The times are a-steaming
With heat, hate, humbug;
Victors of a street fight
Romp with ominous chug chug.

Money-spinners mark assent
To muscle brains of the day;
Celebrities do not mind being
Slaves to what golden mouth may say

Of the honest and the innocent,
Or the unsmartly tame;
Lacking the glibness of tongue,
The meek must take the blame.

Never did the devil quote
Scripture so brazenly as now;
The just croak in crevices,
The rogues stride above.

Badri Raina

by Binoy Viswam

The people of Kerala have given their verdict. It is emphatic, unequivocal and hence, historic. They made the LDF victorious by providing it with 91 seats in the 140-member Assembly. The UDF, led by the Congress, could secure only 47 seats. The BJP, which for long was struggling to enter the Kerala Legislature, could do it by winning one seat. One seat went to an Independent.

This verdict was not at all unexpected. The voters' mood was so clear and visible: they wanted a change. Such a change was inevitable for the onward march of the State, which has always pioneered the cause of social development of the country. The UDF Government, led by Congress leader Oommen Chandy, has disfigured the face of the State in such a vulgar manner. The UDF, in its five-year tenure, has shattered every-thing that the previous LDF Government (2006-2011) had achieved. Every sector witnessed downfall and the people were subjected to unpre-cedented miseries. Agriculture, industry, education, public distribution system—all were in doldrums. The environment was brutally neglected.

Corruption in every strata of administration was nurtured by the UDF Ministers. The Chief Minister and his office became the High Command of corruption. Scandals of all sorts shadowed the day-to-day affairs of the Chandy Government. Grafts in the name of solar energy, bar licence purchases, land deals etc. became the rule of the day. The people were ashamed to go through reports of even sex scandals in which big political bosses were involved Every election survey was pointing to a single point: people want a change.

The LDF in Kerala can really be proud that we fulfilled our commitments to the people that satisfied their aspirations. All the constituents of the Left Democratic Front rose to the occasion and fought the battle with absolute unity. The enemies had wished that differences would surface among the LDF partners on different occasions. But the LDF constituents, mainly the CPI and CPI-M, the leading partners, were mature enough to understand the political significance of the electoral battle in Kerala. Both the parties could comprehend the truth that this was not a fight for Kerala's political power alone. The fight had a wider national message to convey before the Indian people.

The forces of the Right, steered by the big capital, are trying to write off the Left from the Indian political horizon. They are not ready to tolerate the presence of a powerful Left in the country where the majority of the masses are denied even the basic necessities. They are keen to crush the Left in places where the latter are strong due to historical and objective reasons. And for that purpose they support the BJP at the national level and the Congress and BJP in Kerala. Thoroughly under-standing this threat the LDF put up a valiant resistance to the Rightist offensive.

The LDF approached the people and explained to them that Kerala had to tell the nation that a people-centric development is the need of the hour. Both the BJP and Congress have proven that they stand for the profit-amassing centralised development. They argue for TINA (there is no alternative). The people listemed to the LDF viewpoint and upheld it. They proclaimed to the country that another world is possible. They catagorically stated that the Left is the people's alternative.

When the masses turned to the Left and supported its 600-point Election Manifesto, the victory of the Left became on inspiring reality. The CPI, CPI-M and other constituents of the LDF faced the election as a single entity. Nowhere was there any clash of interests between them. Because of that the CPI could increase its strength in the Assembly to 19 from 13. The CPI-M also fared impressively with its strength rising from 45 to 58.

It was not an easy victory. The UDF and BJP shamelessly joined hands to fight the Left. The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combination activated the social engineering theory and launched their “rainbow alliance” with greedy calculations. They pumped in an incredible amount of money. Helicopters were used for their State leaders to run the show. At many places, the Congress and RSS cadres exchanged votes with a hidden agenda. Still the BJP could secure only one seat, while the vote-share of the UDF was reduced. That is the secret behind the BJP opening its account! The party, which swears by Mahatma Gandhi, transferred its votes to the party wedded to the ideals of Nathuram Godse!

Shocked by the thumping victory of the Left, the BJP unleashed violence all over the State. It is interesting to note that the Congress in Kerala has closed its eyes on the series of atrocities committed by the RSS.

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala, with all humility and cohesion, stands before the nation and reiterates its pledge before the people. It very well knows the faith and responsibility the people have entrusted in it. The LDF is aware of the challenges before it. It notes with concern the designs of the BJP to put hurdles on the LDF Government. Utterances have already come from the Cental Ministers that they will face the LDF in the streets. It shows that their strategy is to create violence and engineer communal clashes while crying hoarse over the failure of law and order in Kerala. The LDF, along with the people of the State, will face all such attempts to destabilise its government with firm resolve and prove to be worthy of the trust reposed in it by the Kerala electorate as mirrored in the election verdict.

The author, a former Minister of Forests and Housing in the erstwhile LDF Government in Kerala, is a member of the National Executive of the CPI.

China has started work on its second rail line in Tibet, which will ultimately reach close to India-Bhutan border town of Yatung (Yadong) when completed in 2030. Its first Tibet rail line from Golmud in Qinghi province to Lhasa was completed in 2006, has been bringing in much tourist traffic. Two years ago, it was extended from Lhasa to Shigatse, Tibet's second largest city and the home of Panchen Lama. It will be further extended to Yatung (Yadong), and will reach the Nepal border after that.

China's railway chief described these rail lines of extreme importance for China's development and stability.

Efforts are being made to complete the second line before 2030. It will later be extended westwards to Jilong (or Gyirong in Nepalese language), passing close to the Bhutanese border. This second line will be 1600 kilometres long and will be a bigger construction marvel than the first, which climbs to the highest altitude of the world. The second will pass through snow-capped mountains in a region racked by earthquakes. Half of it will run through tunnels or overbridges, in a very difficult terrain of permafrost, requiring ingenious heat regulating technology to keep the track from buckling.

I had travelled on this first rail line in 2006, soon after it was completed. Because of the heights it touches around Golmud, oxygen along its Tibetan part is rare and one finds breathing difficult. Good lungs are needed to journey on it. The train, which starts from Peking, carries its piped oxygen supply in Tibet for all passengers. The train has sleepers and sitting accommodation. It has a dining car and a shop to buy food. It was packed full when I travelled and had doctors on board to take care of passengers who may fall ill. Medical checks were conducted to see if passengers were fit for the journey through Tibet's high altitude region. The journey provided spectacular views of high mountains, grasslands with wildlife and the Brahmaputra river. There were few habitations on the way, most of them of tents of shepherds and of railway workers maintaining the line. Announcements were made as one passed through landmarks like high peaks, nature reserves with wild animal herds, salt plains and high altitude sports centres. In the sleeper class I travelled, each berth had its own individual oxygen supply.

There is already a narrow but very dangerous motor road connecting Chengdu in Sichuan province to Lhasa, on which it takes three grueling days to reach Lhasa. The rail line will reduce the journey to 15 hours.

China has said building of the railway had become “extremely urgent” not just for developing Tibet but also to meet “the needs of national defense building”. The only country next to that region is India, with which it has a territorial dispute towards south, in an area it calls South Tibet, which India calls its Arunachal Pradesh State.

Chinese leaders had dreamed of such a railway line for a century. In 1912, after he became China's first President, Sun Yat-sen, wanted a trans-Tibetan line, to prevent Tibet from coming in control of Britain, which had already invaded Tibet from India a decade ago. Mao Zedong revived the idea in the 1950s. In years since, many exploratory surveys have been carried out to build a rail line in Tibet.

China now has the world's second largest railway network and the biggest high speed one. The success of its first railway to Lhasa in Tibet, opened in 2006, was claimed to be a major accomplishment. The second rail line, under construction in Tibet, is estimated to cost 16 billion US dollars. It will cross 14 mountains, two of them higher than Mont Blanc in Europe. It will have 16 bridges, one over the Brahma-putra River.

The author is a veteran journalist.

We are appalled that leaders of India's ruling establishments and law enforcing agencies are not ashamed at what happened on January 31, 2016 night to a Tanzanian girl student of Bachelors of Business Administration in a college at Bangalore. The car in which she was returning in company of her friends to the city was attacked, she was dragged out, stripped and paraded naked in public for no rhyme or reason. When she ran to board a bus passing by the place of occurrence, its passengers did not extend a helping hand; rather they threw her out of the running public vehicle. Police personnel present on the scene of her humiliation did not intervene. A good Samaritan, who offered a shirt to the victim to cover herself, was subjected to physical torture. The wronged girl was asked to bring the driver responsible for a road accident to the police station when she went to lodge a complaint.1 She was absolutely unaware of what had happened half-an-hour before she was subjected to shame and humiliation by a mob on the same spot. The State Home Minister did not consider the ugly incident as a racist attack.

In the meanwhile another tragedy has struck a Congolese national in Delhi. A 23-year-old Masonda Ketanda Olivier, a French teacher of a private institute since 2012, was beaten to death by a group of men following a brawl over hiring an auto-rickshaw in the Capital.2 Why such enormous tragedy over a trivial issue for hiring an auto-rickshaw on a Delhi road must torment us. This suggests perhaps that our law-enforcers are incapable to touch the offenders if the victim(s), a native or a foreign national, is a disadvantaged one. The country has no proud record to provide justice and protection to the weak and vulnerable.

Many might recall a car accident that claimed six lives on the Gurgaon-Delhi road 17 years ago. In 1999, one Sanjeev Nanda, son of industrialist Suresh Nanda, had ran over six persons, including three police officers, killing them on the spot under the speeding wheels of his luxurious BMW car. The trial court had acquitted the accused and his accomplices in 1999. But Nanda was later found guilty in 2008 and sentenced to two years imprisonment, which was reduced to time served, a large fine, and two years of community service by the Supreme Court of India in 2012. The case had attracted extraordinary public and media attention. It was viewed as “a test of the judicial system's ability to take on the powerful“.3 Strangely, no mob blocked the road, nor attacked any passing vehicle, nor pelted stones at anybody even hours after the fateful accident. India is a paradise for the rich and powerful offenders and lawbreakers who are pampered and handled with kid gloves. They can bend, break, twist or violate any system to their advantage with perfect immunity. Long ago this was candidly acknowledged by Andrew Jackson, (March 1767-June 1845), the seventh President of the USA (1829-1837): “The rich and the powerful too often bend the Acts of government to their own selfish purposes.” We, Indians, know too well the inherent significance President Jackson wanted us to appreciate. And the sufferers of injustice have witnessed miscarriage of justice helplessly over and over again all over India times without number.

The public stand taken by the Tanzanian Embassy on the treatment of its student in Bangalore appeared to many as enigmatic, if not intriguing. According to a leading newspaper,

In what can only be seen as a volte-face, Tanzanian High Commissioner to India John W.H. Kijazi said in Bengaluru that the attack on the Tanzanian woman last Sunday was not racist. He told the media on Friday (January 31, 2016), after being briefed by the state govern-ment, “What has happened is very unfortunate. We had a meaningful discussion with the state government and I am happy with the action taken against the policemen and we were told nine persons have been arrested. I have got a clear picture of what happened prior to the accident and after that. It is not a racist attack. It is a case of friction between the local community and the students.

The indignity and humiliation of the victim, I am afraid, has been swept under the carpet. Would India be “happy” had such an incident happened to an Indian national abroad?

According to the 2012 census, Tanzania boasted of a total population of 44,928,923, which works out to 3.6 per cent of the Indian population. The African nation is too tiny to exert influence and get justice for its citizens humiliated, outraged or murdered in India. The countrymen have, by now, forgotten the whole episode. Some action is under way in the murder of the Congolese teacher in Delhi. Rendering justice to a victim of atrocities and injustice is not India's forte.

Is telling Lies and making False Claims in Indian DNA?

A junior official of the External Affairs Ministry has blamed the media for hyping the incident as a racist attack. He advised the media to refrain from being judgmental and sending out a wrong message. Our government is very sensitive, if not scared, about its image abroad. They do not relish negative publicity on the social front getting public attention abroad. So resorting to lies or indulging in prevarication is a vital necessity. Our governments, State or Union, always shy away from admitting internal or domestic weaknesses, troubles or deficiencies in public or international fora. So lies or distortions are common.

India presented a pathetic show at the World Conference at Durban in 2002. There Omar Abdullah, the junior Minister of External Affairs, blatantly denied that Indians were racists or casteists. His statement then—and more parti-cularly even over a decade—now sounds like a bundle of blatant lies. The Minister's statement read: “......in the run up to the world Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimi-nation, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance there has been propaganda, highly exaggerated and misleading, often based on anecdotal evidence, regarding caste-based discrimination in India. We in India have faced this evil squarely. We unequivocally condemn this and, indeed, any other form of discrimination. The issue has remained at the top of our national agenda.” Brave words to push truth beyond public eyes under a colourful tapestry.

Touching on “our constitutional, legislative and administrative framework” Omar claimed that “our affirmative action programmes for the uplift of the members of the historically disadvantaged castes” made “positive difference. The institutions of our democratic polity, the progressive removal of poverty and the spread of literacy have empowered and given a voice to millions of the weaker sections of our society. We are determined to continue this national endeavour..... there is no state-sponsored, institutionalised, discrimination against any individual citizen or groups of citizens.” This voluble script appears to have been prepared by gifted men, bereft of sensitivity, sitting in a safe haven of ivory towers. The Minister further roared: “We are here to ensure that states do not condone or encourage regressive social attitudes. We are not here to engage in social engineering within member-states.” And finally his script underlined: “We are firmly of the view that the issue of caste is not an appropriate subject for discussion at this Conference.... We are here to ensure that states do not condone or encourage regressive social attitudes.”4 What are regressive ‘social attitudes'? The Indian statement at the world conference was silent.

The cardinal principle of foreign policy of any nation is dictated by the interests and aspirations of the people at large. India did not have the honesty to tell the truth at the world conference at Durban how caste-based hatred, prejudice, discrimination and untouchability have enslaved about one-fourth of its population and they are treated worse than lepers. According to Patrick French, “To equal the number of Dalits in India, you would need to add together the populations of Albania, Australia, Belgium, Israel, Kuwait, Libya, the Netherlands, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.”5

The society then and even now is the home of extreme intolerance, violence, repression, vulnerability and discrimination against its underprivileged population. The wrong-doers, violators, murderers, rapists and arsonists, encroachers of properties of the weak are patronised and/or courted as well as sheltered more often than not by the powerful authorities from behind the screen. The judiciary fails to punish the criminals for providing justice to India's victims from the disadvantaged sections. The deplorable record of administration of justice to the victims of massacres of Dalits by powerful upper castes from Tsundur in Andhra Pradesh to Laxmanpur Bathe in Bihar, Tamilnadu to Haryana tells the tale. Speaking factually, Indian policy-framers preach what they do not believe. Call it state-sponsored and institutionalised discrimination against any individual citizen or groups of citizensor not, this is undeniably the depiction of ground realities without any remedy.

Do the Africans know the Indian Ethos?

The Africans would do well to note and appreciate the dominant Indian ethos over caste and colour or complexion of skin. They suffer from compulsive obsession for caste superiority which they equate, by and large, with men and women of fair complexion. The autochthonous Indians are dark in complexion whereas the emigrants who colonised India in ancient times were fair complexioned. Their complexion is the basis of claiming superiority in every sphere of life. They created the fiction of caste with themselves at the summit of the heap. All those below it, in their eyes, are object of hatred, prejudice and discrimination. In every socio-cultural norm and practice, they evolved spaces in the top to ensconce themselves.

On Indian soil, justice is normally denied to the Dalit and tribal even for criminal actions by fair complexioned Indians. Injustice is the certainty in every situation. People all over the world would do well to note what is not acknowledged publicly is that they esteem white-skinned men and women in preference to dark-skinned natives. Africans have been subjected in the past to miserable treatment. I have no reason to believe they would not do otherwise as a mark of respect in future as well. The boys and girls from the North-Eastern States studying in the national Capital region as well as Bangalore received, as a routine, treatment no less worse than their African counterparts. (Refer ‘Requiem for Nido' http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article4748.html)

Their DNA Speaks

Only recently the Indian media reported the sad tale of Mahesh, a mining engineering student of IIT-Banaras Hindu University, Uttar Pradesh. He wanted to sell his kidney for repaying a loan worth Rs 2,70,000 he had taken to defray expenses for his technical education. Doctors in the hospitals had told him plainly that his kidney would have no takers. Nonetheless, he went ahead to sell his organ in five hospitals in Banaras and Alwar, Rajasthan.6 The prospective buyers, if any, would first of all ask to know his caste. A Balmiki, Mahesh is a Dalit, whose ancestral occupation is sweeping the streets and cleaning toilets. So his organ was not in demand. In dire straits, he dropped out of IIT and took to sweeping for a monthly salary of Rs 4000 with a view to augmenting the family income. Dejected and desperate, he once even contemplated committing suicide.

When in June 2015 news of two Dalit brothers—Raju and Brijesh of Pratapgarrh district, UP—cracking the IIT entrance exami-nations securing 167 and 410 positions respec-tively in merit were flashed, my spontaneous concern was about their security. In an online comment, I had written that the two Dalit stars needed security and protection more than media adulation, lest their envious villagers, neigh-bours and countrymen harmed them. Lo and behold! The next day, the media reported that their house was brickbatted by anti-social elements and miscreants obliging the authorities to deploy police for their security and protection. This happened much before they enrolled themselves in IITs where even graver danger might be in store for them.

All over the country, tragedies have struck Dalit and tribal students doing medical, engineering, management etc. in institutes of excellence or higher studies in other departments of knowledge. (Refer ‘Merit, a curse for dalit?' http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article3390.html) In campuses unsuspected underprivileged students have been driven to commit suicides in dozens. How can they be protected and secured from the predatory caste fanatics and supremacists in the garb of teachers, non-teachers and fellow students is the moot question. They must get security cover until they pass out of the institutional dark clouds hovering over their heads. Dead bodies have emerged from the laboratories, libraries and hostels, or classrooms of universities, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, even IISc. which can be equated with glamorous morgues for underprivileged students. Those without an iota of conscience behind their deaths are infernal butchers. None of the heads of these institutions ever showed uprightness to assure justice for the vulnerable students. The case of the research scholar of Hyderabad Central University, Rohith Vemula, is still playing out in the public domain ever since his suicide.

No Buyers for Dalit Kidney?

The Indian organ market is a thriving one. The black market is expanding because the demand far outstrips the supply of organs. According to a World Health Organisation WHO report in 2007, the underground organ market is still resurgent in India, with around 2000 Indians selling kidney every year. Donors regularly put their lives at risk for just $ 5000 (£ 3000) from unscrupulous gangs who then sell the body parts for prices up to $ 200,000 (£ 130,000) a time. A Chennai based broker boasted in 2015: “If you have the money and want it (organ) fast, you come here. I will find you a donor and you can go home with a new kidney in a month.” Another was quoted as saying, “You can get a kidney for 1.7m rupees ($25,700) in West Bengal.” The WHO is of the view that South Asia is now the leading transplant tourism hub globally, with India among the top kidney exporters. “Each year more than 2000 Indians sell their kidneys, with many of them going to foreigners. The illicit kidney trade in South Asia has exploded as brokers use social media to find donors.”7 Yet another broker told the same electronic media that many agents in India and Bangladesh were working at the behest of individual doctors or hospitals based in Colombo who offered “complete packages” to foreign recipients, with prices ranging from $ 53,000 to $ 122,000. Higher demand pushes the market price for kidney prohibitively conforming to the simple norm of economics.

Nevertheless, Mahesh had no buyers. This exposes the bare truth: his low caste status. A kidney might be necessary for his healthy life, but he would abhor to breathe his last with an organ of a low-caste man. The Hindu pathology of hatred springs from their religious notion which is subordinate to caste rules. In this background, no African under the sun can expect better treatment from Hindus anywhere in the globe, not to speak of India. The emigrant Bengali bhadralok in the USA, it is pertinent to note, were not at all enamoured about Barak Obama when he contested and ultimately won the US Presidential election. They despised his dark skin much before they witnessed his quality of leadership and broad mindedness. These NRIs play a tremendous role in influencing India's social, economic and political fabric. Britain had passed the Equality Law in 2012 by incorporating caste discrimination as a crime. But the financially affluent Hindu upper caste ganged up against the new provision of law and opposed its implementation to safeguard the numerically larger British Dalit population. The UK Government, under David Cameron, kowtowed majestically before the Hindu black-mail. What an about-turn of the British Govern-ment! Winston Churchill, we may remember, about 80 years ago had observed: “.......These Brahmans, who mouth and patter the principles of Western liberalism, and pose as philosophic and democratic politicians, are the same Brahmans who deny the primary rights of existence to nearly sixty millions of their own fellow countrymen whom they call ‘untouchable', and whom they have by thousands of years of oppression actually taught to accept this sad position. They will not eat with these sixty millions, nor drink with them, nor treat them as human beings. They consider themselves contaminated even by their approach. And then in a moment they turn round and begin chopping logic with John Stuart Mill, or pleading the rights of man with Jean Jacques Rousseau.”8 Hypocrisy of the caste system of the Hindus cannot be better illustrated and more succinctly elaborated to match Churchill. The Indian intellectual class never rates Churchill anything other than an arrogant and imperialist British overlord. But the truth of this assessment can barely be brushed aside. The same Empire has become the guardian and protector of the caste system much to the chagrin of millions of British citizens.

On February 7, 2016, the media reported that the police had registered a case against the guide of a Dalit mathematics scholar who committed suicide at the Central University of Rajasthan (CURAJ). “The student, Mohit Kumar Chouhan, had alleged harassment by Vidyottma Jain.” Vidyottma was his guide.9 He had formally requested the Vice-Chancellor twice for replace-ment of his guide who had harassed him. Replacement of a research guide, it may be mentioned, is not unknown nor against the university statute. His requests did not receive the attention of the Vice-Chancellor.

The life of a Dalit, scholar or illiterate, is cheap in monetary terms. The Vice-Chancellor, Central University, Hyderabad had put a price tag of Rs 800,000 ($ 11,700) for Rohith Vemula who committed suicide in the University hostel room. Those who are responsible for driving Dalit and tribal students to commit suicide are also the people putting tags on their life. The scholars were not murdered by assassins; nor did they fall victim to the bullets of supari (contract) killers. They were not lynched in frenzied mob violence. Nor did extremists or terrorists have any hand in their deaths. These talented scholars ended their lives in laboratories, libraries or hostels in the face of unabated persecution from mostly their gurus. This underlines a game-plan befitting the pernicious Hindu philosophy. Harvard University Professor Myron Weiner (1931—June 3, 1999), an American political scientist and renowned scholar on India, ethnic conflict, child labour, democratisation, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries, had appropriately deciphered and diagnosed the cancer two-an-half decades ago. “The Indian position rests on deeply held belief that there is a division between people who work with their mind and rule and people who work with their hands and are ruled, and the education should reinforce rather than break down this division. These beliefs are closely tied to religious notions and to the premises that underlie India's hierarchical caste system”.10

With this diabolical game-plan playing out in the educational field, we have reasons to believe and apprehend tragedies befalling Dalits and tribals have not come an end. More might be in the pipeline. Only time will reveal the continued ferocity against them.

The American scholar's final verdict is further alarming. “Officials regarded education for the masses not as liberating but as destabilising.”11 What is at risk of destabilisation? What is at risk of destabilisation is the Hindu social set up created by long efforts of fabrication, suppression, domination, exploitation and, above all, total denial of opportunity for expression with the aid of education that facilitated wholesale prevarication. Denial of education is in the cardinal principle in Hindu religion. The tenacious attachment to caste for the Hindu arises from the chaturvarna vyavyastha.

The Dalits and tribals who went against this LOC (line of control), prescribed by the Hindu saints and sages, have hitherto paid heavy prices. Rohith, Mohit, Chuni, Pradeep, Jaspreet etc. are instances. Hindu India cannot yield space to Dalits and adivasis for their upward mobility in life with knowledge and skill which they believe and proclaim as their sole inheritances. They, therefore, encounter armed Hindu brigade like the German Fascist Gestapo everywhere. Not an inch of space is allowed for them voluntarily.

Footnotes

1. The Deccan Chronicle,“Mob strips Tanzanian girl, torches her car as police watch”, February 3, 2016.

2. The Huffington Post,“Congolese man beaten to death in Delhi over auto-rickshaw spat”, May 22, 2016.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Delhi_hit-and-run_case

4. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India,

Statement by Omar Abdullah, Minister of State for External Affairs, India at The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Durban, September 2, 2001.

5. Patrick French, India: A Portrait.

6. The Times of India,“IIT pupil tries to sell kidney to repay loan, but no takers for ‘dalit organ'”, January 23, 2016.

7. Al Jazeera, “Need a kidney? Inside the world's biggest organ market”, October 8, 2015.

8. Winston Churchill, Our Duty in India, March 18, 1931. Albert Hall, London.

9. The Times of India,“Guide ‘who harassed' Rajasthan scholar booked”, February 7, 2016.

10. Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India, OUP, 1991, pp. 4-5.

11. Ibid., p. 17.

The author is a retired IAS officer and former Vice-Chancellor, B.R. Ambedkar University, Muzaffarpur, Bihar. He can be contacted at biswasatulk@gmail.com

by Mohd Yousuf Dar and Jahangir Ahmad Dar

Jawaharlal Nehru's political leadership both in Indian politics and international affairs was indeed unique in the true sense. As a votary of world peace, Pandit Nehru was intimately connected with problems and challenges of international affairs. He developed an inter-national outlook. He was greatly concerned about the arms race and the superpower rivalry. He was deadly opposed to all forms of imperialism, colonialism, racialism and so forth. He was one of the leading spokesmen of Asian and African aspirations for absolute political and economic freedom. He remained a domi-nating personality in the affairs of the world, especially in the Afro-Asian countries. He stood for cooperation amongst the various nations of the world in the interest of world, peace and laid emphasis on the need of bringing about some sort of harmony between nationalism and internationalism. Narrow nationalism, according to him, leads to imperialism which he discarded outrightly. Regarding narrow nationalism, he warned in 1947:

Nationalism is a curious phenomenon which, at a certain stage in a country's history, gives life, growth, strength and unity but, at the same time, it has a tendency to limit one, give one thoughts of one's country as something different from the rest of the world,. The result is that the same nationalism which is the symbol of growth for a people becomes a symbol of the cessation of that growth in the mind. Nationalism, when it becomes successful, sometimes goes on spreading in an aggressive way and becomes a danger internationally. Whatever line of thought you follow you arrive at the conclusion that some kind of balance must be found.

He exhorted the young men of Bengal in 1928:

Are you prepared to shoulder to shoulder with the youth of the world, not only to free your country from an insolent and alien rule but to establish in this unhappy world of yours a better and happier society?

He warned them that national independence should not mean for us merely an addition to the warring groups of nations. It should be a step toward the creation of a World Common-wealth of Nations. He was in favour of a world federation, and a world republic, and not an empire for exploitation. Again in 1928 Nehru, while addressing the Punjab Provincial Congress, stated:

The world has become internationalised, production is international, markets are international and transport is international..... No nation is really independent, they are all interdependent.



Thus, if romantic loyalties had made Nehru a nationalist, the rational and pragmatic conside-rations for human welfare made him a believer in peaceful co-existence and the ideals of ‘one world'. In the nuclear age, hydrogen fusion and the prospects of neutron bomb and chemical warfare, Nehru became an apostle of world peace, a champion of disarmament, and a true believer in the ideals of the United Nations. To Nehru, the United Nations was of central impor-tance. He was conscious, of course, of its shortcomings. But in spite of that, he was tireless in affirming that the United Nations is the chief repository of our hopes for ever and more effective international co-operation for security as well as welfare. Nehru was a firm believer in the ideals of the United Nations and was opposed to the bipolarisation of world politics during the Cold War era and persistently refused to join any powerful bloc. It was Pandit Nehru who carved the third force or third world as a counterpoise to the two super- powers and eased the tensions. Nehru pro-pounded the policy of non-alignment and peaceful co-existence to safeguard the national interests and internationalism.

Non-alignment has been regarded as one of the most important cornerstones of India's foreign policy and is the most enduring of India's contri-bution to international relations. Non-alignment as a principle meant non-involvement in the USA-USSR bipolar power-politics, and keeping away from bloc politics, maintaining friendship with both, and military alliance with none. A desire for world peace and evolving an independent foreign policy became main objectives.

Nehru was in favour of adopting an approach of friendship and cooperation with its neighbours. For this he established sound principles of dealing with them in the name of ‘Panchsheel', that is, the five principles of peaceful co-existence. These principles were enunciated on April 29, 1954, as part of the preamble of India-China agreement with regard to Tibet between Nehru and Chou-En-Lai. These are:

(a) Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty;

(b) Mutual non-aggression;

(c) Mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs;

(d) Equality and mutual benefit;

(e) Peaceful co-existence.

These five principles are meant to enhance the sense of security, trust and confidence.

Nehru was not in favour of the use of arms for security in the world as he believed that peace cannot be secured through security, but security can be attained through peace. He was very much apprehensive about the dangerous consequences of the post-Second World War arms race. Considering the growth of nuclear weapons as a dangerous development, he felt that these had pushed the world on to the ‘edge of disaster'. Hence, he appealed to the superpowers to adopt disarmament as a good gesture for the sake of humanity.

In the present times too the ideas of Nehru, if adopted without prejudice and in an objective manner, are bound to pave way for a just and equalitarian world order where all the nation- states can live in peace and harmony and in this perceived world order, hostility, fear and suspicion will be replaced by rationalism, tolerance, friendliness and cooperation.

Mohd Yousuf Dar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Kashmir. He can be contacted at myousufdar082@gmail.com. Jahangir Ahmad Dar (Gold Medalist) is a Lecturer in Political Science at the Government Model HSS, Kilam Kulgaon.

From N.C.'s Writings

One of the striking impressions of the AICC pilgrims returning from Bombay is about the Prime Minister' style in dealing with the critics of government policies.

This question is not something which came up all of a sudden at the Bombay AICC. In fact it has become the subject matter of avid gossips and discussions in the Capital for the last few weeks, particularly since the Prime Minister's return from the USA. From the person-to-person broadcast to the press conference, Smt Gandhi has shown an extraordinary measure of sensitiveness to the criticisms levelled against the government's policy-stand on issues connected with our relations with the USA—from the proposed Foundation to the Fertiliser Deal and in that context, the wider implications of dollar aid. Sri Subramaniam and Sri Asoka Mehta have come to be known as closest to the Prime Minister among all her Cabinet colleagues; inevitably, the performance of the Food and the Planning Ministers, particularly their calculated moves to facilitate the inroad of American influence into the country's economic and cultural life, has had their impact on the Prime Minister's own standing in the country.

Although Sri Krishna Menon and the other well known cities of these pro-West postures (like Sri K.D. Malaviya and Sri Bhagwat Jha Azad) have been scrupulous enough to confine their criticism to policy-matters instead of dragging in personalities, many in New Delhi have been surprised at the vehemence of the Prime Minister's attack on her critics—not necessarily a sign of strength of the government's position but rather its nervousness. And this element of surprise was replaced by one of bewilderment when at the last week's press conference she claimed that she had been misunderstood and that she did not have the Left-wing elements in the Congress at all in mind when she had asked the critics to quit the party as she did at the last meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party on the eve of the closure of the Budget session. But in the eyes of the public, it was the Left-wing elements who have come to be regarded as the main critics of the government's policies.

Although the picture seems confusing from outside, careful observers in the Capital know who the Prime Minister has in mind when she lashes out every time against her critics. It is known, for instance, that more than once in recent weeks she, in private talks to a number of MPs as also to others in her confidence, has expressedannoyance with Sri Morarji Desai's supporters for having actively taken up the cudgel against her government. This sense of worry was conveyed also to one of the Left-wing stalwarts inside the Congress Parlia-mentary Party.

Her contention appears to be that taking advantage of the difficulties facing the country, the Morarji group has been trying to discredit her Cabinet and thereby making it more difficult for it to tide over the present economic crisis. Secondly, she seems to be under the belief that Sri Desai's followers have been using Leftist arguments even though such arguments do not tally with their own political convictions.

In this way Smt Gandhi seems to be rather obsessed about the Morarji lobby; and this approach is perhaps making it difficult for her to realise that the sharp criticisms against Sri Subramaniam and Sri Asoka Mehta's political line have evoked widespread spontaneous response all over the country and in circles which are normally regarded as a-political.

Although it is true that some of the prominent luminaries of the Morarji camp—Smt Tara-keshwari Sinha for instance—have been making the most out of the present climate of resentment against the distinctly pro-US slant in some of the major economic decisions of the government, hardly any responsible observer in the Capital would like to give the entire credit for the spontaneous chorus of disapproval against these policy decisions to Sri Morarji Desai and his circle. By no stretch of imagination can Sri Krishna Menon's attacks be ascribed to any inspiration from Sri Morarji Desai. The Prime Minister will therefore be ill-advised to suspect every critic of the government policies as Morarji's supporter.

Such a lop-sided view of current develop-ments—reportedly doled out by some of the leading lights in her entourage—can in the long run prove disastrous both for the Prime Minister and her government, since this will lead to a tendency of equating every manifes-tation of mass discontent with the activities of her opponents inside her own party, thus giving them credit which really is not due to them.

Those who have been crusading in defence of Smt Gandhi's position raise three sets of explanations on her behalf. First is that she has inherited most of the ailments for which she is being blamed most at the moment; the second is that the economic crisis has become so acutely intense that there is no way out except to bow to American pressure in order to secure aid, and what she has been desperately trying to do is to bow as decently as possible; and the last point is that what is happening in India today is but the usual working of the process of growth of capitalism and that those who have been getting distressed over these developments are really infantile since they have no idea of the enormity of capitalist exploitation.

The last argument is, strangely enough, raised both by the parlour socialists in the Prime Minister's camp as also by the extremist wing of the Left Communists. In fact, it provides an easy alibi for a programme of inaction, trying to make out that no amount of mass pressure or Left-wing criticism can halt the juggernaut of capitalism.

The theory of acute economic crisis being responsible for the slide-back in policies with regard to the West has carried little conviction, judging by its impact both in Parliament and the AICC. For one thing, the accentuation of the crisis with regard to food or foreign exchange does not warrant its over-publicisation since such a step can only worsen the situation. The manner in which the Food Minister has gone about magnifying the food deficit, and the Planning Minister enlarging the quantum of foreign aid in his Fourth Plan calculations, has only strengthened the suspicion that these have been done with almost cold-blooded deliberations to prepare the country for the induction of US wheat and dollar under conditions which were never before acceptable to the country. This way the line of resistance to the World Bank pressures has been sought to be undermined.

The remaining argument that the cross that Smt Gandhi has been forced to carry today has come to her only as a heirloom has been repeated by herself. The most conspicuous example of this was provided by Smt Gandhi who at her last press conference significantly gave out that the Indo-US Foundation had been agreed upon as early as March 1965, that is, a little before her predecessor's projected visit to the USA which was unceremoniously called off by President Johnson.

There is no doubt of the fact that most of the major concessions to Washington—around which have been raging a stormy controversy today—were initiated during Shastri's Prime Minister-ship, a rather uncomfortable discovery for those who had been trying to boost the Lal Bahadur regime as being almost equal to that of Nehru.

Presumably to ward off this stigma from Shastri's record, a new move is afoot in New Delhi to show that the idea of the Foundation had been first mooted as early as April 1964; in other words, Nehru himself should be blamed for having allowed it to come up. It is, however, to be noted that in April 1964 it was the US initiative that had led to the despatch of a noted American educationist to New Delhi to do some exploratory work to sell the Foundation project, and there is no proof of Nehru having in the least shown any interest in it. There is no gainsaying the fact that by far the major share of responsibility, if not its monopoly, for having agreed to the Foundation project has to fall on Shatri's shoulder as the Prime Minister.

Incidentally, observers in the Capital are certain that Smt Gandhi's disclosure of the date of birth of her Foundation would touch off a powerful demand both in Parliament and outside for the release of all Indo-US diplomatic exchanges on the project. If Nehru could be attacked for having kept Parliament in the dark about China building the Aksai Chin road, there is no reason why the same charge should not be levelled at the authorities for having secretly agreed to such a controversial deal behind the back of the entire nation.

With all the lavish protestations by the Prime Minister that there has been no deviation in policy, the biggest refutation of it comes from Sri S.K. Patil's spectacular return to political eminence as demonstrated in the Bombay AICC. While there is a tendency in some quarters in the Capital to discuss Sri Patil's victory in the contest for the Central Election Committee as a case of brilliant manipulation of the oars of power, that is, of group votes in the AICC, careful observers would prefer ascribing this Patil triumph mainly to the favourable current that prevails in the pro-US politics under the present dispensation.

While Smt Gandhi has not infrequently been complaining in private about the growth of Rightist forces as personified by Sri Morarji Desai, it has come as a surprise to many in the Capital that Sri Patil has throughout been in her good books, claiming to be an almost regular caller at the Prime Minister's residence.

More important is the fact that with Smt Gandhi taking upon herself the task of defending the pro-American bias of the Subramaniam-Asoka Mehta combine, there remains little ground for any political resistance to Sri Patil's re-emergence in High Command politics, since it is he who can claim to be the architect of the pro-Washington strategy that is being pursued today by the Food and the Planning Ministers.

In Bombay, it was clear as daylight that Sri Patil's main target was Sri K.D. Malaviya, and for that he could mobilise the Syndicate as a definite political crusade against the Left in the Congress. Against this, Sri Kamaraj did not hesitate to let it be known that he favoured Sri Malaviya's election, but Smt Gandhi was conspicuously silent: in fact, if she had taken the least interest in Sri Malaviya candidature—half of what she did for Sri D.P. Mishra—there is no doubt that Sri Malaviya would have been definitely elected.

It was not a mere case of personal preference; Sri Malaviya's inclusion in the Central Election Committee would have meant the restoration of the political balance between the Right and the Left that Nehru often tried to maintain at crucial junctures. Smt Gandhi's failure to comprehend the political significance of the CEC contest—as also her noticeable aloofness from Sri Kamaraj is interpreted in New Delhi circles as a measure of her inability to grasp the true character of Right-wing's realpolitik in the Indian scene today.

In the bargain, it is the Left that suffers in the organisational set-up of the Congress, and the Right that profits by corroding the government's basic policies. It is time Smt Indira Gandhi realised that not by words alone but by rallying the forward-looking forces can she defend the great Nehru legacy in partnership with the millions of this great nation.

(‘New Delhi Skyline', Mainstream, May 28, 1966)

by N. Sukumar

The model State, Gujarat, has long been considered the social laboratory for Hindutva. Jan Bremem1 has analysed the well-entrenched nature of the Hindutva movement and its predecessors in Gujarat, strongly opposed to communal harmony and to the design of society as a melting-pot of diverse and open-ended social segments. The mobilisation of low and intermediate castes to participate in the activities of the Sangh Parivar organisations in the last two decades has broadened the base of Hindu fundamentalism as a social-political force.

The price these previously denigrated segments have to pay for their acceptance within the Hindutva fold is their willingness to express antagonism to Muslims as members of the religious minority and, in brutal acts of confrontation, to do the dirty work of cleansing on behalf of their high-caste brothers and sisters. The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are intricately interwoven.2 The battle for the hearts and minds of the Dalits has undergone a tectonic shift—from their physical labour to their cultural/religious subservience. One of the most revered icons of modern India, who sought to unravel the hegemony of religion and culture over the people, Babasaheb Ambedkar, has been given a ‘makeover' by the Hindutva spin doctors.

Deifying Ambedkar

The Panchajanya issue3 commences with a hyperbolic and effusive praise for Babasaheb, ‘a great leader who sought to organise and strengthen society on the basis of social harmony; a foresighted leader who strived to mould his country to meet the future challenges; a patriot, in short a seer of his age'. A lot of water has flowed down the Ganges since the appearance of Arun Shourie's Worshipping False Gods4 wherein Ambedkar was vilified as a traitor, as a supporter of Pakistan etc. Now, ‘Sri Guruji (Golwalkar) argues that after Buddha it is only Ambedkar who discoursed about social welfare and religious interests, to get rid of social evils. Indeed, Ambedkar is the true inheritor of Buddha's legacy and I heartily endorse his purity.'5

The above mentioned journal quotes Ambedkar on various issues without giving any reference as to its authencity. A blanket claim is made—‘through his various writings and speeches (no reference to volume or book), Ambedkar engaged with savarna Hindus'. In one article (no source is cited) Ambedkar wrote that Hindu religion believed that every man is a microcosm of the divine and every man is entitled to dignity. However, savarna Hindus have ill-treated Dalits. If Dalits are maltreated then even God is displeased. On the contrary, Ambedkar was very conscious of the insidious operation of the Hindu religion. “Hinduism is not interested in the common man. Hinduism is not interested in society as a whole. The centre of its interest lies in a class and its philosophy is concerned in sustaining and supporting the rights of that class. That is why in the philosophy of Hinduism, the interests of the common man as well as of society are denied, suppressed and sacrificed to the interest of this class of Superman.”6

In yet another writing (again no source is cited), the same journal tries to put words in Ambedkar's mouth. ‘He pointed out that till Hindu society is organised, justice and humanity will not be worshipped and till then indepen-dence is incomplete'. However, for Ambedkar, “Hinduism is inimical to equality, antagonistic to liberty and opposed to fraternity.”7 “Inequality is the soul of Hinduism. The morality of Hinduism is only social. It is unmoral and inhuman to say the least.”8 As mentioned by the journal, at a speech in Amaravati (again no source as to the date and occasion for the speech), Ambedkar argued that even Dalits have rights on Hindutva. In order to establish the Hindutva philosophy, Valmiki, Chokhamela, Rohidas etc. Dalits have contributed in great measure and numerous Dalits have sacrificed their lives to safeguard this philosophy. Hence, “if Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas can enter temples, why cannot Dalits do so?”9 In one of his abhangas, Chokhamela calls to God, “Why have you given me this birth if you have to give me birth at all? You have erred in giving me this birth; you have been unkind.”10 Chokhamela questioned his origins within the contours of the caste hierarchy (the bedrock of Hinduism) and this has been transformed into an advocate of Hindutva.

The attempt to falsify history is very evident in the above mentioned arguments. No distinction is made between Hinduism and Hindutva and both concepts are used as similes to one another. A linear trajectory is sought to be created between the Bhakti saints and Ambedkar, with scant regard for historical authenticity. The semiotics of deifying Ambedkar is apparent when the claim is made that the Indian Constitution is a new ‘Manusmriti' or even ‘Bheemsmruti'11 On December 25, 1927, Ambedkar burned the Manusmriti, a symbol of enslavement for a majority of the denizens of India.

Similarly, he considered any form of hero worship as detrimental to democracy, acquie-scing to the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not “to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions”. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. “As has been well said by the Irish Patriot Daniel O'Connell, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty. This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”12 It's an anathema to ponder that Ambedkar would have even considered the Constitution as ‘Bheemsmruti'. This is nothing but giving a saffron spin to the nation's secular ethos.

Peddling Falsehoods

Another RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, assimilates the value systems of Hinduism, Buddhism and Democracy into an indissoluble whole.13 For them, Buddhism is inseparable from Hinduism and along with democratic values, the trinity endeavour to establish righteousness.14 In the article ‘Buddha and the Future of His Religion', Ambedkar‘s perspective of a true religion consists of four characteristics: a) it must remain the governing principle in every society in the sense of morality; b) it must be in accord with reason which is merely another name for science if it is to function; c) its moral code must recognize the fundamental tenets of liberty, equality, and fraternity; and d) it must not sanctify or ennoble poverty. He said further that only Buddhism can satisfy all these tests, and it is the only religion the world can have.15 In a clever sleight of hand, the Organiser quotes Ambedkar on the four characteristics of religion but omits to mention the crucial conclusion.

The effort to saffronise Ambedkar is very palpable when it is claimed that Ambedkar's fundamental thinking has always remained ‘Bharatiya' despite his critique of Hindu society in the name of religion.16 It's declared that he was a follower of Ram.17 His Riddles in Hinduism was first banned in Maharashtra (contrary to the claim that the text was kept in his cupboard till the last breath of his life).18 Rama holds no attractions for Ambedkar, for whom the most significant event in the Ramayana has to be Rama's decapitation of a Shudra for practising asceticism. Ambedkar calls this ‘the worst crime that history has ever recorded'.19

While toying with Ambedkar's beliefs, the RSS ideologues have eschewed any historical veracity. In his work, ‘Who Were the Shudras? How they came to be the Fourth Varna in Indo-Aryan Society', Ambedkar argues at length on the origins of Chaturvarna. However, for the Sangh Parivar scholars, caste crept into Indian society with the Islamic invaders. Very subtly, they not only lay the sin of introducing untouchability into India on Islam but also play up the fear of Hindu women being violated by the mlechha invaders.20

While expurgating Ambedkar's ideas, the Organiser is also editing generously the political terminology espoused by Ambedkar. Their antagonism to the English language is well known as also the reluctance to use the term ‘India'; so the All India Schedule Castes Federation, founded by Ambedkar in April 1942, is transformed into the Bharatiya Scheduled Caste Federation. The conversion to Buddhism was not merely a challenge to the Hindu caste supremacy but Ambedkar provided a well-thought-out rationale for his act of conversion.21 The journal cooks up a novel myth that “Ambedkar promised Gandhi that he would leave Hindu Dharma but would see to it that the least damage was done. When he embraced Buddhist faith in Deekshabhumi, Nagpur on October 1956, he said, ‘I had kept my promise to Gandhiji'.”22 Neither in Gandhi's writings nor in Ambedkar's writings and speeches does one come across any such conversation.

Along with Ambedkar, the Organiser is also misquoting Gandhi23 on the question of untouchability. Apparently, Ambedkar believed that untouchability is inscribed on the Dalit body rather than a blot on Hinduism and ‘we (untouchables) have to clean it. It means that we ourselves will have to fight this social slavery.'24 The narrative gives the impression that Ambedkar was apologetic of the caste system rather than its fiercest critic. ‘At one point he says that the Bhagvad Gita is my inspiration.' He writes, ‘Jai Bhavani' on his newspaper. ‘He was proud of calling himself a Hindu.'25 If one were to go by the evidence, as reflected in Ambedkar's own writings, the truth is diametrically opposite. Ambedkar affirmed on October 13, 1935, at Yeola in Nasik district: “Unfortunately, I was born a Hindu untouchable. It was beyond my power to prevent that, but it is within my power to refuse to live under ignoble and humiliating conditions. I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu.”26

The Propaganda War

Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a one-party dictatorship, the Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of the Germans. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.27 Being very astute students, the RSS is also traversing the same path. Its political front, the Bharatiya Janata Party is now the world's largest political party with 8.8 crore members28. Gradually, all dissent is being stifled and landmark changes in the polity and society is being ushered in through ordinances, bypassing parliamentary debates.

One of the harshest critiques of the Hindu social order was Ambedkar who sought to transpose the caste society through legal, rational and constitutional norms. His followers have struggled to create an Enlightened India by interrogating the social, cultural, political and economic domains controlled by entrenched interests through political struggles, revolutionary poetry and prose, new iconography and symbols. The appropriation and deliberate misreading of Ambedkar's life and vision will delegitimise his egalitarian ideas, demolish and demoralise the struggles to usher in justice and fraternity and lead to the continued enslavement of the marginalised groups. The subversive and deliberate gesture of misquoting Ambedkar reveals the lack of historical and scholarly authenticity in the intellectual projects of the RSS.

However, the Dalit-bahujan citizens would not accept any tampering with the ideals of Babasaheb Ambedkar and would offer a befitting response.

Endnotes

1. Jan Bremen, ‘Communal Upheaval as Resurgence of Social Darwinism', www.epw.org, accessed on 17/05/2014, 11.30 pm.

2. For Further details refer, ‘Communalism as a Political Strategy', http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/india0703/Gujarat-10.htm, accessed on 20/05/2014, 12.15 am.

3. Panchajanya, April 19, 2015, Bharat Prakashan, Delhi.

4. Arun Shourie, Worshipping False Gods: Ambedkar, and the Facts which Have Been Erased ASA Publications, 1997.

5. Ashok Modak, “Bharat Bhumi ka Bhakt: Bharat Ratna”,Panchajanya, op. cit., p. 21.

6. Ambedkar's Writings and Speeches, Government of Maharashtra, Vol 3, 1998, p. 77.

7. Ambedkar, op. cit., Vol 3, p. 66.

8. Ambedkar, ibid., Vol 3, p. 87.

9. Panchajanya,op., cit., p. 22.

10. Eleanor Zelliot, ‘Ambedkar's World: The Making of Babasaheb and the Dalit Movement', Navayana, 2013, p. 54.

11. Suvarna Rawal, “Two Stalwarts, Revisiting Ambedkar”, (Collector's Edition), Organiser, April 2015, p. 58.

12. Friday, the 25th November, 1949, Constituent Assembly Of India—Volume Xi, http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol11p11.htm, accessed 16/4/2015, 9.45 pm.

13. Bhimrao Bhosale, “Enlightened Thinker, Revisiting Ambedkar”, Organiser (Collector's Edition) April 2015, p. 78.

14. Ibid., p. 77.

15. Ahir, D.C., ‘Dr Ambedkar‘s Pilgrimate to Buddhism' in Dr. Ambedkar, Buddhism and Social Change. (ed. by A.K. Narain and D.C. Ahir), 1-16. Delhi, India: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1994, p. 8.

16.Organiser,op. cit., p. 19.

17. Ibid., p. 19.

18. Ibid., p. 19.

19. Hinduism and Modernity, David Smith, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, p 197.

20. Organiser, p. 15.

21. Speech delivered by Dr Ambedkar to the Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference, May 31, 1936, Bombay. Translated from the Marathi by Vasant W. Moon. The typescript of the translation, with handwritten emendations, was presented by the translator to Eleanor Zelliot on January 25, 1988, and has been contributed by her for this website. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00ambedkar/txt_ambedkar_salvation.html, accessed or 16/4/2015, 11.30 pm.

22. Organiser,op. cit., p. 58.

23. Organiser, p 15. For the exact quote, refer, M. K. Gandhi, ‘Untouchability', Harijan, 11/2/1933, http://www.mkgandhi.org/journalist/untouchablity.htm, accessed on 16/4/2015, 11.45 pm.

24. Organiser, p. 15.

25. Ibid., p. 15.

26. Ambedkar's Writings and Speeches, Government of Maharashtra, Vol 17, (111), 2002, p. 95.

27. Nazi Propaganda and Censorship, United States Holocaust Memorail Museum, Http://Www.Ushmm.Org/Outreach/En/Article.Php?Moduleid=10007677, Accessed 17/4/2015, 12.15 Am

28. With 8.8 Crore Members, the BJP is Now the World's Largest Party, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/with-8-8-crore-members-bjp-is-now-the-worlds-largest-party-750679, Accessed 17/4/2015, 12.20 am.

Professor N. Sukumar belongs to the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Delhi University. He can be contacted at skn70@yahoo.com

WOMEN'S WORLD

by Pradeep Nair, Navneet Sharma and K.B.S. Krishna

Karyeshu dasi, karaneshu manthri; bhojeshu mata, shayaneshu rambha; Roopeshu lakshmi, kshamayeshu dharitri; shat dharmayukta, kuladharma pathni—Neetisara

(Works like slave, helps like minister, cooks like mother, beds like a consort, beautiful as goddess of wealth, is as bearing as the earth, carries hundred religious virtues, is the righteous familial wife.)

The above ‘pearls' of wisdom not only eulogise the idea of ideal woman but simultaneously places men at the centrefold of the very existence of women.

The physiology and psychology of women has always been shrouded in mystery as stated in the proverb: “triya charitram, purushasya bhagyam, devo na janati kashchit manushya (women's character/trait/behaviour and men's destiny is unknown to god even, how the mortal man can fathom)”. In every mythological explanation of the genesis and origins of earth and humankind women have been portrayed as playing second fiddle to men and most of the time are depicted as secondary creations of the divine self. The women are not even, according to Hindu mythology, directly the atman as a part of parmatman. They have to approach god via men or it is better if they perceive man as god. The pati-parmeshwar idea succinctly expresses this. Women, moreover, are not entitled to ‘swarg' (Hindu-heaven) as they cannot pay back three ‘rinas' (debts), namely, Guru-rina,Matri-rina, and Pitra-rina, which, as per the scriptures, clears the path to heaven. Women and non-dwijas cannot seek education/knowledge, as it is in Samskrita (dev-vani — language of gods), and women were forbidden from learning the language. In fact, there were specific provisions in Manu's constitution on how to punish women and non-dwijas who learn/hear Sanskrit whether inten-tionally or even by chance. Matri-rina/Pitra-rina (debt to mother and father) cannot be paid back as women again cannot perform the last rites (antim sanskara/shraddha) of their parents. At the best what a pious, chaste, and devoted woman can get is to be re-born as a dwija-man (Brahmin in particular) to seek salvation and heaven. Women across religions and mythologies are portrayed as sinful or satanic; it is even suggested in Christian mythology that every month they bleed (menstrual cycle) as punishment for not obeying god and persuading Adam to eat the forbidden apple. Across civilisations menstrual bleeding is treated with different and multiple taboos—most prominent being banned from worshipping gods, touching pickles, entering kitchen, seeing mirror, and prohibiting sexual intercourse. These taboos vary and are weird in many cases, and have given rise to numerous superstitions such as if a menstruating women makes papad, they all will turn red or if she touches a banana she will be impregnated. Moreover, people have started looking for ‘scientific' explanation of these taboos and construct and establish theoretical linkages to pre- and post-menstrual syndromes. The menstrual blood is considered not only impure but as having strange powers and is used for certain tantric rituals and hypnotism. Menst-ruating women (or for that matter women as a homogenous entity) are not allowed to enter temples or at least the sanctum-sanctorum of most of the religions across the world.

Women and Religion

Women have always been central to religion, and historically, they have played significant roles in religion. Nuns, in the Christian tradition, had huge power at certain times in history. They worked as independent groups without having clerical control. They have also played important roles in faith communities. But what we see today is male leaders, clergy and others having control over the religion and over women—notably in fundamentalist movements. In Britain, the Church of England denied the demand of women to have equal positions and leadership as bishops -as they have in the United States' Episcopal Church. In Buddhist countries, from many decades bhikkhunies have been demanding equal status to monks. In Islamic countries, educated women who are interpreting the Quran are challenging men for leadership position. Hence, there is a struggle for power in religious places.

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Centre, religion is a significant part of women's lives. The study says that 80 per cent of women are religiously affiliated and they consider religion as an important part of their lives. But when it comes to their role in religion, they are mostly assigned the duty to teach children, maintain a godly household, refer to husband on familial and religious matters and maintain social and volunteer groups in places of worships. In Islam, they are active in politics and religious organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood, but are still assigned the role of assisting their men in political and religious decisions and retain and care for familial assets. In Judaism, as far as female responsibilities are concerned, interestingly, less emphasis is laid on gender roles, as God is considered both male and female. However, women are expected to perform more intellectual tasks, while men take care of physical tasks. Same is the case with Buddhism. Although, women have defined responsibilities, scriptural presence and specified role in all religious realms, but equality and authority for women in religion is still a contested terrain.

In advanced civilisations, women are fighting for religious rights, but the older theories of the Church and other religious entities largely remain the same even today. Christianity down the ages has tried to sustain the concept of superior and inferior sex possessing different rights in Churches across the world, assigning different code of morals to men and women. Women are mostly viewed as a creation of god to serve men and they found excuses in the Bible for illicit conduct.

Simultaneously, in Hinduism, women were created by the Brahman as part of the duality in creation, to provide company to men and to facilitate procreation, progeny and continuation of family lineage. The Vedas suggest that a woman's primary duty is to help her husband in performing obligatory duties and enable him to continue his family tradition. Her primary duty is to give birth to his children and take care of them. More or less, whether it is Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism, every religion is male-dominated to the core. where women always play a secondary role. All the religions had placed greater duties and responsibilities on the shoulders of men and exhorted women to help men perform those duties. In every religion, the religious ceremonies and sacrifices revolve around men, they are mostly performed by men for men, and if women were involved, it is for the welfare of men. In Hinduism, women cannot officiate in any Vedic ceremony. They can perform only domestic rituals such as puja or perform austerities, but the host of a sacrifice shall always be a male.

Women and Holy Places

While answering a question raised by the Bombay High Court on the rules barring women from entering the ‘sanctum sanctorum' of the dargah of 15th century Sufi saint Haji Ali, the trustees of the dargah said that entry of women in close proximity of the grave of a male Muslim saint is a grievous sin in Islam. The trustees further defended that Article 26 of Indian Constitution confers upon the Trust a funda-mental right to manage its religious affairs on its own. The Trust, which manages the shrine, argued that the ban on entry of women is meant to protect women from ‘uncomfortable situations' and is restricted only to the sanctum sanctorum. Such incidents happened earlier as well. In 2012, the authorities of Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari banned women from entering the sanctum while giving the reason of ‘appropriate clothing'. Later on it was revealed that they were banned to protect the area from a ‘potential danger'—women can at any time have menstrual periods. For the same reason, the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabrimala bans girls and women between the ages of 10 and 50 from entering the temple. Women are also not allowed to enter the Jain Temple, Renakpur because of the same old reason of menstruation.

Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiru-vananthapuram has an odd rule when it comes to women: the temple authorities' permit women to pray but they are not permitted to enter the temple vault. Simultaneously, the sanctum sanctorum of the Hindu monastery in Assam—Patbausi Satra—had no written instructions or decisions not to allow women to enter the sanctum sanctorum, but it was the tradition practised from centuries that women don't come to the holy place. When in 2014, Assam Governor J.B. Patnaik took a group of women into the temple, they felt guilty due to the reactions of the locals. India's largest mosque, the Jama Masjid, allows women, but only if they are accompanied by a male. Furthermore, they are not allowed to enter the mosque after the maghrib (evening) prayers.

Interestingly, in Lord Kartikeya temple in Pushkar, there is no official restriction regarding women entering the temple, but the temple mythology/legend has a story which warns them off: when Lord Kartikeya was doing meditation, Devraj Indra got jealous that Brahma might give him more power than himself, and sent some beautiful Apsaras to distract him. By this act, Kartikeya got angry and cursed that ‘any woman who comes to this place in future will turn into stone'. Now this story has become a belief and women don't enter this temple out of fear that they might be cursed instead of being blessed. While taking a serious note on the religious customs and temple-entry restric-tions, the Supreme Court of India said that no temple or governing body of holy places can bar a woman from entering the place as it is a serious violation of women's constitutional right and also the violation of Articles 14 (equality before law), 25 and 26 (freedom of religion) of the Indian Constitution. But serious efforts are still required to draft guidelines regarding gender inequality in religious practices at places of worship.

Mythologies: Practising Religion

Women are given a short shrift even in mytho-logy—be it Occidental or Oriental. In Hindu mythology, the abandonment of Sita by Ram, and Damayanti by Nala in the forest are regularly considered as examples of renun-ciation and sacrifice on the part of the males, rather than instances of oppression of women. While Ram is worshipped as a god by Hindus, the Nishada king Nala is eulogised no less. However, it is the poor women abandoned in the forest who actually suffered for no fault of theirs. Similar is the case of Draupadi and Taramati: both were treated as property by their husbands; while Yuddhisthira waged and lost Draupadi in a game of dice, satyawadi Raja Harischandra sold his wife to the highest bidder as a slave to pay off a debt of honour.

Greek mythology, too, treats women in an equally shabby manner. The apple of discord given by Zeus to the three goddesses results in their behaving in a petty manner and they attempt to bribe Paris to win the fruit. This event culminates in the war between Greeks and Trojans. Such depiction of women as given to jealousy and desire shows them in a poor light. Furthermore, the portrayal of Helen as a frivolous woman who is seduced and taken away to Troy suggests the lack of respect that women are given in Greek mythology. The case of Eve being tempted by Satan to eat the fruit of knowledge, and how she later blackmailed Adam to taste it in Christian mythology, is yet another example of how women are portrayed as weak, not just physically but also psychologi-cally and morally. Women in mythology, hence, are regularly portrayed as negative sources of energy. However, it is undeniable that this is only in later additions to mythology.

The earliest depiction of woman in Hindu mythology is, for instance, as Shakti or the goddess of power. She is depicted as someone who is stronger than the gods, and more competent than them in her ability to destroy demons. She was considered as the hub of learning, strength, and wealth. Following closely on this is her portrayal as Prakrati, or nature. While man or Purusha was considered as one half of the universe, Prakrati was the other half. However, just as man had colonised wild nature through domestication and cultivation, Shakti also was considered to be too powerful and hence the gods deemed it necessary to subdue her. Hence, they divided her into Lakshmi, Parvati, and Saraswati, and shared the spoils amongst themselves.

This is uncannily similar to the manner in which Lilith is exterminated in Christian mythology. Lilith was first created by God in a manner similar to Adam, from the soil of the earth. However, the strength she possessed frightened even God. Hence, he destroyed her, and created a docile version called Eve from the rib of Adam.

What these tales bring to light is how women have always been suppressed by men. This oppression is a result of the fear of the Saidean ‘other'. This fear has led to the creation of women as ornamental, fragile, vulnerable, yet dangerous. This last portrayal of women seems paradoxical and strange, as the term ‘dangerous' suggests that women are depicted as strong. Sadly that is not the case, as even in such portrayals women are depicted as rather wily and vicious, and thus radiating negative energy. Examples of these are the depiction of women in mythology as Kamini or Succubus. Kamini or Mohini in Hindu mythology is not to be confused with Vishnu's avatar, but as a femme fatale out to harm men in the world with her charm and guile. Kamini is depicted as the embodiment of lust, and considered as an evil form out to lead men to their doom. Succubus of Western mythology is a parallel creature that visits men in their dreams and sucks their life-blood leading to dissipation and eventual destruction.

Women: Multiple Positionalities

A frequent error made in the studies of women as discriminated against, vilified by, and subsequently oppressed by the other, that is, men, is to consider them as homogenous. Just as it is with men, women too belong to various groups and cannot be classified as a single entity. The identity of a woman is not restricted to her sex and gender, but is also based on her class, religion, region, race, caste and sexual orientation.

It is silly to assume that the Queen of England would face the same kind of problems or discrimination as an illiterate tribal girl living in the hinterlands of India. Of course, even the queen might have experienced certain restrictions on her activities and proclivities due to her gender; however, such impositions are hardly comparable to those faced by a woman who is discriminated against not only on the basis of her gender but also due to her class, caste, region, etc...

This has led to critics such as Frances Beal to come up with terms such as ‘Double Jeopardy' in their feminist studies. Beal coined this term to explain the kind of problems faced by women on the basis of their race along with gender, mainly African women; but this still ignores the vast divisions that exist in our world. Hence, the term ‘Multiple Jeopardy', coined by Deborah King, suggests the numerous discriminations that a woman has to face in everyday world. Yes, it is true that men too face discrimination based on their economic class, their skin colour, the place where they live in, the kind of education they have, the gods that they worship, and the person they hope to love; but, women, in addition to such discrimination, have to live with the burden of being the other in a patriarchal world.

This discrimination is nothing new. Even in the mythologies hitherto mentioned, women have been classified. Hence, the treatment meted out to Sita is different from Surpanakha, Putana is distinguished from Yashoda, and Athena from Hera. While Sita is depicted as the epitome of feminine virtue, Surpanakha is portrayed in Ramayan as lustful and spiteful. Similarly, though Yashoda and Putana both nurture Krishna in Mahabharat, Yashoda is the loving foster-mother, while Putana is a demoness sent to kill the little baby with poisoned milk. The Greek goddesses, Athena and Hera, too are depicted likewise. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and courage, is regularly portrayed as just and helpful. On the other hand, Hera, the goddess of marriage, is depicted as petty and vengeful. In Christian mythology, the case of Eve and Lilith, as noted earlier, runs on parallel lines. Such classification of women is a convenient way for patriarchs to impose a code of conduct on women, coercing them to behave in a meek and obedient manner.

The current divisions are different, and are formed due to hegemony arising out of various factors such as caste, creed, race, class, etc. It is not only being simpleton but also irresponsible to ignore these divisions, and treat women as a homogenous entity. The ‘Bhoomata brigade' which steered the campaign for the entry of women into temples was nowhere and has no concerns about the issue of entry of Dalits into temples.

The very idea of religion and its institutiona-lised form is a piqued one for women. In religion you either follow the dictum or you are blasphemous. One cannot ask questions in religion. It is more of contradiction to ask a constitutional right from a religion. Religion and Constitution both are about the code of an individual and the social conduct whereby the former establishes hierarchy and the latter denigrates it. Even if one gets and achieves the constitutional right from a religion s/he is no more a ‘religious' one as being devoted and a devotee one should not question the lord and his incarnate agents—men. One cannot ask for a 17th century right to liberty and equality from a religion which emerged and evolved aeons ago. Women cannot challenge the patriarchy which institutionalises itself by and via religion by asking entry into holy places but by rejecting them in totality; at least, till a machine is invented which can detect a Dalit woman from a non-Dalit woman, and/or a menstruating woman from others.

References

Beal, F.M. (1969), Black Women's Manifesto; Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female, New York: Third World Women's Alliance.

Hargrove, B., Schmidt, J.M., and Davaney, S.G. (1985), ‘Religion and the Changing Role of Women', The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Religion in America Today, 480: 117-131.

King, D.K. (1988), Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology,Signs, 14 (1):42-2. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lefkowitz, M.R. (1985), ‘Women in Greek Myth', The American Scholar, 54 (2): 207-219.

Pintchman, T. (2007), Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Said, E.W. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books.

Pradeep Nair, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor and Dean, School of Journalism, Mass Communication and New Media, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala.

Navneet Sharma, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, School of Education, Central University of Himachal Pradesh.

K.B.S. Krishna, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and European Languages, Central University of Himachal Pradesh.

IMPRESSIONS

A disturbingly turbulent election season has come to an end. It was characterised by campaigns that often broke the letter of the law, to say nothing of its spirit. Violence was its signature tune in West Bengal. Illegal flow of unaccounted money marked the campaigns in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Overall, it was an election that again exposed the manner in which democracy was losing its soul in India.

The polling process itself went off well, showing that the Election Commission continues to be efficient, a model for the world. The way T.N. Seshan mobilised the Commission's forgotten powers has proved lasting. But the political class has not shed its devious ways. It continues to employ every weapon in its arsenal—from murder and mayhem to bribing and deception. This means that, despite the correctness of the polling/counting exercises, the outcome of the elections will not in any way improve the quality of our politics.

That the Election Commission chose to conduct polls in West Bengal in six phases over a month-and-a-half was a pointer to the inflammable nature of Bengali politics. The Commission secured the presence of one lakh security forces to ensure peaceful polling. The actual polling was indeed peaceful by West Bengal's standards. But before and after polling, violence prevailed.

Assaults were prompted by two factors—sheer anger against opponents and the desire to intimidate voters. Marauding goons kept warning villagers that if they did not vote for the ruling party, they would have hell to pay. The Commu-nists, veterans in the use of threat and intimi-dation, used the same tactics. This time the BJP fielded its gangs, too, trying to keep up with the others. Result: Continuous clashes across the State during the election weeks. Twelve killings were reported, which were twelve more than in the other States that went to polls. With that record, what does it matter who wins? For, whoever forms the government, the first priority will be settling of scores. Whichever party gains, Bengal will lose.

Tamil Nadu was perhaps the luckiest of the States because there the people were winning already irrespective of the fortunes of the parties. People were winning television sets, and jewellery, and cycles, and mixies, and scholarships and cash in a political race of competitive populism. Only Anpumani Ramdas decried the freebie culture, saying that it “made people beggars, alcoholics and lazy”. He had nothing to lose because he was going to be nowhere near his goal: Chief Ministership.

Kerala went into an unaccustomed spin this time because the set pattern of Congress-Communist monopoly was challenged by the BJP. This seemed a propitious moment for the “outsider”. Public disgust with the Congress-led coalition had reached unprecedented levels, largely because of the corruption scandals surrounding the Oommen Chandy Government. In the other camp, Pinarayi Vijayan's dictatorial ways of enthroning himself as the Big Brother of the communist coalition alienated large numbers of people. The BJP was justified in thinking that it had the opportunity at last to “open its account” in the State Assembly. And it did!

But it suffered from a lack of credible local leaders. The available ones were constantly at war with one another, forcing Delhi to take decisions on its own. Delhi, true to form, was both unable and unwilling to understand local realities. So it made costly mistakes, like allying with the most discredited political pretender of the State, a toddy contractor-turned-leader of a section of the Ezhavas. But the biggest setback for the BJP came unexpectedly from its star campaigner, Narendra Modi.

He compared Kerala, of all places, with Somalia, of all places. BJP spokesmen later explained that the Prime Minister was only referring to the infant death rate among a section of Adivasis in Kerala. But even that offered no scope for comparison because Somalia was way down. The important thing is that people got the impression that Modi was comparing Kerala, India's number one State in socio-cultural parameters, with a country that had collapsed into wretchedness on all counts.

The angry uproar that erupted would have prompted any electoral tactician to make amends quickly. Modi had a golden opportunity to do so when he addressed another rally a day later. But he said not a word about the Somalia faux pas. That added fuel to the anger of voters. The BJP did open its account this time in Kerala, but that was, in spite of Narendra Modi. What happened to the Modi who worked magic in the 2014 parliamentary election?

by Joydeep Biswas

The BJP's emphatic victory in Assam is not only the tale of two tall leaders, fallen apart, contrary to what the media would have us believe. This electoral spectacle is scripted by a complex social engineering whereby Assamese regionalism, ethnic assertion and Hindutva could be rallied successfully against the perception of a Muslim demographic invasion

Out of the four States and a tiny Union Territory which went to Assembly polls during April-May, only Assam appeared high on the possibility frontier for the BJP. In this traditio-nally Congress-dominated State, the BJP could be off-the-mark only in 1991 when it managed an encouraging number of ten Assembly seats riding on the back of the nation-wide polarisation over the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. Since then the party could never consolidate its organisational base in Assam till the last Assembly hustings. The total tally of the BJP in the five Assembly elections between 1991 and 2011 was a meagre 37 seats, and in between it could touch the double-digit mark only once in 2006.

But the 2014 Lok Sabha polls proved to be a watershed for the BJP in Assam much like on the national electoral map. Not only did the vote-share of the saffron party phenomenally shoot up to 36.5 per cent from a modest 11.47 per cent it had garnered in the 2011 Assembly polls, the ravaging Modi-wave was successful in bagging seven of the fourteen parliamentary constituencies in the State for the BJP's kitty. During the two-year-period from May 2014 to May 2016, interestingly enough, the BJP had more MPs from Assam than they had MLAs in the State Assembly!

HBS Factor

The third edition of the Congress-led government in Assam plunged into a serious crisis around midway through the term when the undeclared Number Two of the State Cabinet, Himanta Biswa Sharma, challenged the leadership of the Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi, his one-time mentor, on the ground of what the former called ‘inefficiency and under-performance' of the latter. What had initially looked like a manageable problem of intra-party dissidence, not unheard of in the Congress, reached its crescendo when this ‘de facto Chief Minister' of Assam failed to convince 10 Janpath in New Delhi that not the octogenarian at the helm, but a Himanta Biswa Sharma in his mid-forties would be required by Rahul Gandhi to install a Congress Government in the State for a record fourth time on the trot. The intransigence of the Congress ‘High Command' coupled with the recalcitrance of Tarun Gogoi and the obstinacy of Himanta Biswa Sharma culminated in the latter joining the BJP in the summer of 2015.

The media—both regional and national—had already been closely following the high-voltage dissidence drama in the State Congress. Having defected from the Congress, of which he had been a member of for more than two decades, Sharma picked Sonia-Rahul as his targets for political tirade in sync with the BJP's national vendetta against the ‘dynastic politics' of the Nehru-Gandhi family which instantly fit the media-bill as well. The Assam State BJP, under the new-fangled aura of Sharma, was witty enough to manufacture an Assamese version of the ‘dynastic politics' pointing to Tarun Gogoi's son, Gaurav, an MP from Kaliabor seat in central Assam. The media-savvy BJP was successful in cashing in on the individual popularity and charisma of Sharma throughout the campaign trail and till the two-phase polls on April 4 and 11. The historic win for the BJP on May 19 is being sought to be explained in a very reductio-nist manner. The over-simplistic explanation made available in the public domain is that the defeat of the Congress at the hands of the BJP-AGP-BPF alliance is solely because of the ‘HBS factor'. While the cutting-edge advantage of having a deft election-manager like Sharma in the strategy room of BJP can surely not be explained away, more objective analysis of the electoral victory for the alliance is visibly missing.

Stitching the Alliance

Initially, the poll pundits failed to find any psephological logic behind a purported pre-poll patch-up between an upbeat BJP and an off-colour AGP given the extreme form of existential crisis the latter as a political formation was facing on the day. Since 1996, the last time this regional party came to power in Guwahati's Janata Bhavan, the electoral prospect of the AGP had been steadily on the slide in the subsequent elections till 2011 in terms of both the number of seats won and the vote-share.

In 2011, the AGP could manage only 10 seats with a vote-share of 16.29 per cent in the Assembly elections. The party's worst ever performance was recorded in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in which it drew a blank with a paltry vote-share of 3.8 per cent. The obvious question then arose as to why the BJP, fresh from its brilliant performance in the 2014 general elections followed by another splendid display of electoral success in the 2015 civic polls, needed a morbid AGP to play the second fiddle in the Assembly hustings. Why couldn't the BJP dare to go alone to take on the one-and-a-half-decade of anti-incumbency of the Congress and Tarun Gogoi?

Neither the BJP State President, Sarbananda Sanowal, nor a sizeable section of the AGP top-leadership was convinced of the prospect of this tie-up. On this corridor of confusion stepped in Himanta Biswa Sharma. He provided the answer to the BJP's central leadership that such an alliance was indeed potent to reap political dividend. He could perhaps impress on Amit Shah and Ram Madhav that the raison d'être of the BJP-AGP alliance lay not in electoral, but ideological logic. A robust BJP did not perhaps require the seats of the AGP to add to its tally in the fourteenth Assembly that much. What it urgently needed at that moment was a loud and clear message to the Assamese middle class that the BJP was very much with the Assamese regional nationalism, a force which has dominated the State politics in the post-colonial period.

The Bodoland People's Front, a political formation in the BTC area in western Assam, was born out of a protracted violent battle with the Indian state for a separate Statehood for the Bodos. This party, which represents the assertion of an ethnic identity even older than that of the Ahoms, was a coalition partner of the Congress Government in Assam. Himanta Biswa Sharma was instrumental in brokering the Congress-BPF seat adjustments on more than one occasion during 2001-2011. This time he made use of his old personal rapport with the BPF chief, Hagrama Mohilary, to bring this Bodo party on board for his new masters.

How it worked

Assam exhibits such a complex demography and conflicting sectarian interests that devising a win-win dispensation on an electoral agenda is always an uphill task for a political party. The Congress, by dint of its accommodative and inclusive policies, could manage to rule the State for a better part of the post-independence period. But for a pro-Hindutva brigade like the BJP it was never thought possible to win Assam on its own. With non-overlapping constituencies like Hindu Assamese, Hindu Bengali, Muslim Bengali and various tribal groups—each of which is capable of tweaking a verdict either way—the prime task of the BJP was to pick the friends and foes, and then to draw the battle-line accordingly. The standard strategy for the the BJP in the Hindi heartland works in consolidation of the Hindu votes across caste divides. This modus operandi was successful in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the 2014 parliamen-tary elections, but failed in the subsequent Bihar Assembly polls.

For Assam such a greater consolidation of the electorate in the name of Hindutva did not seem possible for the BJP given the demographic distribution and diverse cultural contexts of the State. Hence the party think-tank apparently took a detour by picking the foes first, and the friends later, by a method of simple subtraction. Immigration from across the Bangladesh border has always been a big issue in Assam politics. In fact, the genesis of the major alliance partner, the AGP, is found in the six-year long violent anti-foreigner agitation led by the All Assam Students' Union in the eighties. This regional outfit was born after the signing in 1985 of the Assam Accord which declared the post-1971 Bengali migrants foreigners in Assam. The AASU leader, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, went on to become a two-time Chief Minister of Assam during the AGP rule in 1985-1991 and 1996-2001.

The foreigners' question in Assam has a linguistic angle. The Assamese nationalism has always considered both Hindu and Muslim Bengali equally qualified to be branded as ‘foreigners' in Assam, and their existence on the State's soil has been construed as detrimental to the cultural, linguistic, economic and political interests of the local Assamese and tribal groups. But the BJP, under the RSS diktat, was compelled to infuse a religious dimension to the immigrants' issue. Two Central notifications from the MHA dated September 7, 2015 incorporating suitable changes to the relevant provisions contained in the Foreigners Order 1948 and the Passport (Entry into India) Rules 1950, allowed the non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh (and also from Pakistan), who came to India upto December 31, 2014, to stay back in India. This effectively meant that the BJP was not in favour of deporting the Hindu Bengali migrants from Assam.

The BJP had to do it because of two reasons. One, as a policy, the RSS considers India as the natural refuge for the persecuted Hindus from all over the world. Two, for sheer electoral expediency, the Hindu Bengali voters—who constitute a decisive chunk in more than twentyfive Assembly segments in the State—were given such a legal safeguard as a quid pro quo for their unstinted support to the BJP since 1991. But such an arrangement did not expectedly produce Pareto-optimum state as the move irked the votaries of Assamese chauvinist sentiments like the AASU and AGP. Here came the master-stroke from the BJP back-office. They successfully persuaded the AASU to withdraw the petition it had filed in the Supreme Court challenging the September 7 Central notifications regularising the stay of the Hindu Bengali migrants in Assam. In the bargain, however, the BJP sharpened its attack on the Muslim migrants, ostensibly to nurse the bruised Assamese emotion.

But the strategy worked wonders in the BTC area as well which saw brutal anti-Muslim pogrom on numerous occasions in the last decade. The Bodo ethnic identity also found a common enemy in the Muslim neighbours. The entire campaign language was craftily drafted in such a manner that the resulting sharp religious polarisation could push the Congress in a cul-de-sac. The Battle of Saraighat of 1671 was used as an allegory to foment the theory of Muslim invasion. The 2016 Assembly poll was named as the LastBattleofSaraighat so that the indigenous Assamese and tribals could be pitted against the ‘invaders' (read the Muslim settlers) for electoral vengeance. The retaliatory gesture from the AIUDF, which claims to represent the rights and interests of the migrant Bengali Muslim in Assam, added grist to the Hindutva mill. The end-result was the worst possible for the Congress. Already suffering from anti-incumbency of fifteen years and a defection of ten MLAs including Himanta Biswa Sharma from its fold on the eve of a crucial election, the Congress leadership, both in Delhi and Dispur, appeared just clueless as to how to hold on to its secular vote-bank. This century-old party had run dry of any counter-narrative to this smart social engineering by the BJP.

Joydeep Biswas, an Associate Professor of Economics in Cachar College, is a scholar with the Department of Political Science in the Assam (Central) University. He can be contacted at joydbiswas@gmail.com

by Purusottam Bhattacharya

Contrary to all speculations and a certain degree of wishful thinking on the part of her opponents, Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress have created an electoral record in the annals of Bengal politics by winning 211 seats for the TMC alone in an Assembly which has a strength of 294. The alliance of the Congress and Left Front secured only 77 seats and the BJP increased its tally from one to three.

The TMC's numbers are a record in the sense that no single party managed to win so many seats on its own since the elections of 1972 which was vitiated by charges of electoral fraud of all kinds (the current elections have been described by a leading Bengali daily as the freest in 50 years). The TMC has got the support of nearly 45 per cent of the electorate while the Left Front received only 25.9 per cent, the Congress 12.3 per cent and the Bharatiya Janata Party 10.2 per cent of the votes cast. Again, in terms of the percentage of votes polled, the TMC has created a record as no single party received such a high percentage of votes on its own in recent memory. The Left Front managed to reach a higher figure during its 34-year rule several times, but only as a combine. The CPM by itself never reached such a figure.

So what explains the scale of such a triumph for the TMC and Mamata Banerjee personally? A lot has already been written by political analysts of all hues since the election results were declared on May 19. What is clear by all accounts is that in spite of the barrage of negative publicity mounted by her political opponents and a section of the media it was the sheer will power, energy, dogmatic determi-nation and last, but not the least, her tremendous charisma and popular appeal that carried Mamata Banerjee to this record-breaking election triumph. As one paper put it, if there was one explanation it was Mamata Banerjee alone who scripted this grand success of the TMC. When the various charges of corruption, syndicate raj and adoption of high-handedness were mounting against the TMC during the weeks preceding the elections, held in seven phases over a period of one whole month, Mamata, in sheer desperation, appealed to the voters that they should treat the elections as a referendum on her personal honesty, integrity and credibility and that they should vote for her as if she was the candidate in all the 294 seats by herself. Incredible as it might sound, the election results bear out the cold fact that the electorate responded in overwhelming numbers to that clarion call by Mamata disregarding some very damaging television footages showing some of her trusted lieutenants in compromising positions of accepting cash beamed repeatedly on television screens throughout the State and the country during the run-up to the polls. The matter is now before the Calcutta High Court and the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee and the veracity of the footages is yet to be established.

However, the personal appeal and charisma of Mamata Banerjee alone does not fully explain the magnitude of her victory. There is no doubt that if Mamata's electoral success in 2011 when she ousted the Left Front from power was essentially a negative verdict against the 34- year Left Front rule, this time she has ridden some of the positive achievements of her government during the last five years, much touted by the Chief Minister herself and her publicity machine and much derided by her political opponents as well as an influential segment of the electronic and print media. There is no question that a large, possibly a majority, segment of the rural population have been hugely benefited by many of the welfare schemes introduced by the TMC Government such as kanyashri (Rs 25,000 to girl students for continuing their education), sabuj sathi (free bycycles to girl students in rural areas), rice at Rs 2 a kilo for the rural poor, a perceptible improvement in the rural as well as urban infrastructure like roads and electricity gene-ration and distribution, free medicines at speci-fied medical stores in government-run hospitals and the like. Many questions were raised about the actual credibility of these schemes, mainly by the Opposition parties and an influential section of the media. However, the veracity of these claims has received the positive impri-matur of the electorate which is clear from the electoral verdict.

It has been argued by many analysts that the formation of the electoral alliance between the Left Front and Congress only a few weeks before the elections did not go down well with many voters in the State; that the alliance was seen as opportunistic and formed only with a single agenda—removal of Mamata and the TMC Government. There is much strength in this argument. Notwithstanding the arguments favouring such an alliance between two politically and ideologically antagonistic forces (that the Mamata Government has unleashed a reign of terror where no one starting from her political opponents to women and others opposed to her rule were safe and that it was a ‘save Bengal' platform), it should have been formed much earlier based on a common agenda for governance and emphasising the areas where the alliance thought the Mamata Government had gone wrong and promising to rectify such omissions if a government for the alliance came to power. That would have been a much more positive approach to the elections rather than relying on the barrage of negative campaigning against Mamata and her government. There is still doubt if even such a campaign would have opened the doors of Nabanna (the Secretariat of the West Bengal Government) to an alliance government given the level of popularity enjoyed by Mamata as already analysed above. However, there was a possibility that some voters disenchanted with the TMC would have voted for either the Congress or the Left Front if they had contested the polls independently. A post mortem and a blame game has already started between the Congress and LF with the latter suggesting that while the LF voters voted for the Congress candidates where they were in the fray, the Congress voters did not vote for the LF candidates where they were in the fray. On the face of it, it might seem logical to assume that many Congress voters could not bring themselves to support LF candidates when their memories went back to the days of the LF in power when the principal adversary of the LF was the Congress and many Congress activists were persecuted by the LF, especially the CPM, cadres. The alliance also found it difficult to explain satisfactorily how they reconciled with the contradiction that while in Bengal they were in alliance they were the principal adver-saries in Kerala which also went to the polls simultaneously.

As things stand, the TMC (read Mamata Banerjee for she has once again proved beyond any shadow of doubt that the TMC is synony-mous with her) is assured of an almost unbridled reign of power for the next five years with all Opposition (Congress, LF and BJP) virtually decimated in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. The question arises: would such a brute majority in the Assembly and the huge popular support base throughout the State inject a degree of humility and self-introspection in Mamata as the leader and the TMC as the ruling party? Seasoned watchers of Indian politics over decades are fully conversant with the phenomenon that once they win power Indian politicians begin to behave like feudal satraps paying only lip-service to democracy and the rule of the law. While this is not a space to start a discussion on this much-debated issue, it may be worthwhile to remember that Bengal is also not immune to this much- witnessed ‘democratic' disease. Even the highly respected Bidhan Chandra Roy, the former Chief Minister of West Bengal, was often accused of high-handedness though his stewardship of the State during the 14 years he was at the helm still remains, to many, the golden years of West Bengal since independence. So the moot point is that, armed with such power reinforced by the massive electoral mandate, would Mamata Banerjee give greater space to dissent and develop a modicum of tolerance towards her defeated adversaries and critics rather than taking shelter behind conspiracy theories and so-called slander-mongering allegedly being indulged in by her opponents? She really has nothing more to fear from her political opponents as the road for the next five years remains pretty smooth except for a few caveats.

However, the reality is that the Chief Minister is virtually unrepentant on everything she and her party have done or said in the past five years. She declared point-blank that there is no corruption either in her party or government and therefore no action is necessary. She is on course in reversing all the transfers at the administrative level enacted by the Election Commission to conduct a free and fair poll. The attacks on Opposition party activists and sympathisers, which started even before the poll (and which has been a feature of the rule of the TMC Government during the past five years) and persisted when the poll process was on, have increased in intensity since the elections ended on May 5 and the declaration of results on May 19. Mamata Banerjee appealed for peace at the post-declaration press conference she held on May 19. However, the violence continues unabated and there is no perceptible attempt on the part of the government and administration to stop the mayhem.

So the new government needs to demonstrate that it is keen on starting the next term on a clean slate by showing greater tolerance to dissent, upholding the rule of law, especially when it comes to allegations of police inaction with regard to crimes against women, indul-gence of unlawful and undemocratic practices by ruling party activists and sympathisers. This is not to say that the activists of the Oppo-sition parties are entirely without any fault in this regard. However, as the largest political force, a great deal of the onus rests with the ruling party and it can be said with confidence that if a climate of healthy politics free from violence and intimidation is created at the instance of Mamata Banerjee, Bengal will be the beneficiary generating greater confidence among the business community to come forward with new proposals for investment in the State which will be the harbinger of change on all the fronts, political, economic, social and commercial.

The Chief Minister has all the options wide open for an all-round regeneration of Bengal which she wants to turn into the Number One State in India. That can only happen when there is peace and security in the State and all sections of the society feel that the gover-nment is working for everybody irrespective of any political colour. The crying need of the State is generation of jobs for the youth, many of whom have to move to other States or even abroad in search of jobs and livelihood. The TMC Government has done well in promoting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as self-employment. However, jobs on a bigger scale can only be created by bringing in large entrepreneurs in manufacturing as well as service industries in which West Bengal lags behind States like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and a few other advanced States of India. The huge debt burden of Rs 3088 billion as of March 2016—which rose from Rs 2000 billion in 2011— will be a gargantuan challenge for Mamata. The TMC Government has always blamed—and rightly so—the Left Front Government for leaving it with this unresolved debt when it first assumed power. Since then both the governments of Dr Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi have failed to offer a solution acceptable to the State as well as the Centre. The matter is riddled with enormous technical complications and repeated pleas of Mamata to the Centre for a moratorium on the interest payments have drawn a curt response on the ground that if it was granted to West Bengal, it would create a precedent and other debt-stressed States would also clamour for a similar treatment.

The 2016 elections have been a milestone in Bengal politics. While it has empowered the TMC and Mamata Banerjee with the largest majority for a single party in recent history, the challenges for the incoming government are also aplenty. It now remains to be seen how the most iconic and powerful woman leader that West Bengal has thrown up since independence can turn these challenges into opportunities to carve out a niche not only for herself and her party but also for the State of West Bengal.

Former Professor of International Relations and erstwhile Director, School of International Relations and Strategie Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Dr Purusottam Bhattacharya is currently a Visiting Professor of Political Science, Rabindra Bharti University, Kolkata

Addressing Pakistani think-tankers and the strategic community in Islamabad on May 27, Iran's ambassador Mehdi Honerdoost disclosed that:

Chabahar was first offered to Pakistan and China (before India came into the picture) but they were disinterested—and the offer is still open.

“Chabahar is not a rival to Gwadar”; on the contrary, Iran sees advantages of a link-up between the two ports that are separated by only 70 kms.

“The (Chabahar) deal is not finished. We (Iran) are waiting for new members. Pakistan, our brotherly neighbour, and China, a great partner of the Iranians and a good friend of Pakistan, are both welcome.”

“We are ready for any rapprochement between regional countries which directly impact the interests of the people of our countries. Trade and business is business, and politics is politics. We should separate them.”

The above remarks become a reality check on the virtues of pragmatism in economic diplomacy. (Dawn)

This is not to decry Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Iran. Without doubt, of all the 25 visits abroad Modi undertook so far, the recent one to Tehran was the most productive. The calibration was commendable, too—no grandstanding, very focused and ultimately productive and satisfying. The fact that the PM took with him Nitin Gadkari, one of the two or three dynamic Cabinet colleagues in his lacklustre government, underlined forcefully that this time around he meant ‘business'.

The fragility of the Indian-Iranian relation-ship was always that civilisational affinities and strategic congruence on regional security issues aside, it was an airy partnership bereft of content other than the oil trade. No strategic partnership can survive on love and fresh air. Thus, compared to the halcyon days in the nineties when there was the shared antipathy toward Pakistan, the atrophy of the relationship was almost inevitable with the American intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and the commencement of the (tragi-comic) US-Indian dalliance in the Hindu Kush.

Iran is endowed with vast resources and is potentially a very rich country amassing much surplus of capital. And, of course, we are now dealing with an altogether new Iran, which is free from UN sanctions and is raring to integrate with the world market.

The highlight of Modi's visit was the signing of the documents relating to development of the Chabahar Port with an Indian investment of $ 500 million. Chabahar could offer India a gateway to access the Afghan border up north (once a railway line is completed in the hinterland). Chabahar can also be used to evacuate Iran's natural gas to India either through an undersea pipeline or as liquefied gas. So far so good.

However, the Iranians probably feel embarrassed that Indians could make crude propaganda stuff out of their Prime Minister's visit to a friendly country, simply to balance the score-card with Pakistan on the famous spy affair involving Kulbhushan Yadav (who apparently operated out of Chabahar).

The plain-speaking by the Iranian envoy in Islamabad ought to give food for thought. Tehran and Islamabad are working hard on improving their troubled relationship. Pakistan kept distance from the Saudi-led proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, and its cooperation is needed for ending the cross-border terrorism by Wahhabi terror groups destabilising Iran's eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province. Today, Iran's policies toward Afghanistan are not Taliban-centric; Iran does not vie with Pakistan for ‘influence' in Kabul.

Most important, Iran is keen to tap into China's Silk Road projects in Pakistan. One major project could be the extension of the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor leading to China's Xinjiang province.

Thus, it is easy to understand what Iran's motivations are in developing the Chabahar Port:

One, Sistan-Baluchistan province is a backward region, which also happens to be Sunni-dominated, where Wahhabbi terror groups supported by Saudi Arabia have been operating from across the Pakistani border. Certainly, economic development of the region is a priority.

Two, Iran needs foreign investments in a big way—and from all available sources.

Three, infrastructure development is a top priority for Tehran and Iran is conscious of its geography offering scope to emerge as a regional economic hub.

Four, Iran is conscious of India's rapidly growing market and Chabahar enjoys proximity to Kandla and Mumbai ports.

Finally, Iran sees long-term advantages in getting India involved in a big way in its economy as an investor, builder and end-user alike.

We will do well to factor in that China could turn out to be a principal user of Chabahar. In a down-to-earth commentary on May 27, the Chinese Communist Party tabloid, Global Times, pointed out that this is not a zero sum game, and commended India for contributing to ‘regional connectivity'.

Indeed, Chinese factories in Xinjiang and Central Asia will seek to export their products to the Indian market via Chabahar—in which case, Chabahar could eventually end up as a splendid pearl in the necklace of China's One Belt One Road.

Clearly, the time is overdue for India to take a realistic view of regional connectivity instead of hiding its head in the sand. The Chinese caravan is on a roll in our region. We can't stop it. The sensible thing is to climb on board and see how far we can use it to our advantage.

For a start, Modi should take away the compass from the hands of the finicky South Block mandarins twiddling with it, and set sail himself on a journey of discovery on China's Silk Road. Read a Chinese commentary last week, here, on how Ranil Wickremesinghe's Sri Lanka is a step ahead of us, the regime change in Colombo and our best efforts to be the ‘spoiler' notwithstanding.

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).

EDITORIAL

As we go to press, two issues have come to prominence.

A special court today convicted 24 persons while acquitting 36 people in the Gulbarg Society massacre in Ahmedabad on February 28, 2002. Former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was among those killed in that incident. As for the remaining 13 persons, they have been convicted for rioting and on other charges but not murder.

The sentences for those convicted are to be pronounced by the court on June 6. What is significant is that the court has ruled that the massacre was not the consequence of a “pre-planned conspiracy”, a point repeatedly underscored by activists like Teesta Setalvad indefatigably fighting for justice for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat carnage including those who perished in the Gulbarg Society massacre.

It is also noteworthy that BJP councilor Bipin Patel and former police inspector K.G. Erda, whose names were added as accused in the case by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Apex Court to reinvestigate the nine most crucial cases of the Gujarat happenings, were among those acquitted.

Reacting to the verdict Zakia Jafri, wife of Ehsan Jafri, said she would continue to fight for justice as many accused have been acquitted by the court.

No I am not satisfied with the verdict. I did not like it. All should have been given punishment for what they did and what they did not. I know it all and as I have seen the massacre, I expected all to be convicted... how they killed people, how they made them homeless, I saw it myself.

And Teesta Setalvad informed that “we will study the judgment” in depth and thereafter appeal to a higher court. She said she was convinced “this is a case of criminal conspiracy”.

Interestingly, the SIT, appointed by the Supreme Court in 2009, had submitted that the massacre was a pre-planned conspiracy as the rioters had targeted the minority-dominated housing society in the area. This was contested and refuted by the lawyers appearing for the accused.

As for the second issue, after Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis' meetings with the PM and BJP President today in New Delhi, the former said the BJP will decide “appropriate action” with regard to the State's Revenue Minister, Eknath Khadse.

Khadse is under fire not only from the BJP's political opponents but also its ally, the Shiv Sena, over several charges of corruption, notably the alleged impropriety over purchase of a land belonging to the government-owned MIDC at Pune at a throwaway price.

Fadnavis' statement has given rise to the speculation that Khadse is on his way out, perhaps in a couple of days. Observers of the Maharashtra political scene point out that Khadse being senior to Fadnavis, the CM was not prepared to take action against him keeping the national figures in the party's central leadership in the dark. Hence his trip to the Capital.

Nevertheless, even if action is belatedly taken against Khadse, the latter's activities and his defiant continuance in power have only exposed the hollowness of Narendra Modi's tall claim that the ruling party is immune to any form of corruption unlike its predecessor in office.

June 2 S.C.

COMMUNICATION

When Darulum Deoband, the largest Muslim religious seminary in Asia, protested over the proposed visit of Salman Rushdie, the author of Satanic Verses in which he has used highly offensive and objectionable language against the Holy Prophet of Islam and Islam and on which account this book had been proscribed by the Government of India, to attend the literary festival at Jaipur, Muslims all over the country, including Muslim organisations, supported the verdict of Darulum Deoband and the Chief Minister of Rajasthan also supported the Muslim stand, the media and a number of columnists condemned the acceptance of the Muslim demand as an appeasement of Muslims and violation of the right of freedom of expression completely ignoring the fact that no right is absolute and is subject to reasonable restrictions and that no one has the right to hurt the religious sentiments of any community. By no logic respect for religious sentiments can be anti-secular or synonymous with appeasement of any particular community.

Dr M. Hashim Kidwai (Ex-Member of Parliament)
C-501, Rosewood Apartments
Mayur Vihar, Phase-I Extn.,
Delhi-110091

Linking Short-Term Urgent Relief With Longer-Term Sustainable Development and Protection of Environment

Bundelkhand region is spread over an area of around 70,000 sq. km. in the States of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in Central India. This region at present includes 13 administrative districts—Banda, Mahoba, Hamirpur, Chitrakut, Jhansi, Jajaun and Lalitpur districts in Uttar Pradesh as well as Panna, Chattarpur, Damoh, Sagar, Tikamgarh and Datia districts in Madhya Pradesh.

In recent times this region has emerged on the extensive map of drought-affected areas of India as one of the worst affected regions. The present drought was preceded here by several erratic weather conditions, including drought in some phases, and untimely heavy rains and hailstorms, even floods, in other phases and this prolonged period of adverse distress has aggravated the distress of the people. This has also led to efforts to understand the existing situation as not just a short-term phenomenon but a longer-term trend of more adverse and erratic weather related to climate change as well as local ecological ruin such as large-scale destruction of forests.

In recent months very large-scale hunger, malnutrition, drinking water shortage, deaths and abandonment of farm and dairy animals, indebtedness, threat of land loss and distress related migration have been reported from the Bundelkhand region. In such conditions clearly there is a great urgency of providing adequate and timely short-term relief to the people but at the same time there is an obvious need to link this to longer-term sustainable development based on protection of environment as without this only delinked and isolated relief will not provide any lasting solutions.

At the present time a many-sided relief effort of the government is in place but this is widely perceived as inadequate as has been highlighted in the context of all drought-affected parts of the country by a Supreme Court judgment in mid-May. There is thus an urgent need to step up and improve the relief effort.

First of all, it is necessary to scale up and improve the implementation of the rural employ-ment guarantee legislation or NREGA. This work needs to become available to a much larger number of people and for more number of days as per their needs and as per the provisions and the spirit of this legislation. It is no less important to ensure the timely payment of wages. In addition to NREGA works, the government should also start separate drought relief works which can be more flexible in meeting the needs of the drought-affected people such as for prompt payment of wages within two or three days at the local level and making work less rigorous for people who are already very weak due to prolonged distress.

There is clearly also a need for ensuring the proper implementation of food security legis-lation which, as per the Supreme Court directives, is to be implemented even more liberally in the drought-affected areas like Bundelkhand. Thus almost all rural families here should get their quota of highly subsidised grain (Rs 2 per kg. for wheat and Rs. 3 per kg for rice) even if the process for preparing proper cards has not yet been completed for several villages. As the returns for diversion of this heavily subsidised grain to the black market are very considerable, there should be close monitoring and strict vigilance to minimise any possibilities of black marketing and corruption. Also in view of the glaring absence of proteins in the food intake of the drought-affected people these days, there is a strong case for inclusion of some highly subsidised pulses as well at least till such time that the region gets a good pulse harvest. It needs to be realised that the food security law provision for highly subsidised grain lasts only for a week in a month and so there is also the need to curb any hoarding and black marketing of open-market grain.

There are several very old, disabled and destitute people in almost all villages who are unable to arrange even a meagre supply of food and water on their own There are also several widows as well as children left behind by migrant workers. The possibility of starting community kitchens by the government as well as citizens' groups for them with the cooperation of villagers should also be considered. Such kitchens should offer at least one full meal in a day to such members of the village community and they should feel free to carry back some food and water with them. The food for some disabled villagers can also be sent to their home with the cooperation of other villagers.

The importance of proper mid-day meals for nutrition of children has increased. These should be improved and mid-day meals should continue at the time of school vacations with the added provisions of ensuring more protein availability. The anganwadis or ICDS should also be improved with better and regular availability of nutritious food to make up for the increasing absence of pulses and milk in the regular village diet.

Meeting drinking water needs should obviously get the highest priority keeping in view the extreme scarcity conditions in many villages and several urban areas. Detailed plans for all villages should be made which list the condition of all the available potential sources and then the best possible actions should be planned in consultation with local people who have the most reliable information and understanding of local conditions. The experience of elderly people should also be tapped. Women should be closely involved in the entire process.

The effort should be to ensure the best possible utilisation of available scarce water to meet the priority needs of people and animals on an equitable basis and to prevent any squandering of water on non-essential uses as well as to prevent any waste of water. While visiting several villages of this region I noticed that people in various villages offer location-specific solutions for the water crisis and this should receive adequate attention.

This may be even more important from the point of view of meeting the water needs of animals. Efforts should be made to set up animal camps near some carefully identified water sources where some minimum supplies of water and dry fodder or bhusa can be assured to farm and dairy animals. A payment can be made to the owner of the water source and water drinking places or haudis can be constructed.

There should be a moratorium on the recovery of loans till such time that badly drought-affected villagers can recover. No one should be deprived of his or her land in drought-related or other distress conditions. Land rights should be well-protected in drought conditions. During drought the villagers should not be forced to enter into any bonded labour-type arrangement and children should be protected from exploitative labour. To ensure this, it is important for the relief work to be stepped up adequately. Also the crop loss compensation and insurance payments should be made promptly without any pre-conditions and these should be reasonably adequate. Sharecroppers and other types of land-leasers should also be entitled to at least a part of the compensation.

As people are more vulnerable to various types of health problems but are unable to afford treatment, special efforts should be made to improve public health with provision for entirely free supply of essential medicines as well as reliable monitoring of malnutrition and mortality.

District or even block level cells should be set up to take up the problems of workers migrating from these villages so that any complaint of injustice, fleecing, exploitation or denial of wages can be taken up with the help of local administration and social and legal activists. For example, if a migrant worker is injured in an occupational accident then efforts can be made to get a proper compensation for him although presently this is generally denied to him.

Efforts should be made by the administration to obtain the cooperation of various citizens' groups and voluntary organisations in drought relief and related work. Citizens' groups should come forward to take up responsibilities of various kinds of relief effort in several villages. One effort can be to set up grain banks in several villages. A village committee can then provide grain from this source to the most vulnerable families. Another effort can be to start a model community kitchen for the most vulnerable people in a village or else to start a camp for animals.Yet another contribution can be to create opportunities for extremely low-cost marriages in drought-affected areas by organising a number of such dowryless weddings together in gracefully organised community events.

The water needs of animals and birds living in forests or in the wilderness outside village boundries are often forgotten. This not only causes a lot of suffering to these silent animals and birds but in addition there is the added risk of these animals getting diverted due to thirst more and more towards villages. Hence there is a need for some water conservation works even in forests and uninhabited wilderness areas keeping in view the needs of various wild animals, birds etc.

While all the efforts and reforms listed above can play an important role in reducing distress in seriously drought affected Bundelkhand, there is the need for integrating this relief work with the longer-term needs of sustainable development and environment protection in this ecologically ravaged area.

During a drought year more funds are likely to be available for NREGA and drought relief work. Many fields and waterbodies are likely to be more or less empty. Hence well-planned soil and water conservation work can progress more rapidly with the cooperation of people not just as paid workers but as close participants who want to make the best possible use of the existing opportunities for improving the most basic resource base of soil and water. However important this work may be, it is also an unfortunate fact that a lot of corruption and wastage is generally involved in the utilisation of these funds.

It is sometimes said—everyone loves a good drought. It may be closer to the truth to say that only five per cent of persons who are powerful and corrupt like a serious drought situation as they find ways and means of using the drought relief funds to fill their own coffers, or else some powerful persons may misuse the acute and mass distress to trap the people in longer-term exploitation or even try to grab the land of some vulnerable farmers. Efforts should be made to avoid all these possibilities.

If corruption can be reduced significantly and NREGA and drought relief works as well as the more regular work of irrigation, soil and water conservation can be well-integrated with the real needs of the people, as expressed by them in the form of village plans, then certainly significant protection from drought can be achieved and in addition a base for better farming can be prepared. The potential for this increases further with a more comprehensive ridge to valley planning for watersheds. However, the tendency to overemphasise one or two models should be avoided and there should be greater room for flexibility according to local conditions and more room for incorporating the location-specific suggestions of local people including women and weaker sections. There has been a wrong tendency to involve only those with significant land while the need is for securing at least some land for the landless and making improvement and irrigation of this land an integral part of the watershed projects.

Similarly, afforestation work offers a great potential, wherever opportunities emerge with the availability of some water and moisture and a little rain, of linking short-term relief work with longer-term sustainable development and protection of environment. The indigenous species of trees should be planted trying to imitate or resemble mixed natural forests of the region, with emphasis on soil and water conservation as well as meeting the food, fodder and medicinal and fuel needs of the people. A lot of attention and high priority should be given to saving the existing natural forests. Proper tree cover around water sources should be emphasised.

Highly indiscriminate mining activities by powerful mining interests and even mafias have been responsible for causing very heavy damage to forests as well as water. Hence there is a clear need for imposing the necessary restrictions on mining activities as well as carefully regulating the mining, quarrying, sand mining and stone crushing in such a way as to reduce significantly the devastation of the environment of Bundelkhand and exploitation as well as the infliction of serious health hazards on many workers and villagers and the destruction of agricultural fields of many farmers. In the place of such hazardous plunder in the name of mining, small-scale mining with ecological safeguards, which can be taken up by cooperatives of weaker sections in a selective way, can show the way forward for reforming the mining sector.

Organic mixed farming emphasising staple foods based on indigenous seeds collected with a lot of care and effort and striving to make the best possible use of free local resources (for example, compostable materials or local free materials useful for repelling or keeping away pests) need to be encouraged to keep down costs of farmers and also to improve their self-reliance in situations where farmers are facing increasingly erratic weather conditions.

In this context it needs to be emphasised that climate change as a reality should be accepted and so more efforts and funds are needed to prepare the rural communities and farmers in particular to face the emerging challenges of climate change. Hence government allocations for agriculture, rural development, drinking water, irrigation, disasters, environment protection and health in particular should increase very significantly. In addition, the ways in which these budgets are being spent also need to be improved significantly.

For example, in the case of irrigation and water it is necessary to move away from highly expensive and long gestation projects like river links and large dams towards small-scale watershed projects taken up with the close involvement of the people. In the case of agriculture it is necessary to move away from subsidising expensive inputs and machinery to promoting low-cost, self-reliant, eco-friendly and organic farming. Such reforms will help to make available more resources for the most important tasks and initiatives.

A development strategy which places a lot of emphasis on promotion of organic farming, afforestation and protection of natural forests can make a considerable contribution to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and on this basis it can also qualify for considerable international help if proper efforts are made. The opportunities for this can increase further with a shift towards renewable sources of energy. There is considerable scope for this as many remote villages are very poorly served by conventional, centralised electricity systems while decentralised rural mixed renewable energy-based systems offer a lot of scope for meeting the energy needs of remote villages as well as enhancing rural livelihoods.

Such initiatives can be even more successful if proper encouragement is given for the promotion of rural skills, innovativeness and creativity at various levels. A good example of this is the Mangal Turbine invented by a farmer scientist of Bundelkhand, named Mangal Singh; it has been widely appreciated by senior scientists. This turbine which helps to lift water without using diesel or electricity can help to save considerable expenses of farmers, apart from making a substantial contribution to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Bundelkhand as well as other areas.

Thus despite the great distress visible today in Bundelkhand there is certainly ground for optimism not only for providing better short-term relief to people but also to significantly improve the prospects for sustainable develop-ment as well as well environment protection. However, strong vested interests will have to be overcome in order to ensure that the path of genuine sustainable development is actually taken up.

Bharat Dogra is a free-lance journalist who has been involved with several social initiatives and movements.

BOOK REVIEW

The Phoenix Moment: Challenges confronting the Indian Left by Praful Bidwai; Noida: Harper Collins Publishers India; 2015; 586 + xiii pages; Rs 599.00

The Left in India, admittedly, is passing through its worst crisis since independence. Praful Bidwai, the author of this book, who died at a rather premature age in 2015, was an engaged researcher as well as an activist, with vast experience of political journalism. He has written virtually a comprehensive history of the Indian Left from its origins which go back to the 1920s till the Lok Sabha polls of 2014. While acknowledging the positive contributions of the Left in providing alternative perspectives on larger issues of society, economy, politics and culture, the book takes a severely critical view of its failings, but it would be wrong to describe it as an obituary of the Indian Left. Rather Praful has identified certain key issues which the Left must address, if it has to survive and withstand the crisis it faces today.

Very candidly he has stated his Left credentials in the short yet very compact Preface. His objective is to study the parliamentary Communist Parties and exclude from his purview the Left-extremist, primarily Maoist, groups and parties which shun electoral democracy and believe in insurrectionary tactics. This is explained by three reasons advanced by him (pp. ix-x) : first, as Communist Parties they have had the longest experience of operating within the confines of a liberal democratic system; second, notwithstanding splits, dissent, etc. these parties have had the longest and continuous organised existence. Third, there is serious dearth of recent analytical literature on their performance. As regards his own ideological position, he describes himself as a staunch anti-Stalinist, although he had very good rapport with all varieties of the Indian Left. (p. xi) Finally, the author argues that the problems plaguing the Indian Left are four-fold and these have been his concerns while writing the book. These are: “its ideological deficiencies, theoretical rigidity, aridity in programme formulation, and undemocratic organisational practices”. (p. x)

There are actually two narratives, running in two opposite directions, throughout the book. The first narrative chronicles the glory, success, achievements of the Left in the pre- as well as post-independence era at different points of time, in no way belittling its historic role and accomplishments, which began with the call for complete independence given for the first time not by the nationalists but by the Communists in the 1920s and ended with the support extended by the Left to the first UPA in 2004-08. Theoretically speaking, the second narrative takes off at the point where the first narrative closes. This refers to the moment when the Left withdrew its support to the UPA in 2008 on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal, marking the decline of the Left's secular slide leading to its virtual rout in the Lok Sabha polls of 2014. Driven by this worry and the urge to diagnose what has gone wrong with the Left, the second narrative emerges, almost as a critical response to the dark spots, the weaknesses, the blackholes that remained otherwise hidden in the first narrative's apparently glorious and impressive success story of the Left. In the process the two narratives criss-cross one another, opening up a terrain where the author, while appreciating the historic role and importance of the Left, also reprimands it for its reluctance and inability to respond to these issues.

Praful has very rightly diagnosed the central problem underlying this inability/reluctance of the Indian Left to address these problems, when he at the very beginning of the book draws our attention to two major theoretical weaknesses of the Indian Communists. (p. 5) One: the complete lack of awareness of the tradition of Western Marxism, “its rich discourse on the nature of capitalism, the modern state, and the peculiarities of the exercise of power in bourgeois democracy”. Two: they took hardly any interest to explore the valuable non-Marxist analyses of Indian society, that is, caste, its relations with class and politics. This was strikingly evident in a number of episodes. First, let us consider some of the issues which exclusively belong to the ideological domain of Marxism. It all began with what Praful describes as Comintern's “toxic influence”, the subservience of the CPI to the CPGB (Chapter 1) and its consequent inability to think independently and thereby take the right decision at the right moment. This disconnect with reality, because of a blinkered vision, has caused irreparable damage to the communist movement in the country, as sterile dogmatism and short-term tactical considerations have largely characterised the functioning mainstream communism throughout its life in India. This explains, for example, why the CPI refrained from engaging in any ideological struggle on the issue of Stalin and the 20th Congress or the Hungarian crisis in 1956 and the Czech crisis in 1968 and simply blamed Gorbachev and his reform programme for the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991. (pp. 26-27, 62) The author attributes this “entropy” of the Communist Left to its failure to emerge as a movement rather than as a political organisation only (p. 29), this overemphasis on organisational prowess to the exclusion of many other larger issues being largely a replication the Soviet model. (p. 27) Understandably, this happened because, at the theoretical level, the Communist Left in India has always maintained a safe distance from the currents and crosscurrents within the Marxist tradition, while at the organisational level it has remained firmly rooted in the Stalinist principles of party organisation, making it impossible to foster any real inner-party democracy and look beyond.

Coming to the Indian dimension, Praful so very rightly draws our attention to at least four issues which the Communist Left failed to negotiate, resulting in the shrinkage of its social base and political space. First, the contributions of the Socialists, notably the formation of the Rashtra Seva Dal, set up in Maharashtra in 1941 to counter the RSS menace, were never seriously considered. (p. 6) This, in fact, raises a bigger question: despite the rather abortive break-up of the CPI-CSP alliance in 1934-38, was it not imperative on the part of the Left to revive this strategy in post-independence India, since the Socialists constituted the only other Left current, apart from the Communists? Second, a somewhat lukewarm, if not passive, attitude of the mainstream Comm-unists towards smaller yet very important local movements initiated by A.K. Roy, Sankar Guha Neogi, the Lal Nishan Party, which actually accelerated class struggle in the pockets in which they were waged, has largely contributed to the isolation of the mainstream Communists. (pp. 92-94) Third, the Left's rather sceptical, at times hostile, attitude towards movements that involved workers' takeover, that is, Sonali Tea Gareden in Jalpaiguri (1974-78), Kanoria Jute Mill in Calcutta (1993-94), Kamani Tubes Ltd in Bombay in 1988, was another big mistake which cost the Left dearly. (pp. 68-72) This simply reminds one of Gramsci's classic study and endorsement of the Turin Factory Council movement, as the First World War was coming to a close and Italy was getting ready for her encounter with fascism. Fourth, the decision of the CPI-M leadership not to allow Jyoti Basu to become the Prime Minister of India in a moment of power vacuum in 1996, a decision that Basu described as a “historic blunder”. Praful describes 1996 as an “inflexion point”, “where the people's aspirations for social change, frustrated by successive regimes, were still not defeated and were amenable to incorporation in imaginative Left-of-Centre programmes and policies — especially if they were coupled with mass mobilisation strategies, and backed by the Left's announcement of its intent to run specific mass campaigns on issues with progressive content and popular appeal”. (p. 115)

It is against this background that the author then goes into a detailed examination of the coming to power of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and their performances. Compared to West Bengal, the performance of the Left has been much better in Kerala, despite its declining image, its emergent pro-business, corporatist profile. (p. 261) In comparison, West Bengal's performance has been far worse, considering the fact that, since 1977, the Left was in power in Bengal till its fall in 2011 for more than three decades without break, while in Kerala power has changed hands between the UDF and LDF at regular intervals. In West Bengal the downhill slide began when, initially after the success of “Operation Barga” and the energisation of the panchayat system, “politics of middleness” (paiye debar rajniti) gripped the power-brokers of the Left, giving rise to corruption, inefficiency, arrogance and insensitivity. All these went into the unseating of the Left in Bengal in 2011, unfolding a painful process that eroded its base further in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

At the end of the book Praful addresses two key issues which really deserve attention today, when the Left is in deep crisis. In the first place, despite the progressive thrusts of the Left on many fronts, national as well as international, he reminds us of three caveats. One: the Left succeeded best when it joined initiatives launched by civil society movements and progressive sections of the intelligentsia. This happened, for instance, in the case of MGNREGA, Food Security Act, Right to Information Act etc. Two: problems arose when sections of the Left went ahead with policies which were a deviation from the cause that the Left stands for. This was most starkly evident when the West Bengal Chief Minister invited Walmart into retail trade, zealously campaigned for SEZ and made deals with international seeds and food companies like Cargill. Three: the Left failed to put pressure on the UPA through mass mobilisation, confining itself largely to media statements. (p. 303)

Second, the author draws the attention of the reader to an alternative four-fold future agenda of the Left, which one can seriously consider. First : “building a counter-hegemonic alternative to the bourgeois democratic system through anti-capitalist popular mobilisation even while exploiting all possibilities available within the system”. (p. 335) Second: incorporation of the following demands into a radical movement, namely, agrarian reform, right to work, right to education, old-age pension, minimal food security, forest rights etc. (p. 338) Three: micro-level planning involving issues generated at local level. These may range from municipal governance to such burning issues of everyday life as supply of clean drinking water, accessible and affordable health care, an efficient public transport. (p. 344) Four: a non-vanguardist relationship must prevail between the party and the masses and between and within parties so that party bureaucracy can be checked and controlled (p. 346), reminding one of the Gramscian distinction between power and domination.

Based on party documents, interviews, field work, this is a magisterial study of Left politics in India. Written with thoroughness and precision, this is a work of great political wisdom. The book needs to be read by all those who still care for the Left and have not yet lost faith in the future of the Left in India.

Dr Sobhanlal Datta Gupta is a former S.N. Banerjee Professor of Political Science, University of Calcutta.

by Mustafa Khan

In her new book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up, Rana Ayub calls the genocide in Gujarat 2002 as the “cold political bloodbath”. Narendra Modi and the state machinery under him carried out the genocide calculated to achieve a political purpose. So rich was the result that Modi and his BJP milked the holy cow of the ballot box for more than a decade. And he is doing it even now and on a much larger scale internationally. The recent speeches of Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Shehla Rashid and others show that now more than ever before the knowledge of the full extent is breaking new grounds of learning.

Rana herself comes out with greater detail in her book in which she shows how even the Haren Pandya murder case was a fake encounter. Who stood to gain from it was of course the one responsible for it. Pandya's widow Jagruity's realisation of the fact came later but her father-in-law Vithal knew it as a political assassination. What is new learning in this is that there is need to put an end to this kind of crimes committed most cynically for the hidden agenda of not just Hindutva but also the personal ego (of Modi). There is a long history of the cussed exploitation of religion for personal and party gains in which the interest of India, representing the majority of the people, is sacrificed.

After years of soul-searching the preparation of a bill for the prevention of communally targeted violence was dropped by Parliament because the Hindu party, the BJP, did not accept the definition of minority. Perhaps they would have been overjoyed by the target group as majority and a victim of communal violence. But that would have been like showing a candle to the sun. But more time passed and the need to protect the minorities which suffer the most grew tenfold. It is but natural that those who suffer most in communal violence including caste atrocities are the poor and weaker sections of the society. Another justificatory realisation is that the Modi Government fought the elections and won 31 per cent for the development of the country. Again, the poor and weak were left out of development even after two years in power. So the second anniversary of Modi sarkar coincides with this realisation and none other than Kanhaiya Kumar, Umer Khalid, Shehla Rashid realised it. What is more, they articulated it and they were on the stage and managed the agenda of announcing it. The audience had the time and patience to let the importance of it sink in their minds.

They gave their idea of what India they want to be in the future. The idea of India they have is inclusive and majoritarian. Hindutva was also majoritarian but exclusive and upper-caste based. It left out the oppressed and the poor, namely, the Dalits and Muslims. If the oppressed and suppressed have suffered then it is their turn now as they are the majority of the country. “Because only after our stories are heard,” said Kumar, “in the wake of the attacks that have happened on us, we will realise what we must add to the idea of India.”

“On the basis of what is happening in the country, we can say with certainty that bourgeois democracy is in danger in this country, and there is no sign of socialist democracy.”

Having in mind Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech during the World Culture Festival in India, Kumar said: “There can be two ideas of India, either ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' or the idea that India must be the most powerful country in the world. The current government supports the second idea and so they are buying planes and tanks worth Rs 6000 crores. We reject this idea of India. We want the idea of India that begins with ‘We, the people of India'.”

“RSS and BJP are not against the minority, they are against the majority, because the majority belongs to the poor, backward and Dalit communities.”

Having always uttered the platitude umpteen times, that the whole world is a family and therefore Hinduism is the universe, the Right-wing Hindu extremists failed to see the naked truth that they have always looked askance at the minorities, particularly the Muslims and the Dalits. They presumptuously ignore them and carry on their fixed routines of anti-Muslim and Dalit work. This self-induced delusion needs the prick of a pin to burst it. “If Modi is a tiger, then put him in a jungle or keep him in a zoo, if you don't do it, then we will do it. That is our commitment. I have been campaigning all over the country and our biggest victory has been that we have received the most support from Dalit and Muslim communities.“1

That kind of support is what Modi had destroyed when he roped in the Charra and Dalit communities in 2002 to kill Muslims. That was also true of Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Dr R.P. Singh and the anonymous man from the Yamuna river habitation who had roped in the Valmikis to kill Muslims. Tehelka had covered the former in its November 2007 issue and Hemant Karkare had retrieved details of the latter from the laptops of Purohit and Dyanand Pandey. Such is the prerogative of the ruling classes that the courts in India do not entertain them as of any evidentiary value. How effete is the system that the Hindutva forces used the same techniques to replicate the genocide in Muzaffarnagar to reap a bumper crop in the 2014 elections and still got away. Many people know why and how Haren Pandya had crossed Modi by not vacating his constituency for the Chief Minister and how he had revealed the substance of Modi's instructing the police not to come in the way of the Hindus who would wreak havoc on the three days of February 28 to March 2, 2002. All these were ‘political bloodbaths'. It's time to stop all these for the reawakening of learning is too dazzling for the eyes to close. In the meantime the conspiracy of silence of the likes of L.K. Advani deepens. He had demanded change of investigators as far as Pragya Singh Thakur was concerned, but is mum over Haren Pandya's widow's wailing and beseeching for justice.

FOOTNOTE

• http://video.scroll.in/808819/finishing-my-phd-is-a-political-responsibility-too-what-kanhaiya-kumar-and-umar-khalid-said

While Donald Trump forges ahead to be the world's most powerful CEO and then to keep the world's Muslims from entering America, India's own Sangh Parivar“trains” its young saffron shirts to do one better—namely, to prepare, rifle and lathi in hand, against our own Muslim Indians.

Last week saw a clutch of Bajrang Dal fascists in fierce drill to ward off possible attacks from an enemy who was represented as a man with a beard and wearing an unmistakable Muslim skull cap.

Noticeably, the target was not sporting either a Pakistani or an ISIS flag, leaving one in no doubt that Muslims in general and our own Muslims in particular were meant to be the enemy. Had the target been terrorists or terrorism, surely the additional symbols would have been imperative to the purpose of representation; and one might have expected to see not only saffronite warriors but perhaps a pluralist group of Indian citizens setting shoulder to the patriotic wheel.

When quizzed about the event—which has now thankfully drawn legal notice from the local authorities in Uttar Pradesh where elections are due in six to eight months (whereby hangs the true tale of the Sangh's predictable resort to communal polarisation ahead of time)—spokes-persons of the Parivar have been saying how routine an exercise such a thing is; after all, such “self-defensive” drills are habitually imparted in schools and colleges, don't we know? Indeed we do, but in none of those habitual exercises is a bearded man with a skull cap shown to be the enemy. To put the matter starkly: suppose for a moment that such a drill were to be performed by some Madrassa going young Muslims, showing the target to be a man with a vermillion mark on the forehead, what might the Sangh have said?

What clearly should have worried the mighty BJP-led government at the Centre is the inference that its own young satraps do not trust it to protect them from the Muslims of Ayodhya and Uttar Pradesh. Not so; because more than you or I, the mighty Central Government knows for sure what these shenanigans are about and why they are necessary to the Sangh's burning desire to capture Uttar Pradesh, come the elections. Do remember that in the elections just concluded in five States, the BJP could only win one—a wholly expected change of government after a fifteen-year-long stint by the Congress in power. Much as that “victory” is sought to be peddled as a globe-shaking triumph, the reality is that the supposedly defunct Congress has won both a larger share of the vote across the five States, and a considerably larger number of Assembly seats. And there is further bleak prospect of the BJP, in all likelihood, having no success in the forthcoming elections to the Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and, cuttingly, Gujarat Assemblies. Note that in the last State mentioned, the Congress recently swept to victory in some eighty per cent of seats in local elections.

Not having brought the least redress to the people at large, tall promises in the 2014 elections notwithstanding, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sangh that now rules it with an iron fist has one done-to-death recourse, namely, to give out the call for the “nationalistic” Hindu nation to keep the swarm of skull caps and beards at bay, or else all may be lost.

Fortunately, this wretchedly destructive gimmick has been yielding fewer and fewer dividends and it is to be hoped that the coming year will see saner politics gather sufficient force to defeat the Sangh's cynically divisive and potentially violent tactics—all of which, don't we know, is marketed under the rubric of “nationalism”?

A hope must also go out to the United States of America that either Hillary Clinton or the inspiring Bernie Sanders will put paid to the Trumpet that blares doom for politics of reason and universal human values.

Look where you will, and the world seems to be teetering on the edge of that burning lake of fire. Do not forget either that a hundred thousand Jihadis worldwide remain committed to cast rest of the recalcitrant world into that lake—a reality that can hardly be met through the politics of imitation.

(Courtesy: Kashmir Times)

The author, who taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is now retired, is a prominent writer and poet. A well-known commentator on politics, culture and society, he wrote the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. His latest book, The Underside of Things—India and the World: A Citizen's Miscellany, 2006-2011, came out in August 2012.

From N.C.'s Writings

The following piece was published as ‘New Delhi Skyline' in this journal precisely fifty years ago. It is being reproduced on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1966 devaluation that had enormous impact on India's politico-economic landscape.

For days the papers were fed with reports of differences between the Planning Minister and the Finance Minister about financial allocations for the Fourth Plan programme. And so in the Capital when the Press Information Bureau sent out warning of an important announcement almost near midnight, the word went round on Sunday evening (June 5, 1966) that perhaps Sri Sachin Chaudhuri had resigned.

The plausibility of such an assumption was strengthened because only a few weeks ago, it was known that Sri Chaudhuri had opposed in the Cabinet the World Bank proposal for foreign majority participation in Indian enterprise, a proposal which was sponsored by the Prime Minister's two economie ADCs—Sri Asoka Mehta and Sri Subramaniam—and backed by Smt Gandhi herself, but was defeated in the Cabinet. The reported annoyance of the Finance Ministry circles that Sri Mehta should have conducted the aid talks in Washington poaching into their time-honoured preserve also lent colour to the speculation that perhaps even Sri Chaudhuri had turned and resigned. For a very brief interlude the Finance Minister's patriotic bonafides were regarded as being above question. The spell was broken at 11 in the night with his rather monotonous broadcast announcing the bomb-shell news of the Cabinet decision in favour of devaluation of the rupee. Next day Sri Chaudhuri left nobody in doubt as to where his loyalties lay when he claimed the credit for having thought of devaluation of the rupee even before he was pitchforked to Finance Ministership as a Santa Claus gift by Shastri.

But careful observers in the Capital were not exactly caught napping. The high-level discussions during the two previous days had a note of extraordinary urgency: even the PAs of some of the Ministers involved, for once found themselves being placed in the dark. Sri Subramaniam's postponement of the Moscow visit looked rather odd, particularly at a time when the Food Minister desperately needed a face-lift for his election campaign image.

Actually, it was known in the Capital for a few preceding days that the detailed reports of Sri Asoka Mehta's confidential te-te-â-te-te with the World Bank boss did contain reference to the US insistence on devaluation of the rupee and that the Planning Minister gave the tacit assurance that devaluation would be considered, only if it might be staved off till after the General Elections. There was, however, the general impression in the circle of Delhi economists that even if the World Bank would not wait till the General Elections, the devaluation would not perhaps come till about September—though it was known that Washington had almost made it clear to New Delhi that the Aid India Club would not meet until the devaluation had taken place.

While it is undestandable that no Government would like to announce that it had accomplished a Command Performance, the impression is inescapable in New Delhi—an impression which is widespread, ranging from the Opposition critics to the sources close to the US Embassy—that devaluation was decided upon over the week-end at the climax of high-powered ‘persuasion' from Washington. After Sri Asoka Mehta's spectacular demonstration of grovelling in Washington, expectations rose in the Prime Minister's camp that the first substantial dose of aid would soon be forthcoming and so there would be no need to devalue the rupee so soon after the adjournment of Parliament. But these hopes were rather shockingly belied when the latest despatches from Indian emissaries in Washington dealing with the World Bank and IMF made it clear that not a dollar would come without immediate devaluation. The Shylock would accept nothing but the pound of flesh, here and now, and New Delhi's case is certainly not in the hands of a Portia who could outwit the greedy money-lender.

It is evident now that when the Finance Minister and the Planning Minister were vociferously assuring Parliament that there was no question of the rupee being devalued, at that very moment the Government had already been showing signs of strain in standing up to the IMF pressures; though rather pathetically Sri Sachin Chaudhuri in his confrontation with the press tried to explain these away as mere pieces of wise counsel from a friendly club. New York Times however preferred the term “pressure” for the recent US approach to New Delhi.

Meanwhile, the World Bank had its own horse inside the New Delhi walls. The Reserve Bank Governor, Sri P.C. Bhattacharyya, the Government of India's Economic Adviser, Dr I.G. Patel (an old IMF hand) and the Prime Minister's Secretary, L.K. Jha—all three confirmed devaluationists—worked overtime to sell devaluation while its leading apostle, Sri B.K. Nehru, now emboldened by his success in tackling the Prime Minister to get on with Mr Johnson, pressed hard for it, so much so that a Finance Ministry official cracked in private that one wondered if B.K. had already joined the IMF, as he has been aspiring to do after his retirement as India's Ambassador.

At the Sunday morning Cabinet meeting, Sri Manubhai Shah's was the most emphatic opposition to devaluation; actually, the last annual report of his Ministry presented to the Budget session of Parliament had made the most convincing case against tampering with the value of rupee. (The Commerce Ministry circles are cut up with Sri Chaudhuri's public observation that its report did not reflect the Government viewpoint.) Others who are reported to have expressed their apprehension about the proposed measure were Sri Jagjivan Ram, Sri Sanjiva Reddy, Sri Chavan and Sri Nanda, with Sri S.K. Patil pointing to the risk of such a step being taken before the General Elections. Support for devaluation naturally came from the teen murti, Sri Asoka Mehta, Sri Subramaniam and Sri Sachin Chaudhuri (incidentally the three non-descripts in the Congress Party hierarchy), and heavily backed by Smt Gandhi herself. Since there has never been any voting in Cabinet deliberations, it was easy for Government spokesmen to give out—with a slight overstretching of the truth—that it was a “unanimous” decision.

On Sunday morning, the Finance Minister, just before the Cabinet meeting, mentioned the imminence of devaluation to the President. It is believed that in his personal capacity Dr Radhakrishnan expressed his concern about the wisdom of such a step, particularly with regard to its impact on the morale of the nation.

The same evening, Sri Kamaraj was having an informal dinner with some friends. Anxiety was writ large on the face of all of them; and although what the Congress President said was strictly off the record, most of New Delhi pressmen knew by then that he had already made it abundantly clear to the Prime Minister his very pronounced objection to the devaluation of the rupee.

The manner in which the Government took the decision to devalue the rupee has come in for adverse comments. Not to speak of the Congress Parliamentary Party Executive, even many of the senior Ministers were told about the impending proposal only at the eleventh hour: there was no prior consulation, no effort at arriving at a unified understanding inside the Cabinet, evaluating the pros and cons of such a serious step. The way Parliament was actively misled into the belief that there was no devaluation in the offing has been objected to not only by the Opposition leaders but by a number of noted Congress MPs. Leaving aside the Bombay AICC, even responsible members of the Congress Parliamentary Party Executive had not been sounded, not to speak of being formally consulted, on the need of such a move.

Sri Sachin Chaudhuri's plea that the Cabinet decision was the product of intense indigenous introspection on the part of the Government is thus far less seriously believed than the almost overwhelming impression that the measure had to be hustled through because of the SOS from India's representatives in Washington that the IMF would not move even to provide for stand-by credit unless and until devaluation was decided upon. The piper did not call the tune himself.

This is precisely the reason why practically all sections of New Delhi opinion are worried over the political impact of devaluation both at home and abroad. The fact that the Government has chosen to knuckle under the US pressure and has almost agreed to let the US strategy work out its own logic on the Indian economy, will be a very big drawback for it in terms of its standing in the country. The prestige it could command inside the country as an independent authority with a strong sense of self-respect refusing to give in to pressures from any quarter, has been badly undermind. Although the trend started under Shastri, he could rehabilitate his personal position as also that of the Government during the fighting with Pakistan. But now the walk down the slippery path, started with Smt Gandhi's talks in Washington, is likely to very severely affect her own standing as also that of her Government in the eyes of the people. It is this aspect of the question which has been troubling Sri Kamarj most, for the Congress President knows the disastrous consequences of a situation like this in terms of vote-catching in an election year.

New Delhi observers have been noting the significance of another aspect of the political development created by devaluation. The Opposition parties would be far better placed in the election battle with the inevitable rise in prices, which in today's context could no longer be ascribed to certain economic mysteries but to the plain fact that devaluation had to be brought about to curry favour with Washington. This is a point which not only the Left Opposition but even some conservative circles are bound to exploit as is clear from the first round of reactions.

Inside the Congress, the Left-wing critics, already consolidated in the struggle against the Foundation and the Fertiliser deal, are in a much more belligerent mood and with them have joined Sri Morarji Desai's supporters. They have the advantage of the fact that Sri Desai 's supporters. They have the advantage of the fact that Sri Desai has long been a staunch opponent of devaluation. A large section of Congressmen who were so long rather passive in pronouncing judgment of Smt Indira Gandhi's economic policies are likely to come forward in bitter opposition to the devaluation decision. Sri Babubhai Chinai is a case in point. For with all his support to the Government in combating Left-wing critics, Sri Chinai was emphatic in opposing devaluation at the Jaipur session of the Congress.

There is no gainsaying the fact that by this one single master-stroke of unwisdom, Smt Gandhi's team has split even its supporters in the business world, and the law of Indian politics has shown that when the business world gets split, political homogeneity of the Congress could hardly be maintained. It has no longer remained a case of the Left-versus-Right inside the organisation but of an overwhelming nationalist protest against a Government decision, inspired by a small coterie wedded to the American approach to economic policies.

An interesting reaction noticeable in the Capital is that devaluation has come as a natural corollary of ten years of economic policy pursued by the Government; in other words, the present crisis was the inevitable outcome of the grandiose physical planning pursued since the Second Plan-Frame was adopted under Nehru. While it is understandable that the unwavering critics of physical planning should take up such a position, the same criticism has today been coming from quarters that once backed Nehru but are now overwhelmed by the immediate impact of the economic crisis. A favourite argument now bieng sold by circles close to Sri Asoka Mehta and Sri Subramaniam has been that there was no other way-out except devaluation at this particular point of time, and that they should not be held responsible for the sins of the Nehru period. They glibly make out that the perspective of the 1956 Plan-Frame could be carried out only under the Draconian compulsions of the Chinese Way, thereby quietly ignoring that many of the contemplated measures for capturing “the commanding heights” of the economy were persistenly scuttled both from within and outside the Government.

This way the aridity of the Left, both inside and outside the Congress, in giving a total perspective in planning is today being exploited in much the same manner as in the early fifities the die-hards used to counter the very talk of planning by the forward-looking elements, as regimentation and hence negation of democracy.

The attack on the very concept of planning has been brought back unde the new slogan of “a marked-oriented free economy”. What is being trotted out is a totally phoney planning in which the direction of development is set by the guidelines from the World Bank, the centre of implacable opposition to Indian planning for the last ten years. In other words, thanks to the well-thought out strategy of the Asoka Mehta-Subramaniam axis, the strain in the economy has been sought to be overcome, not by firm measures against vested interests unleashing a nationwide mass crusade, but by handing over the initiative to Washington. The Rake's Progress, started with the massive PL 480 bounty under Shastri, has now reached new heights with rupee devaluation under Indira. The Prime Minister can rightly claim to be carrying forward the Shastri legacy, but not Nehru's.

In the eyes of friendly countries, Smt Gandhi's Government has not enhanced its prestige. In The USA, judging by the reactions in the Capital's American colony, one could say that this is regarded as a triumph of US intervention—both political and economic—in the affairs of India at the moment of her distress. Whatever else, such reactions do not represent any sense of respect for the powers-that-be in New Delhi. In the Afro-Asian diplomatic circles here, there is perceptible misgiving that our economy is now getting irretrievably moving to the whims of the Wall Street, and therefore thee will be far less assertion of independence against Washington's intervention in foreign affairs as well. The possibility of Smt Gandhi playing anything more than a low second-class role in world affairs is greately discounted.

Uneasiness is bound to come up in Moscow and Eastern European capitals at this clear shift in New Delhi's economic policies in favour of Washington. While the quantum of promised aid from the Communist world may not be sliced down, concern at the political weakness of the GOI as being unable to withstand Western pressure is likely to grow and the expectations about New Delhi playing a purposeful role in world affairs will to a large measure disappear. On the other hand, the Peking thesis that India has gone under the heels of the dollar might get more hearing than at any time in the past. Perhaps Smt Gandhi may be expecting to salvage a portion of the lost glory during her proposed visit to the USSR, and also by playing host to the non-aligned troika summit in the autumn.

In New Delhi's dealings with Pakistan, India's truncated political stature brought about by devaluation may prove to be a handicap. The extent of its capitulation to American pressure, now patent to all, will not be missed by Rawalpindi. If the Indira Government is prepared to listen to Washington's “advice” in the sphere of the country's internal economy, there is no reason why it could not be “advised” by the same super-authority with regard to Kashmir. One step leads to another: if George Woods could win his point on devaluation, why can't Dean Rusk win his on Kashmir? After all, Sri Asoka Mehta had his “meeting of minds” with both. If such calculations dictate President Ayub's policy-stand with regard to this country, New Delhi has to thank itself. The political implications of the capitulation on devaluation may prove to be far-reaching and one wonders whether the Prime Minister realised that in agreeing to devalue the rupee, she was not just grasping a solitary nettle—as one New Delhi correspondent picturesquely put it in his chivalrous defence of Smt Gandhi—but getting lost in a whole jungle of deadly thorns.

This ominous situation bodes ill not only for the Congress but for Smt Indira Gandhi as a political personality A senior Congressman with a sense of Social Democratic history was found on the day after devaluation to be drawing a parallel with the situation in Britain in mid-1931 when Ramsay MacDonald, facing an economic crisis, chose to split his party and went over to the Tories, to form the so-called “National” Government. Sri Rajagopalachari's encominums showered on Smt Gandhi coupled with his call for a national government almost gives a realistic touch to this historical parallel.

What she has really suffered is a devaluation of the political assets that she had inherited from her great father. Many in the Capital would be reluctant to concede that a political heirloom necessarily comes as a matter of personal right—just as statesmanship cannot always be an inherited virtue, as is writ large in New Delhi today, staggering under the humiliating blow of the Black Sunday, the blackest in independent India.

(‘New Delhi Skyline', Mainstream, June 11, 1966)

by Mayanglambam Ojit Kumar Singh

On June 5 every year since 1974, people from across the globe have been celebrating the World Environment Day (WED) by taking part in environmental action and becoming agents of change for positive impacts on the planet. The UN General assembly in 1972 designated June 5 as the World Environment Day (WED) marking the first day of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment. One of the very important resolutions adopted by the same assembly the same day led to the creation of the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). The WED was celebrated for the first time in 1974 with the slogan of “Only One Earth”. Since then the relevance of this day and themes and slogans of the WED have been on the rise and are made practicable.

This day serves as the “people's day” to do something so freely and independently as to take care of the Earth or become an agent of change. The theme for this year's WED is on the illegal trade in wildlife under the slogan “Go Wild for Life”.The Global host country for the WED 2016 is Angola where the official celebrations are taking place. Angola is today seeking to restore its elephant herds and bring peace and prosperity where environment becomes a part of the heart and minds of the people integrated with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Raising the voice against illegal trade in wildlife and supporting and joining the global fight against the illegal trade in wildlife are intended for a secure and more tolerant future. Zero tolerance towards the illegal trading of wildlife is today very much required for ensuring a tolerant future.

Illegal Trade in Wildlife and Biodiversity

Biodiversity, which consists of the species, genetic and ecosystem diversities, is the source of foods, medicines, shelters and innumerable services, is getting eroded due to horribly illegal and criminal means of trading and commodification of the wildlife and their products. Every single species in every possible part of the world is a magic well and consists of products of natural selection and adaptation. If conserved and asked proper questions every species has answers and solutions for every query and problem for us. Biodiversity loss today, unlike the past mega extinctions of the so-called Big Five, is driven mainly by human activities.

Recorded data indicates that wildlife crime endangers iconic species such as elephants, rhinos, tigers, gorillas and sea turtles. Declaration of the extinction of a subspecies of Javan rhino from Vietnam and the vanishing of the last western black rhinos from Cameroon in 2011, disappearance of the great apes from Gambia, Burkina Faso, Benin and Togo, and other countries are all due to the human activities of trading on these wild animals. Besides these, many lesser known species, which however play very important ecological roles (popularly known as keystone species), are also getting exterminated directly or indirectly due to wildlife crimes.

The current trend of the global illegal trade in wildlife for keeping them as pets is extremely unsustainable and is emptying our forests, rivers, skies, villages and mountains to supply a steady stream of romantic and exotic non-native pets to the ever hungry and not-well-aware global consumers. Can you believe that nearly 1.3 million African grey parrots were removed from the continent for the last 30 years for the international pet trade thus threatening the species today? Those places, where once the chirping birds enhanced the siginificance of those spots, are now filed with the dull silences. And the ways these species are brought from their native places to the adopted places and homes are beyond all descriptions of sorrows and pains such as drugging, chaining, starving, crowding and all possible means of tortures.

Illegal Trade in Wildlife and Economy

The illegal trade in wildlife is also causing alarming problems by undermining the economies and promoting organised crime. It is fuelling and feeding corruption and insecurity across the nations. By overexploiting the animals and plants in their natural habitats by means of overfishing, trapping and mutating the natural habitats, the wild lives being are rendered rarer and scarcer sending their commercial values uncontrollably soaring. Brain Horne of the Wildlife Conservation Society reports that certain species of Asian box turtle are now selling for as much as US $ 40,000 per hatchling. Such rampant activities cause loss and destruction of the habitats, loss of livelihood activities of the locals making them even poorer.

Desire for exotic animals, plants and their products are converting the poor residents and tribes in the wildlife habitats and biodiversity-rich countries into poachers armed by organised criminal syndicates. Many a time they outgun the security forces, loot villages and decimate animal populations. Their bloody haul is mostly transported by agents who bribe officials and undermine the security of national states.

Conclusion

The dimension of the illegal wild life trade is very deep and multi-faceted. And hence all possible means to control this crime is welcome. Stricter rules and regulations have to be formulated and implemented well. Understanding that environ-ment is important and at the same time it is fragile must be the guiding spirit of all the awareness programmes. Through the WED celebrations seas of people from different nations and groups have taken part in environmental action of great relevance. By grouping and channelising well the energy of each individual and nation, the WED really has the power to generate humongous positive impacts on the planet. Wildlife and their conservation must be treated as personal issues.

Burning of the 105 tonnes of ivory and 1.35 tonnes of rhino horn in Kenya last April was a timely and symbolic action to end the poaching crisis. Such actions shall signal to the buyer communities and the markets located near to and far from the associated criminal acts. Whoever we are and wherever we are let's “Go Wild for Life” to inherit a safer and a more tolerable world. Let's allow the wild life to move freely by enabling human transportation and our transports free of the products of wild-life. We must be serious about the wildlife trades and crimes associated with them.

Mayanglambam Ojit Kumar Singh is an Assistant Professor in Zoology, Ramjas College, University of Delhi. He is a Research Scholar of Human Ecology at Ambedkar University, Delhi. He can be contacted at e-mail: ojit102005@yahoo.co.in