by Sandeep Pandey

The defeat of India by West Indies in the T-20 World Cup triggered a controversy at the National Institute of Technology at Srinagar between Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri students. Some Kashmiri students have been alleged to have raised anti-India slogans and burst firecrackers upon India's defeat. The Kashmiri students allege that the violence was started by non-Kashmiri students the next day when a group waving the tricolour and chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' attacked a group of Kashmiri students returning from Friday prayers. Police lathi-charged to control the students in which some non-Kashmiri students were hurt and subse-quently the Central Reserve Police Force, actually a paramilitary entity, has replaced the Jammu & Kashmir Police on the campus. The NIT has been shut down and students asked to vacate the hostels.

Since the BJP-RSS has come to power, the academic atmosphere of one more campus has been disturbed. It is really a pity that people associate their nationalistic ideals with cricket teams and are ready to clash over victory or loss in their matches. The Board of Control for Cricket in India itself claims to be a private body in spite of its pompous name. How could a team constituted by it be considered a national team? The Supreme Court has recently reprimanded the BCCI for its arbitrary functioning and refusing to implement the Lodha Committee's recommendations. That the BCCI refuses to have a representative of the Comptroller and Auditor General on its Governing Council shows that it doesn't want to be held accountable to the people at large, who are contributors to its funds. There are States like Gujarat and Goa which received preferential treatment by the BCCI in the form of disproportionate funds while on the other hand States like Bihar don't receive any funds. It is not surprising that Bihar doesn't have a single player in the BCCI-constituted Indian team. How could then the BCCI claim to represent the country? Imagine if more such private bodies came into existence and fielded their separate teams. Then which team would be considered to represent India?

Students from both sides, whether they raised pro- or anti-India slogans, have demonstrated immaturity in asserting their nationalistic prefe-rence based on the outcome of a game of cricket. It is even astonishing that pro- or anti-Pakistan slogans were raised at the NIT, Srinagar when Pakistan was not even one of the sides in the particular match in question. It shows how people can easily get carried away when jingoistic slogans are raised. There are much more serious anti-national activities going on within the country, for example, corruption, about which we need to be worried. Similarly, there is a lot of good work going on within the country about which we can feel proud. It is a pity that rather than concerning ourselves with real issues on the ground, we let our emotions fire based on the results of the game of cricket and get carried away in sloganeering to the point where it can turn into violence. Probably the intention of the government is precisely to divert the people's attention from real issues, like price rise, to emotional issues like nationalism.

The Indian Premier League has to some extent done the job of dissociating the feeling of nationalism from cricket teams by making players from different nationalities play as part of a team. The IPL has also highlighted that these are professional players who can be bought and sold, which implies that they play for money. In the IPL they can switch teams depending on who pays them more. Similarly, even when they play in national teams the prime motivating factor for the players is money. It is unthinkable that any player would play for his national team merely out of a feeling of patriotism without any payment in exchange. In fact, if players had any nationalistic feelings they would not indulge in match-fixing, sometimes deliberately, causing their teams to lose the match.

When the game of cricket and its management are so highly commercialised, does it make any sense to associate nationalistic feelings with these teams? In fact, the commercial interests exploit our nationalistic feelings. If we agree that sports is to be played with sportsman-like or sportswoman-like spirit then we should appreciate whoever plays the better game irrespective of their nationality. When Arun-dhati Roy was once asked to convey her best wishes to the Indian team before an inter-national event, she said her favourite team was Sri Lanka. Why should every Indian be expected to endorse the Indian team in a sporting event and worse why should this determine our commitment to nationalism?

Now the Bombay High Court has also reprimanded the Cricket Associations for using huge volumes of water to maintain their pitches while the State of Maharashtra is suffering from drought. People and cattle are dying because of water shortage. In the context of the recent debate on nationalism it may be interesting to ask what is more nationalistic—to play cricket or to save people and cattle?

BJP leader and BCCI Secretary Anurag Thakur has said that Maharashtra will lose Rs 100 crores if the IPL was to be moved out of Maharashtra. He suggested that this money could be used for tackling the drought situation and for relief for the affected people. It has also been emphasised by the Cricket Associations and the government that potable water is not used for maintenance of pitches, which is estimated to require 60 lakh litres of water this season. What people like Thakur don't realise is that money cannot be a substitute for water or food. If you've money but there is no potable water left, how would you quench your thirst? The situation is gradually becoming worse and we cannot adopt a complacent attitude. We need to save even the non-potable water which can be used for other necessary activities like irrigation, in toilets, washing of clothes, etc.

Noted social activist and Magsaysay awardee Dr Sandeep Pandey was recently sacked this year from the IIT-BHU where he was a Visiting Professor on the charge of being a “Naxalite” engaging in “anti-national” activities. He was elected along with Prof Keshav Jadhav the Vice-President of the Socialist Party (India) at its founding conference at Hyderabad on May 28-29, 2011.

Kashmir is normal in the sense that there are no stone-throwing incidents. Militancy, too, is on its last leg. Yet, the Valley is seething with discontent. You can feel it once you land there. It is difficult to ascribe a single reason. Many factors are responsible for it. The most important one is the general feeling that India is all over, while Kashmir had given its control only over three subjects: Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communications.

The complaint is justified because it is for a unit to surrender as much sovereignty as it likes. The federation cannot usurp more subjects on its own. But New Delhi has precisely done that. This is what came in the way of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Shiekh Abdullah, who were close friends. The Sheikh spent 12 years in confinement. Nehru realised his mistake and had the Sheikh to stay at the Prime Minister's house to make amends.

A similar problem plagues relations between New Delhi and Srinagar. How does a Chief Minister stay in the good books of the Centre and give the Valley a feeling of independent identity? This is the thinking that worries the political parties of the State all the time.

Those who consider Kashmir as India's inalienable part and want to undo Article 370, which gives a special status to Kashmir, are betraying the Constitution on the one hand and the confidence of Kashmiris on the other. Unfortunately, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a different point of view, although Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not done anything which would whittle down Kashmir's autonomy. But the fear pervades in the Valley.

This is the main reason why accession to India has come to be questioned seriously. Those who seldom received any response to their slogan of independent Kashmir in the past have many ears to listen today. And, not surprisingly, their number is increasing by the day.

What New Delhi has to appreciate is that the Kashmiris' desire to distance themselves from India may not be considered in any meaningful transfer of power from New Delhi to Srinagar. Yet the impression that the Kashmiris rule themselves has to be sustained. The National Conference waged a long war to get rid of Maharaja Hari Singh and had an icon like Sheikh Abdullah to provide a secular and democratic rule to the State. But the party suffered defeat in the Assembly polls because it was seen as being too close to New Delhi.

The People's Democratic Party (PDP) won because its founder, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, kept a distance from New Delhi, without alienating it. The Kashmiris voted for him because he gave them a feeling of defiance. Omar and Farooq Abdullah had to pay the price of the National Conference's image of being pro-Delhi. Kashmir's links with India are too close to challenge it beyond a point. Still the opposition, however small, gives the Kashmiris a vicarious satisfaction of defying New Delhi.

Lord Cyril Radcliffe did not attach any importance to Kashmir. He was a judge in London who drew the line between India and Pakistan to establish two separate countries. He told me many years later during an interview that he never imagined that Kashmir would assume so much importance as it did.

I recalled this instance when I was in Srinagar a couple of weeks ago to preside over the first anniversary of an Urdu magazine. Urdu has been unceremoniously ousted from all the States, including Punjab, where it was the main language until some years ago. In fact, the language lost its importance in India soon after Pakistan made it its national language.

Kashmir feels strongly about New Delhi's step-motherly treatment meted out to the language. And it is generally believed that it is languishing in neglect because Urdu is considered the language of Muslims. If New Delhi were to own and encourage Urdu, the Kashmiris would have at least one reason less to feel aggrieved.

People are generally poor like the rest of India and they want jobs which they realise will come through only development, including tourism. But they are not themselves picking up the gun or any other weapon to drive the militants out. One, they are afraid of them, and, two, there is a feeling that what the militants are trying to do is to give them an identity. Therefore, the criticism that there is no resistance to the militants from within the Valley should be understandable because it is part of alienation. It is unfortunate that New Delhi did not give the package which it had announced after the devastation through floods in Kashmir. There was no criticism of not honouring the promise by the media. There was also no Indian leader to point out to New Delhi that it had reneged from the promise. All these are interpreted in Kashmir as a deliberate sign of cursory attitude.

I still believe that the 1953 agreement which gave India the control of defence, foreign affairs and communications can improve part of the situation in the State. The Kashmiri youth, who are angry over the State's status as well as the situation, can be won over by the assurance that the entire Indian market is available to them for business or service.

But this alone may not do. New Delhi will have to withdraw all the Acts relating to the fields other than defence, foreign affairs and communications. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which was promulgated some 25 years ago to meet the extraordinary situation in the State, is still in operation. Were the government to withdraw the Act, it would placate the Kashmiris on the one hand and make the security forces more responsible on the other.

Normalcy is also a state of mind. The Kash-miris must feel themselves that their identity is not under attack and that New Delhi realises the importance of what the Kashmiris desire. The restoration of the 1953 agreement giving New Delhi the control of only three subjects may retrieve the situation which, if not attended to, may deteriorate.

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is www.kuldipnayar.com

EDITORIAL

As we go to press today, the results of the Assembly elections in four States (Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal) and the Union Territory of Puducherry have just come. These given an idea of the public mood in various parts of the country at this point in time. Significantly, all these States and Puducherry have given decisive verdicts.

In Assam (having a total of 126 seats), after being in power for three terms at a stretch CM Tarun Gogoi of the Congress has been dethroned by the BJP-led alliance headed by Union Minister for Sports in the Narendra Modi Government, Sarbananda Sonowal. The alliance, comprising the Assam Gana Parishad and Bodo People's Party besides the BJP, won 86 seats while the Congress came a distant second with 25 seats and the AIUDF could garner merely 13 seats while Others had two seats.

In Kerala, keeping the pattern of governance rotating between the two combinations—the United Democratic Front and Left Democratic Front—every five years, the LDF wrested the government from the UDF headed by CM Oommen Chandy with a victory which was doubtless resounding, the LDF having won 91 seats in the 140-member State Assembly, with the UDF reduced to 47; however, more striking was the first ever victory of the BJP in the State Assembly (behind which the RSS' tireless activity spread over several years played a contributory role). Apart from the lone BJP win, a seat was won by Others in the province.

In Tamil Nadu, CM J. Jayalalithaa was able to break, for the first time since 1984, the cycle of anti-incumbency every five years and won hands down securing 134 seats in the 234-member State Assembly while the DMK-Congress alliance (which was all set to form the next government according to most exit polls except one) had to remain content with 98 seats while all other parties in the fray (including those, like the Communists, who had formed a third front) drew a blank. This was a blow to both the DMK and Congress (that is being highlighted by the Modi-Shah-led BJP in a bid to spite the Congress and underscore its own success in Assam).

In West Bengal, where the Left parties had entered into a seat-sharing arrangement with the Congress in an attempt to oust the incumbent Mamata Banerjee Government of the Trinamul Congress, the TMC achieved an outstanding landslide victory romping home with an incredible 211 seats in the 294-member Assembly leaving the Left-Congress way behind (between the two they shared 76 seats: Left 32 and the Congress 44) while the BJP won three seats and Others four.

(Here it must be pointed out that though the electoral understanding between the Left and Congress was limited to seat-sharing on the formal plane, in reality it went far beyond that and took the shape of an electoral alliance with popular support. That it failed to mobilise the masses against Mamata in particular was a different matter.)

Only in the Union Territory of Puducherry did the Congress register a straight win bagging 17 seats in the 30-member Assembly with the rival Congress (All India NR Congress) getting eight, AIADMK four and Others one.

The Congress' extraordinary defeat in Assam needs to be analysed in the proper perspective. There are several reasons for such an outcome. First, the Congress was alienated from the young people as it did not understand the yearnings of the younger generation. In fact the youth felt closer to PM Narendra Modi since they were taken in by his rhetoric. Secondly, because of his age CM Tarun Gogoi could not keep a close watch on what his Cabinet colleagues were doing—the latter indulged in different forms of corruption in the wake of Gogoi's loosening grip over the administration. Thirdly, people were keen on a change from the veteran CM to a much younger personality—and that is why they chose Sarban-anda Sonowal who had led the AASU's struggle against “illegal immigration”; subsequently he joined the AGP but then, frustrated over the intense factionalism in that party, opted for joining the BJP.

As for the Congress, it must be frankly stated that it should have comprehended the scale of danger inherent in the decision of former Assam Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma to quit the Congress to join the BJP. He should have been dissuaded from doing so but that did not happen and eventually the party suffered.

There was a feeling that the politics of polarisation the BJP was playing would in the final analysis help the Congress to garner the Muslim votes in bulk but that did not take place to the extent expected.

However, the BJP's victory brings with it certain ominous portents. Its communal politics can cause havoc in the State. Already there are some signs to that effect. In the situation the Congress has the bounden duty to mobilise all the secular democratic forces to resist and defeat the BJP's nefarious designs. But the moot question is: could it bestir itself to do so?

Overall therefore there is no doubt that the Congress has definitely suffered a setback—losing two States where it on its own strength or as the leader of an alliance was in power—Assam and Kerala; while in two other States (Tamil Nadu and West Bengal) where it was anticipating to be part of the ruling combine it had to bite the dust. Its only satisfaction is that it has become the second largest party after the TMC in West Bengal, something the CPM had secured in the 2011 Assembly polls after having ruled the State for 34 years without interruption.

For the Left these elections constituted a struggle for survival after having lost two major States—Kerala and West Bengal—where it was in power. The decisive victory in Kerala was indeed a consolation prize but the debacle in West Bangal (after soaring expectations) has resulted in the eruption of new dissensions on ideological
grounds. Thus the Congress-CPM electoral understanding—so essential on the national plane in view of the depredations of the Sangh Parivar in power at the Centre—has suffered a major jolt at present to the jubilation of the blind anti-Congress and ultra-Left hotheads within the CPM and outside. Needless to mention, it is these elements who had roundly opposed the Left-Congress bonhomie in West Bengal.

A word about the present-day BJP leadership: Amit Shah seems too excited over his plan for a Congress-mukt Bharat (an India emancipated from the Congress) and had the gumption to say today that the State Assembly election results had been witness to a major stride in that direction. Since the Congress was tempered in the flames of the freedom struggle from which the RSS, the BJP's mentor, had carefully kept itself aloof, the party (Congress) cannot be made extinct by the likes of Shah or Modi because, after all, it resides in the hearts of our common people with whom the RSS-BJP have had no connection whatsoever.

True, the results of the State Assembly polls have boosted the morale of the RSS-BJP leaders now in charge of the ruling dispensation. Perhaps they needed this elixir after the BJP's dismal performance in Delhi and Bihar (as also the latest outcome of the civic polls in the Capital). And there is every possibility of this inciting them to effect further communal polarisation on a large scale while carrying forward the agenda of Hindutva striking at the very root of secularism.

The situation therefore has turned more grave than what it was even a few days ago. This is the time when the country is in dire need of farsighted leaders in the Left and Congress of the mould of those who had guided our freedom struggle. Instead what we have today are pathetic caricatures who are only interested in projecting their self-importance by resorting to just revolutionary phrase-mongering that sounds so hollow in the midst of the mounting complexities fast engulfing our polity.

May 19 S.C.

COMMUNICATION

In all five States taken together the Congress got more seats than the BJP but this was ignored by the media.

Although the media in India was recently saturated with the results of the Assembly elections, it was by and large ignored that if we combine the results of all the five States then the Congress has won 115 seats while the BJP has won only 64 seats. Thus the number of seats won by the Congress is much higher than the BJP. This can be more clearly seen in the table given below.

Table

Election Results of the Legislative Assemblies to the Five States/UTs

While it is clear that the Congress has suffered major setbacks and needs reforms, nevertheless its ability to get more seats than the BJP even in difficult times should not have been ignored by the media.

Bharat Dogra
C-27, Raksha Kunj,
Paschim Vihar,
New Delhi-110063

The Bharatiya Janata Party has always excelled in its mastery of the art of hyperbole. Remember ‘Shining India'? The hype that the party leadership is giving to the BJP's perfor-mance in the recent State elections—in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and in the Union Territory of Puducherry—does not come as a surprise.

The BJP narrative is four-fold: one, the BJP has eclipsed the Congress as the star performer in these State elections; two, India is getting rid of the Congress; three, the BJP is now a truly national party with a dynamic presence all over the country; and, four, the “BJP's ideology is being accepted, appreciated and supported by more and more people”. (PM Narendra Modi)

However, the fine print contradicts the narrative. Reproduced below are certain perti-nent observations culled out from social network sites (which are any day providing far more insightful views on Indian politics than our plaint corporate media):

Out of the aggregate 812 seats contested in the recent elections, the Congress won 115 and the BJP 64. Yet it is being claimed that the BJP won a great victory and the Congress was “routed”.

In terms of popular vote, the Congress got almost thrice as much as the BJP.

The BJP won 60 MLAs in Assam with a population of 31 million. But it could win only eight MLA seats in the other States (minus Assam), which have a combined population of about 250 million.

Then, there are the fine prints

In Tamil Nadu, the BJP candidates lost their deposits in 230 out of 232 seats (because they couldn't secure even one-sixth of the votes polled in the constituency).

The BJP's vote-share in these Assembly elections, in comparison with the 2014 poll, actually declined. In Assam, it dropped from 36.5 per cent in the 2014 poll to 30.1 per cent in the State elections; in West Bengal it dropped from 16.8 per cent to 10.3 per cent; in Tamil Nadu from 5.56 per cent to 2.7 per cent. Kerala, the smallest of the four States, is the solitary exception where the BJP candidates actually increased their party's vote-share from 10.33 per cent in 2014 to 10.7 in the State elections.

Then, there are the still finer points as regards the fortunes of the Congress Party, which put a question-mark on the BJP thesis that Indians are getting rid of the Congress Party:

Contrary to the BJP's abysmal record of decline in vote-share, the Congress Party actually increased its vote-share in the State elections in comparison with its performance in 2014. The figures are: Assam (increase from 29.6 to 31 per cent); West Bengal (increase from 9.58 to 11.9 per cent); Tamil Nadu (increase from 4.3 to 6.5 per cent.)

Again, the only exception is Kerala where its votes-share of 31.3 per cent in the 2014 poll dropped to 23.8 per cent in the State elections.

How Modi could draw such a sweeping conclusion that “more and more people” are accepting the BJP's ideology, I do not know.

To be sure, the BJP's capture of power in Assam is impressive. But then, the fine print here is that the BJP made some smart electoral alliances—while the Congress, on the other hand, was exceedingly foolish to keep the overtures from Muslim parties at arm's length. Equally, the BJP was not only willing to put its ideology on the backburner, Modi himself adopted (uncharacteris-tically but wisely) a self-effacing role for himself in the campaign and instead projected local Assamese leaders as the party's mascot.

Now, do the recent elections suggest that the BJP is a rising star in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu or Kerala? I don't think so, and let me explain why. Given the big population of minority communities in West Bengal and Kerala, the BJP will continue to remain a pariah in coalition politics. As for Tamil Nadu, the BJP remains a peripheral force until the cycle of Dravida politics finally ends.

Finally, does the win in Assam help the BJP to capture power in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab? No, Assam is not a trail-blazer. It could have some limited impact in one or two North-Eastern States—excluding Tripura, of course— but is really a ‘stand alone' case.

Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

by Suneet Chopra

Objective realities, often based on hard truths and their subjective papering over, are a part of our present state of hyperbole in the media. And the elections in five States of the country are no exception, but the myths they are burdened with have to be cleared.

The first myth that must to be exploded is the projection of a BJP wave sweeping the country. If we look at the overall figures, the BJP contested 696 Assembly seats, won only 64 and had a success rate of 9.1 per cent. This was to be expected as in most of these States the BJP hardly exists. In comparison to it, the Left contested 484 seats and won 124, with a success rate of 27.4 per cent, while the Congress contested 363 seats, won 115 and had a success rate of 31.6 per cent. If we look at the impact on different States, if the polarisation of different sections of society brought the BJP to power in Assam, its reaction brought the Left and Democratic Front to power in Kerala. In Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, on the other hand, regional parties came to power. The BJP was confined to merely three seats in West Bengal and forfeited its deposit in most of the seats in Tamil Nadu. So where is the substance behind the hype of the BJP's sweeping success? It is definitely not there.

If we take a hard look at the States, starting with Assam, what do we find? During the election that brought Narendra Modi to power at the Centre in 2014, the BJP garnered 36.6 per cent of the vote. In 2016, the percentage has gone down to 29.5 per cent. In comparison to this, in Kerala, the LDF increased its tally from 40 per cent of its vote-share in 2014 to 42.6 per cent in the current Assembly elections, while in West Bengal the TMC rose from 36.6 per cent to 44.9 per cent and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu declined from 44.3 per cent to 40.8 per cent on account of incumbency. Given this reality, one finds that the Congress improved its tally in Assam from 29.5 per cent to 31 per cent despite incumbency, in Tamil Nadu, it rose from 4.3 per cent to 6.2 per cent and even in West Bengal from 9.6 per cent to 12.3 per cent, while in both the States the BJP's vote-share fell from 16.8 per cent to 10.2 per cent in West Bengal and from 5.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent in Tamil Nadu. In Kerala despite its alliance with the BDJS, the BJP only marginally increased its voting share from 10.3 per cent to 10.7 per cent between the 2014 and 2016 elections. Given that the BJP won in Assam on the basis of polarisation and the riots that followed the parliamentary elections, even that was not able to prevent anti-incumbency becoming more visible both in Assam and in the country as whole. So the first myth that has to be exploded is that of the BJP sweeping over new areas on top of a wave.

Now we come to the second myth that needs to be demolished. This is the myth of an INC-CPI-M alliance from above. The people of Bengal feared a violent election with mass rigging like 1972 when the CPI-M had to sit out of the Assembly. This time a repeat of that was successfully avoided by listening to the ground-level cadre and it was the seat adjustment with the INC, RJD, JD(U) and the parties of the Left that isolated the TMC enough to prevent a wholesale rigging of elections and also gave these parties a chance to show their strength and bring their ideology to the masses. True, in terms of seats and voting percentages, the Congress appears to have done better than the Left; but the significance of the capacity to hold this election in peace was definitely a positive factor which won the people over to the idea, as was evident from the mass participation we witnessed in the campaign.

The most significant victory of the Left has been in East Midnapore, where the townships are working class strongholds that had been attacked, terrorised and the trade unions drawn to the All India Trinamul Trade Union Congress from the CITU, notably in Haldia. Here the CPI-M candidate won with a huge margin of 21,493 votes; in nearby Panskura East, the CPI-M candidate won with a margin of 5000 votes, while the CPI defeated the TMC narrowly in Tamluk. This was an area not far from Singur, where the TMC had literally wiped out the Left electorally. This victory is not merely a small one. It reflects both a resurgent CPI-M and other parties of the Left.

In general terms too, Mamata Banerjee's margin of victory in Kolkata has declined. Eight of her Ministers have lost their seats. In Siliguri, the CPI-M has defeated Baichung Bhutia, the world class footballer. So it would appear that the adjustment seems to have reduced the margins of victory even if it lost in the election. In this respect we should not fail to remember the events of 1972 to 1977, when the CPI-M in protest against a rigged election, had no voice in the Assembly. Today there are 80 members of different Opposition parties in the Assembly who can and do raise their voice in solidarity, as has happened recently in respect of the post-poll violence.

The third myth that needs demolishing is that the Bengal adjustment affected the Left negatively in Kerala. On the contrary the vote of the minorities like the Muslims and Christians actually shifted in favour of the LDF this time. Between the 2011 and 2016 Assembly elections, the Muslim vote in favour of the LDF rose from 32 per cent to 34 per cent while the Christian vote rose even more sharply from 27 per cent to 35 per cent. Clearly these communities, which were the mainstay of the UDF, shifted to the LDF seeing both its image in Kerala and its capacity to reach out beyond its periphery in Bengal as the most effective defence against the disruptive activities of the Sangh Parivar all over the country. It is evident that it is only by sweeping these cobwebs of myths away we will be able to make sense of the reality and not get lost in hyperbole.

(Courtesy: The Indian Express)

[An abridged version of this article appeared in The Indian Express of May 25, 2016]

The author, a former member of the CPI-M Central Committee, is the Joint Secretary, All India Agricultural Workers Union.

I was on my way to Peshawar from Rawalpindi to meet Wali Khan, son of Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan. At Abottabad, where I stopped for a cup of tea, the radio was broadcasting a BBC report that Sikh security guards had shot Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dead.

There was no question of my proceeding further. I rushed back to Lahore but by then the flight to Delhi had left. Ironically, a London-based Sikh organisation at Lahore had arranged that day a meeting to raise the demand for Khalistan.

When I landed at Palam the following day, the airport wore a deserted look. Two Sikh officers at the immigration counter stood aside. I heard someone saying at the counter that security would have to be arranged to take the Sikh employees safe home.

I was bewildered and could not make head or tail out of what was going on. A Hindu officer at the counter explained that there had been a massacre of Sikhs at Delhi. It had never occurred to me that the Hindus could kill the Sikhs who, according to the Constitution, were Hindus. That apart, marriages between the Hindus and Sikhs were common till a few years ago. My mother was from a Sikh family. When I came out of Palam, I saw a heap of ashes. The taxi driver told me that a Sikh had been burnt alive earlier in the day.

Many years later, when I was the Rajya Sabha member, I raised the question of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and wanted the appointment of a high-powered commission to probe the entire happening. L.K. Advani supported me. Justice G.T. Nanavati, who had probed the Gujarat killings, was appointed to head the commission.

In an otherwise fair report that he submitted to the government, Justice Nanavati had evaded naming the person behind the anti-Sikh riots. When I met him later to complain that he did not name the person, he shrugged his shoulders and said that everybody knew who were behind the riots. This is true, but if he had named them in his report, it would have made all the difference.

The head of a Special Investigation Team (SIT), R.K. Raghvan, probing 10 cases following instructions from the Supreme Court, allowed his ideology to have the better of him, although he had been an outstanding police officer. Even the Court has not commented on Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, although it had all the details before it.

By sending to the trial court the case of former Congress MP, Eshan Jafri, who along with 69 people were burnt or butchered alive at the Gulburga Society in Ahmedabad, the Supreme Court had only passed on the buck. This is the same Supreme Court which commented on Modi: Nero was fiddling when Rome was burning.

The sort of report the SIT had submitted can be made out from the evidence of two retired judges it had ignored. Both had interviewed the then State Home Minister, Haren Pandya, who was murdered because he had started speaking the truth. According to the two judges, P.B. Sawant, who was on the Supreme Court Bench, and Justice H. Suresh of the Bombay High Court, Pandya told them that the Chief Minister had directed the police to give Hindus a free hand to vent their anger during the riots.

Both judges were members of the People's Tribunal which held Modi guilty. That there was not a single FIR filed against the Chief Minister was not a plus point. He had generated so much fear in the minds of the victims that they dared not go to the police station, hardly safe for Muslims at that time.

To incite people Modi had also arranged to parade through the Ahmedabad streets the bodies of 49 kar sevaks who had been burnt alive on a train at Godhra while returning from a pilgrimage. This had terrible repercussions. Even today, Muslims in Gujarat generally confine themselves to their localities fearing that they may be attacked.

They have not forgotten how 2000 from their community were killed and how several thousands were ousted from their homes and lands. Some Muslims have tried to return, but have found that they are not welcome to their places where they and their forefathers had lived for ages.

True, the horror of Gujarat had shaken the nation. Yet, no amount of condemnation by the public and media has made Modi relent, much less force him to apologise. He had refused to say sorry and had gone about arranging the humbug of sadbhavana (goodwill) sittings at big cities of the State. Modi had a lot to hide. Specific instances of murders, when reconstructed or proved, pinpoint to the State's plot for ethnic cleansing.

Brave police officers like Sanjay Bhatt have told the truth, even at the risk of annoying Modi who had unleashed his repressive, one-sided administration against Bhatt. He is suffering alone and even the Gujarat High Court has not come to his aid. Still Bhatt had said in an affidavit that Modi instructed his officers to let Hindus vent their anger on Muslims.

In the case of Sikhs, Prime Minister Man-mohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi have offered their apologies for the 1984 riots. Modi and his party, BJP, have not done even that for the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. Now that he is the Prime Minister, he should have had the grace to apologise for what he had reportedly done in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Why there is so much umbrage against the anti-Muslim and anti-Sikh riots even after years of their occurrence is not yet understood either by the BJP in the first case of Gujarat or by the Congress in the second case of Sikhs. The reason is that there is practically no action against those people who had soiled their hands with blood. The BJP had saved them in Gujarat and the Congress did so in Delhi and elsewhere. Still worse, both parties do their best to protect the administrations which had planned and executed these riots.

The author is a veteran journalist renowned not only in this country but also in our neighbouring states of Pakistan and Bangladesh where his columns are widely read. His website is www.kuldipnayar.com

MUSINGS

Frenzied are Sanghis about changing names of roads. In fact, this frenzied lot are now targetting Akbar Road; chanting it ought to be renamed after Maharana Pratap Singh. Why? ‘Too many Delhi roads named after Mughal emperors... Muslim rulers!' quip today's RSS rulers.

Hopefully this name-changing hysteria remains confined to roads. And not get diverted to hapless humans. It shouldn't come as some sort of a shock if you happen to hear today's rulers hiss, ‘Too many with Muslim names and surnames. Change these names. Off with Muslim Names! Hack them ...er, their names or throw them from here to there!'

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru removed from Textbooks!

Though nothing comes as a shocker but it did get painful to read news reports that the Rajas-than Government plans to remove the particular chapter on Jawaharlal Nehru from school text- books.

I hadn't ever met or seen Jawaharlal Nehru but there was that something special to his personality; he had qualities of a leader, of a statesman ...Here is one of my earlier written pieces on Nehru—

“Whenever I think of my maternal grand-mother, Amna Rahman, there's one particular image which holds out in that ongoing way— we were sitting in the living room of our ancestral kothi in Shahjahanpur, and my grand-mother had switched on the radio. As soon as the news of the passing away of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru came through, she'd cried out, ‘Panditji gone ...what will happen to us! Who'll be there for us ...who'll protect us! Tabahi for us ... doom for the Musalmaans of Hindustan!'

“I was a young child and couldn't really understand the connect between Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's death and her cries. Nah, I couldn't grasp the exact significance of her cries, of her emotional outburst. After all, she was living in one of those nondescript townships of Uttar Pradesh; far away from New Delhi and also far away from the world of politics. In fact, there were no political creatures in our clan.”

Of course, as years rolled by I could more than sense the wisdom of her words... the agony she was relaying. For her, like many of her generation, ‘Panditji'—as Jawaharlal Nehru was popularly called—stood for secular values, for the rights and dignity of the minorities of this land. He was looked upon as a saviour of sorts.

Needless to elaborate that after his death the basic fabric got punctured. The Muslims of the country started getting sidelined, bypassed and dumped into varying slots; in the backdrop of an ongoing poisonous propaganda against them. Today, as I nostalgically recall those carefree childhood days, there seemed little danger of being labelled ‘the other'... Muslims of this land lived on par with those from the majority community and one couldn't have visualised that there'd come a day when Muslims would be reduced to second or third class positioning. Yes, rioting did take place even during Nehru's prime ministership but one was confident that justice would prevail; not like today when even with a cracker burst a bunch of hapless Muslims are thrown into prison hellholes with those horrifying terror- tags pinned on them. In fact, during my travels to Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ajmer, Mumbai, Aligarh, Lucknow and adjoining areas of Uttar Pradesh, activists have recounted instances of Muslim youth being held only on grounds of mere suspicion. The first to be rounded up are Muslims; more so now as new ploys in the form and shape of the ISIS are being used by a biased machinery.

In fact, when I'm asked—what's the difference between a poor Muslim and poor Hindu, my spontaneous response is—‘Both are hapless and disadvantaged, hungry and jobless; the only difference is that the very feeling of security is missing in today's Muslims.' Needless to add that with the RSS-BJP in power, this feeling of insecurity amongst the Indian Muslims has been increasing.

I've always argued that in a democracy (that is, in a healthy democracy) it doesn't matter if you have a Hindu or Muslim or Sikh or Christian as the head of government. All that matters is a non-communal attitude of the governmental machinery, so that justice together with transparency prevails. During Nehru's prime ministership that basic feeling of security was high because he was himself secular. If Nehru was around, it would have been impossible for the Babri Masjid to have got demolished, or for the Gujarat pogrom to have taken place, or for the RSS pracharaks and mahapracharaks to be ruling this land, or for any of the window-dressing gimmicks to be taking place. Yes, gimmicks on, where two or three are handpicked from the minority community and placed up there! Who is the government of the day trying to hoodwink by these silly ploys?

In fact, Nehru was a statesman in the truest sense. Several years back whilst interacting with one of the Iraqi envoys to India, I was amazed to know that in the 1950s Nehru had gifted one of the bungalows on New Delhi's Prithviraj Road to the first Iraqi envoy to India. To this day the bungalow stands out, though, of course, Iraq stands reduced to ruins, intruded into and wrecked by the American- Allied forces.

In fact, Nehru's vision and policies vis-a-vis West Asia made the entire so-called ‘Muslim world' tilt towards India. He seemed clear about his stand on the Middle East and with that made the Arabs and West Asians strong allies of India. Alas! Today there's no Nehru and there's little trace of the erstwhile Middle East; wrecked by American policies-cum-ploys.

What Khushwant Singh had to say about Nehru

I am quoting Khushwant Singh from the book Absolute Khushwant (Penguin) :

‘Nehru answered Allama Iqbal's requirements of a Meer-e-Kaarvaan—leader of the caravan: nigahbuland, sukhandilnawaz, jaan par soz/Yahihainrakht-e-safar Meer-e-Kaarvaankeliye. (lofty vision, winning speech and a warm personality /This is all the baggage the leader of the caravan needs on his journey)...

‘He should have been the role model for all the Prime Ministers of India. He was above prejudices of any kind: racial, religious or of caste. He was an agnostic and firmly believed that religion played a very negative role in Indian society. What I admired most about him was his secularism. He was a visionary and an exemplary leader; the father of Indian constitu-tional democracy, of universal adult franchise, the five-year plans, giving equal rights to women, among other things. He was better educated than any of his successors, with the exception of Manmohan Singh, and spent nine long years in jail reading, writing and thinking about the country's future ...But being human, Nehru had his human failings. He was not above political chicanery. Having accepted the Cabinet Mission plan to hand over power to a united India, he reneged on his undertaking when he realised Jinnah might end up becoming Prime Minister...'

From N.C.'s Writings

The following piece, which appeared in the ‘New Delhi Skyline' of Mainstream, was written two days after Jawaharlal Nehru's demise on May 27, 1964. It was published on May 30, 1964. It is being reproduced on the occasion of Nehru's fiftysecond death anniversary.

As the golden flame licked up the funeral pyre, an unforgettable scene ended near the banks of the Jumna and under the shadow of the Red Fort.

It was an emotional experience without precedence, to watch this mightiest demonstration of love and respect that this great country has paid to any man. For Jawaharlal Nehru was, for the vast mass that is engulfed in sorrow today, not just a symbol of freedom, he was part of their very personality: it is difficult for this entire generation of ours to think of India without him; whatever we felt and learned, made us happy or sad, our hopes and our frustrations, were all inextricably interwoven with him.

As the millions came to join in his final journey through the streets of Delhi, new and old, they were as yet too stunned to feel the pangs of his loss in full measure. An indescribable sense of the coming void, of an existence in which Nehru would no longer be there seemed to have gripped them. The expression often used in his life-time that he could feel the pulse of the nation, could be understood in the fullest measure when one watched with awe the vast sea of humanity that accompanied him for miles in the grueling summer sun. A sense of personal loss was writ large on every face, young and old.

The remarkable initiative shown by the vast concourse of men and women in mourning could hardly be missed as the cortege was carried from the Prime Minister's House to the open space beyond Rajghat. The Army and the Police could not manage the solid phalanx that thronged the eight-mile route: but spontaneously, the people with an amazing sense of dignity befitting the poignant occasion, made way for the entire funeral procession to pass while they themselves were wending their way to the cremation ground.

The realisation that Nehru was in broken health had come months backs. In fact, it began with his serious illness in the summer of 1962, just two years ago, when the most agile among political figures was laid up in bed for more than a month. Since then came the severest ordeal in his whole career—as also of free India—the armed attack by the Chinese. In fact, the blow came with the Chinese breach of faith five years ago, because he had made the friendship with China the sheet-anchor of his foreign policy.

For any leader anywhere else in the world, placed in similar circumstances, Peking's diabolic attack would have been a killing blow. The fact that Nehru could not only survive the shock but found his own bearings as also of the nation's to a large measure testified to his tremendous will power and steadfast devotion to the principles and ideals he has always striven to hold aloft. No wonder that in Delhi today many felt that if any single factor had killed this fearless fighter for peace, amity and under-standing among nations, it was the perfidy of Peking.

New Delhi is comforted in its hour of grief by the unique demonstration of friendship and solidarity that has been conveyed from all parts of the world. Cold War barriers have gone in paying homage to the man who had always fought it with unwavering faith in a world without war. If the West has paid generous tribute to his memory, Moscow has not lagged behind, and in the Capital today there is the recognition of Khrushchev's expression of sorrow at the loss of a good friend; his ready pledge of support to the present government has been widely noted.

After Nehru Who? The question that has been debated for years has left the country no wiser. It is an extraordinary phenomenon that though Nehru's departure was for long not unexpected, the nation—New Delhi particularly—was never more unprepared.

The grim fact that Nehru, unlike Gandhiji, did not groom anybody to succeed him, has left New Delhi in an uncanny suspense. The Titan has left behind a brood of dwarfs, none of whom can aspire even to that national eminence which was the hallmark of the Congress High Command when freedom came to this land. Under the shade of the mighty banyan tree, no other plant did grow in stature or stamina.

It was therefore but inevitable that the milling crowds that attended the memorable funeral were mostly beset by the inexorable question-mark—who will lead the government of this country, keeping it together and strong? This was indicated by the common people constantly flocking in clusters round the different leaders, Right and Left, all along the journey to the cremation ground. Who knows on whom the mantle will fall, or snatched by whom?

In the highest circles, the debate began within a few hours of the passing away of the leader. Actually, it started with the arrival of the Congress President late in the evening. Sri Kamaraj met Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri that very night. Since then, brisk lobbyings have been going on in the Capital in practically all circles. Sri Nanda's supporters have been meeting in their own conclave, and so have Sri Shastri's. Reports have come of Sri Morarji Desai's talks with Sri Jagjivan Ram. Ententes and alignments of the most diverse character are being talked about.

An interesting development has been a wide demand from a large number of Congress MPs that the choice of a new leader should not be confined to close arrangements among the top few. As one of the rank-and-file members remarked, “Palace intrigues will not do, no longer shall we accept a fait acompli by the High Command.” Though it looks like a democratic demand, it is said to have been inspired by Sri Morarji Desai.

Three names have been heard as the likely contenders for Nehru's succession—Sri Nanda, Sri Shastri and Sri Morarji Desai. Of these, there seems to be little prospect for Sri Desai on his own wangling a majority either in the Working Committee or in the Parliamentary Party. How-ever, he might strike some agreement with some other important group as that of Sri Jagjivan Ram, who commands a good number of supporters, at least the bulk of the Scheduled Caste MPs. It is significant that some of the Congress Left leaders are not totally averse to strike a deal with Sri Morarji Desai as a means of edging out Sri Shastri. It is understood that if Sri Desai does not become the Prime Minister, he wants, as price of an entente, the assurance that he would get back his old portfolio, namely, Finance. But this raises the question of Sri T.T. Krishnamachari's future, for though he has no group following in the Congress as such, he does enjoy Sri Kamaraj's patronage.

While fortunes may change unexpectedly in the next few crucial days, the indications available on the eve of the Congress Working Committee meeting placed the chances of Sri Shastri's success as better than those of Sri Nanda. Apart from a large body of UP and Bihar members—the biggest single bloc in the Congress Parliamentary Party—Sri Shastri is assured of the support of Sri Kamaraj and Sri Atulya Ghosh. It is learnt that Sri Sukhadia also supports this alliance. Sri Biju Patnaik, who originally belonged to this group, has walked over to Sri Desai, it is learnt.

An incident showing up the strained relations was provided by the announcement of the portfolios of Sri Nanda's Caretaker Cabinet: Sri Shastri's supporters did not conceal their annoyance at Sri Nanda's holding the External Affairs portfolio together with the Home.

According to one report, there is a possibility that Sri Nanda's supporters, as a last resort in solving any possible deadblock, may press for Smt Indira Gandhi to be the Prime Minister. But it is not yet clear that she will persuade herself to accept the proposal, nor that it would automatically lead to the ending, or at least the freezing, of all group wrangles.

It appears that Sri Shastri's supporters also want to enlist her for the Cabinet of their choice and may vote for her to be the new Foreign Minister. However Smt Vijayalaxmi Pandit's name is also being mentioned as a possible candidate for the External Affairs portfolio, though her chances are rather slim.

The choice of the Prime Ministership is bound up with the question of selecting the Cabinet. For, the Congress President as also whoever is the possible choice would like to have an unanimous election. Under the circumstances, there is a strong tug-of-war among the groups to strengthen their own representation in the composition of the Cabinet. If Sri Shastri wins, there is hardly any chance for Sri Desai being taken into the Cabinet, though Sri S.K. Patil might have a chance. There is a lurking doubt if Sri Jagjivan Ram would find a place in a Shastri Cabinet, unless there is a last-minute under-standing. If Sri Nanda wins, then both Sri Jagjivan Ram and Sri Krishna Menon may be brought back: and Sri Desai too may not be left out. But Sri Patil is not likely to be acceptable for Sri Nanda's team.

Whatever be the final selection, observers in the Capital fear that despite all show of unanimity, a Cabinet led by any of the groups in today's context, will have powerful critics inside the Congress Parliamentary Party itself. This will no doubt be a strain on its stability. “Should we have UP projected in the Centre?” was the ominous question heard even in the funeral procession.

Meanwhile, powerful vested interests are not just passive spectators. Their mighty lobbies have been at work and if they could manage to have their say even under Nehru, how much more demanding they must be today. In the Capital, there are even talks of large-scale air-freighting of solid cash on the day the common humanity was saying a tear-choked goodbye to their beloved leader.

Man-eaters are at large, and they carry Morarjibhai on their book. But how many among the powers-that-be in New Delhi can fight the man-eaters?

A minor episode that must strike New Delhi's press corps as not only interesting but significant is the hand-out released by the I&B Ministry's Press Information Bureau on the day after the Prime Minister's passing away. The Bureau has done excellent work to help the journalists in covering the momentous event.

Entitled “Jottings from Jawaharlal”, the 11-page hand-out contains very good passages from Nehru's speeches and writings. As many as 34 passages have been chosen, but none of these contain even the breath of any reference to socialism, while portraying the life and work of the man who gave the concept of socialism to the national movement and made it the official goal of the government.

A straw in the wind? To forget the message of Nehru so soon after his departure may be the anxious objective of a handful of Big Money, but not certainly of the teeming millions who formed the never-failing companion of Jawaharlal Nehru.

(Mainstream, May 30, 1964)

by V.M. Mohanraj

The early 20th century saw India, China and Russia as mediaeval or semi-feudal societies under oppressive rulers. The imperialists in India and China could only have been more oppressive but not much more than the monarchy in Russia. However, the people of these three countries had not been taking it lying down; they fought for their freedom but India and China liberated themselves from colonial rule only three decades after Russia overthrew the monarchy. When the British imperialists quit India in 1947, vivisecting, as it were, the country, it plunged into a state of anarchy as a result of massive transfer of population and violent Hindu-Muslim clashes that almost reached the dimensions of a civil war. The government that took over the independent but truncated India was headed by Jawaharlal Nehru. Added to the problems of a caste-ridden Hindu society inherited from the past and those thrown up by partition, Nehru was confronted with an economy that was in a shambles as a result of nearly two centuries of colonial exploitation.1 This was three decades before Deng Xiaoping became the ‘paramount leader' of China and three decades after Lenin had embarked on the New Economic Policy (NEP)2 in the Soviet Union.

Nehru (1889-1964) was, so to say, a contem-porary of Deng (1904-1997) but was not leading the country contemporaneously with him. These leaders had the onerous task of designing a policy framework for the economic development of their respective countries, the economies of which were on the verge of bankruptcy when they came to the helm. The similarity of the economic path that Nehru had envisaged for India with Deng's ‘new economic outlook', as both were inspired by the NEP, was as much conspicuous as the dissimilarity of the political means they adopted to implement their economic programmes and what they aimed to achieve.3

Long before India attained independence, Nehru had visited the Soviet Union4 as an invitee for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution when he saw the stupendous socio-economic transformations brought about by the NEP. He was immensely impressed, and must have, at that time itself, thought of devising an economic programme for the development of India along the lines of what he found in the Soviet Union under the NEP. Obviously the idea of a planned development strategy5 was also borrowed from there and he did not hesitate to acknowledge it. Years later, he was known to have said: “The Soviet experiment didn't come in the way. On the contrary, it helped our thinking”6, which shows what he saw there did play a part in his decision to opt for what is known today as the ‘mixed economy' when he became the Prime Minister. It cannot therefore be gainsaid that Nehru's economic policy was, in the final analysis, virtually the NEP adapted to suit the Indian conditions.

But indubitably there were other factors too that shaped his policy. Although he was profoundly influenced by the Soviet Union, he was not a Marxist. But he was inclined to Fabian Socialism7 and by extension to the socialist ideology of the then British Labour Party, the influence of which on Nehru cannot also be overemphasised. It was two years before India became independent that Clement Attlee, the then Prime Minister of Britain, who headed the Labour Government of 1945, introduced the Welfare State.8 It had caught the imagination of Nehru and he did incorporate that concept in his economic programme. He was palpably, though hesitantly, veering towards socialism.

Nehru had been dithering about socialism until he visited the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1954. The change in him was unmistakably reflected in the resolution passed, at his instance, at the AICC session in Avadi the next year, which declared that the objective of the Indian National Congress (INC) was to build, as he put it, a ‘socialistic pattern of society'.9 But he left it vague without attempting to define the term ‘socialistic' which, however, implied that the pattern of society that he was planning to build would be Left-oriented, giving the INC a Leftist image and, incidentally, taking the wind out of the sail of the Left parties — the Communist and the Socialist. Whether this was the motive of his socialist agenda, is a moot point. Be that as it may, the next year, the industrial policy resolution passed soon after independence, putting off nationalisation of existing industries for a decade, was modified and the natio-nalisation of heavy and capital goods industries was taken up seriously, incorporating it in the Second Five-Year Plan effective from 1956.10 This gave an unmistakable socialistic slant to his economic policy.

In order to implement his economic programme, he had set up a Planning Commission in 1950 with the Prime Minister, which he was at that time, as its ex-officio Chairman. Before launching the Five-Year Plans, that was the purpose of the Planning Commission, Nehru set about rectifying the disequilibrium in the economy that World War II and the partition had caused and declaring the intention of taking necessary measures to reduce inequalities in income and wealth. In the first Five-Year Plan, drawn up by the Commission which came into force in 1951, only a trace of his socialist thinking was manifest. However, the first baby step towards socialism was taken under this Plan with its hint at nationalisation of heavy industries, mining and infrastructure like railways, roads, power and irrigation. This Plan basically paid attention to laying the foundation for future development. The Second Five-Year Plan marked a turning-point when Nehru took decisive steps towards his concept of socialism with the nationalisation of heavy industries and constru-ction of hydro-electric power plants under the public sector.

However, he had no intention of upsetting the prevailing socio-economic system because his vision of socialism did not go beyond the concept of a Welfare State and that could be achieved, he thought, by confining state-ownership to the commanding heights of the economy like heavy and key industries and taking care of food, health, education, transport and such other welfare programmes. In keeping with that outlook, private players in the manufacturing sector of the economy were restricted with licences, subsidies, and other instruments of state, which inevitably precluded the possibility of a nexus being developed between the state and Big Business leading to crony capitalism. At the same time, consequent upon inflationary pressures on the economy in the aftermath of partition and the events that followed, the public distribution system (PDS), which was urban-centric and had been in operation under the erstwhile British Govern-ment due to the compulsions of the Second World War, was retained. However, by 1958 foodgrain production had improved marginally, because of the rise in summer monsoon rainfall by over 20 per cent since the 1950s11 and the PDS was universalised. Incidentally, whether he had intended it or not, the procurement of foodgrains and the control of prices by subsidies prevented manipulation of prices by businessmen in the open market which helped the people at large, particularly the economically backward section of the population.

During the Nehruvian era, which covered the periods of the first two Five-Year Plans and ended midway during the third Five-Year Plan with his death in 1964, India's average annual growth rate of the GDP was 4.1 per cent. It was much above that of other Asian countries, including China's which was only 2.9 per cent during the same period. More importantly, inequality had declined in India and thanks to the inclusive nature of the economy this trend continued beyond the Nehruvian era.12

The economic policy, ‘a new economic outlook', designed by Deng for achieving ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics', was, incidentally, not different from the Nehruvian ‘mixed economy.' Deng considered this a necessary prerequisite for the transformation of society to full-fledged socialism as Lenin had envisioned by his NEP. So did his successors and they continued his economic policy as a result of which China today is the second largest economy in the world, poised to overtake the United States by 2030 or earlier and become the numero uno economic power.13

That it was in 1991, the year the Soviet Union imploded, India had given the go-by to the Nehruvian economic policy and plumped for what is popularly known as “Reforms” 14 is purely coincidental. What is touted as Reforms is a euphemism for neo-liberalism which enables private entrepreneurs to practically control the economy of the country resulting in the rise of crony capitalism that Nehru had consciously or unconsciously prevented. Above all, even inclusive growth and an egalitarian society that Nehru had envisaged by his economic policy were nullified by the ‘Reforms' which led to corporatisation resulting in lopsided growth, producing a few millionaires and millions of indigent masses.

It is wishful thinking to expect the conser-vative, pro-corporate Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is trying to belittle Nehru and even erase him from national memory, to revert to the Nehruvian economic policy. Why, the INC itself seems to have disavowed the socialist legacy of Nehru and has embraced the neo-liberal economic policy that it had initiated! This is understandable because socialism—Marxian or even Fabian—is alien to the ideology of the INC, which it professed at Avadi under pressure from Nehru. In fact, the class character of both these parties—the INC and BJP—ipso facto makes them parties of the status quo and naturally would not countenance any radical change in the prevailing socio-economic structure. There is no possibility of either of the two major political parties in the country giving up neo-liberalism and going back to the economic policy of Nehru to build an egalitarian society, let alone a socialist society that Marx had visualised.

Unless the Left comes to power at the Centre, which is a remote possibility at present, there is little chance of reverting to even a Nehruvian economic policy, let alone embarking on a Marxist-oriented economic policy. If, however, the Left has at least sufficient parliamentary strength, it may be able to force the hands of the ruling party to bring in certain people-friendly measures or prevent the ruling party from pushing through blatantly anti-people programmes as it had succeeded in doing to some extent during the UPA-I Government. On the other hand, a weakened Left in Parliament would not be “in a position to play a pivotal oppositional role” to the ruling party as was the case during the NDA Government led by Vajpayee.15 The situation today is still worse because the emaciated Left in Parliament by itself has no choice but to look on helplessly at the aggressive neo-liberal thrust of the Modi-led NDA and is constrained to play second fiddle to other Opposition parties including those that claim the legacy of the erstwhile Congress Socialist Party which are practically on the same page, so to say, as the INC and BJP as far as their economic policies are concerned.

What has been happening in India since 1991 is exactly what had happened to the Welfare State of the Labour Party in Britain after the Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher came to power,16 which explodes the myth of the possibility of transition to socialism within the framework of the Western parliamentary system. The happenings in the Latin American countries today exemplify this beyond doubt. The Left governments of the Latin American countries that have retained the Western parliamentary system are vulnerable to political manipulation by powerful neo-colonial powers using the Right-wing Quislings in those countries as was seen in Honduras and Venezuela. This was made possible because firstly the Bolivarian socialism that Hugo Chavez and other Left leaders of Latin America swore by is based on “fairness, idealism and a goal of national policy”17 and not on any scientific socio-economic principle. Secondly, the governments of Manuel Zelaya of Honduras and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela—like all other Bolivarian socialist governments of Latin America—have “maintained intact the essential institutions of the capitalist state, above all, the armed forces, which constitute a key pillar of their rule”.18 Significantly, Cuba, which too is a socialist country in Latin America based on the Marxist ideology, stands in stark contrast to the Bolivarian socialist countries.

The neo-colonialists may also use money-power as they did to pull down the Left Government in Greece that made Yanis Varoufakis famously remark: “In 1967 there were the tanks and in 2015 there were the banks.” And he thinks: “The social inefficiency of capitalism is going to clash at some point with the technological innovations capitalism engenders and it is out of that contradiction that a more efficient way of organising production and distribution and culture will emerge.”19 Varoufakis takes into account the on-going technological revolution that began since World War II, thus updating the Marxist concept of productive forces. In other words, he considers the products of technological revolution—as, for example, the computer and robot—means of production, updating Marxism. Significantly he is silent on the role of force which, as Marx metaphorically states, is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

NOTES

1. From the defeat of Siraj-ud-daulah at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to 1947 when the British imperialists left India. However, the regions that were under the political control of the East India Company were absorbed into the British Empire in 1858 only.

2. This involved reintroduction of certain aspects of the capitalist economy. Private enterprise was permitted in light industry, agriculture and retail trade while heavy industry, foreign trade, banking and transport remained nationalised. Money, which was abolished earlier, was reintroduced.

3. Nehru chose multi-party parliamentary system. Deng, on the other hand, conceived a unique system that may be called collective presidency, the five major mechanisms of which were collective collaboration, collective power transition, collective self-government, collective research and collective decision-making. http://www.huffingtonpost. com/hu-angang/china-us-democracy_b_5310800.html? utm_hp_ref=email_share &ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in [Accessed25.12.2015]. Similarly, the ends that both of them had been seeking to achieve were also different; Nehru‘s intention was to merely make some cosmetic changes to the prevailing socio-economic system while Deng's objective was to change it, root and branch. [Accessed 25.12.2015].

4. It was in 1927. On his return to India, Nehru wrote a series of articles about his impressions. These were compiled and published in 1928 in a book titled, Soviet Russia.

5. The Planning Commission and Five-Year Plans were complementary to this strategy.

6. Moraes, Frank (2007): Jawaharlal Nehru, A Biography. https://www.google.co.in/search?q=[Accessed 25.12.2015]

7. It is the ideology of a British organisation, the Fabian Society, which accepts the principles of Marxian socialism but proposes to advance them sans revolutionary means.

8. It is a concept of government in which the state plays a role in education, health care, social security and other activities that ensure the welfare of the citizens. This was recommended by the Commission headed by William Beveridge, a Fabian Socialist and an economist, in its report of 1942.

9. A resolution to that effect was passed on January 10, 1955. The Economic Weekly of May 14, 1955, in its editorial commented: “It was difficult to be persuaded even then,...that the Congress resolution for a socialistic pattern of society was just an election dodge to forestall opposition against it in Andhra.”http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/1955_7/20/the_great_ endeavour.pdf [Accessed25.12.2015].

10. http://www.inc.in/about-congress/history/literature/6-Congress-and-the-Making-of-the-Indian-Nation/26—The -Nation-Era [Accessed 25.12.2015].

11. Aerosol and rainfall variability over the Indian monsoon region: distribution, trends and coupling, by R.Gautam, et al. http://www.ann-geophys.net/27/3691/2009/angeo-27-3691-2009-pdf [Accessed 25.12.2015].

12. Ghuman, Ramjit Singh (2014): ‘Revisiting and Contextualising Nehruvian Economic Philosophy', Mainstream, LII, 47, November 15, 2014/Sunday 16 November 2014. http://www.Mainstreamweekly.net/article5314.html [Accessed 25.12.2015].

13. The present fall in the Chinese stock market is not a sign of economic meltdown. It is the result of the dependence of China's economy more on export than on domestic market. The recent Congress of the CPC had noted this danger and taken steps to boost domestic consumption and improve people's living standard. This has only begun to take effect.

14. For this policy change, Manmohan Singh has been faulted by the Left but lauded by the Right. Was it his brainchild? In the Economic Times of 21.07.2015, Sanjaya Baru, Director for Geo-Economics and Strategy, International Institute for Strategic Studies, writes: “In June 1991, a new government was formed under the leadership of a retiring Congressman, P.V. Narasimha Rao. As PM, Narasimha Rao retained the Industries portfolio and asked his Principal Secretary A.N. Vama, Industries Secretary Suresh Mathur, Economic Adviser Rakesh Mohan and an aide in the PMO, Jairam Ramesh, to draft a new industrial policy statement. Announced on July 24, 1991, Narasimha Rao's ‘New Industrial Policy' was the core of what has come to be known as the 1991 reforms. On the same day, Finance Minister Manmohan Singh set out in his Budget speech Rao's reforms agenda.”

15 http://thewire.in/2015/12/25/questions-the-left-must-answer-if-it-wants-to-see-a-turnaround-in-2016-17865/[Accessed 25.12.2015].

16. The Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher privatised all industries that were nationalised by the Labour Government and taking on the trade union movement reduced the power and influence of trade unions.

17. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/957092.shtml[Accessed 25.12.2015].

18. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/11/pers-d11.html [Accessed 25.12.2015].

19. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/23/yanis-varoufakis-convicted-high-treason-interview-greece-finance-minister-syriza?CMP=share_btn_link [Accessed 25.12.2015].

The author, a freelance writer, has 13 books and several articles to his credit. One of his latest works, The Garden and the Cross (Aakar Books, Delhi), a materialist interpretation of the Bible, is being translated into Russian by the Atheist Society of Russia. Another one, on the materialist interpretation of the Gita, The Warrior and the Charioteer (LeftWord Books, Delhi), published earlier, has been translated into a few Indian languages. After passing out of the university in 1947, Mohanraj taught in a college for three years before changing his profession to librarianship; he retired after working for 39 years as an academic librarian.

The fiftysecond death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of modern India, will be observed this month at a time when the present dispensation is bent on rubbing out his name from the annals of history. Also, one of the principles Nehru stood and fought for, a principle which he thought was essential for the very survival of the plural polity that is India, namely, secularism, is being openly denigrated and denounced by those who have assumed office by swearing in the name of the Constitution that enshrines secularism as one of the three pillars of Indian democracy.

Nehru had to fight communalism from the very dawn of independence. There is no denying that there was a soft Hindutva school within the Congress itself. For instance, when the Somnath temple was reopened in May, 1951, the then President, Babu Rajendra Prasad, was invited to inaugurate it. Rajen Babu accepted the invitation but Nehru objected on the ground that as the President of the secular republic, he should not be associated with a religious function and that, if he insisted on attending the ceremony, he should do so in his personal capacity and not as the President of India. In the event, Rajen Babu did go to Somnath but I do not remember whether he went as a citizen or as the President.

According to one Congress leader, secularism in the Indian context is “not about pitting the State against the religious authority but about keeping matters of faith in the personal realm and matters of State in the public realm”. In fact the concept of secularism developed in Europe in course of the struggle between the Church and the State for authority. Ultimately it was decided that the Church would concern itself with matters spiritual and the State with matters temporal.

Nehru was not a Hindu secularist as he is sometimes sought to be made out to be. He was against all forms of communalism. In December, 1955, he denounced the Indian Union Muslim League by asserting emphatically that it was not necessary to form a political party to safeguard the rights of the Muslims because our Constitution itself is committed to protecting those rights.

The late Dr Rafiq Zakaria observed in his book The Widening Divide:

Because of the charismatic and generally enlightened stewardship of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) and later of his daughter Indira Gandhi (1917-84), the first few decades after Independence saw communal tensions simmer but these were never allowed to get out of control. Since then two factors have contributed to the deterioration of the Hindu-Muslim relationship. First, the Central leadership has weakened, especially after Mrs Gandhi's tragic assassination. Her successors, much less powerful persons, have failed grievously to control the fissiparous tendencies. Second, with the rising tide of Hindu fundamentalism, the very validity of Indian multiculturalism has been challenged and the wisdom of tolerance of smaller communal groups, particularly Muslims, has been questioned. In the result, the minorities instead of being assimilated in the national mainstream, have begun to be more defiant than before. (pp. xx-xxi)

This is the crux of the problem: Muslim comm-unalism feeds on Hindu communalism and Hindu communalism feeds on Muslim communalism. They strengthen each other. The aggressive rise of the Hindutva forces under the BJP dispensation will only harden the stand of the Muslims. They will increasingly feel threatened and start asserting their identity as Muslims. The atmosphere created will make India a fertile ground for the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and draw more and more Muslim youth to extremist bodies like the ISIS. When a Muslim is murdered on the mere suspicion that he has eaten or stored beef, the reaction of the common Muslims can be easily imagined.

Elaborating on secularism, Nehru wrote, it does not mean something opposed to religion.

What it means is that it is a state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportu-nities, that, as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion.

He went on to add:

The majority is strong enough to crush the minority, which might not be protected. Therefore, whenever such a question arises, I am always in favour of the minority. Talking about religion, ours greatly outnumber the others. Nobody is going to push them from that position: they are strong enough. Therefore, it is their special responsibility to see that people following the other religions in India feel satisfied that they have full freedom and opportunity. If this principle is applied, most of these troubles and grievances will disappear.

In fact secularism is not for preaching from the pulpit or the public platform. It is something to be imbibed and made a part of one's ethos and practised in everyday life without even being conscious of it.

At a public meeting at Pathankot on August 6, 1954, Nehru said:

Parties like the Jan Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which do nothing but foment trouble in the name of religion, have made Pathankot their base to spread unrest in the Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir..... [They have] no constructive political and economic programme... Have you ever hard them talk about the poor in India or anything else except communal issues which foment disunity?

How true these words ring, even after the passage of sixtytwo years!

But Nehru did not stop here: He came very hard on the stand of the Hindu communalists with regard to the minority community.

The Muslims who live in India, belong here. We cannot talk of a Hindu State in India because that would mean that the people of other religions who live here do not belong here; which is wrong. Everyone who lives in India, irrespective of his religion and caste, belongs here with equal rights. This is what is known as nationalism.

Giving the example of neighbouring Pakistan ‘which is an Islamic State', Nehru said:

But we have been opposed to this principle right from the beginning because, if we were to adopt it, there could be no true equality in the country. Some sections of society would be considered full citizens and others would lack that status. It would once again bring to the fore the divisive tendencies which have always existed in Hindu society. If we accepted the principle of domination of one religion, India would be divided into a thousand fragments and become weak..... We are free to follow our own religion. But in national tasks, we are all one. The moment we bring in religion and caste into political matters we become weak. The world does not respect a nation which is weak.

The oracles at Nagpur would never accept that making India a Hindu Rashtra will weaken India, will stall its progress in ‘national tasks' and India will lose the respect of the world as a weak nation—the catchy slogan of ‘Make in India' notwithstanding.

Pakistan chose to be an Islamic State. It promoted and instigated terrorism against its neighbours as a State policy. In the process it created a Frankenstein's monster. Today it has itself become a target of terrorism. It finds itself isolated in the comity of nations for its promotion of terrorism. For the first time, even its best friend, the United States, is taking a hard stand on it.

Here is an interesting piece of information culled from D. C. Jha's book Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress and the Partition of India. Jha writes:

In his book The Shadow of the Great Game Narendra Singh quoted Col. Elahi Baksh, the physician who attended on Jinnah during his last illness in August-September of 1948, that he had heard Jinnah saying: ‘I have made it (Pakistan) but I am convinced that I have committed the greatest blunder of my life.' And around the same period, after meeting Jinnah on his sick-bed. the Pakistan Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was heard to have muttered: ‘The old man has now discovered his mistake.' (Jha, p. 105)

If the account given is not apocryphal, the protagonists of Hindutva have much to ponder over. If India becomes a Hindu Rashtra, will the same fate befall her as has befallen Pakistan? Will India be heading for another partition or disintegration into many small States? Pakistan is a living refutation of the two-nation theory, first propounded by Sir Syed Ahmad as far back as 1888. In less than a quarter of a century after its creation, Pakistan fell apart. The Bengalis of East Pakistan broke away to form Bangladesh. It proved that religion could not be the basis of a State.

Those who are trying to obliterate the name of Nehru from the annals of history will not succeed. But their narrow, bigoted worldview, their majoritarian politics and their targeting of a large section of the Indian people on account of religion will do great harm to India's polity. Nehru's death anniversary should be the occasion to renew the pledge that we will not let India give up the values and ideals which evolved out of our freedom struggle, the values and ideals which form the bedrock of our nationhood, the values and ideals which some anti-national elements are trying to destroy. If they succeed, India will cease to exist as it does today.

The author was a correspondent of The Hindu in Assam. He also worked in Patriot, Compass (Bengali), Mainstream. A veteran journalist, he comes from a Gandhian family and was intimately associated with the RCPI leader, Pannalal Das Gupta.

The following article, by the first editor of Mainstream, appeared six years after Jawaharlal Nehru's death in this journal's May 23, 1970 issue. Born on September 29, 1921 in Ooty, C.N.C., as he was known to his friends and admirers, passed away at Delhi on August 2, 1990. A veteran journalist, he worked in the Indian Express (Madras) in the 1940s; he joined The Hindustan Times in Delhi in 1960, and edited Mainstream when it was launched from the Capital in September 1962. In 1963 he joined Patriot as its Assistant Editor and also became the editor of Link. Thereafter in 1970 he was the Resident Editor of National Herald (Lucknow) before becoming the editor of that daily in 1976. At the time of his death he was the Joint Editor of India Press Agency (IPA). Although the situation in 1970 in the country was quite different from the one prevailing today, the similarity of the contents of this article with the present scenario in India is indeed striking.

When last week Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on behalf of the people of India squarely accepted the grim challenge posed by communal reaction and declared that these enemies of the nation would be relentlessly fought at every level, history was repeating itself; for, she was speaking the language of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru whose uncompromising commitment to secularism and democracy is her own heritage as much as the nation's.

When the Prime Minister referred to the “naked fascism” visible behind Jana Sangh President Atal Behari Vajpayee's provocative and mischievous speech which could only be interpreted as a green signal for communal gangs to continue and intensify their inhuman activities against the minority communities, chiefly the Muslims, she was unconsciously echoing words used by her great father over two decades ago.

Cherished Values

Not long after the murder of the Mahatma, Jawaharlal described the dark forces of communalism as “the Indian version of fascism”, and expressed his determination to prevent them from attacking the secular base of Indian democracy. When Smt Indira Gandhi compared Sri Vajpayee's gesticulations to those of Hitler, she obviously had much more in mind than the Jana Sangh leader's waving of arms. Like her father, she saw clearly the threat to all cherished values of the country enshrined in the Constitution in these gestures and the diabolical words that accompanied them.

Jawaharlal Nehru was among the first of the national leaders during the years of the freedom struggle to understand the true character and aims of the parties of communal reaction among both Hindus and Muslims. He often undere-stimated their strength, no doubt, but he was never in doubt about what precisely they stood for, whose interests they were frantically trying to protect at the cost of national unity and cohesion.

Vested Interests

He saw clearly enough that both Hindu and Muslim communalists in those years were in fact henchmen of British imperialism whose game they were playing to further the petty interests of a handful of affluent persons in either community. Communalism to him was the most obnoxious expression of the struggle of vested interests in collusion with the alien power to prevent awakening among the masses of India to which the National Congress under the leadership of Gandhiji had directed all its energies.

It the early thirties, Hindu communalism was represented by the Hindu Mahasabha whose offspring is the present Jana Sangh. Of the Mahasabha, Nehru said that it “not only hides the rankest and narrowest communalism but also desires to preserve the vested interests of a group of big Hindu landlords and the princes”. He firmly held that the activities of the Hindu communal organisations “have been communal, anti-national and reactionary”.

It is a fact of history that Nehru did not spare the Muslim communalists who supplemented the work of the Hindu communalists. “Most of them,” he declared once, “are definitly anti-national and political reactionaries of the worst kind.”

In the early thirties he noted that the Hindu reactionaries as well as the Muslim communalists represented no more than a handful of vested interests subservient to the colonial power, and that neither had much hold over the masses of the country despite their obvious capacity to foment trouble taking sinister advantage of religious differences. He was indeed categorical that “there is no essential difference” between the two types of communalism.

One important difference he did note, however. This was that “the communalism of a majority community must of necessity bear a close resemblance to nationalism than the communalism of a minority group”. This was especially true of India, for the Hindus are largely confined to this country and in religious terms they have little affinity with the world outside—a proposition which is obviously not true of minorities like the Muslims, the Christians and others.

It is easy for the Hindu communalists to pretend that they are genuine nationalists taking advantage of the fact that the roots of other religions lie outside the country. This point is of importance in the present context, for today's Hindu communalists, led by the Jana Sangh and RSS, are precisely making this claim to nationalism for themselves and constantly casting doubts on the loyalty to the country of the minorities on the strength of the wider association of the religions of the latter.

The purpose of the Hindu communalists now, as it was before independence, is to prevent the socio-economic status quo from erosion by the modern ideas of equality and democracy. While this was equally true of the Muslim communalists, whose symbol paradoxically enough came to be the irreligious and ultra-modern Jinnah, Nehru and some other national leaders realised that the greater danger to national purpose was posed by the communalism of the majority community. They realised that minority communalism could be effectively curbed only if majority communa-lism was eliminated.

Hence the leadership Gandhiji and Jawaharlal gave in the struggle against the dark forces of communalism beginning with the ones entrenched in the upper classes of the majority community. There is no doubt that they did succeed to a great extent in reducing the strength of Hindu communalism despite the consistent efforts of the British administrators to encourage it.

Grim Consequences

In the case of Muslim communalism, however, the efforts of the national leaders were not so successful, the main reason being the back-wardness and utter poverty of the majority of Muslims which the Muslim League was able to exploit to the full and in the most cynical manner. It was only when partition actually took place accompanied by the most unprecedented blood-letting and misery for millions of families, both Hindu and Muslim, that the grim consequences of a communal attitude etched themselves on the minds of both Hindus and Muslims.

At the time of partition the leaders of India more than the leaders of Pakistan were on trial; Pakistan had been carved out on foundations of hatred, and religion was used as a cloak to build a state whose sole purpose then was to satisfy the enormous vanity of a handful of arrogant individuals led by Jinnah. India, however, had different traditions imbibed over a far longer period.

The national leadership and the people as a whole were firmly committed to establishing a secular democratic state in which all citizens would have equal rights and all religions would have their place without any one of them being permitted to influence the administration. To the rulers of Pakistan the killing of the Hindu minority was not something altogether abominable; at any rate the philosphy on which they had chosen to found their new state precluded violent reaction to communal orgies.

Not so India; to the leaders of this country, the message of hatred and murder that the vast numbers of Hindu refugess brought from across the border was something that had to be fought fiercely and subdued. It did not, rightly, occur to them that the Hindu refugees or their friends this side of the border were justified in wreaking vengeance on innocent Muslims, men, women and children, living their own lives here as citizens of free India.

It is no accident that there was no parallel in Pakistan to the healing missions undertaken by Mahatma Gandhi in areas where minorities were under attack by organised hooligans, or to the great personal risks that Jawaharlal took by rushing into the midst of frenzied, armed mobs to prevent the butchery of innocent members of the minority community. The difference in attitude stemmed from the difference in purpose in establishing a free state.

Secular Forces

In the years before freedom it was Mahatma Gandhi who led the secular forces in the country despite his preference for communicating with the Hindu masses in the language of the shastras and the epics which the ignorant and the illiterate could comprehend easily. His concern for the safety of all minorities and for all the oppressed sections even within Hindu society was manifest not merely in his words but in his actions.

But, after the attainment of independence, it was left to Jawaharlal Nehru to lead the secular democratic forces in the struggle against communal reaction. This he had to do in the face of sniping from his own ranks often: for example, it is no secret that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, whom the Hindu communalists of today appear to have adopted as one of their apostles, thought in terms of packing off Muslims from this country in retaliation for the misdeeds of the Muslim majority in Pakistan against the Hindu minority there.

Jawaharlal put his foot down against such tendencies and insisted that it was the sacred duty of the majority community to protect and look after the interests of the minorities who had become citizens of this country, irrespective of the behaviour of the neighbouring country. The people were with Jawaharlal and he succeeded in isolating the communalists in his own camp and establishing understanding with secular forces outside his party.

A little after independence Nehru said: “We in India have suffered from communalism. It began in a big way from the Muslim League. The result was the partition of India. The Muslim League type of communalism is now more or less outside India. Some odd, foolish individual may indulge in it here, but that does not count and nothing can happen in India today from that source. But that poison has, by some reverse process, entered other people's minds and we have Hindu and Sikh communal organisations as communal as the Muslim League ever was.....

“If you examine the gospel of communalism even under the cloak of nationalism you will find that it is the most dangerous thing and breaks up that essential and fundamental unity of India without which we cannot progress.”

Non-Communal Approach

At that time he noted, too, that communal elements had infiltrated the Congress and pleaded that Congress candidates “must be chosen with particular care so that they might represent fully the non-communal character and approach of the Congress”. As for the Jana Sangh and other communal organisations, they were trying “to frighten the Muslims and exploit the vast number of refugees who had suffered so much already”.

He uttered a clear warning to the communal organisations whose echo was heard in the Lok Sabha the other day from Srimati Indira Gandhi; Nehru said: “So far as I am concerned and the Government I lead is concerned, I want to make it perfectly clear that communal forces will not be given the slightest quarter to sow seeds of dissensions among the people.”

It is no accident that during the fifties, although there were engineered communal incidents here and there, the communal organisations were more or less ineffective. It is no accident either that the minorities in the country came to look upon Nehru as their greatest protector.

It was only during the last years of his life, when his powers were waning and opportunists in power were able to strike deals behind his back, that the communal organisations, notably the Jana Sangh and RSS, began to gain strength once again. Since his death these forces have become increasingly arrogant and violent. And they have been joined by organisations like the Shiv Sena which owe their growth to tolerance and even encouragement from certain Congressmen in office and from vested interests which see in such groups effective instruments to mount an offensive against the progressive policies and attack parties and individuals wedded to socialist ideas.

It is not just by chance that in Bombay, Ranchi and elsewhere the communal orgainsations have been making open attempts to divide the working class on communal lines and destroy trade union solidarity.

Smt Indira Gandhi's chin-up acceptance of the challenge of communalism is undoubtedly heartenng, but it will amount to little unless the administrative machinery is purged of the communal elements that have infiltrated over the years, firm action is taken to put down poisonous propaganda by the communal organisations and their publicity sheets, and all forward-looking parties and individuals are swiftly moblised at all levels to give a determined fight to reaction in all its forms.

Let us remember Nehru's warning which is as relevant today as it was when it was uttered. “Communalism bears a striking resemblance to the various forms of fascism that we have seen in other countries. It is in fact the Indian version of fascism. We know the evils that have flown from fascism. In India we have known also the evils and disasters that have resulted from communal conflict. A combination of these two is thus something that can only bring grave perils and disasters in its train.”

The warning is timely in the wake of Ahmedabad, Chaibasa and Bhiwandi. But the struggle against the fascist threat posed by the Jana Sangh, RSS, Shiv Sena and the rest has now to be much more broadbased than it ever was in Nehru's time; the roots of the poison tree have to be cut and destroyed, and this calls for a dedicated national effort.

In this task, the Prime Minister obviously has the capacity to provide the leadership, but what we need are leaders in every village and every mohalla who will make the elimination of the communalists their first task. Let this battle against communalism be turned into a massive national crusade as the nation pays its homage to the memory of Jawaharlal Nehru this week on the sixth anniversary of his passing away.

(Mainstream, May 23, 1970)

May 27 this year marked Jawaharlal Nehru's fiftysecond death anniversary. On this occasion we are reproducing the following excerpts from the speeches and writings of Nehru that are of exceptional relevance today.

I have long been of opinion that the Hindu Mahasabha is a small reactionary group pretending to speak on behalf of the Hindus of India of whom it is very far from being representative. None the less misapprehensions have been created by their high-sounding titles and resounding phrases and it is time that these misapprehensions are removed. Nothing in recent months has pained me quite so much as the activities of the Mahasabha grup culminating in the resolutions passed at Ajmer.

Going a few steps further, the Arya Kumar Sabha, which is presumably an offshoot of the Hindu Mahasabha, has proclaimed its policy to be one of elimination of Muslims and Christians from India and the establishment of a Hindu Raj.1 This statement makes it clear what the pretensions of the Mahasabha about Indian nationalism amount to. Under cover of seeming nationalism, the Mahasabha not only hides the rankest and narrowest communialism but also desires to preserve the vested interests of the group of big Hindu landlords and the princes. The policy of the Mahasabha, as declared by its responsible leaders, is one of cooperation with the foreign government so that, by abasing themselves before it, they might get a few crumbs. This is a betrayal of the freedom struggle, denial of every vestige of nationalism and suppression of every manly instinct in the Hindus. The Mahasabha shows its attachment to vested interests by openly condemning every form of socialism and social change. Anything more degrading, reactionary, anti-national, anti-progressive and harmful than the present policy of the Hindu Mahasabha is difficult to imagine.

The leaders of the Mahasabha must realise the inevitable consequences of this policy of their lining up with the enemies of Indian freedom and most reactionary elements in the country. It is for the rest of India, Hindu and non-Hindu, to face them squarely and oppose them and treat them as enemies of freedom and all that we are striving for. It is not a mere matter of condemnation and dissociation, though of course there is to be both these, but one of active and persistent opposition to the most opportunist and stupid of policies.

[Speech delivered at the Banaras Hindu University on November 12, 1933—published in The Bombay Chronicle, November 15, 1933; reprinted in Recent Essays and Writings (Allahabad, 1934), pp. 45-46.]

I am glad that the remarks I made at Banaras regarding the Hindu Mahasabha have galva-nised a number of people and made them think furiously. This thinking has even taken the form of personal denunciation of me.2 This personal aspect is unimportant and will pass because the question is far too important and vital to be considered in relation to personalities. I hope to say something in reply to the criticisms later. But I should like to point out that my criticisms related to the Hindu Mahasabha chiefly because I was addressing a purely Hindu audience. There was no point in my tracing Muslim or other non-Hindu communalism there as the average Hindu is sufficiently aware of the feelings of others. It is always difficult to appreciate fully the weaknesses of oneself or one's own community. As I have stated, my remarks against communalism and anti-national activities apply in an equal measure to all communal organisations in India—Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, etc. There seems to be a race between them as to which can be more communal than the other. For a long time past I had remained quiet on the subject because I wished to ignore this aspect of Indian public life and hoped that national activities would gradually divert people's attention from it. But matters have come to such a pass that I felt silence on the subject was in itself a compromise and acceptance of this evil. We all know of the amazing communal and reactionary outlook and activities of the Muslim communalists in India. These require no publicity but there is a misapprehension in some quarters that Hindu communalists are of a greyer colour and not quite so black as the others. This notion is thoroughly unjustified as the attitude of the Hindu Mahasabha and the many other Hindu organisations, specially in north India, connected or unconnected with the Mahasabha, has conclusively demonstrated during the last year. The statements and evidence before the Joint Select Committee in England as well as numerous speeches and resolutions chiefly in the Punjab show this.3 Leading members of the Hindu Mahasabha and other communalists have deliberately advocated cooperation with British imperialism in the hope of getting some odd favour. This attitude is both anti-national and reactionary, and even from the narrow point of view of Hindus, foolish and shortsighted.

There seems to be some mystery about the resolutions passed by the Arya Kumar Sabha at Ajmer. My reference to a certain resolution has called forth denials, although the denial does not tell us exactly what the resolution was. This can easily be verified and I shall be very glad indeed to learn that my information was wrong. I received a copy of that resolution apparently from some official of the Sabha for my information. This resolution was also received by others and Dr Mahomed Ullah Jung4 has given publicity to the text of it.5 I shall be glad if the Arya Kumar Sabha will publish their resolutions and if it appears that we have been victims of a hoax, I shall gladly and willingly express my regret to the Arya Kumar Sabha. But apart from this my main criticism would hold as it is based specially on the activities of Hindu communalists during the last many months.

[Interview at Allahabad, November 21, 1933; from The Leader, November 23, 1933.]

Q: How far is the communal problem due to economic causes?

JN: This question perhaps is not properly framed (I am partly responsible for that), in the sense that the communal question is not fundamentally due to economic causes. It has an economic background which often influences it, but it is due much more to political causes. It is not due to religious causes; I should like you to remember that. Religious hostility or antagonism has very little to do with the communal question. It has something to do with the communal question in that there is a slight background of religious hostility which has in the past sometimes given rise to conflict and sometimes to broken heads, in the case of processions and so forth, but the present communal question is not a religious one, although sometimes it exploits religious sentiment and there is trouble. It is a political question of the upper middle classes which has arisen partly because of the attempts of the British Government to weaken the national movement or to create rifts in it, and partly because of the prospect of political power coming into India and the upper classes desiring to share in the spoils of office. It is to this extent economic, that the Mohammedans are on the whole the poorer community as compared with the Hindus. Sometimes you find that the creditors are the Hindus and the debtors the Mohammedans; sometimes the landlords are Hindus and the tenants are Mohammedans. Of course, the Hindus are tenants also, and they form the majority of the population. It sometimes happens that a conflict is really between a money-lender and his debtors or between a landlord and his tenants, but it is reported in the press and it assumes importance as a communal conflict between Hindus and Mohammedans. Funda-mentally this communal problem is a problem of the conflict between the members of the upper middle-class Hindus and Moslems for jobs and power under the new constitution. It does not affect the masses at all. Not a single communal demand has the least reference to any economic issues in India or has the least reference to the masses. If you examine the communal demands you will see that they refer only to seats in the legislature or to various kinds of jobs which might be going in the future...

Q: In your answer to the fourth question, regarding the communal problem, you suggested, I think, that the religious clement was a small part of it and that it was not primarily economic, but that it resolved itself into political jealousy, political ambitions. How do you see it resolving in the light of the national movement? Do you feel that the central national aim would be so big that it would bring all the parties together?

JN: No. First of all I said that the communal movement was not religious, but that does not mean, of course, that there is not a religious background in India, and sometimes that is exploited. It is political mainly. It is also economic in the sense that the political problem largely arises because of the problem of unemployment in the middle classes, and it is the unemployment among the middle classes that helps the communal movement to gain importance. It is there that the jobs come in. To some extent the growth of nationalism and the nationalist spirit suppresses the communal idea, but fundamentally it will go when economic issues and social issues come to the forefront and divert the attention of the masses, and even of the lower middle classes, because these issues really affect them, and inevitably then the communal leaders would have to sink into the background. That happened in 1921, at the time of the first noncooperation movement, when no communal leaders in India dared to come out into the open. There was no meeting held and there was no reference to them in the papers. They disappeared absolutely because there was such a big movement on other issues. As soon as a big political movement starts the communal leaders come to the forefront. They are always being pushed to the front by the British Government in India. Therefore the right way to deal with the communal question is to allow economic questions affecting the masses to be discussed. One of the chief objections to the India Act is that, because it divides India into seven or eight—I am not sure how many—separate religious compartments,6 it makes it difficult for economic and social questions to be brought up. Of course they will come up, because there is the economic urge behind them, but still it makes it difficult.

Q: Do you not think caste comes into the communal question at all—Brahmin against non-Brahmin? That is a matter we know so well in Madras.

JN: I do not think the communal question is affected much by caste. In south India, of course, the question of caste comes in, and it has given rise to great bitterness. I was thinking more of Hindu versus Moslem. I am not personally acquainted with conditions in the south in recent years, but it used to be more a question of non-Brahmin versus the vested interest. Taking the depressed classes, they really are the proletariat in the economic sense; the others are the better-off people. All these matters can be converted into economic terms, and then one can understand the position better. I do not think the Brahmin and the non-Brahmin question as such is very important now. There is a very large number of non-Brahmins in the Congress. In the Congress the question does not arise. It has some importance in local areas in the south, because of various local factors, but I do not think the question of Brahmin and non-Brahmin comes into the communal question at all.

[Excerpts from a discussion with the India Conciliation Group, at its meeting of Februay 4, 1936—published in the Bombay Chronicle, May-June, 1936; reprinted in India and the World (London, 1936), pp. 226-262.]

Dr Ansari's greatest contribution was in regard to the Hindu-Muslim question. We should sink our petty differences in the cause of the nation. We are fighting among ourselves for trivial causes and are overlooking bigger and more vital issues. We should study contemporary history to understand what is happening in Palestine, Egypt, Sumatra, Java, Indo-China or Syria. The exploitation of the people in these countries differs only in degree, though in some countries the people are not as enslaved as we in India. But everywhere they are forming united fronts to win their freedom. The questions of seats in the legislatures and offices do not affect the masses of Hindus and Muslims whose interests are one and the same.

The big questions staring India as well as the world in the face are poverty and unemployment and these are common to both Hindus and Muslims.

The only remedy for these problems is a socialist order. The solution cannot be different whether it be in the case of Muslims or Hindus. India should find her own solution in the light of the world experience—of socialism. Substituting Indian capitalists in the place of British capitalists will not alter the lot of India.

A properly constituted and democratically elected constituent assembly alone can formulate the constitution of India. The Congress will not stop its fight till success is achieved and we shall not rest content till our goal is reached.

[Address lo Young Muslim Brotherhood, Bombay, May 17,

1936—from The Bombay Chronicle, May 18, 1936.]

...I am only telling you that socialism when it is applied to India, will have, I think, to fall within the wide framework of socialistic theory. The manner of its application, the speed of its application and the measures for its application, will, however, have to depend on Indian conditions. They will have to depend on Indian industrial conditions, Indian cultural conditions and, to some extent, on what may be called the genius of the Indian people. All these will have to be taken together. Therefore it is impossible for anyone now to state which particular shape, form or colour the future socialist organisation of India will take. You can generally say what its probable shape or form or colour might be. But as to the exact form or as to how long it will take to get into that form, nobody can say anything definitely now. It will be foolish to be dogmatic about it because you cannot know.

None the less, if we really want to understand and prepare ourselves for that socialist India, we have to think hard and deep. We have to see it in connection with our present struggle for freedom and independence. If you isolate it from that, you function in the air. Today, the hunger and poverty of the Indian people are inevitably driving them to socialistic thought. Why do you talk of socialism to me, young men and women all over the country? Not because a few odd persons have been delivering speeches about it but because of the growing middle class unemployment in the country. Because of that, you are forced to examine the problem and to think. Because you think of it and examine it, you are driven in the direction of accepting socialism. So, there is a growing urge to socialism and that will go on increasing. But remember this, that the dominant urge in India today, the dominant urge in any country that is a subject country, inevitably must be the nationalist urge. Whilst I tell you socialism is not an ‘anti' thing, nationalism, I think, is an ‘anti' thing fundamentally. I do not want to be ‘anti' anything, unless it be solid, constructive and health-giving. The fact remains that essentially the background of nationalism is anti-foreign. It derives its strength not so much from love but from dislike. It is to some extent a racial matter, although we may not think on racial lines. I want to tell you I dislike nationalism. But I do like nationalism so far as India is concerned, situated as it is today, because nationalism for us means that it takes us in the direction of our freedom and of our own growth physically, mentally, morally and spiritually. For us, nationalism is a releasing force, and therefore, it is good. But nationalism in a country like Germany today or Italy is not a force which takes one to freedom. It confines and restricts. It is a narrowing thing.

It is not an enlarging thing. Therefore nationalism in Europe today has become a bane and a curse. Therefore, progressive people of Europe today feel insulted if you call them nationalists and they ask you, “Do you think we are narrow-minded, bigoted people, fascists or nazis?” Nationalism is a confined and excessively narrow creed there. But it is a definitely different thing here in India. But still, the fact remains that the background of nationalism is not so much, I think, an active positive feeling as a negative feeling.

You know that in the past eighteen or twenty years, we in India have had a unique experience, the experience of a great and inspiring leader dinning into our ears the doctrine of nonviolence, peace and goodwill and love for our opponent. That continuous dinning and teaching has inevitably produced a certain atmosphere in the country. It has not wholly got rid of the background of nationalism, viz., the ‘anti' element in it, but has reduced it to a minimum. Ordinarily a nationalist movement like ours, if we had not that continuous pressure from our leader in the direction of peace and goodwill, would have resulted in something terribly racial, anti-foreign, devouring and consuming us and perhaps occasionally giving us a certain energy to go ahead, but ultimately making us much smaller men. And the solution of the problem would have, quite apart from the moral issue, become much more difficult; because it is difficult to solve problems by accumulating violence and hatred.

Although we have functioned as a nationalist movement and our nationalism has been of a fairly intense variety, yet it has led to relatively little of the bitterness that is the natural line of nationalism elsewhere. But I cannot say that we have escaped those hatreds and bitternesses altogether. We have them still in our hearts and sometimes they come out, if not against our opponents, at least against our own colleagues.

The problem before us is, nationalism being the dominant urge of the country and socialism being, according to you and me, the right path to tread to solve the problems which face us, how to combine the two? We cannot have one of the two alone, because nationalism alone does not solve the problem and to follow socialism alone will be to ignore the vital issue before the country and the vital urge which moves millions in the country. We have to combine the two. Socialism has inevitably to push nationalism forward in its political garb. That is the common aspect between socialism and nationalism. Both like political independence. But nationalism, more or less, stops there, while socialism wants to go ahead. Socialism, if it is wise, presses forward with its ideas and turns nationalism in its direction. At the same time it does not combat with nationalism because the first tremendous step is common to both. Socialism wants to cooperate with nationalism, cooperate not only with the socialist elements and others who are friendly to socialism but even with anti-socialist elements in that nationalism. Without that proviso, there can be no cooperation, because there is no common ground left.

[Excerpts from a speech at Madras, October 8, 1936—from The Hindu, October 8, 1936.]

We talk about a secular state in India. It is perhaps not very easy even to find a good word in Hindi for ‘secular'. Some people think that it means something opposed to religion. That obviously is not correct. What it means is that it is a state which honours all faiths equally and gives them equal opportunities; that, as a state, it does not allow itself to be attached to one faith or religion, which then becomes the state religion.

Where the great majority of the people in a state belong to one religion, this fact alone may colour, to some extent, the cultural climate of that state. But nevertheless the state, as a state, can remain independent of any particular religion.

In a sense, this is a more or less modern conception. India has a long history of religious tolerance. That is one aspect of a secular state, but it is not the whole of it. In a country like India, which has many faiths and religions, no real nationalism can be built up except on the basis of secularity. Any narrower approach must necessarily exclude a section of the population, and then nationalism itself will have a much more restricted meaning than it should possess. In India we would have then to consider Hindu nationalism, Muslim nationalism, Sikh nationalism or Christian nationalism and not Indian nationalism.

As a matter of fact, these narrow religious nationalisms are relics of a past age and are no longer relevant today. They represent a back-ward and out-of-date society. In the measure we have even today so-called communal troubles, we display our backwardness as social groups.

Our Constitution lays down that we are a secular state, but it must be admitted that this is not wholly reflected in our mass living and thinking. In a country like England, the state is, under the Constitution, allied to one particular religion, the Church of England, which is a sect of Christianity. Nevertheless, the state and the people there largely function in a secular way. Society, therefore, in England is more advanced in this respect than in India, even though our Constitution may be, in this matter, more advanced.

We have not only to live up to the ideals proclaimed in our Constitution, but make them a part of our thinking and living and thus build up a really integrated nation. That, I repeat, does not mean absence of religion, but putting religion on a different place from that of normal political and social life. Any other approach in India would mean the breaking up of India.

Acharya Vinoba Bhave has recently been saying that politics and religion are out-of-date. And yet we all know that Vinobaji is an intensely religious man. But his religion is not a narrow one. He has, therefore, added that the world today requires not that narrow religion or debased politics, but science and spirituality. Both these, at different levels, are uniting and broadening factors. Anything that unites and broadens our vision increases our stature and is good and creative. Anything that narrows our outlook and divides us is not good, because it prevents us from growing and keeps us in a groove.

Ultimately even nationalism will prove a narrowing creed, and we shall all be citizens of the world with a truly international vision. For the present, this may be beyond most peoples and most countries. For the us in India, we have to build a true nationalism, integrating the various parts and creeds and religions of our country, before we can launch out into real internationa-lism. Without the basis of a true nationalism, internationalism may be vague and amorphous, without any real meaning. But the nationalism that we build in India should have its doors and windows open to internatio-nalism.

[Foreword to Dharam Nirpeksh Raj by Raghunath Singh (1961)]

1. The report of the resolution passed by the Arya Kumar Sabha, the youth wing of the Arya Samaj, was later found to be incorrect.

2. In a letter published in The Leader of November 20, 1933, Bhai Parmanand attributed Jawaharlal's criticism of the Mahasabha to the fact that owing to his “early training” and upbringing abroad “he is incapable of thinking as a Hindu”.

3. On July 31, 199, they protested that the government's decision on the communal problem was unjust to the Hindus and the separation of Sind was an “ex-parte judgement”.

4. A resident of Allahabad.

5. In a letter to the editor published in The Leader of November 20, 1933.

6. The Act of 1935 divided the total number of seats allotted to the Federal Assembly into several categories like general seats, general seats reserved for scheduled classes and separate electorates for Sikhs, Mohammedans, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and Indian Christians.

The judgement from the Allahabad High Court on April 23, 2016, quashing my termination order from the Indian Institute of Technology at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi has come as a big relief for me because it essentially is a vindication of my thought and action. Moreover, without taking the name of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh or the majoritarian Hindutva ideology and the Vice Chancellor, Professor Girish Chandra Tripathi, it has spared no words in their criticism.

The judgement is foremost and most importantly a defence of ‘freedom of speech and expression'. It says that irrespective of whether a view is correct or not there is freedom in this country to express your views as a legitimate and constitutional right which cannot be held to ransom by an intolerant group. Thus in the debate on tolerance-intolerance, which made headlines a while back, the judgement clearly indicates that stifling different opinion is being intolerant. In this context the Court has delivered a master-stroke by quoting the famous saying: ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it.' Thus the whole atmosphere of terror manufactured, where not action but words became the basis for branding anybody anti-national, who was liable for attack even putting his/her life at risk, has been dismantled by this argument. One hopes that some sense will prevail now over the people identifying themselves with the aggressive Hindutva ideology.

In response to the accusation against me that my teaching was against national interest and could disturb communal harmony as well as encourage students to take law into their hands on campus, the Court clearly says that fair criticism of government policies cannot be a ground for restricting the freedom of speech and expression. It says that situations may arise where responsible persons may feel it is their duty to criticise and invite people to come for discussion, which would not constitute misconduct. The Court has clearly upheld the right to dissent which is a resounding assertion of democracy.

Quite remarkably, the founder of the BHU, Madan Mohan Malaviya, even though he belonged to the Hindu Mahasabha, said, ‘India is not a country of Hindus only. It is country of Muslims, the Christians and the Parsees too. The country can gain strength and develop itself only when people of different communities in India live in mutual goodwill and harmony.' The Court has very thoughtfully pulled out this quote of the Mahamana to counter the attempts by people associated with the Hindutva ideology to dominate the country and to relegate everybody else to either inferior position or worse put them in the category of anti-national. It also wants to convey that the attempts to create a communal divide in the minds of people will weaken the country just like it did when physical partition took place 69 years back. The idea that Hindutva can grow at the expense of others has clearly been rejected by Malaviya. The RSS may like to think that Malaviya belonged to their genre, but his above-mentioned quote shows that he was in a different class. Mentioning this particular quote of Malaviya also unequivocally affirms the concept of secularism in our Constitution by the Court, which has been the basis for the communal harmony in our country for long but was under attack by the Right-wing for some time. One hopes that the notion of secularism would not be put to test time and again by the Right-wing as it is much older than the history of democratic India.

Out of respect for the Mahamana's feelings the University authorities should think about constructing other religious places on the campus in addition to the magnificent Vishwanath temple, which stands in the centre, so that people following other religions would also have a chance to pray inside the campus. Right now non-Hindus have to go outside the campus to offer their religious prayers.

The judgement also says, in criticism of the VC and his friends associated with the RSS in important administrative positions, that academic administrators should remain politically neutral when taking decisions about academic or administrative matters. The Dean of Faculty Affairs, Professor Dhananjay Pandey, got the IIT (BHU) conduct rules sent to me on October 15, 2015 through the Assistant Registrar and, by a remarkable coincidence, on the same date a student of Political Science, Avinash Pandey, filed a complaint against me with the VC. The conspiracy to terminate my contract was hatched by persons associated with the RSS in which the complainant and administrators joined hands. The Court categorically says that the decision to terminate my contract was stigmatic and punitive in nature and not a simplicitor. It says: ‘Heavy words such as commission of cyber crime and acting against national interest have been loosely used. All these allegations are serious in nature and such allegations have serious aspersions on the conduct and character of an incumbent and the way and manner in which the decision in question has been taken as against him ex-parte cannot be approved by us.'

The decision has come as a relief not only to me but to also a lot of my friends who felt stifled in the present atmosphere. We now know that democracy has not disappeared from the country or the campuses completely.

I now have the dubious distinction of joining two of my illustrious relatives, Professor of Indology at BHU, Raj Bali Pandey, my mother's uncle, who later became the VC at Jabalpur University, and the Professor of Chemical Engineering, Gopal Tripathi, the first Director of the Institute of Technology, before it became an IIT at BHU, and the former's cousin, who too were expelled by the University in 1960 along with several other Professors like Hazari Prasad Dwivedi. Acharya Narendra Dev, the famous Buddhist scholar who served as the VC for three years and was also the first President of the Socialist Party, had to leave the BHU not under very pleasant circumstances.

[Note: In spite of the fantastic above mentioned order, the VC has not let me rejoin BHU yet.—S.P.]

Noted social activist and Magsaysay awardee Dr Sandeep Pandey was recently sacked this year from the IIT-BHU where he was a Visiting Professor on the charge of being a “Naxalite” engaging in “anti-national” activities. He was elected along with Prof Keshav Jadhav the Vice-President of the Socialist Party (India) at its founding conference at Hyderabad on May 28-29, 2011.

by Sadhan Mukherjee

If you shout “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, you are a patriot. If you don't for some reason, you are not only not a patriot but anti-national as well. That is the latest funda of varied Hindutva fanatics among whom are those occupying key positions in both the governments at the Centre and elsewhere including the BJP party hierarchy. An era of ‘nationalism-test' has begun.

Hitler used nationalism to evoke patriotism in Germans and bolster his Nazi party. The current war-cry of the Hindutva fanatics led by the RSS are modelled almost on similar infamous slogans of the Nazi party, like “Wir sind Deutsher” (We are German), “Deutschland uber alles” (Germany above all), “ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer” (one people, one government, one leader). These slogans find reflection in the RSS. Hitler had his bugbear in Jews, the RSS has in Muslims and other “aggressors” who came and settled down here.

RSS chief (sarsanghchalak) M.S. Golwalkar, in his Bunch of Thoughts (p. 435), denounced the Constitution of India for giving equal rights to all, and copied the Nazi slogan in his “one country, one state, one legislature, one executive” demand.

The Hindutva protagonists, more so the Hindi zealots, have been active in India for many years. In 1965 they tried to impose Hindi on non-Hindi- speaking States leading to virtually a revolt in Tamil Nadu. The Union Government was then forced to retract and declare that the use of Hindi would be voluntary. Both Hindi and English remained official languages and Hindi also did not become the national language. Incidentally, there are roughly 1635 mother tongues and 122 languages in India.

The renewed assertion of Hindi and Hindutva today is no doubt due to the RSS-guided BJP's ascension to power, leading our country towards a Hindutva hegemony negating our democracy.

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The RSS was formed in 1925 by K.B. Hedgewar after the Nazi party was set up in Germany in 1923. He was the man who coined the word Hindutva in 1923 in his pamphlet ‘Essentials of Hindutva'. RSS guru M.S. Golwalkar, who took over the RSS after Hedgewar, had great regard for the Nazi party's anti-Semitism. In his book, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, he admires Germany in the following words: “Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the roots, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) denounced democracy saying: “One truth which must be borne in mind is that the majority can never replace the man. The majority represents not only ignorance but also cowardice. And just as a hundred blockheads do not equal one man of wisdom, so a hundred poltroons are incapable of any political line of action that requires moral strength and fortitude.”

The RSS too does not believe in democracy. This was enunciated by Golwalkar in his Bunch of Thoughts where he asserts: “The concept of democracy as being ‘by the people' and ‘of the people', meaning that all are equal shares in the political administration, is to a very large extent only a myth in practice.” In a speech in November 1947, while protesting against the Constituent Assembly, he asserted: “Adult franchise was nothing more than granting right to ‘cats and dogs'.” The current trend in governance confirms this view being practised.

To go back to the issue of the Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan: it is a fact that not all Indians believe in idols which “Bharat Mata” essentially is. Islam does not believe in idol worship and so also several other faiths. Above all, no one likes to be dictated. President Pranab Mukherjee has stressed that “pluralism and tolerance” are the “hallmark of our civilisation” and India's diversity is a “fact” which cannot be turned into “fiction” because of the “whims and caprices of a few individuals”. (The Indian Express, April 10, 2016)

Both Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Mataram are slogans that originated during our freedom struggle and these were supplemented at different stages by other slogans like Jai Hind, Mera Bharat Mahan and so on. The RSS did not have any particular role in formulating these slogans but it now wants to misappropriate these slogans. Bhagat Singh went to the gallows shouting the slogan Inquilab Zindabad (long live the revolution), coined by Hasrat Mohani, and that slogan became more popular than Bharat Mata ki Jai. Was that slogan less patriotic than Bharat Mata ki Jai? Or was Bhagat Singh not a patriot?

The RSS' Guru Golwalkar declared in Delhi that one can be a secularist only when he is a staunch Hindu. (Delhi, February, 22 1970) Hasrat Mohani was a Muslim but was he less patriotic? Are we now to learn a special meaning of nationalism and patriotism from people who never fought for India's freedom and lionised British rule? Didn't this RSS guru propound in his Bunch of Thoughts: “Anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects on the entire course of the freedom movement, its leaders and the common people.”

He declared in his treatise We, or Our Nationhood Defined: “Those only are nationalist patriots who with aspiration to glorify the Hindu race and Hindu nation next to their heart are prompted into activity and strive to achieve the goal. All others, posing to be patriots and wilfully indulging in a course of action detrimental to the Hindu nation, are traitors and enemies to the nation's cause or to take a more charitable view, if unintentionally and unwillingly led to such a course, mere simpletons, misguided, ignorant fools.” (page 32)

So to be a patriot, you must be a staunch Hindu! Has the RSS or its modern-day followers given up that thinking? Not at all! RSS ideologue and chief pracharak M.G. Vaidya, in an article in The Indian Express (March 24, 2016),elaborates the modern-day RSS' thoughts under the title “One nation, one culture”.

He theorises about what constitutes a nation, and agrees that a state may include many nations and then he fumbles. He argues that “Our India that is Bharat, that is Hindustan”, was “one nation from time immemorial but contained many States”. He does not admit that there were many nationalities or many nations. He cites Alexander's invasion in 4th century BC when there was the “Nanda Empire and many Republics” that constituted India. He deliberately includes many “Republics” as the Nanda Empire was limited to Northern India in its spread. How was India then one nation at that time? In any case, Indian history did not start with the Nanda Empire!

Moreover, from ancient times, Matsya Nyaya (big fish eating small fish) or big States eating up smaller ones, was in vogue and only during the Maurya Empire did ancient India more or less become one state entity. But even the Mauryan Empire did not extend to the Chola kingdom in the South and to North-Eastern India. If India extended from Iran to Singapore, and included all branches of the Himalayas going down to Ceylon, as per the RSS theory (Bunch of Thoughts p. 83), how did the RSS ideologue discover ancient India as one nation? Who ruled this great India? Certainly not the Hindus!

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It is an accepted fact that a nation comprises a group of people who have common cultural background and who share a common language, heritage, and religion besides some other characteristics. But a state is a political entity; it normally has a government that is sovereign and independent. A nation-state is a voluntary association of nations and nationalities. States like India, the USA, the UK, etc., are its examples, having a federal structure. There is no difference between a state and a country which also has a geographical dimension and place.

Problems like de-merger in a nation-state emerge when one nation tries to dominate or practises discrimination over other constituents. That may lead to the break-up of a nation-state, as recently happened in Yugoslavia. Conflicts also germinate for such divisions due to various reasons as between Palestine and Israel. But North and South Korea, for example, consist of the same people but they are two artificially created states. The Kurds are in four states—Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. There are many similar examples. Political history, ambition and geography obviously do not always go together.

Vaidya has tried to suggest that these people (the Hindus) “are known, world over, by the name of Hindu. Therefore, this is a Hindu nation.” His strange logic is further buttressed by claiming: “It has nothing to do with whether you are a theist or atheist, whether you are an idol-worshipper or against idol-worship, whether you believe in the Vedas or some other sacred book.” In short, he means that all who are in India are Hindus! That's exactly is the key aim of the RSS. One may recall its attempt at ghar wapsi, conversion to Hindus from other faiths, or the cow protection slogan, and now Bharat Mata ki Jai.

Vaidya deftly uses the explanatory note under Article 25 in the Constitution of India which says “reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion”. He wants to use this expression to include Muslims and Christians as well. This is like arguing that ‘all women are men' since the legal adage in common law holds that “man includes a woman”.

The problem, however, is actually in the terminology itself. The term Hindu cannot be found in what is known as Hindu scriptures. Anyone can call himself a Hindu as it has no guidelines of a religion. It is a way of life (Sardar K.M. Panikkar). The Supreme Court of India, in a landmark judgment in 1995, has also held that Hinduism is a way of life, a view reaffirmed in a 2005 Supreme Court judgment as well. The Indian Constitution does not define it.

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Hinduism probably developed as a synthesis of various Indian cultures and traditions. The term most likely was brought into India by Islam meaning “Indian Pagan”. Some others hold that it was a derivative of Sindhu (meaning a large body of water, in Sanskrit, referring to the Sindhu River), in Persian “S” is expressed as “H” and that made it as Hinduto or Hindu. The Greeks borrowed the expression and made it Indos and the people around the river as Indoi which in English became Indus, India and Indian. In South-East Asia, Indians were mostly known by the Persian terms while Arabs called India al-Hind. This is an etymological explanation.

A scientific explanation from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad has cut at the very root of the established view that Hindus are descendants of the Aryans. German philosopher Max Mueller proposed in mid-19th century about an Indo-Aryan migration from Central Asia some 3500 years ago, and this view has been assiduously held on. According to Max Mueller, this migration was responsible for the Indo-European language and caste system in India.

That Aryan link has now been challenged. An article by Dinesh Sharma (Mail Today, December 10, 2015) points out that a new study by Indian geneticists says that the origin of genetic diversity found in South Asia is older than 3500 years. So where is the Aryan ancestry of all Hindus? Besides, there existed in India the Indus Valley (3200-1300 BCE, some say even 5000 BCE) and Harappan civilisations (2600-1900 BCE). They predate the so-called Vedic period.

Instead of legal, historical and political hair-splitting on the RSS concept of One Hindu Nation, let us see what is happening on the ground today in India. On March 16, this year AIMIM MLA Waris Pathan was suspended from the Maharashtra Assembly for refusing to utter Bharat Mata ki Jai. AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi voiced a similar opinion in Parliament. It seems that Waris Pathan was ready to say Jai Hind but not Bharat Mata ki Jai. The point is that Jai Hind refers to the nation but Bharat Mata is personification of the country as a goddess and a mother.

According to a blog by Sadan Jha, Indian Express, March 18, 2016, the slogan, ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai' is often interchangeably raised with Vande Mata-ram and shares a common history too. Though it is extremely difficult to pin-point when this slogan first came into existence, the genealogy of the figure of Bharat Mata has been traced to a satirical piece titled Unabimsa Purana (‘The Nineteenth Purana') by Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay, first published anonymously in 1866, long before the RSS was born.

Bharat Mata is identified in that text as Adi-Bharati, the widow of Arya Swami, the embodiment of all that is essentially ‘Aryan'. The image of the dispossessed motherland is also found in Kiran Chandra Bandyopadhyay's play, Bharat Mata, first performed in 1873.

The landmark intervention in the history of this icon through Bandemataram was Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Anandamath. Jha also pointed out that it was sung in the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1896 by Rabindranath Tagore.

It seems that the Hindutva fanatics are now adopting various slogans of yore and utilising them to serve their propaganda objectives. But they are forgetting that this country is not the fiefdom of the Hindus; they do not have any hegemony over this country. What makes us one nation and one country is the coalition of many faiths, many nationalities, many languages, many cultures and, above all, a common fight for freedom from British rule that welded us into a nation.

The ethos of our uniqueness was wonderfully expressed by Rabindranath Tagore who, in his poem “Bharattirtha”, pointed out that here in India the Aryans, non-Aryans, Dravidians, Chinese, Scythians, Huns, Pathans and Mughals merged into one body. The RSS and Hindutva fanatics obviously do not believe in this multiplicity. Tagore would have been termed by them as anti-national had he been alive today.

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Vice-President Hamid Ansari has made a very good plea by calling upon the Supreme Court “to clarify the contours within which the principles of secularism and composite culture should operate”. He pointed out that India has a “population of 1.3 billion comprising over 4635 communities” of which 78 per cent “are not only linguistic and cultural but social categories” and religious minorities “constitute 19.4 per cent of the total”. He added that our “democratic polity and state structure were put in place in full awareness of this plurality”. He added: “There was no suggestion to erase identities and homogenise them.”

There is another aspect to the RSS' kulturkampf (cultural struggle) which was first waged in modern history by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to subject the Roman Catholic Church under state control. The attacks of mosques and churches here bear testimony to that idea. The recent emphasis in the Union Budget of the BJP-led government on the rural population is also not fortuitous nor does it show any special love of the BJP for them. Fascist thought used peasantry for its own ends. Barrington Moore Jr writes, in his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, that the German Nazis “succeeded most in their appeal to the peasant whose holding was relatively small and unprofitable for the particular area in which it existed”.

The peasantry and the landless in India are also the largest entity as compared to other social sectors. With the support garnered from the rural sector and the big capitalists who contributed handsomely to the Nazi coffers, Hitler advanced to the level he did. Add to that the other Nazi slogans like Reine Race (Pure Race) and Herrenvolk (Master race), etc., using which the Nazis were able to win the masses and their support. The weakness of the Left and Social Democrats, and the division among the working people to fight this emerging menace comprised a massive political failure in Germany to prevent the sweep of Nazism.

The same Nazi methodology is now being followed in India by the Hindutva fanatics. There are several other similar situations obtaining here as in Germany. The weakness of the Left, social democrats and others in India is also failing in the task of preventing these forces from growing due to bickering among them.

The Hindutva fanatics are helping the process of dissension and distrust as an instrument of division. More and more people of this country will now be compelled to assert their own statehood as distinct entities. The latest is the Marathwada demand for a separate Statehood from Maharashtra. Vidarbha raised it earlier. No wonder, RSS ideologue M.G. Vaidya supports this demand. He in fact wants Maharashtra to be split into four parts. (The Times of India, March 24, 2016) Where is then their One Bharat concept? Wait, the RSS has an answer to that as well. Smaller States mean less powerful States that can oppose the BJP.

We have already had the Telangana and Andhra division in 2014. That was an offshoot of merging the Tamil and Telegu-speaking areas as one entity under Andhra Pradesh. We have now 29 States and seven Union Territories. A little flashback into India's political history may be useful here.

British India consisted of eight provinces at the turn of the 20th century that were administered either by a Governor or a Lieutenant-Governor. These were Burma, Bengal, Madras, Bombay, United Provinces, Central Provinces and Berar, Punjab and Assam. During the partition of Bengal (1905-1912), a new Lieutenant-Governor's province of Eastern Bengal and Assam existed. In 1912, the partition was partially reversed, with the eastern and western halves of Bengal re-united and the province of Assam re-established; a new Lieutenant-Governor's province of Bihar and Orissa was also created. In addition, there were a few minor provinces that were administered by a Chief Commissioner.

At the time of independence in 1947, British India had 17 provinces: Ajmer-Merwara, Anda-man and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Baluchistan, Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, Central Provinces and Berar, Coorg, Delhi, Madras, North-West Frontier, Orissa, Panth-Piploda, Punjab, Sindh and United Provinces.

Upon the partition of British India into the Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan, 11 provinces (Ajmer-Merwara-Kekri, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Bombay, Central Provinces and Berar, Coorg, Delhi, Madras, Panth-Piploda, Orissa, and the United Provinces) joined India, three provinces (Baluchistan, North-West Frontier and Sindh) joined Pakistan, and three (Punjab, Bengal and Assam) were partitioned between India and Pakistan. The struggle for independence in Baluchistan continues even now.

In 1947 after independence which divided British India, its people were left with a peculiar admixture of provinces into which most of the 562 princely states were assimilated between India and Pakistan. Bhutan and Hyderabad opted for independence but Hyderabad after a police action was taken over by the Indian Union. There remained what the Constitution of India declared as Union of States comprising nine Part A States, eight Part B States, 10 Part C and one part D State — Andaman and Nicobar islands.

In 1950, after the Indian Constitution was adopted, the provinces in India were replaced by redrawn States and Union Territories. Pakistan, however, retained its five provinces, one of which, East Bengal, was renamed East Pakistan in 1956 and it became an independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1975 Sikkim joined the Indian Union.

The 1956 States Reorganisation integrated India into 14 States and six Union Territories. A solution was sought through reorganising the States on the basis of language. This was not an ideal solution as later events showed. Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Tripura became separate States. Delhi got a State Assembly with restricted rights. All this had to be done due to popular agitation.

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It is absurd to claim, as the RSS does, that from time immemorial India was one Hindu nation. Do they now want an inter-ethnic conflict to burst out in this country to shatter whatever national unity we have? These details are recounted here to show that the RSS' game of One Hindu India cannot succeed, and if forced will lead to inevitable conflict and bloodshed.

After unleashing these agents of national disruption, the RSS is now trying to retract at least theoretically. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, having demanded “No reservation” and “Compulsory Bharat Mata ki Jai” on March 6, has declared on March 28 that Bharat Mata ki Jai should resound in the world but: “We don't want to force anyone...it is not to be imposed.” Is it a change of policy or only a tactical retreat in view of the State Assembly elections?

The Hindutva fanatics are worried. The Citizen on March 31 quotes a site “Struggle for Hindu Existence” that carries an article after the RSS chief's second statement expressing deep dismay over the decision, and maintaining that Owaisi and his likes must be very happy men today. Referring to media reports about Bhagwat's seemingly more conciliatory statement, the article notes: “If this report is true with a video footage of Bharatiya Kishan Sangha's press statement, this shift is highly derogatory to RSS ideology and obviously detrimental to the morale of crores of Swayamsevaks (volunteers) who fight for the dignity of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' in India.”

The Citizen assigns three reasons for this volte face. One, the BJP's Maharashtra ally, the Shiv Sena, has asked if the BJP would ask PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti to chant Bharat Mata ki Jai; two, “the target” for the polarisation through this ‘mandatory' recitation was intended to be the JNU, HCU students and the Muslims. However, these groups barely responded to this debate, with the students ignoring it altogether and the Muslims—except for Asaduddin Owaisi—also dismissing the issue as meaningless; and third, most importantly, other groups that had clearly not been intended as targets entered the fray with passion. The Sikhs, the Dalits in particular reacted sharply against the move to make the slogan mandatory and criticised the government for this. In fact leaders from within these groups came out with alternative slogans as well. Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) President Simranjit Singh Mann asserted: “Sikhs don't worship women in any form. Hence, they can't chant this slogan.” He further added: “According to the BJP, one who doesn't say ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' is not a patriot and can be tried for sedition...Sikhs should say “Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh.”Punjab is going to the elections soon. Dalit scholars and organisations also questioned and criticised the government on this with one scholar, Kancha Ilaiah, suggesting “Bheem Bhoomi ki Jai” as an alternative.

So Quo Vadis?

The author, a former journalist, is currently engaged in education management through distance education.

TWO YEARS OF MODI RULE

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava

In several ways it is conveyed that the Modi Government has performed extraordinarily well on the foreign policy front but the dark pimples are never talked about. The fact is that Modi's South Asian foreign policy has been under stress since the day it was crafted. There are cracks in relations with Pakistan, Maldives and a big hole has been created in Indo-Nepal ties where a huge trust deficit exists.

It began since the time of the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015 when it was emphasised that PM Modi had informed the Nepalese PM about the earthquake; the latter was in Thailand at that time. Along with it aid diplomacy was pressed and penetration of Indian media became excessive in Nepal; thus an adverse reaction with nationalist thoughts developed among the people and political elites in Nepal. Unfortunately the Modi Govern-ment failed to comprehend it.

The next phase started when Nepal adopted its Constitution on September 20, 2015. Indian diplomacy was intellectually at a loss; the Foreign Secretary rushed to Nepal to press for the safeguarding of Indian interests but that was just two days before the inauguration of the Constitution. India failed to convey to Nepal that the ethnic issue of Madhesis should be dealt with deftly keeping both Madhesi and Indian interests in mind. The Modi Government was never in operation during the constitutional discussion process in Nepal on these issues. The visit of the Foreign Secretary so close to the inauguration of the Constitution shows how much policy-paralysis had overtaken the MEA. Although PM Modi, during his November 2014 visit to Nepal, had warned Nepal that it should prepare its Constitution early or else it ‘may fall into difficulties', India was never actively watchful of the swift developments there.

The introduction of the Constitution brought into sharp focus the desires of Madhesis and the confused role of India. Nepal, which had cultural and emotional bonds with India, was not in a mood to listen about Indian concerns. Why did it happen? India's tactical support to the Madhesis and the reaction to rhetoric-based aid diplomacy were sufficient to push Nepalese politicians away from the Indian zone of influence. The Government of India was not aware that since the days of the killing of King Birendra in Nepal in June 2001, a strong anti-Indian sentiment was prevailing and Communist leader Pushpa Kumar Dahal Prachanda had succeeded in articulating this sentiment in quite an influential manner. One illustration underlines it: Prime Minister Bhattarai visited India in 2011 but could not sign major agreements on energy, security due to the possibility of a backlash from hard-core Communists back home. The new dispensation in New Delhi did not take notice of the domestic factor of Nepalese politics.

PM Modi, on the other hand, believed in contact diplomacy, that by visiting the country and making aid available and talking about South Asia as a collective entity he would be able to place India in the leading position in the region; but he failed to appreciate the role of China too, besides the prevailing anti-India sentiments. China had emerged as the major player in Nepalese politics. The hard realities were not given importance by the Indian foreign policy-planners and the PM, being unaware about the dynamics of international politics, allowed Nepal to slip away from the Indian sphere of influence. Nepal's tilt towards China is now clear. In the whole game Prachanda was a key factor; he has recently played a role in the emergence of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-MC), not a good sign for India. India needs to devise an effective mechanism to deal with the Chinese factor in Nepal but its pro-active approach is not visible.

The year 2015-16 is different from 1989-1990 when Rajiv Gandhi forced Nepal to follow India when New Delhi was not properly treated on the issue of the trade and transit treaty; Nepal had imported the anti-aircraft and armoured personnel carrier violating the treaty provisions. The blockade at that time was more punishing and was capable to bring Nepal to accept the Indian terms and the monarchy in Nepal had to acknowledge the democratic process thereafter.

The era of PM Modi is different as two factors differ from previous times. There is a clustering of the anti-Indian groups led by Prachanda and this is backed by China; and the role and influence of China are different from those in 1989 when it was attempting to fashion a more aggressive South Asian foreign policy. This time it has entrenched well in the region by enhancing its relations with Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Maldives, Pakistan and now Nepal where it is in the process of outmanoeuvring India.

There are some unpublicised aspects of this failure; primarily the mainstream media does not talk about these negative developments due to the failures of our government though these have much relevance for the country. The diplomatic corps in the country is not proactive at least at the regional level. Its working has become quite political and neutral stands are not visible from the side of the top leadership. Finally the political leadership is myopic in the sense that it does not understand the theoretical postulates of realism but harps only on PR techniques; however, in foreign policy these carry little significance. Indian foreign policy is a victim of these factors particularly in South Asia and in the case of Nepal it is almost a disaster.

The author is the Vice-Chairman, CSSP, Kanpur. He can be contacted at e-mail: vpy1000@yahoo.co.in

by Ram Puniyani

Introduction

Modi came to power with a bang in 2014. Riding on the support of the corporate world, the RSS combine, media blitz and sky-rocketing promises, he managed to get 31 per cent of votes and 282 seats in the Lok Sabha. This is the first time the BJP managed a simple majority in the Lower House of Parliament. This also became an occasion for Modi-BJP-RSS to unfold their agenda in full. While economic promises have floundered, the protective policies for the average downtrodden have been partly retracted along with the claims of great economic achievement by the RSS combine and its supporters. The reality of the economic situation has forced substantial section of the media to take cognisance of the plight of the people and criticise the failure of the government on economic and many other fronts.

The social scenario has been dismal, the growing intolerance, the attack on the autonomy of universities, the treatment of Dalits, as reflected in the death of Rohith Vemula, the intimidation of religious minorities through issues like beef-eating, Bharat Mata ki Jai, and nationalism have dominated the scene. By now most of the people are clear that the RSS is in the driving seat supervising the total unfolding of its agenda of Hindu nationalism.

Acche Din and Governance

Acche din had become a buzzword, black money being retrieved and deposited in everybody's bank account was looked forward to and the anticipation of creation of jobs got registered in the people's mind. None of these came through. Prices of essential commodities started shooting up, of all the things even dal (pulses) started becoming a luxury item. Fifteen lakhs is nowhere in the account and job creation is stagnant. As such the well-advertised foreign policy remained on the confused platter with nothing to show except the Prime Minister's much-hyped global rendezvous on a regular basis. With Pakistan the policy of ‘blow hot, blow cold' is in operation and the friendliest neighbour, Nepal, is drifting away from the earlier status of a close ally.

The much-touted Maximum Governance-Minimal Government has been reduced to all powers being centralised in the hands of a single person and authoritarian streaks are visible as the Cabinet system, where the PM is first among equals, is being overturned towards a PM controlling everything. The major damage is in the arena of freedom of expression, autonomy of academic institutions, and communal harmony.

Hate Speech

Different leaders from different wings of the RSS combine went on a verbal rampage. For every voice dissenting from the ideology/policies of RSS-BJP-Modi, abusive words were used like, go to Pakistan, Haramzade, anti-national and the like. Many of those who ultered such words are in the Central Ministry as well, like Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti and Giriraj Singh. Yogi Adityanath, Sadhvi Prachi and Sakshi Maharaj were the other notable ones in this regard. Many of these worthies were labelled as fringe elements by some commentators. It is clear that they are no fringe elements; they are part of the core agenda of the RSS combine. The Prime Minister has not reprimanded any of them as these speeches are part of the divisive agenda being pursued by the VHP and its parent organisation, the RSS. During this time Godse, who murdered the Father of the Nation, Gandhi, is also coming to the fore and demands for temples in his name are in the air.

Education: Autonomy of Educational Institutes

The government made its intention of changing the syllabus very clear from the beginning. The Central Cabinet Minister, Venkaiah Naidu, had expressed this in so mnay words even before the elections. The real indication was given when RSS pracharak Dinananth Batra got the academic book, ‘Hindus and Alternate History' by Wendy Doniger, pulped by pressurising the publishers through court cases. Those appointed in charge of educational institutions and academic bodies have explicitly stated their ideology. K. Sudarshan Rao, the one who has been appointed as the chief of the Indian Council of Historical Research, has stated that there is no problem in the caste system as nobody had complained against it. Similarly he is trying to present Hindu mythology as History.

The interference in the academic institutions led to the Director of IIT-Delhi and Board of Governors of IIT-Mumbai resigning from their posts. One Gajendra Chauhan was appointed as the Chairperson of the FTII. He did not have a stature for the high post. The students' strike opposing his appointment was ignored and he continues to occupy the post. In IIT-Madras the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle was banned, but had to be restored after a lot of protests. In Hyderabad Central University the activities of the Ambedkar Students Association were opposed. These activities were the screening of the film, Muzzafarnagar Baki hai, a programme to oppose the death penalty of Yakub Memon, and organising a beef festival. Under pressure from the Central Ministry of HRD the students were expelled from the hostel, their scholarship was stopped. This is what led to the suicide of Rohith Vemula.

In JNU a programme was organised by the students to oppose the death penalty to Afzal Guru. Some masked men shouted anti-India slogans. A video was doctored and Kanhaiya Kumar and other students were arrested under the charge of sedition. Interestingly, the students (masked men), who shouted anti-India slogans, were not arrested. The doctored video was used to put Kanhaiya and others in jail. A massive students' protest has grown in the country to oppose the high-handed government action in the academic campuses. In response a major protest took place by the teachers of JNU and other prominent academics; they began a series of lectures on Nationalism, covering its various aspects. The lectures gave the nation a perspective on the phenomenon of nationalism and also the distinction between Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism.

A new emotive issue was allowed to surface. That revolved around the slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' (Hail Mother India). The RSS chief had said that the youth should be told to chant this slogan. In response to this the MIM's Asaduddin Owaisi said he will not do so even if a knife was put on his throat. RSS fellow-traveller Baba Ramdev stated that had the Constitution not been there, by now lakhs of people would have been beheaded. The issue of Bharat Mata ki Jai again brought forth the issues related to who constitutes the nation in a very clear manner. Now the RSS combine is using the word deshdrohi (anti-national) for anybody and everybody who has opinions different from their own. One recalls that for his statement opposing that of Baba Ramdev, Akbaruddin Owaisi was arrested and had to be in jail for some time.

Growing Intolerance

As the government took charge, already the murder of Dr Dabholkar was in the backdrop. Meanwhile Com Pansare and Prof Kalburgi were murdered for their rational views. The beef ban and cow protection hysteria was built up. This led to many murders, the major one being that of Mohammad Akhlaq. The issue of ‘cow as mother' has been brought up more strongly now leading to many acts of violence. After Akhlaq's murder the heat of growing intolerance led many eminent citizens to return their awards for excellence in their areas of work. Rather than positively respond to their protests, they were looked down upon.

As matters stand, it is becoming clear that all the wings of the RSS are in full action. They are getting all the protection and support from the ruling government. The RSS progeny which has come to maximum prominence is the ABVP, and it is coming to limelight in different educational campuses. Its aim is to oppose the secular, plural and democratic activities in the campuses as witnessed in the Hyderabad Central University, Allahabad University and JNU in particular.

The incidents of the HCU and JNU tell us as to how brazenly the ABVP can assert itself on the issues related to pluralism and democracy, with due support from the ruling party. Incidents have also revealed that attacks on Dalits and other democratic formations are possible by the ABVP as it has the protective cover of the authorities selected because of their loyalty to the Hindutva ideology.

On the one hand we have this imposition of the RSS ideology of Hindu nationalism, on the other the students and youth have come forward to defend the mantle of progressive values, the values of the Indian Constitution. The most heartening feature of recent times is that the students of different political persuasions, Ambedkarite-Left-Socialists are coming together on the democratic platform. This upsurge of the youth is a guide to the national movement as a whole reminding us of the need for all anti-communal forces to come together at social and political levels to oppose the rising tide of authoritarianism in the name of Hindutva. While the electoral experiment in Bihar has given the first respite, the students are providing the ground for the movement to protect democracy.

We are in for challenging times. There are attacks and there is hope. We can definitely look forward to a united platform of all forces believing in the values of democracy and pluralism to come together and preserve those very values.

The author, a retired Professor at the IIT-Bombay, is currently associated with the Centre for the Study of Secularism and Society, Mumbai.

EDITORIAL

The BJP-led NDA Government has completed two years today. As it observes its second anniversary, one is reminded of what happened in 1979. That was the time when the first anti-Congress government at the Centre, represented by the Janata Party comprising the major non-Congress parties—the Congress-O, Jana Sangh, Socialist Party and Jagjivan Ram-H-N. Bahuguna-sponsored Congress for Democracy—and headed by the then PM, Morarji Desai, completed two years in power after having vanquished the Emergency regime of Indira Gandhi and her younger son, Sanjay, in the historic Lok Sabha elections of 1977. On the occasion of its second anniversary, the Morarji Desai dispensation, which had assumed power with the blessings of Jayaprakash Narayan, the architect of the democratic struggle against the Emergency raj, was already tottering with deep dissensions affecting its unity. The essential reason for those dissensions to surface was the fast pace at which the RSS, the ideological mentor of the then Jana Sangh (and present-day BJP), was growing across the country, something which had caused legitimate concern among several leading figures of the ruling Janata Party and its supporters. That was the development which soon brought about a split in the ruling party on the famous ‘dual membership' issue, and the consequent ouster of the Morarji Desai Ministry and its replacement by a new government headed by Charan Singh even though the incumbent Janata Dal-S-Congress-S Ministry was shortlived. Finally the country had to face another election, in early 1980, and that found the Congress-I, led by Indira Gandhi, returning to power within less than three years of its 1977 defeat.

Why is one recalling those days of 1979? Precisely because the crisis in the then ruling Janata Party was triggered by the RSS. Of course there is a vital difference between what happened in 1979 and the situation that prevails today. If the Jana Sangh's ties with the RSS were instrumental in effecting the 1979 'July crisis' leading to the split in the Janata Party and the formation of the Charan Singh Government and eventually the end of the Janata experiment by the beginning of 1980, today it is the RSS-guided BJP under Narendra Modi's stewardship that enjoys absolute majority at the Centre. In that sense it is a unique situation for the RSS now. So much so that the organisation, which was banned in the aftermath of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination in 1948, and kept at arm's length by sizeable sections of even the Janata Party members in 1977, is now in the driver's seat and many MPs have only in the recent past publicly declared their intention to build memorials and temples in honour of Nathuram Godse who had himself killed the Father of the Nation. The RSS, as is well known, had created an atmosphere in those days that resulted in Gandhiji's assassination. Today it is the same RSS under whose inspiration several incidents have taken place in the country in the last two years that threaten to destroy the secular fabric of our nation while striking at the root of our pluralist ethos thereby undermining national unity and amity between peoples in our multinational and multire-ligious state.

Commentators and specialists, totally oblivious of or deliberately concealing this phenomenon, may highlight the achievements and/or failure of the Modi Government in the economic and political fields since May 2014, but it is the above-mentioned danger that imparts a grave dimension to the past two years of the present BJP regime. It is the RSS which is taking the country in a particular direction. Taking the cue from RSS publications the BJP-led NDA Government is following a divisive course. Instead of seeking to remove the sense of alienation growing in the minds of the people in J&K and the North-East, it is trying to perpetuate that very alienation by reinforcing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in those regions of the country and at the same time branding student leaders like Kanhaiya Kumar, the General Secretary of the JNU Students Union, as anti-national thus causing profound resentment among the student community.

Yesterday The Times of India quoted extensively from the latest issue of the Organiser, the RSS organ, to highlight the opinion of the RSS workers. It concluded with the following words:

...It (Organiser) has also taken on JNUSU student activist Kanhaiya Kumar for his alleged support to Left-wing extemism. “There are many Kanhaiyas who support anti-national activities in the name of free speech,” says the weekly, also alleging that certain parliamentarians are on “the payroll of terrorists to raise questions in favour of anti-national elements”.

Tomorrow we shall observe the fiftysecond anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru's death. It is thus pertinent to recall that immortal son of India whose name is being sought to be erased from textbooks as another major ‘achievement' of the Narendra Modi Government (simply because he was an implacable enemy of and uncompromising crusader against majoritarian communalism). Recounting what Nehru wrote in his Discovery of India, Ashutosh Varshney, the Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences in Brown University, has written in The Indian Express on the prevailing scenario in India:

In Discovery of India, Nehru writes that while interacting with millions of farm workers, who chanted Bharat Mata ki Jai (Victory to Mother India), he would suggest that Bharat Mata was all of us together and upon hearing that, their faces would light up with joy and instinctive approval.

Nehru's Bharat Mata was an inclusive, kind and compassionate mother, who cared for all of her children. So long as we think of India as a mother, should we not debate whether we want a mother who loves and looks after all her children, or a mother who discriminates, reserves her compassion for one set of children, and hurts the others?

To conclude, India's democracy is going through an especially troubling period of its fundamentally paradoxical character. It continues to shine electorally, but its attack on liberal freedoms between elections is a cause of great concern.

Varshney mentions only of “attack on liberal freedoms between elections”. One would like to describe it as a manifetation of the Indian version of fascism emanating from those who came to power two years ago in 2014. It is time the pernicious ideology of these elements is frontally assailed and uprooted from the Indian soil, howsoever long and arduous be the process of carrying out that imperative task.

Let us also not fail to understand that this Indian version of fascism is the gift to India from the RSS now enjoying the fruits of power under Narendra Modi's benign benevolence.

May 26 S.C.

COMMUNICATION

There have been several recent newspaper reports which indicate that there are strong possibilities of the revival of the agitation by several members of the Jat community. As at the time of the previous such agitation there was a lot of violence and arson and the peace of a huge area was disrupted for a long time, there are apprehensions among the people regarding their safety as well as prevalence of law and order. While the government of course has to initiate the necessary steps to ensure the maintenance of law and order, there is a strong and urgent need also for the Jat leaders to exercise restraint.

They must issue a clear statement to all their supporters that violence, arson and damage to property should be avoided. In addition, any disruption of rail and road traffic and harassment of commuters and disruption of water supply as well as other essential services and supplies should also be completely avoided. Distinguished elders from the community who have occupied respon-sible positions should come forward to advice restraint so that youths in particular can be prevailed upon to avoid unnecessary confron-tation. Theirs is an upward mobile community which has everything to gain from pursuing its interests and demands in peaceful ways while maintaining very good relations with all sections of society.

Instead of pursuing the path of needless confrontation, constructive community efforts for educational progress, social reform,improving the employability of youth, motivating them for innovative rural self-employment initiatives and genuinely improving relationships with other sections, including the weakest sections, will prove beneficial for the Jats as well as for the entire society. The need is not for narrow progress of just one community but for integrating its progress with the progress of the entire community.

Bharat Dogra
C 27, Raksha Kunj,
Paschim Vihar,
New Delhi—110063

Veteran theatre personality Ebrahim Alkazi is now ninety. In this year, a number of programmes have been launched in different parts of the country to highlight the life-time achievements of this stalwart theatre director who has produced an illustrious crop of actors, directors, playwrights and practitioners of other crafts of theatre. Many of his students have become renowned film personalities as well. We reproduce here an interview of the theatre legend with Anees Chishti, conducted over half-a-century ago for Mainstream, covering different aspects of his creative life. This was among the first few such comprehensive interviews of Ebrahim Alkazi at a time when he was the Founder-Director of the National School of Drama. It brought out the state of the theatre in India at that point in time.

There is something of the theatre in all that Alkazi possesses, from a highly cultivated accent to a marked fondness for dark bush shirts.

Talking to him is a pleasing experience. He has a tremendous sense of responsibility and does not utter a single word without weighing it on the sensitive balance of his conscience.

Question:“Has the theatre in India really arrived? In other words, is our theatre tradition merely a survival from history or does it possess vital contemporary trends?” I asked.

Answer

: “I do not know what we mean when we ask whether our theatre tradition is merely a survival from history. What theatre tradition are we referring to? It is said that our ancient classical tradition has been practically non-existent for about a thousand years. On the other hand, there are theatre traditions in Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra etc. created in the last hundred and fifty years or so. These two traditions have very little in common.

“The question whether the theatre in India has really arrived can be answered only by finding out whether the theatre has become an inseparable part of the life of a large number of people; by knowing if one, as a matter of habit, goes to theatre not merely as an intertainment but some kind of special experience which no other art form is able to provide. I refer to the highest form of theatre experience from which one emerges refreshed, cleansed, restored to the dignity of a sensitive, thoughtful, intelligent human being.”

Q:

“Indian theatre, today, derives its values from three distinct traditions—ancient classical, folk and purely Western. Since a vigorous modern form of the theatre is the need of the hour, we have to give some new direction to our plays. Which of the three traditions should be followed and why?”

Ans:

“The question is not what particular tradition should be followed. Any living theatre movement gets its inspiration from wherever it can, either from its own earlier development, or from its environment or from ideas or influence beyond its geographical frontiers. The artist can be creative either by following a tradition or by rebelling against it. He would be uncreative if he merely followed or repeated the dead elements in a particular traditional form. A tradition that is already dead cannot be resurrected; nor can a live tradition be killed. I think it was Christ who said: ‘Let the dead bury their dead.'

“There is no point in being dogmatic about any one of these traditions. Whatever lives has my reverence.

“Consider, for example, what some people regard as being the most vital theatre movement—the modern theatre in Bengal. We could hardly say that it stems from ancient tradition. If anything, they stem largely from the Western tradition. Take the case of Utpal Dutt or Shombhu Mitra. The influences on them have chiefly been Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht, Piscator and some of the later Russian directors. I do not think we can talk of an ancient classical tradition for the simple reason that such a living tradition in the theatre does not exist.

“About the folk tradition we tend to be rather sentimental and feel attached to it because a large number of us are barely a generation away from the village or small town life. There are many picturesque and attractive elements in it, an earthiness, even a simple poetry. The folk tradition can contribute to a modern theatre movement but cannot by itself bear the burden of contemporary drama.”

“Today, when we are talking about the atom bomb, about the obliteration of the world, the issues have become very crucial and, therefore, the work of the theatre can no longer be carried on at the level where it cannot revolutionise the whole being.

“There would be some sense in talking about the classical Sanskrit tradition if there were significantly large number of plays by contem-porary producers, to contemporary producers, to contemporary audiences, in a contemporary style or a style which is an authentic classical Indian style. If I were to take anybody seriously who is talking about the Sanskriti classical tradition, I would like to know how many classical Sanskrit plays he has produced in the last three years. And if he has not produced any in the last ten years, I do not find any point in talking to him about it, because these problems have got to be solved in practical terms on the stage. It is not a question of quoting from the Natyashastra but of actually applying it.”

Q:

”In this context, what importance should be attached to such theatrical forms as Raslila, Ramlila, Nautanki, and Bhavai? Should we preserve or neglect them?”

Ans:

“I do not think we should neglect them. There is the need of trying to preserve them. In a fast changing society this is, of course, difficult.”

Q:

“What, according to you, is the scope of presentation of translations from Sanskrit? What should be the correct way of producing them?”

Ans:

“I find no reason why translations from Sanskrit into different Indian languages should not be produced. The way of production would depend entirely upon the imagination of the particular producer.

“There may be a person, for example, who would like to know how these plays were presented in ancient times. Instead of theorising about the proportions etc., of the stage it would be much more useful for him to build one according to the specifications in the Natyashastra and produce a classical Sanskrit play in Bengali, Marathi or any other language. Any producer interested in this type of research would certainly be making a contribution to the investigation of the classical Sanskrit form.

“On the other hand, there might be a person who says that, after all, he is presenting the play to a modern audience and wants to stage the Mrichchakatika on the proscenium stage of the AIFACS theatre. I think that such an experience could also be quite exciting.

“A third person may argue that the days of proscenium stage have gone and he may like to use an arena stage for a classical Sanskrit play. The arena style is supposed to be one of the latest innovations in the theatre movement, though actually it is nothing of the kind at all. It is one of the most ancient forms. It is a form which is instinctively used by every type of street performer be he a magician or a snake charmer.

“If such performances are given, we can learn a great deal from the people who are making such experiments, and many difficult problems are likely to be solved. But any approach to the classical Sanskrit plays would be valid so long as their essential beauty, their authority and significance are retained, for it is not the style that matters but it is the imaginative spirit and the essential form of the play that has to be valued.”

Q:

“Please allow me to ask something about one of your experimental plays which, after its production, became much talked about—Andh Yug. It has been alleged that a fantastic amount of money was spent without achieving anything significant. What are your own pesonal reactions to such criticism?”

Ans:

“First of all, it was not an experimental play. It was a straighforward simple production. The mere fact that it was presented imaginatively against a background of historical ruins does not make it experimental. There are claims made about quite a few of my productions which I myself do not make. Secondly it is erroneously assumed that since a play is produced against a monumental background, the expenses would also be monumental. The cost of mounting the production at the Ferozeshah Kotla was considerably less than the cost of mounting the same production for an equal number of nights at the AIFACS theatre would have been.

‘I think I have achieved a certain reputation for putting on austere productions, for doing a great deal with very little. Let us put the whole matter relatively: for the same amount of money which some local groups themselves claim to have spent on a single production, the School has presented at least five major productions. Does this give you an idea of our sense of proportion?

“Finally, shall we try and see what Andh Yug achieved? It has given a new dignity and dimension to Hindi drama; it has proved that what was before considered a failure as a play was in reality one of the great landmarks in Hindi drama; it has proved that a single first-year first-term student of the School can stand and perform with supreme self-confidence on an 80 foot stage.”

Q:

Is a National Theatre immediately rquired or whould it be wiser to use our present resources towards extending theatrical activities throughout the country and wait for the time to be ripe for a National Theatre?”

Ans:

“I think the time for a National Theatre is always now, not at some remote time in the future. There is already a considerable theatre movement. Every large city of India is worked up about the theatre. If you go to Bombay, you would be amazed at the scores of theatre organisations, heard of or unheard of, that are putting up plays and rehearsing them. In Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore, Hyderabad and even in Delhi the same situation prevails.

“A National Theatre should perform in the Capital as well as in the rest of the country. It would be a valuable experience for a National Theatre troupe to go round the country to perform against the country to perform against the national landscape as it were. There should be an Art Director for the National Theatre. He should work in consultation with a Board of Management. It should appoint three producers on a contract basis who would work in the residential repertory company of trhe National Theatre. There should be a nucleus of about twenty actors. They may work with a man like, say, Shombhu Mitra, who might be invited to do a production of a play by Tagore in a particular season. The same group of players should be given to another producer for some other play, possibly translated from Kannada into Hindi. As part of the same season of plays, a third producer may be invited to do a Western classical play translated into Hindi with the same group of players. In addition to this resident troupe there may be another troupe travelling throughout the country.”

Q:

“What should be the role of amateur theatre in general and universities in particular towards the establishment of a good theatre?”

Ans:

“The greater part of the theatre movement in the West has been started by amateurs. A large number of great directors including Stanislavsky started as amateurs.

“The amateur theatre has certian advantages. It has enthusiam. It has a certain daring. It has its freshness of outlook, its own intellectual integrity and, therefore, it need not sell its soul to the devil.

“I think universities should be in the vanguard of the progressive theatre movement. In the West too it has often been that the universities have led the theatre movement. The Oxford University Dramatic Scoiety has a long and ancient tradition of its own. Frequently it is not the professional theatre which sets the standard to the amateur theatre but the other way round.”

And thus concluded my memorable conver-sation with the first man of the Indian theatre.

(Mainstream, October 10, 1964)