TRIBUTE

by Sukharanjan Sen Gupta

Arundhati Ghosh of the Indian Foreign Service (1963 batch), who recently passed away in New Delhi, came into prominence in 1971, during the Bangladesh liberation war. On March 25, 1971, the Bengalis of the then East Pakistan rose in revolt against the colonial domination and exploitation by the Punjabis of West Pakistan and declared independence. Indepen-dent Bangladesh came into being. The Pakistani rulers unleashed a reign of terror on the unarmed Bengalis of East Bengal. They became the easy target of the Pakistan Army. Their property was looted and burnt, their womenfolk were raped and innocent men, women and children massacred by the Pakistani Army which came to be known as the ‘Khan sena'.

Tens of thousands of panicky Bengalis started pouring into the neighbouring Indian States of Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura to save their lives. Accommodating and feeding the Bangladesh evacuees became a major problem for the Government of India. Sealing the 2217 km long West Bengal-Bangladesh porous border was neither physically possible nor desirable from the humanitarian point of view.

Several lakh Bengali-speaking people crossed the border and took shelter in the villages of West Bengal. By May 1971, the Central Govern-ment opened an office in Writers' Buildings (which was the seat of the State administration) and posted two IFS officers there to deal with the developing situation. One of the two was Arundhati Roy. The other was A.K. Ray. Arundhati's job was to supervise the evacuee camps and deal with their manifold problems and liaise with the State Government. Arundhati made a mark in her job and became a specialist on the political crisis in Bangladesh.

In December 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi decided to send the Indian Army to help the freedom fighters or the Mukti Bahini of Bangladesh. Within a fortnight Bangladesh was liberated. Arundhati was associated with all the activities that ultimately ended in the defeat of the Pakistani Army. In the fitness of things, Arundhati was posted as a First Secretary in the Indian High Commission in Dhaka—a post she retained for almost three years.

A go-getter type by nature, she had no difficulty in mixing with and befriending the young workers of the Awami League and the two factions of the National Awami Party— Bhasani and Muzaffar. She would sit with them, engage them in adda for hours. She could soon come to the familiar relationship of tui with these youngsters. In the process, she not only made friends among all the major political parties, but, as a diplomat, could get a clear picture of their thinking, of the ideas they had about a host of contemporary problems and of what was going on in their respective parties. She proved more than equal to her sensitive task. The basis of her future rise in her diplomatic career was laid during those eventful days and years in Bangladesh. I still remember her as a bright and jovial young woman in her early thirties, quite uninhibited in her approach but always alert about her duties.

On a personal note I may add that she was the sister of Ruma Pal, a former judge of the Supreme Court, while her brother, Bhaskar Ghosh, was a former chairman of the Prasar Bharati. Her sudden passing away has given me a shock. My tributes to Arundhati.

Now in his mid-eighties, Sukharanjan Sen Gupta is a veteran journalist who had worked for newspapers like Ananda Bazar Patrika and Jugantar and reported widely on the Bangladesh liberation war.

TRIBUTE

by Vijay Kumar

Writing is a career of death in a sense; it signifies the absence of the author, and great writing is certainly a gateway to immortality. This is the single greatest and lasting solace for a writer. Mahasweta Devi is no more, but her writing will endure and her place is firmly secure in history.

What makes Mahasweta Devi different from other writers is that she combined her writing with activism anchored firmly in the most sublime dimension of humanism. In this sense, Mahasweta Devi was not only a great writer but also a committed activist and sanguine humanist.

The writing of Mahasweta Devi went much beyond what is described as magical realism. By espousing the cause of poor people like bonded labourers and tribals with indefatigable energy, almost till she breathed her last, she inaugurated the subaltern literature a la subaltern history pioneered by the Cambridge trio of Ranjit Guha, Shahid Amin and Gyan Pandey. In the process, Mahasweta Devi became the voice of the lowly, lonely and lost; dispossessed and disadvantaged and disenfranchised and defeated. In this way, Mahasweta Devi became for Bengali literature what Munshi Premchand and Charles Dickens were for Hindi and English respectively.

Just as the bucolic beauty of the countryside of England and Scotland provided the manna for romantics like Keats, Shelly and even Hardy and the kaleidoscopic Himalayan view of Kausani for Sumitranandan Pant for penning their immortal poems, the life and existence of poor people; their sorrows, sufferings and struggles and trials, tribulations and tragedies became afflatus for both the writing and activism of Mahasweta Devi.

Despite the neglect and exploitation of the downtrodden in general, and the adivasi in particular, Mahasweta Devi remained an inveterate idealist and optimist and never lost her faith in ethical humanism.

After the espousal of the cause of tribals by their great leader Jaipal Singh in the Constituent Assembly during the framing of the Constitution, it was Mahasweta Devi who lent her entire power behind their welfare. Dr B.R. Ambedkar, as would be evident from the Constituent Assembly debates, confined himself to the suffering of Scheduled Castes alone and it was left to Jaipal Singh to argue for the Scheduled Tribes. Mahasweta Devi, throughout her life, fought for the tribals when their causes did not constitute a vote-bank like the Scheduled Castes. Precisely, for this reason, all political parties took up the issue of Scheduled Castes but did not raise the issue of Scheduled Tribes. The real legacy of Mahasweta Devi lies in fighting for the cause of tribal peoples even when it was neither fashionable nor politically productive to do so for the political parties.

Dubbing Mahasweta Devi as a Left liberal would not do justice to her colossal persona. She was much beyond ideology. She was too vast to be cabined and cribbed by any ideology. She realised that no ideology could capture the entire complexity of human lives. The very fact that her loud opposition to acquisition of lands for Tata Motors in Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal became the rallying point for opponents of the erstwhile CPM Government in West Bengal would show that she was not the one who was a prisoner of any ideology.

She was humanist rather than an ideologue, and thus could be compared with humanists like Ruskin, Emerson and Tolstoy. For Mahasweta Devi, her writing symbolised the relentless human struggle and moral dilemma. Like Premchand, she exposed the hypocritical morality of the society. In her Draupadi, she poignantly brought to the fore that miracle happened only in epics in the form of intervention by Lord Krishna to save the dignity of the queen, but in day-to-day quotidian life, miracles did not happen, and when women got disrobed, there was no saviour.

Mahasweta Devi was an optimist to the core. Despite widespread injustice around the poor, she remained hopeful and the plight and predicament of these people became the source for her literary creativity and craftpersonship. Mahasweta Devi's oeuvre is not confined to literature but provides intellectual resources for the social scientist and both the practitioner and theorist of human rights; and copious references to her works by the most authoritative human rights scholar, Prof Upendra Baxi, speak for it. On July 28, 2016 only the physical body of Mahasweta Devi left for astral world, but her spirit of humanism would become the folklore for inspiration for generations to come.

The author is an advocate of the Supreme Court.

The following is a write-up prepared by the New Socialist Initiative on Cow Vigilantism. It has been sent by Subhash Gatade who is actively involved in the NSI.

Cow vigilantism, which has received tremen-dous boost since the ascendance of the BJP at the Centre, got its first fitting reply in Gujarat recently. The way in which a self-proclaimed Gau Rakshak Dal—owing allegiance to the Shiv Sena—attacked in Una (July 11, 2016) a group of Dalits who were skinning a dead cow, publicly flogged them, led them to the police station charging them with cow slaughter, and even circulated a video of the whole incident on social media to spread further terror, has caused tremendous uproar.

Thousands and thousands of Dalits have come out on the streets in different parts of the State, gheraoed government offices, damaged govern-ment property, enforced Statewide bandh and tried to bring the government to its knees, demanding severe punishment to the guilty and strict action against the police and government officials who failed to act upon their complaint when they were being publicly brutalised.

The wave of protests has still not ebbed. The anger still simmers. Protest rallies still continue.

There have been thirty incidents of suicide attempts by Dalit youth protesting the Una incident within a span of just one week. People across the political spectrum are appealing to the angry youth not to resort to this extreme step and continue with the peaceful struggle. Undoubtedly, the Una incident and the consequent Dalit assertion is proving to be a great turning-point in the history of the Dalit movement as Dalits have ultimately realised that politics of Hindutva is no friend of the Dalits and in fact, it is geared towards strengthening and further consolidating the purity and pollution-based caste system. The growing disenchantment of Dalits with the politics of Hindutva was very much evident when their protests reached Narendra Modi's home town of Vadnagar itself where thousands of Dalits participated in a militant demonstration blaming the Prime Minister himself and BJP for the brutal thrashing of Dalits. Videos of the protest showed many Dalit people shouting, “Hai re Modi...hai-hai re Modi”—modification of a slogan used by women during Hindu funeral processions. (http://www.-hindustantimes.com/india-news/dalits-protest-una-thrashing-in-modi-s-hometown-blame-bjp-and-hindutva/story-PcDEifwFGlHn20fLwuv TOJ.html) The outrage has rekindled memories of the militant Dalit assertion in the early eighties led by the earlier generation of young Dalits wherein they had fought to defend the policy of reservation and also dared to take on the Hindutva formations head-on.

It has also been a great learning experience for ordinary Dalits who comprise around eight per cent of the population in the State and who were largely co-opted by the Hindutva formations in their project of hate and exclusion. One unique form of struggle adopted by the protesters this time has rattled the ruling elite tremendously and has the potential of nationwide resonance. It involved throwing of carcasses of dead cows at government offices, outside the houses of promi-nent politicians, removal of which became a strenuous affair even for the establishment. A large section among them have boycotted work of collecting dead bovines and have even declared that henceforth they are ready to die of hunger but would not take up the occupation again. In fact, by this simple act the Dalits have rather issued a warning to the Manuvadi/Brahminical forces that the day they resolve to leave all those ‘dirty' professions. for which they are stigma-tised, a catastrophe-like situation awaits the former. One of the activists, who ‘pioneered' this unique form, told a correspondent that they have stopped doing it to teach them a lesson—“The gaurakshaks beat us because they think the cow is their mother. Well, then, they should take care of her and pick up her carcass when she dies.”

(http://scroll.in/article/812329/your-mother-you-take-care-of-it-meet-the-dalits-behind-gujarats-stirring-cow-carcass-protests)

Fact-finding reports, which have appeared in sections of the media, tell how the police did not stop the perpetrators on their way and also took hours to lodge a simple FIR and arrest the criminals. There are even unconfirmed reports that local police had tipped the Gau Rakshak Dal about the skinning of the dead cow. The complicity and connivance of the local police is evident also in the fact that despite enough proof available with it in the form of the video of the incident about involvement of more than thirty people in the thrashing incident, it has kept the number of arrests limited to eight only and is trying to portray it as a one-off incident.

The unfolding Dalit outrage, which found the State Government in deep slumber, has brought to the fore many other similar recent incidents where Dalits had come under attack at the hands of Gau Rakshaks and the silence maintained by the police which had even refused to entertain complaints lodged by the victims. It has also given vent to the pent-up anger of the Dalits against daily humiliations and discriminations faced by them, widespread existence of exclusion and untouchability in social life, denial of basic human rights and manifold spurt in atrocities in the State in recent times and failure of the powers that be to take proactive measures to curb the growing menace.

The criminal acts by the Gau Rakshaks and the impunity with which they are ready to take law into their hands—which has received nationwide attention—has also been an occasion for the senior members of the bureaucracy to speak out about the menace they have become all over the State. Chief Secretary of the State G.R. Gloria is reported to have told a national daily:

‘These vigilantes are self-proclaimed gau rakshaks but in actual fact they are hooligans.' According to him, there are as many as 200 cow vigilante groups in Gujarat who have ‘become a law and order problem because of their aggression and the way they take law into their hands' and the government is going to take strong action against them. The Chief Secretary was even categorical in admitting that lower level police personnel are hand in glove with these vigilantes. (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/vigilantes-are-the-new-security-threat/article8882354.ece)

It is worth emphasising that not long ago even the Punjab-Haryana High Court, while ordering a CBI probe into the death of Mustain, a transporter, at the hands of members of another ‘Gau Raksha Dal' in Kurukshetra, Haryana (March 2016), had underlined the growing criminalisation of the cow protectors who work with impunity. It said that the so-called cow vigilante groups, constituted with the backing of political bosses and senior functionaries governing the State, including police,

..[a]re bent upon circumventing law and fleecing poor persons ferrying their animals, be it for any personal domestic use or otherwise... Apparently even the senior functionaries of the police are hand-in-glove with such vigilante groups. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Cow-vigilante-groups-bent-on-circumventing-law-HC/articleshow/52197819.cms)

Dalit anger witnessed on the streets of Gujarat —variously described as Dalit rebellion by a section of the commentators—has had a spiralling effect in other parts of the country as well, and has also helped galvanise the entire parliamentary Opposition camp which has even demanded that there should be immediate ban on all such Gau Rakshak Dals and all such miscreants who operate under its name and engage in mayhem. Members of Parliament on the floor of the House have denounced all these vigilante groups who are targeting Muslims as well as Dalits, brutalising them in very many ways and on occasions lynching them and explained how the policies and programmes of the powers that be has created a conducive atmosphere for their proliferation and demanded a ban on them.

The manner in which cow is being moved to the centre-stage of politics and where a mere rumour that it is being slaughtered somewhere gives miscreants a licence to take law into their own hands with due connivance of the police and administration, is being compared with neigh-bouring Pakistan where the ‘crime of blasphemy' serves a similar purpose. Pakistan has lost many precious lives and many more are rotting in jail due to its refusal to check religious fanatics for whom the blasphemy laws have become a tool to intimidate innocents. Concerns are being raised whether India would similarly go the ‘Pakistan' way—unable to stop erosion of secular principles in the polity and facilitating further legitimacy to faith in social-political lives.

The open letter by Laloo Prasad Yadav to PM Modi in the aftermath of the Una incident captures the prevalent mood in the country; therein he had described how actions by cow vigilante groups—which are receiving state patronage—have created an ambience of terror and intimidation among farmers, tribals, Dalits and all those people who are engaged in cattle trading. In his open letter he has directly blamed the ‘RSS as well as PM Modi' being responsible for this state of affairs. (http://hindi.catchnews.com/india/lalu-yadav-controversial-remark-on-una-incident-1469268538.html)

While the BJP and RSS, having lost the battle of perceptions, are busy counting their losses in the aftermath of the Una incident, and assessing its electoral fallout, the misogynistic remarks by a senior leader of the BJP targeting Ms Mayawati, leader of the BSP and who has been Chief Minister of UP, has added further fuel to the fire. It is a different matter that all their ‘regrets' about these remarks expressed on the floor of the House have proved to be an eyewash and at the ground level they are trying to be on the offensive again utilising similar condemnable remarks allegedly made by fellow politicans of the BSP.

Coming close on the heels of demolition of the Ambedkar Bhavan in neighbouring Maharashtra by a BJP-led government—a decision which it regrets now because of the spurt in voices of opposition to this act—and the nationwide mass movement which emerged after the ‘institutional murder' of scholar RohithVemula of Hyderabad Central University, and the alleged role of a few Central Ministers in letting it happen and a series of anti-Dalit actions and controversial statements by its top leaders targeting the community, or their attempts to discontinue the policy of affirmative action for Dalits and Adivasis, the unfolding Dalit anger has also seriously dented their well-planned strategy of consolidating their base among the Dalits at the all-India level. Undoubtedly Dalit outrage has not only put the saffron dispensation at the State as well as Centre on the defensive and has put paid to their well-calibrated strategy of appropriating Ambedkar by projecting him as a ‘Hindu Social Reformer'.

Whatever might be their claims vis-a-vis Hindu Unity, this incident—which was no exception and a part of an unfolding pattern of denying basic human rights to Dalits, intimidating them and using them as stormtroopers for their anti-minority actions—has laid bare the essentially Manuvadi/Brahminical core of their ideology based on exclusion and hate. In fact their worldview is basically antithetical to any vision of Dalit empowerment/emancipation or for that matter inclusive development. And it has further demonstrated that their feverish attempts notwithstanding to aggravate tensions between the Dalits and Muslims at the grassroot level on any flimsy pretext, in their worldview of Hindu Rashtra both of them are equally dispensable. The unprecedented fury shown by the Dalit masses in a State which has been ruled by the Hindutva forces for more than 15 years, and was projected by them as a unique ‘Gujarat Model' of development prior to the elections to Parliament in 2014, has shaken the latter to the core and left them scrambling for solutions. They are slowly realising that the assertion of the Dalit masses has the potential of disrupting all their political calculations in the coming elections to different State Assemblies—Punjab, UP and Gujarat itself—which are scheduled to be held in 2017.

Another ignoble aspect of the present phase of ‘Dalit Uprising' is the role of the media which (barring exceptions) seems to have become a handmaiden of Hindutva's exclusion-centred politics. A cursory perusal of the coverage of the corporate funded and controlled media demonstrates that it has refused to report Dalit mobilisations on a massive scale that have consistently challenged and questioned Hindutva politics. A representative example of their Varna-dominated, anti-Dalit worldview can be had from the way they completely under-reported the massive gathering in Mumbai recently where more than 1.5 lakh people had gathered to protest the demolition of Ambedkar Bhavan by the BJP-Shiv Sena regime. Forget being watchdogs of democracy as it is being projected elsewhere, forget its role of being objective in reporting events and analysis, it seems much too happy in its metamorphosis of being the spokesperson of the powers that be—a situation much worse than what existed during be Emergency when ‘it was asked to bend and decided to crawl'.

It needs to be underlined here that the depre-dations of the cow vigilante groups are not limited to Dalits alone, in fact, Muslims have been their chief targets—as a cursory perusal of events since the last two years makes it obvious. The latest in the series happened to be from Gurgaon where two Muslim transporters were attacked by a Gau Rakshak group and were fed with cow dung laced with urine since they were found to be carrying cattle. A video of the said incident had also gone viral. A leader of the group even claimed on camera that they have done it to ‘purify' the Muslims of their sins. (http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-gau-raksha-dal-force-fed-beef-smugglers-cow-dung-and-make-them-drink-cow-urine-2229190) And since Haryana happens to be a BJP-ruled State—which is also contemplating forming a ‘Cow Protection Force' much on the lines of Home Guards and has also appointed a special officer of the IAS rank to curb ‘cow smuggling', there was no action against the perpetrators.

It was only last year that Palwal in Haryana witnessed a communal riot-like situation. The immediate trigger for the situation was the cow vigilantes themselves who had attacked a truck carrying meat and had spread the rumour that it was carrying beef. Police reached there within no time and instead of taking action against the perpetrators charged the driver and owner of the truck with criminal conspiracy and sent them to jail. The very next day the government announced that all cases filed earlier against ‘cow protectors' would be withdrawn immediately making it obvious how it would have no qualms if similar actions occur in future.

At the end of December last year, village Banokhedi, district Karnal (Haryana) witnessed indiscriminate firing by a cow vigilante group on a canter (mini-truck) which was carrying people—most of them belonging to the minority community—who were travelling from Punjab to UP for the coming Panchayat elections. (Refer: Lok Lahar, December 14, 2015) It led to the death of one youth and serious injuries to several others. Cow vigilantes attacked the truck in the middle of the night and what was more worrisome, there were a few policemen also with them. Later five people were arrested, among them were two policemen as well.

The menace of cow vigilante groups is not limited to one particular area or State, it has spread all over the country. A few months back cow vigilantes had lynched two youths belonging to the minority community (one of them a minor) near Latehar, Jharkhand and left them hanging on a tree, as they were also found carrying cattle and the cow protectors wanted to ‘teach them a lesson'. Sarahan village, District Nahan (Himachal Pradesh) was witness to an attack on a group of minority youth by cow vigilantes (October 2015) which led to the death of one them and four others were seriously wounded. Cow vigilantes alleged that the youth were engaged in cow smuggling. Last year a similar group attacked a Kashmir-bound truck with a petrol bomb which led to the death of a young man, Zahid (19 years), because of serious burn injuries. It was only a few months back that Mehbooba Mufti, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, wrote to the Chief Minister of Punjab how people from Kashmir, who are meat exporters and traders, are being regularly brutalised in the State by self-proclaimed Gau Bhakts. (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/Cow-vigilante-groups-bent-on-circumventing-law-HC/articleshow/52197819.cms)



It is futile to imagine that the BJP—an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—would rein in cow vigilantes, just because Dalits are feeling outraged over some incidents involving them or sections of the judiciary or even the executive are appalled at their transgressing of constitutional values and principles or the peace and justice-loving people of the country are reminding the pracharak-turned-PM that he had declared in the august House of Parliament that for him ‘Constitution is the most sacred book' now.

We should never forget that the Sangh Parivar operates through its vast network of what are known as anushangik (affiliated) organisations— with a strict division of labour between them— to further the agenda of Hindu Rashtra. In fact, it would leave no stone unturned to deflect attention of the people from its essentially Varna mindset which refuses to even acknowledge that assertion of Dalits has its basis in the age-old hierarchy-based system. They would be ready to go to any extent to silence all such voices which are questioning them, challenging them and are in a position to put roadblocks on their ‘path to victory'. An inkling of what is in store for all such voices can be had from the unprovoked attack on a public meeting protesting Dalit atrocities in Gujarat organised by a Dalit group in the heart of the Capital itself by an organisation which is alleged to be close to the Hindutva brigade. (http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/protesters-clash-at-jantar-mantar/; https://tahlkanews.com/singh-sena-attack-on-dalit-at-jantar-mantar/97975)

The ongoing attacks on Dalits in the ‘model State of Gujarat' or an overall spurt in atrocities against Dalits presents before all those Dalit leaders who had joined the Modi bandwagon before his ascent to power and in a way helped sanitise his controversial role in the Gujarat carnage (2002) when he happened to be the Chief Minister, a pertinent question. Whether the likes of Athavales, Udit Rajs and Paswans would still cling to the apron-strings of power, further facilitating white-washing of this essentially anti-Dalit and anti-oppressed regime or would listen to the clarion call given by the Dalits on the streets of Gujarat that without fighting the RSS and Modi-led BJP, Dalit emancipation cannot even be imagined.

The unfolding Dalit outrage also poses an important question before the Dalit movement itself. Whether the anger witnessed would just peter out or would be able to reinvigorate the radical agenda of Ambedkarite politics centring on caste annihilation and fighting capitalism and would present a systemic challenge before the Manuvadi-Hindutva forces forging alliances with like-minded forces. Parties like the BSP have a lot many things to answer on this issue.

No doubt, the unfolding cow vigilantism and continued silence maintained by the net-savvy PM over attacks on Dalits and minorities has further exposed the real agenda of this government. Analysts are predicting that the ruling dispensation will have to pay heavily because of its essentially anti-Dalit worldview in the coming elections to the State Assemblies. What is still unclear is how all such forces, formations who are opposed to the agenda of Hindutva and are keen to defend secularism in the country and further democracy at the grassroots level, are strategising so that the exclusivist agenda of Hindutva is delivered a crushing defeat not only at the electoral level but at the social level also and what role a reinvigorated Left is ready to play in the unfolding situation. It remains to be seen whether there would be parallel realignment of various social-political forces at the ground level comprehending the menace the very politics of Hindutva presents before the country.

The present moment in the country's history is pregnant with tremendous possibilities and demands a creative, energetic and strategic intervention from the revolutionary Left.

One is reminded of the historic slogan raised during anti-fascist struggles in the thirties which declared that ‘Fasicsm Shall Not Pass'. It was a time when a united front of communists, anar-chists, socialists and republicans had come up and were fighting shoulder to shoulder; they were also joined in by non-party people from town and country, because everyone had realised what a victory for fascism would mean to Spain. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/ibarruri/1936/08/23.htm)

Perhaps there is a need to learn from all such experiences and forge the broadest possible unity to confront its 21st century avatar in this part of Asia and declare from rooftops: ‘Communal Fascism Will Not Pass!'

by Bhartendu Kumar Singh

Great powers have great strengths! Yet, with almost 70 per cent import of its total weapons' requirement, India is the world's largest arms importer since the last few years. This absolute dependency mocks India's profile as a rising great power, in particular, its military aspect. India remains a laggard and an inconsequential player in the international arms market, being placed at 26 in the list of arms exporting countries. Therefore, the recent induction of two Light Combat Aircrafts (LCAs), nicknamed as Tejas, into the Indian Air Force marks a landmark where the country has not only an ‘almost' made in India fighter jets but also has something that can boost India's defence exports and fuel its quest for military power.

Lack of timely military innovation and production has been one of the reasons why India is not considered as a military power yet. The LCA project itself took three decades from concept to completion. It also suffered due to the preference accorded from time to time to imported jets. This dependency prohibited the LCA project to reach the logical milestone within a reasonable project development cycle (PDC). The LCA is also reflective of India's failure to build on past technological advances and skills. After all, India did have reasonable technological build-up in aircraft technology in the mid-sixties that it failed to capitalise on or proliferate to the civilian sector. Nevertheless, the formal commissioning of the LCA is commendable since it puts the country into a select group of countries that can boast of modern fighter jets and reduces India's security dilemma against China and Pakistan by enhancing the air deterrence through a combination of fighter jets and missile system.

It is, however, the LCA's positioning of India into the international relations system that is more important. First, the LCA could emerge as one of the major components defining India's incremental recognition as a military power. Despite the world's third largest Army and having a huge arsenal including nuclear weapons and delivery system, India is yet to be counted as one of the paramount military powers capable of competing in the increasingly complex military competition in the Asia-Pacific region and induce a sense of security to small and middle countries around it. It is yet to wield that military clout which could change the military balance of power in the region. Second, it also offers India as a potential tool for defence diplomacy. It is worth noting that despite engaging many countries into a series of military-diplomatic activities in the last two years and raising defence diplomacy to a new level, India has little in military hardware to win friends except for occasional gift or sale of helicopters or small surveillance ships, like the one off sale of an offshore patrol ship to Mauritius recently. China is selling military hardware and weapons to Afro-Asian countries in a big way! The LCA offers an opportunity for India to compete with China and carve out its own market. Third, if international relations are a game of perceptions and image-building, the LCA provides a psychological advantage to India by positioning it with strength in the anarchical set-up. It may take years before India actually starts shipping LCAs to client states but it has already emerged as a power-projection tool for the country. After all, it is the export of high-end military hardware that has sustained the facade of power for hitherto declining great powers like Britain and France!

A major criticism of the LCA is that it is not completely indigenous and has many com-ponents imported from abroad. Yet, the project is reflective of the competence and confidence of the scientific community in India towards innovation which is the sin qua non for any country's emergence as a great power. The new emphasis on the ‘Make in India' campaign and policy-reforms on defence production and FDI in defence have collectively engendered a momentum where there is space for LCA to be cent per cent Indian. The good thing about the LCA is that it belongs to the fourth generation plus and, therefore, is sustainable for at least two decades catering to the requirements of not only the domestic market but also many developing countries interested in a technology-relevant and cost-effective fighter jet!

While the Indian skies welcome a fighter aircraft designed, developed and manufactured in India, there is little time to bask in the glory of the LCA. Instead, the focus should be to build on the technological base and infrastructure available to move on to fifth and sixth generation fighter aircrafts and attempt a gradual shift to civilian use of military technology. India needs to study how China has made a turnaround in weapons production and how even middle powers like Germany, Sweden, Italy etc. and small powers like Israel and Switzerland have made a name for themselves in high-end defence technology and weapons production. Probably, there lies the secret of India's wider recognition as a military power.

Dr Bhartendu Kumar Singh, IDAS, is Additional Controller of Finance and Accounts, Accounts Office, Gun Carriage Factory, Jabalpur. He is in the Defence Accounts Service. But the views he has expressed in the article are strictly personal.

BOOK REVIEW

by Bharti Chhibber

Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India by Sanjay Ruparelia; New Delhi: Oxford University Press; 2015; pp. 480; Rs 995.

Several political parties cooperate in a coalition government in Cabinet formation minimising the dominance of any one party in a parliamentary form of governance. The coalition process is generally adopted in cases of hung Parliament when no single political party has achieved majority in Parliament. Likewise a political coalition is a pre- or post-poll alliance between different political parties to collaborate on the common political agenda either for contesting an election and/or for the formation of the government after the elections.

In India at the Centre, the first-ever coalition government, which was an amalgamation of four parties, was formed under the Prime Ministership of Morarji Desai after the Emergency and sixth general elections from 1977 to 1979. The second coalition government, comprising a seven-party alliance, externally supported by the Left Front and BJP, was that of the National Front from 1989 to 1990 which came to power after the ninth general elections. Likewise the fractured result of the eleventh general elections resulted in the formation of the third coalition government, a minority government of fifteen-party alliance called the United Front from 1996 to 1998. All these could not last a full parliamentary term. These three experiments with coalition politics form the backdrop of the book under review.

Sanjay Ruparelia's Divided We Govern: Coalition Politics in Modern India examines the rise and fall of the parliamentary Left in the Indian democratic set-up and politics of the coalition form of governance in modern India. It further investigates the role of the ‘third force' in the Indian political scene. The author has used many primary sources, including what he has called ‘confidential testimonies' of key political actors, to highlight the politics of three coalition governments in modern India—the Janata Party, National Front and the United Front.

The author highlights the flaws in the earlier studies on coalition politics which have failed to explain how multi-party governments actually function. He argues that ‘the pursuit of power in a highly regionalised federal parliamentary democracy such as India creates incentives to forge national coalition governments: yet para-doxically decreases their chances of survival. Ultimately the failure of socialists and communists to judge their real historical possibilities at key junctures led to the decline of the broader Indian Left.' The Left Front governments' loss of power in Kerala and West Bengal in State Assembly elections followed by the dismissive performance in the sixteenth general elections in 2014 inflicted a huge defeat on the Left. A rejuvenated BJP attacked steep economic downfall, political corruption and leadership vacuum that was part of the second UPA rule. With a remarkable electoral victory in 2014 the BJP became first party to win a parliamentary majority since 1984.

The author tries to answer some critical questions surrounding the Indian political Left including ‘what explains the rise of socialists, communists and regional parties since the late 1970s?', ‘why have they faced repeated difficulties in the construction of a stable third front?', ‘what explains the politics, policies and performance of coalition governments?' The study of coalition in India has gone through two phases. First, examination of coalition in the 1960s and 1970s in States and the second phase of comparative perspective explained through multi-party governments since the late 1970s. The author sees coalition politics through comparative lens without neglecting historical particularities.

The author finds a lacuna in the present scholar-ship on Indian coalition politics which emphasises on competing party interests and formal institutional arrangements to explain the formation and demise of coalition alliances. He stresses that these neglect internal party disputes over whether to share power, with whom to share? and to what extent? which caused real estrangement. Ruparelia argues that ‘what prevented the leaders of the third force from exercising good political judgment, especially those on the broader Indian Left was their tendency to conceptualise power in fixed indivisible and zero-sum terms'.

Divided into three parts with broad themes ‘The Genesis of the Third Force', ‘The Maturing of the Third Force', ‘The Fall of the Third Force', the book has twelve chapters in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. The book is supplemented by maps such as on Electoral Performance of Partisan Blocs 1951-1977; Seat and Vote-Share of Parties after Sixth General Elections, 1977, Ninth General Elections 1989, and Eleventh General Elections 1996; Effective Number of Parties in Parliament 1980-2009; Decline of National Party Vote- and Seat-Share 1980-2009.

The book aims to provide an in-depth analyses of rise and decline of the ‘third force' since the 1970s. Part one explains the genesis of the third force through political speeches, party manifestos, media reports, electoral survey data and government documents.

Chapter one interrogates the prevailing notion of coalition politics in India through comparative theoretical literature. It highlights how party leaders and complex interaction result in unstable multi-party governments. Ruparelia opines that coalition leaders must work out strategies, plans of power-sharing based on consultation, negotiation and compromise. Chapter two traces the roots of the broader Indian Left from 1934-1977. Its origin lay in the anti-colonial struggle during the 1930s. The author further discusses why communists and socialists failed to unite against the Congress. Chapter three examines the formation, performance and demise of the Janata Party. According to the author, the Janata Party augmented parliamentary democracy through constitutional reforms, worked on Centre-State relationship and tried to have better relationship with neighbours. However, clashing political ambitions resulted in its fall. Chapter four investigates the rise of the regional parties in States during the 1980s. The author further highlights how regional parties are the main actors of coalition politics. Despite the 1984 victory of the Congress, reintegrated communist Left and regional parties gave electoral competition to the Congress. Political corruption and economic mismanagement ultimately resulted in its downfall. Chapter five documents the formation, working and demise of the National Front. Rival aspirations over Prime Ministership threatened the coalition.

Part two analyses the rise, performance and fall of the United Front in the next five chapters. Chapter seven traces the formation of the United Front in May 1966. The decision of the CPI-M to reject Prime Ministership highlighted competing interests and strategies. Chapter eight analyses H.D. Deve Gowda's rule. The author points out in Chapter nine that this coalition used national power to serve its interest by imposing President's Rule against rivals in Gujarat and UP exposing its claim to be different from the Congress and BJP. Chapter twelve highlights disintegration of the third force from 1998 to 2012. Managing stable national coalition governments in India with multiple regional influences that are ideologically different is a challenge in itself. The book ends with a contemplation on the future of social democratic politics in India in the coming years.

Some interesting photographs taken from The Indian Express archives add to the volume like that of Rammanohar Lohia; Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jayaprakash Narayan (who persuaded the BJS to join the Janata Party in January 1977); Bharatiya Lok Dal leader Charan Singh and Jagjivan Ram who left the Congress after the Emergency; the three principal leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the 1990s: its General Secretary, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, West Bengal Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu and Chief Minister of Kerala, E.M.S. Namboodiripad; and a photograph taken at the time of formation of the United Front in May 1996 with P. Chidambaram, N. Chandrababu Naidu, M Karunanidhi, Biraj Sarma, G.K. Moopanar and H.D. Deve Gowda. The book is further supplemented by a very useful glossary in the beginning and bibliography and index at the end.

The book is an interesting addition to the study of coalition politics in India. Divided We Govern presents a detailed study of achievements and failures of the Janata, National Front and United Front Governments. It will appeal to politicians, scholars and students keen to know more about Indian democracy and governance and politics of coalition formation in modern India.

Dr Bharti Chhibber teaches Political Science in the University of Delhi.

by Arun Srivastava

The July 11 incident of brutally thrashing Dalits in Una in Gujarat has been different from the earlier atrocities perpetrated against them. This was for the first time the cow vigilantes forced a Muslim boy to thrash the Dalits. Undoubtedly it was aimed at sending the message that even Muslims do not support and sympathise with the Dalits and are anti-beef. Generally the Muslims are supposed to share the economic miseries of the Dalits and the political parties usually try to address the concerns of the Dalits and Muslims together.

This gory incident also underlined a radical change in the way and content of the protest by the Dalits. Instead of resorting to direct action against the upper-caste Hindu elements, they took to bandh and committing suicide. For the first time in Gujarat, as many as 20 young Dalits attempted suicide to express their anger and get justice. The attack was in fact in retaliation to the Dalits' refusal to follow the neo-Brahminical nationalist cultural practices conceived by the Hindutva champions.

Protecting the cow has been the oldest agenda of the RSS but in recent years the Sangh leaders have added a new dimension to their movement. Earlier they used to agitate for protecting the cow. But now they are using the movement to terrorise Muslims and Dalits. In case of Dalits it is more pronounced; they conspire to coerce them to join the Hindu fold and accept the Brahminical way of social life.

An analysis of the violence against Dalits would unravel a well-planned design, a pattern. These incidents are enacted to warn the Dalits about their status in the caste-based social structure, and ensure that they remain there. These atrocities are committed to send a clear and loud message that Dalits have to live a life of indignity, humiliation and exclusion from the mainstream of society. Unless they embrace the Brahminical philosophy and norms they will have to continue to perform the caste-based services ‘so essential for society' and remain at the bottom-rung without access to higher education and entrepreneurship.

It is ironical that the so-called liberal middle class society or the ‘dominant civil society' never take the atrocities against the Dalits seriously. For them it is merely a law and order problem without having a concrete socio-economic contour. The civil society never considers it necessary to intervene when Dalits are murdered, paraded naked and raped. The administration, policy-makers and police system support the system with impunity.

The CPI-M Polit-Bureau member Brinda Karat was narrating a half-truth when she said that the public thrashing of Dalits in Gujarat had Prime Minister Narendra Modi's “support to criminal activities” of the cow protection committees. True enough, this was more than a criminal activity; it was in the chain of the organised violence by the Hindutva forces. The manner in which the cow protection vigilante groups across India have been targeting the minorities and Dalits, was enough for Modi to tighten the screw and show these elements their right place. But instead of taking action or putting a break on their activities, he has been providing them with his maun swikriti (silent approval).

Interestingly, just a day ahead of conceding “there is hooliganism going on in the name of self-proclaimed gau raksha samitis” and “we need to be more vigilant”, the Gujarat Chief Secretary, G.R. Aloria, said that the men who flogged a Dalit family in Una videotaped the July 11 incident simply “for fun”. According to him, the victim belonged to the Shiv Sena, a constituent of the saffron brigade. Aloria's statement makes it explicit that it was not a simple crime but more than that.

Modi has been performing true to the script handed over by the RSS. While the Sangh and Modi have been have been trying to usurp the legacy of Babasaheb Ambedkar, they have unleashed the cow protection forces to perpe-trate torture and violence on the Dalits and minorities. Their strategy has been to isolate Ambedkar. Look at Modi's statement: “We insult Babsaheb Ambedkar by limiting him to his work for Dalits. But he worked for all oppressed people. We see Ambedkar the same way the world sees Martin Luther King.” Apparently it may appear to be a generous tribute to the great person, but in the real sense this is a calculated move of Modi to disconnect Ambedkar from Dalit aspirations.

Modi has been feeding distorted information about Ambedkar and his contribution to empower the Dalits: “If I limit Ambedkar's contribution to Dalits, what will happen to 50 per cent of the population in India?” Modi also said that Ambedkar never had any bitterness towards some sections of the society for the injustice he had to face. “It is natural to seek revenge for any wrongdoing. But Ambedkar never had any bitterness in his words for the injustice against him,” he said. Modi's bhakti is understandable, but Ambedkar disliked bhakts, particularly in political life. At a meeting in Bombay in March 1933, Ambedkar was annoyed that superlatives were used for him. He reprimanded the organisers saying: “These ideas of hero worship will bring ruin on you if you don't nip them in the bud.”

Modi also said that Ambedkar worked for social unity and equality of the country the same way Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel worked for the political unity of India. “Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, through his political wisdom, created a united Bharat Mata... Ambedkar, through constitutional means, worked for social equality and unity in the country,” he said. It is purely an unethical attempt of Modi to equate Ambedkar with Patel. Look at this statement: “Babasaheb was the masiha (messiah) of all the labourers in the country. If there is a central foundation for labour laws in India, that foundation is because of Ambedkar.”

Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism was a choice made for a life of dignity, compassion and justice. Within the Hindu social order, he argued, there was no scope for mutual recognition or reciprocity between communities. Ambedkar noted that the Hindu has no public, and that his public was caste: in the absence of ‘social endosmosis' which makes it possible for classes to hold values in common. The idea of fraternity, as understood from the writings of Ambedkar, points to an egalitarian order based on the modern ideals of liberty and equality.

By identifying itself with the Dalits the RSS was trying to project the heterodoxy within the Hindu tradition as “inclusivism”, as Indianness. The BJP treats individuals belonging to all groups as citizens but while it talks of a citizen it has the Hindu citizen in mind. While the RSS is not seen as playing a major role in shaping the political strategies of the BJP, it, however, meddles in the cultural arena. Ever since the BJP came to power the RSS has actively furthered its old agenda of the Hindu Rasthra.

Modi's devotion to Ambedkar is under-standable, but Ambedkar disliked bhakts, particularly in political life. At a meeting in Bombay in March 1933, Ambedkar was annoyed that superlatives were used for him. If Ambedkar had been alive, even Modi would have been reprimanded that he had better focus on his constitutional duty to protect Dalits from the oppressive state he heads, rather than worship him.

Modi has been maintaining a hypocritical stand towards Ambedkar and Dalits. While he has gone for heavy cuts in funds for development of Dalits, has favoured suppression of the radical expression of Dalit students, not condemning the institutional murders of promising Dalit scholars like Rohith Vemula, attitude of vengeance of the HRD Ministry against Dalit students, and trampling of the Constitution with impunity, Modi prefers to sing paeans to Ambedkar.. Modi should know that the condition of Dalits has worsened since he became the PM.

If Ambedkar had been alive today to see the full unfolding of these policies, he would have certainly demanded their revocation. Modi revealed that, come what may, they would never touch reservations. Dalits may take his statement to be a sign of great commitment. But it is time the Dalits woke up from their emotional stupor and saw whom reservations really benefit and who pays for them.

A closer look at all the incidents of violence against Dalits would unravel that they were resorted to coerce and terrorise them and evict them from the small piece of land they possess. Even Aloria revealed: “The victims have made a few allegations against the local sarpanch of Mota Samadhiyala. The victims are saying that the sarpanch was objecting to construction activity by the family on a land allotted for a common water well, that he called these hooligans to the village under the excuse of gau raksha to beat them up.”

Gujarat has a mere 2.33 per cent of India's Dalit population, but when it comes to atrocities, it ranks among States in the top half of the country. A study report on untouchability in Modi's Gujarat by Navsarjan found that in 90 per cent of temples in Gujarat, Dalits were not allowed entry. In 54 per cent of government schools, Dalit children were made to sit separately.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports a 44 per cent increase in violence against Dalits, up from 32,712 in 2010 to 47,064 crimes in 2014. The heinous nature of these crimes is beyond imagination—a Dalit woman was brutally raped and murdered in Kerala in April, another was raped and murdered and dumped in a water tank in Rajasthan in March; two children were burnt to death in Faridabad in 2015 and two girls were raped, murdered and hung up on a tree in Badaun in 2014.

It has not come as a surprise that the BJP- ruled States, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, have registered highest rates of crimes against Dalits and Scheduled Castes in 2015. The government figures underline an almost 40 per cent increase in crime against Dalits. In 2015, Gujarat reported the highest crime rate against Dalits (163.3 per cent, 6655 cases), followed by Chhattisgarh (91.9 per cent, 3008 cases), Rajasthan (58.5 per cent, 7144 cases) and Bihar (43 per cent, 7121 cases). UP (8946) reported the most number of cases of crime against Dalits.

The data was a part of the agenda papers for a meeting on ‘Monitoring the Implementation of Constitutional Safeguards for Scheduled Castes', held by the NCSC. The agenda papers clearly say: “Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh deserve special attention.” The NCSC has also red-flagged the sudden increase in the incidence of crime against SCs in Gujarat and Chhattisgarh.”The anomaly and sudden increase in respect to Gujarat and Chhattisgarh are abnormal and are being highlighted so that these States can provide actual data in case there was a mistake in reporting,” the papers say.

Fiftytwo to 65 per cent of all crimes in Rajasthan have a Dalit as the victim. This is despite the fact that the State's SC (Dalit) population is just 17.8 per cent of its total population.. Gujarat's numbers of crimes against Dalits had jumped to 6655 in 2015 from 1130 in 2014.

It is most unfortunate that the baton of hatred has been handed over to the next generation by the Sangh leaders who claim to represent the cultural aspiration of India. The upper-caste people would never like to treat them as Hindus, forget about accepting them as a human being. Though still today a huge population of Harijans and Dalits are amenable to identify themselves as Hindus, it is the despise and hatred of the upper-castes that pushes them away from the mainstream.

Cow protection (gau raksha) cannot be a cover for aggressive vigilantism more often than not as a mechanism for communal consolidation. That violence and intimidation in the name of the cow (or beef) will not be tolerated is a message that needs to go out quickly and unequivocally. Unfortunately neither Modi nor his government has been sincere in this regard.

Resorting to misogyny against Mayawati should be seen in this backdrop. This explicitly manifests the mindset of the Sangh activists and BJP leaders. The RSS has been of late harping on bringing the Dalits into the main-stream of social life. But it is unable to do so. The reason: the cultural norms and ethics of the RSS, the socio-cultural tenets on which the super-structure of the RSS stands is laid on the discrimination and exploitation of Dalits.

The day the upper-caste people, having a feudal mindset, accept the Dalits as Hindus, treating them as equals, the traditional upper-caste Hindus would lose their dominance. From the days of Tulsidas to modern times the only cliché that is prevalent in the Hindu society is: Chamaran ke latiyawe ke chanhi. Bina latiyawale sojh nahi rahihan sa (Harijans ought to be thrashed. Without thrashing they would not behave properly) Truly speaking, the upper caste is scared of the physical and numerical strength of the Dalits. They know the day the Harijans or Dalits stand up and challenge their hegemony, they will be finished.

Little doubt the Right-wing elements are out to destroy the secular fabric of the country by indulging in the politics of beef and cow protection. This is a very dangerous game to play. The RSS and BJP might have inducted Ram Vilas Paswan and other Dalit leaders in their ranks but they are aware that these leaders are a mere burden and useless. They have been using these leaders simply for denying the allegation that the Sangh and BJP were anti- Dalit. While the RSS has been enticing the Dalits, the Sangh leadership at the same time is conscious of the ground reality that its Thakur and Brahmin base was reluctant to allow the Dalits into the organisation. For electoral compulsions they may be adopting a liberal democratic approach towards the Dalits, but the fact remains that they will deny them the right to decision-making. The reason is simple: being numerically superior the Dalits will emerge stronger and sideline the upper caste feudal elements. It is in fact the sense of insecurity that has been motivating the upper-caste elements to attack the Dalits.

The author is a senior journalist and can be contacted at sriv52@gmail.com

by Jayanta Kumar Ghosal

The Hindu fundamentalist forces in India are now very active to destroy the secular and democratic fabrics of our country as enshrined in the Constitution. As a part of their agenda these forces have let loose a cultural offensive which is actually fascist in nature. In this process they have taken Swami Vivekananda as one of their educators and guides. But is this true? Do Vivekananda's teachings and ideas help the Hindu fundamentalists who have killed Dr Narendra Davolkar, Govind Pansare, Prof M.M. Kalburgi for their rationalist and secular views? Actually these religious forces have thus allowed the spectre of fascism to loom over the country.

It is of no doubt that Vivekananda was a Hindu monk who preached Hinduism. But at the same time it is crystal-clear from many of his writings and speeches that he was not a mere traditional Hindu monk as the religion's fundamentalist forces of the present day, the Sangh Parivar in particular, make him out to be. Beside his religious teachings and ideas he also advocated the ideas that are to be taken through the rationalist mind. The obscurantist forces like the RSS, VHP have always highlighted Vivekananda's religious teachings, which is just one side of the coin. He had expressed in many of his writings and speeches his views on religion, rationalism, women's emancipation, caste system and scientific outlook and socialism and one can definitely realise that these thoughts go against the ideas preached by the Sangh Parivar and its allies.

Vivekananda was greatly influenced by utopian socialists like Robert Owen and others. He was also very much aware of the other systems of his time. Preferring socialism among them as the best system, he declared: ‘I am a socialist.' He was also aware of the faults of the system and marked them. This was the proof of his rationalist mind. This sense of rationality led him to advice, ‘Do not believe in anything blindly.' Proceeding further he said, “We do not recognise such a thing as miracle... most of the strange things which are done in India and reported in the foreign papers are sleight-of-hand tricks or hypnotic illusions. They are not the performances of the wise man.” From this conviction he described that miracles ‘do not prove anything. Matter does not prove Spirit. What connection is there between the existence of God, Soul or Immortality, and the working of miracles? ... Do not disturb your head with metaphysical nonsense and do not disturb others by your bigotry.' He did not hesitate to declare astrology, mystical things or calculating the stars for better living etc. as all bogus. These are mere superstitions which were being spread mainly by the Brahmins and priests. These are ‘injurious and weakening to humanity.'

In a hard-hitting letter to his disciples he said: ‘Kick out the priests who are always against progress, because they would never mend, their hearts would never become big. They are the offspring of centuries of superstition and tyranny.” What would the present-day Manubadis say.?

Vivekananda called upon the people to give up blind faith and believe in reason because, according to him, “Books are not an end-all. Verification is the only proof of religious truth.” Quoting Lord Buddha he said: “Believe no book; the Vedas are all humbug. If they agree with me, so much the better for the books.” Who other than a rationalist can convey such strong views? Unhesitatingly he declared: “I do not believe in a God or religion which cannot wipe the widow's tears or bring a piece of bread to the orphan's mouth?” Do the present-day Babas and Gurus possess such a humanist outlook about God?

Vivekananda defined religion in a very simple way. As a Hindu saint of non-traditional path, his views on religion completely go against the Hindu fundamentalist forces who are vehe-mently trying to project him as their guide quoting his religions speeches or writings to create hatred towards other religions. As per Vivekananda's simple definition, religion is “to devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all”. And to him, “The ideal of all religions ... is same—the attaining of liberty and cessation of misery.” He also preached respect and dignity for all religions: “What is needed is a fellow feeling between the different types of religion, seeing that they all stand or fall together, a fellow feeling which springs from mutual esteem and mutual respect.” The same was echoed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted in December 1966 by the UN General Assembly nearly seven decades later. As a true follower of the history of mankind he described Mohammed as ‘‘the messenger of equality and the ‘Prophet'... of the brotherhood of man” and genuinely under-stood the historical role of Islam.

Vivekananda warned people against the attempts made by religious fundamentalists to propagate all kinds of myths and divide Hindus and Muslims. Such a false propaganda is about forcible conversions. Vivekananda firmly opined in this regard that in this country “religious conversions have not taken place because of atrocities by Christians and Muslims, but because of atrocities by the upper castes”. So the teachings of Vivekananda are exactly opposed to all that the Sangh Parivar stands for.

The religious fundamentalist forces, both Hindus and Muslims, always speak against the liberation of women. But Vivekananda stated: “There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing.” Again, he said: “In India there are two great evils. Trampling on the women, and grinding the poor through caste restrictions.”

In letters to his American disciples, he wrote that America is prosperous, learned and energetic because its women are free. “But why is it that we are slavish, miserable, and dead? The answer is obvious ... Can you better the condition of your women? Then there will be hope for your well-being. Otherwise you will remain as backward as you are now.” What would the followers of ‘Manu Samhita' say?

Vivekananda properly understood the nature of freedom and democracy of the Western world and stated that a handful merchants, industrialists and moneylenders are the actual beneficiaries of the system, not the downtrodden. He clearly observed: “The wealth and power of a country are in the hands of a few men who do not work but manipulate the work of the millions of human beings. By this power they can deluge the whole earth with blood. Religion and all things are under their feet; they rule and stand supreme. The Western world is governed by a handful of Shylocks. All those things that you hear about—constitutional government, freedom, liberty and parliaments—are but jokes.” These are not the voices of a mere religious monk but of a highly socially conscious person who really wanted to bring about a change in society.

He had great faith in the masses because their suffering had given them fortitude, the energy and patience to bring about the desired transformation of the society. He observed: ‘These common people have suffered oppression for thousands of years; suffered it without a murmur, and as a result have got wonderful fortitude. They have suffered eternal misery, which has given them unflinching vitality. Living on a handful of grains, they can convulse the world; give them only half a piece of bread, and the whole world will not be big enough to contain their energy, they are endowed with the inexhaustible vitality of a Raktabija.” Not religion, only social upliftment of the down-trodden (Shudras) of the country can guarantee India's progress. So he said to his countrymen: “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.” What would the present ‘Gurus' and ‘Babas' wondering about the Delhi Masnad say about Vivekananda who declared: “I consider that the great national sin is the neglect of the masses, and that is one of the causes of our downfall. No amount of politics would be of any avail until the masses in India are once more well educated, well fed and well cared for. They pay for our education, they build our temples, but in return they get kicks. They are practically our slaves. If we want to regenerate India, we must work for them.”

Let these teachings of Vivekananda guide us all along.

[All sources: Collected Works of Vivekananda]

The author is a social activist associated with the literacy movement.

These are of course extraordinary times in our country and the former Foreign Secretary M.K. Rasgotra might have for some incomprehensible reason felt the urge to be in sync with the zeitgeist, when he needlessly indulged in some Nehru-bashing at a function in New Delhi on June 13 as part of drumming up media publicity for his memoirs that has been published recently.

According to Rasgotra, Panditji goofed up historically—and the nation has paid a heavy price consequently—when he spurned an offer from the then US President, John Kennedy, to have an atomic device exploded from a tower in the Rajasthan desert, circa 1962. (The Indian Express)

Which means, if Rasgotra is to be believed, but for Panditji's folly, India would have been a nuclear power ahead of China, and all of that frenzy that we are witnessing today over India's admission to the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have been superfluous.

What a seductive story! Indeed, Rasgotra always enjoyed a fabulous reputation as a colourful reconteur. But in this case, he has badly tripped by stretching cold facts beyond credulity to spin yarns at a public function. What are the facts?

The fact of the matter is that the Soviet Union and the United States began their tortuous negotiations in 1955, which ultimately culmi-nated in the historic Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty signed in Moscow in August 1963.

How could the US President have done such an insane act by poking Nehru (who was not only the leader of the non-aligned world but also a vociferous supporter of disarmament) with a hand-written note to go and undercut one of the most prestigious initiatives of his own tenure in the White House—and a landmark event in Soviet-American relations in the Cold war era?

Wouldn't an erudite mind like Nehru's known that Kennedy was bending over backward to close the Test-Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev? Even assuming he didn't, wouldn't the “gentle colossus”, GP (G. Parthasarathi), have known and advised Panditji? (The Hindu)

Not only that, Kennedy was personally one of the most ardent supporters of a total ban on nuclear tests as far back as 1956. That is what the archival materials in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston would testify.

Regrettably, Rasgotra has lent his shoulders for the Nehru-bashers in our country. And the real tragedy of it is that Rasgotra himself used to be known as a great follower of the Nehru family and an admirer of Panditji himself while in the Foreign Service as a career diplomat.

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).

MEDIA

by Mohd. Afsar

Since the past few years, a section of the national media is misrepresenting the image of Kashmir in India either by exaggerating the events or by spinning the facts. It seems to be a part of some political strategy or pressure. So there is nothing surprising to see the kind of information which is being provided by the national media on the ongoing Kashmir events after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani by the security forces. The coverage of the current Kashmir events by the local media in Kashmir and the national media differ in terms of how they represent the information. A major section of the national media is showing a one sided image of Kashmir due to some possible political relations or pressure or to gain TRPs, while the local media tries to present all sides of the ongoing happenings. It is interesting to see which media is doing the coverage ethically, responsibly and appropriately.

The primary role of the media in any conflict or violence area is to force the existing govern-ment to take actions and measures to ensure peace and to provide all kinds of help to the victims, be it medical, financial, fulfilment of day-to-day needs of food and water or to make an emotional bond with the civilians so that they feel safe. The reporting of the current Kashmir violence by most of the national media does not emphasise on the medical emergency that the hospitals are facing in terms of the scarcity of beds for the victims in the hospitals, lack of sufficient medical staff for the treatment of the injured and does not emphasise on the scarcity of day-to-day essentials such as food, education, electricity etc. for the civilians. Those who have given information regarding these basic needs of the civilians are relatively very less and hence do not contribute much to rouse the government towards the fulfilment of the needs of the common people in the Valley. For example, The Indian Express highlighted the medical emergencies at hospitals in the news story showcasing the round-the-clock working of doctors.1 NDTV showed a report on how volunteers are helping the victims in providing medicines.2 These reports do not highlight or elaborate enough on the frightening situation of medical and food supplies in the Valley.

The difference in the extent of coverage by the local media of these issues better tells the story. The local newspaper, Greater Kashmir, reported the shortage of baby food in the Valley. The newspaper reports that it has received numerous complaints from various curfewed districts by people of facing scarcity of baby food and daily essentials like foodgrains, vegetables, bread, medicines and milk. One of the quotes from an aggrieved resident in the report stated: “Local grocers and shopkeepers are not being allowed to run shops even in the interiors. The forces are not allowing us to venture out.” Another quote is by one of the callers from the Valley who told the newspaper: “We were not allowed to purchase bread in the morning. Security personnel told us not to venture out.”3 The local newspaper, Kashmir Observer, showed a report about the scarcity of essential items and exploded crisis of medical supplies. It showed a quote from an owner of the medical store Shabir Bhat: “I could not help. I am running short of supplies.”4. The stories on the ongoing acute shortages of food and medicines could be seen in the Kashmir Monitor newspaper too. Apart from the news on inadequacy of essentials, the report also focused on the need of internet and mobile phones connectivity. In one of its reports, the President of the Doctors Association Kashmir (DAK) told Kashmir Monitor: “On one hand helpline numbers are provided to the people in view of medical emergency; on the other hand cell phone services are suspended. The sick and wounded are denied access to medical services.”5 The difference in the kind of reporting in the national media and local media is primarily because the national media takes inputs mainly from only one side of the conflict, that is, from government sources. This is because the local media interacts more with the residents of the Valley and therefore this may also be a reason that the people feel safer to interact with the local media and rely more on them.

The media can potentially become a source of divisiveness or harmony in conflict zones based on what kind of information is being provided. The national media on the ongoing Kashmir conflict is not trying to moderate the ongoing conflicts and violence but acting as a contributor in intensifying the situation. The role of the media is not to exaggerate the situation or to provoke people for violence but help by all means to retain peace in these circumstances. It is not that reporting the violence exaggerates the situation; instead it is the extent of its coverage. The Times of India reported in a news story on how the mosque loudspeakers incite the youth to join the ‘anti-India jihad' but has not specified the input source of this story and also did not specify the location of these mosques.6 The incomplete or unauthentic news in these kinds of circumstances could inflame the situation. The media should present the facts of the happenings from all sides of the conflict to avoid these kinds of consequences. In Kashmir, there are different sides of the conflict, one is of the Army and police, the other is of the government and another is of the civilians. The local media has tried to convey to the reader/viewer all these sides. This could be seen from various local news reports. One of them is a report in the Greater Kashmir newspaper which contains information on the death and injuries of both the civilians and security personnel, quotes from the eye-witnesses of the protest to show the protesters' view too and statements from the police officials about controlling the law and order situation.7

The local mediapersons cover such situations extensively in comparison to the national media reporters. That's why the local government restricts the access of local reporters to persons and places and eases the access of the Delhi mediapersons. This is clearly evident when the local government banned the local media and not the national media so that it can shape the coverage in their suited way. Moreover, the government wants the journalists to comple-ment its actions rather than perform their job to investigate the facts and present the real picture of the events.

The newspaper Kashmir Observer on July 26, 2016 published a report in which retired Major Dinesh Tiwari, who was stationed in Kashmir, explained why Kashmir is still burning. He reminisces about his experience as a child growing up in Nepal when the country was going through Maoist insurgency and draws parallels between his teenage persona's conflicted emotions and those of today's Kashmiri youth. News stories like these do provide the other side too which includes an emotional and humane angle. The local media presents stories like these which help to moderate the situation while the national media holds hot debates and discussions and stories conveying the communal angle. A few examples of debate are: “Why are separatists targeting patriotic residents in Kashmir?”, “Why has patriotism became a bane in Kashmir?” and “Who is funding Kashmir for spreading terrorism and separatism?” on Zee News. News report on ABP News starts with contents like “The present unrest in Kashmir, also known as the Burhan aftermath, is a series of violent protests in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley.”8 Does a viewer or a reader get even a feel of what is happening on the ground in the Valley after seeing and reading these types of reports? Does he get facts from each side of the conflict? No. Instead a different kind of perception is made which is shaped by the officials in Kashmir and shown by the national media. In addition, some communal angle is intentionally being injected into the news stories on the national media to gain TRPs as well as due to some political relations. We have a number of times in our country, from the Gujarat riots to UP riots, seen that whenever there is violence or conflict, political parties always have grabbed it as a golden opportunity to fulfil their political propaganda. Why should we fall into their traps again and again? Which type of role is the media playing in such situations? You as a viewer or a reader have to think about it and decide.

Critical Analysis of the News Coverage

Differences in the perspectives of the news reporting in the national media and local Kashmir media could be easily seen from the above cited news coverage. It also points to the importance of the local media. Without the local media, one wouldn't know the other side of the violence, conflict or any event. However, it is not that what the national media has reported is false or incorrect but the reality perhaps is based on how the facts are highlighted and reported. The coverage by the national media mostly presents the government's point of view. They lack insight into the events happening on the ground which are reported in the regional Kashmiri media in detail. The media is supposed to be on neither side. It should remain neutral. It is also a fact that the national media cannot report the local Kashmiri issues as deeply as the regional media can, which shows the need for a dynamic local media.

Conflicts do not occur spontaneously but they have a history. The local media usually has a deeper understanding of the existing political structures and events. The Kashmir conflict is a territorial conflict between India and Pakistan started just after the partition in 1947. In view of its long history of conflicts, the media should act responsibly to disseminate news. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, “Indian security forces have assaulted civilians during search operations, tortured and summarily executed detainees in custody and murdered civilians in reprisal attacks. Rape most often occurs during crackdowns, cordon-and-search operations during which men are held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces search their homes. In these situations, the security forces frequently engage in collective punishment against the civilian population, most frequently by beating or otherwise assaulting residents, and burning their homes. Rape is used as a means of targeting women whom the security forces accuse of being militant sympathisers; in raping them, the security forces are attempting to punish and humiliate the entire community.”9 Is the media showing this side too to the viewer or reader?

The picture of real events in Kashmir is depicted differently by the images of the dead bodies of civilians and the injured being carried on stretchers in the local media and with the pictures of ‘masked stone-pelters and curfew-hit streets' in the national media. For the Kashmiri local news media, dead civilians are not a mere count, they're actual lives that are being taken in the violence.

What we see in the national media channels is that a correspondent roams around in the curfewed city and acts like he is covering the war in Syria. Most of the national news media-persons do not make their own judgments on what is happening in Kashmir but rely hook, line and sinker on the information given by officials. This restrains them from a complete coverage of the events from different angles.

Ideal Role that should be played by the Media

The Preamble of the Code of Ethics of Society of Professional Journalists, one of the foremost voices in the US on the subject of Journalistic Standards and Ethics, states: “The duty of the journalist is to provide a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialists strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility.”10 Journalistic objectivity requires that a journalist must report only the facts and not a personal approach towards the facts and clearly distinguish disseminating information from analysis and opinions. A viewer should get a real and true picture of what and why is actually happening. The media should provide truthful and objective infor-mation to the people that will enable them to form rational opinions, which is a sine qua non in a democracy. Responsible media should describe reality without exaggeration. But the question today is: “Is the media performing this role properly?”

Episodic coverage in conflict zones should not be carried out. The media should thoroughly understand the history of the conflict to present a true picture of the happenings. The media's actions in the Balkans, conflicts between Serbians and Croatians, are a prime example of how the media can be a source of inciter of conflict rather than a source for peace. In addition to fanning the flames of violence, the media was also guilty of obstructing peacemaking efforts by failing to objectively present views of the minority.

The media should try to uncover the causes behind a conflict or violence. It should not try to exploit the damage of the infrastructure, deaths or injuries of the victims. The ethical media guidelines speak to document the suffering and loss on all sides of the conflict and violence. The media should suggest possible solutions to resolve the conflicts and to control the violence.

It's high time to start introspecting today's national media in our country. 

References

1. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/kashmir-violence-doctors-at-srinagar-hospital-say- rush-of-pellet-victims-unprecedented-2915148/

2. http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/as-clashes-curfew-continue-in-kashmir-hospitals-run-short-of-key-drugs- 1430770

3. http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/front-page/-shortage-of-baby-food-essentials-in-several- areas/223235.html

4. https://kashmirobserver.net/2016/local-news/curfew-hit-kashmir-hit-shortages-medicines-food-8476~

5. http://www.kashmirmonitor.in/Details/106907/as-curfew-clamps-valley-people-face-shortage-of-essentials#~

6. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kashmir-violence-Mob-drowns-cop-in-Jhelum-toll-now- 23/articleshow/53145925.cms

7. http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/front-page/kashmir-bleeds-day-2-4-fresh-killings-due-to-forces-firing-5-succumb-to-injuries/222621.html~

8. http://www.abplive.in/lifestyle/jk-protest-what-are-pellet-guns-and-why-are-they-harmful-386298#image1~

9. “Bijbehara massacre: Guilty yet to be punished even after 19 years”, Kashmir Times. Retrieved on November 11, 2012.

10. Warren G. Bovée (1999), Discovering Journalism, Greenwood, p. 203.

The author is a senior correspondent, India News. He can be contacted at e-mail: afsar11@rediffmail.com

Bulbuls are numb
And wonder where humans have fled
Pigeons haunt the shrines
To search the hands that fed them
Dogs with long faces
Loll about on empty streets

The gardens too are distraught
And flowers reluctant to bloom
A pallor hangs on every branch
The gentle breeze draws back
Loathe to disturb the stillness
The eerie stillness
Of this graveyard.

—Nusrat Bazaz

INTERVIEW

The following is the interview of Shujaat Bukhari, Editor-in-Chief of Rising Kashmir, Buland Kashmir (Urdu daily) and Sangarmal (Kashmiri daily) based in Srinagar, on the current situation in the Valley and the difficulties and hardships faced by the media in its functioning there. He replied to a set of questions (including one on what should be done now to improve the situation) from Mainstream.

1. You are one of the leading professional journalists in Kashmir who had been the J&K correspondent of The Hindu and now you edit the publication Rising Kashmir. How would you compare the situation prevailing in Kashmir today with the one obtaining in 1989-90 when the first wave of insurgency rocked the Valley?

Look, the situation is as grim as in 1989-90. The only difference is that in 1990 hundreds of Kashmiris had guns in their hands and of course lakhs of people were on streets demanding Azadi. But that was crushed with an iron hand by the government. The armed revolt in 1989 was the result of continued denial of political rights to the Kashmiris. New Delhi had adopted the practice of thrusting sham elections on the people. People still continued to repose faith in democracy and that is how they participated in the 1987 elections and widely supported the Muslim United Front. But that was rigged wholesale and you had one of the candidates, Mohammad Yousuf Shah, turning into the Hizbul Mujahideen Supreme Commander Syed Salahuddin, or his chief election agent, Yasin Malik, as the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front commander. Democracy was throttled and it was the National Conference-Congress combine that did not allow people to restore faith in the democratic exercise. Pakistan always wanted to do something different in Kashmir and when the situation turned ripe for them after the 1987 elections, they embraced the Kashmiri youth and helped them to launch the armed struggle. It was the result of a long list of betrayals and deceit by Delhi.

Today Kashmiris have stones in their hands and it is a political unrest in which a completely new generation is involved. They are, as compared to the generation that spearheaded the movement in 1990, more educated and enlightened, given their access to educational opportunities and technology. They are more angry as they have seen India through the barrel of the gun only. The democratic spaces here are choked and as an example the Kashmir University does not allow a Students' Union while in the Jammu University you have one. They (the youth) refuse to identify themselves with India. The more you kill them, the more will they be disconnected.

2.How would you compare the situation in the Valley today with the one in 2010 when a large number of stone-pelting young protesters were killed?

The pattern is same but what is worrying is that today people have come out to protest and get killed in the wake of the killing of a militant commander. Kashmiris had embraced a transition from violence to non-violence and that is how the peace process, launched in 2003, had the support of the people. But that intent to move ahead with non-violent political struggle was not recognised and instead New Delhi continues to term Kashmir as a law and order issue. Today when people are on streets braving curfew, bullets and a communication blockade, they have not a set a specific demand but they are asking for the resolution of the political dispute. Over 55 people have been killed and more than 3000 civilians injured. In the literal sense every single Kashmiri has been in jail for over 20 days.

2010 started with the killing of three innocents in a fake encounter in Machil by the Army and the subsequent killing of a teenager by a police shell; so it was for justice. But this time there is no demand except that of final resolution. However, the fact is that all the unrest stems from the political dispute that needs to be resolved.

3.As a professional journalist what are the impediments you are facing in carrying out your professional work?

We have been facing a lot of problems. Essentially of movement. Our newspapers were banned by the government for five days. Printing presses were raided and staff detained. If the police allows us to move in one area, the protesters would block you in the next as they think the media is not reflecting the situation honestly, referring to what a section of the Indian media is doing by demonising Kashmiris.

For us the restrictions are not new. Since the outbreak of armed rebellion in Kashmir in early 1990, the media in Kashmir has been on a razor's edge. A small community though, it has lost 13 of its members to bullets from either side. Life threats, intimidation, arrests, censor-ship and beating have been part of the daily grind through which an average journalist has been going. It has been difficult to operate from this highest militarised zone. Journalists have been the target of state and non-state actors. A journalist in Kashmir has failed to keep the warring sides happy. If an atrocity by the government forces is reported, he may be dubbed as “anti-national” and highlighting the violation by non-state actors or the extra-political activities of separatists would mean that he is “anti-tehreek” (anti-movement) or a collaborator. A sword hanging over his head in both cases.

The newspapers have had a tough time during the 2008 and 2010 public unrest when the government forced them to suspend publi-cations by putting restrictions. When Afzal Guru was hanged in 2013, copies of newspapers were seized in a similar fashion and not allowed to circulate. This time, however, the government did not hide behind the slew of restrictions. Its spokesman, Education Minister Naeem Akhtar, was clear that there is a ban though a “reluctant decision”.

4.The authorities had recently imposed severe restrictions on the functioning of the press and the media in Kashmir. Would you agree that this was a direct attack on freedom expression that mediapersons enjoy in other parts of the country? Has the situation on that score improved by now? How would you interpret the authorities' explanation in justification of such a move on their part?

Yes it certainly is a direct attack on freedom of the press. It has improved but the overall conditions remain the same. Not only are these restrictions hampering our work but for long the Government of India has been intimidating the Kashmir press. In 2010 five publications were barred from getting DAVP advertisements and an advisory was issued by the MHA. This year too two publications were banned from DAVP advertisements without any legal reason. The premise is that we “promote and glorify” separatists and militants. But this does not apply to national papers who cover them the same way. Certainly Kashmir is different for them and this is happening in the world's largest democracy.

5.What, in your opinion, needs to be urgently done to improve the situation in the Valley? What is your expectation from the media in other parts of the country in solidarity with the media in Kashmir in this regard? What do you expect from the civil society organisations and democratic forces of the country in this hour of crisis that Kashmiris in general, and the media in Kashmir in particular, are going through?

See, the situation is simple. Recognise Kashmir as a political problem. Reach out to Kashmiris. Talk to them, listen to them. Don't demonise them. Don't challenge their intelligence by saying that they always play into the hands of Pakistan. You are yourself providing opportunities to Pakistan on a platter. Burhan Wani's killing and subsequent situation did not get front-page coverage in the Pakistan press. PM Nawaz Sharief was forced to jump in by his opponents after three days. There are certainly elements in their establishment who would support trouble but introspect yourself how you are creating space for unrest in Kashmir as you don't recognise the problem on the ground.

The Indian media, a section of it, has supported us this time. But civil society is dead and they also have fallen into the trap of “ultra- nationalism”. India needs a vibrant civil society that can save it from the radicalisation that is hitting its basic secular fundamentals.

MUSINGS

I do realise that for the last four weeks I have been focusing on the Kashmir Valley—a region I have been covering and reporting from for over twentyfive years, a region and its people I bond with.

It gets emotionally traumatic for me to see the Kashmiris going through the toughest possible phase. Unabated violence and havoc. Uncertainty-riddled conditions affecting each segment. Stress looms large and the scale of violence hits; trapped sit the inhabitants in a war-like zone. Yes, it wouldn't be wrong to say that this conflict zone has got upgraded to a war zone! And as the former Director General of the J&K Tourism, Mohammad Ashraf, states, this uprising is not a revolt but a revolution! For the first time even the well-to-do Kashmiris are openly revolting against the State. You have Ministers' spouses defying set norms, going public with their criticism of the establishment. You have Ministers getting targeted by angry mobs; reports of petrol bombs thrown at J&K‘s Education Minister Naeem Akhtar's Srinagar home. You have a former Chief Minister of the State saying in the midst of a television interview that the anger against the State has exceeded to such an extent that even those injured in these recent clashes are not sitting back but in that mood to take on the security forces! You have the militants' fathers expressing little grief over their sons killings, saying they have ‘sacrificed' their sons for a cause.

And in the midst of this revolt or revolution or uprising, where are the political rulers of the State? There have been reports of infighting within the political set-up; after all, human devastation could be hitting the very conscience of many a political puppet. The PDP's alliance with the BJP has more than compounded the mess, which gets messier as the PDP seems at a loss, caught as it is between the Right-wing fascist dictates and the hapless masses of the Kashmir Valley.

After much dilly-dallying Mehbooba Mufti had opted for this alliance, for the so-called ‘development', for the so-called announcement of packages in well-crafted speeches, for the so- called ‘Modi'fication of the Valley!

Nil traces of development. Only grim realities of human devastation. It's absolutely pathetic and emotionally traumatic to see angry children out there on the streets of the Kashmir Valley. Instead of stones in their hands they ought to be sitting with pens and pencils in classrooms. This same Kashmir Valley that had once upon-a-time produced the largest number of poets and mystics. Today it is crumbling... over-burdened with grief and sorrow and anger. We have pushed the Kashmiris to the wall. We have failed them. We have driven them to this level of alienation. Tell me, why will a child pick up a stone to hit? No, no child will ever take to this level of violence unless there's a dead end out there!

Hear the cry of the Kashmiri. And if the political rulers haven't turned stone deaf and if there is even an iota of sense prevailing, then every possible effort should start off to reach out to these children before the growing anger gets harsher and fiercer. Introspect and intros-pect hard—what have we given the Kashmiris? Nothing very much save curfews and crack-downs, together with fake encounters and faker promises.

The prevailing conditions in the Valley will not change till the political rulers do not accept that that the Kashmiri masses are more than angry. Burhan Wani's killing was enough for the simmering anger to erupt on the streets and lanes and by-lanes of the Valley. And no amount of speeches or announcements of packages will help contain this growing anger which is spreading out in the Valley. Even in localities where the curfew has been lifted, the locals are extremely wary. ”You never know when the curfew could be re-imposed and with that the security forces start pumping bullets or pullets. Ruined we are... ruined lies our land with these clampdowns and war-like situation. For days none of us have had the courage to step out. Constant tension... Landlocked we sit as politicians are flying from all over, but here even birds can't fly.”

Poor governance together with deceitful promises together with brute force has pushed the Kashmiris to the wall. Have we bothered to know how does the daily wager and his children survive in the Kashmir Valley when curfews and crackdowns continue unabated? How does a child's psyche take on the load of this violence and counter-violence? Why are politicians of all hues playing games, ruining the lives of an entire generation? Why are children getting used and abused in this crisis? What has upset the Kashmiri to such an extent that cries for azaadi are peaking? Why is the hatred for the security forces getting compounded by the day? Why are the Kashmiris out to lynch the politicians and scream at those so-called experts?

It gets difficult to watch any of those tele-vision discussions where the so-called ‘experts' dwell on bullets and pellets to ‘settle' this crisis. Why can't these experts walk around the Valley and see the prevailing ground realities, see for themselves that the Kashmiris can no longer contain the rounds of humiliation and deceit.

Looking back, I can say that I could see traces of the deteriorating conditions right from the early 1990s but couldn't have ever imagined that now, in 2016, it would peak to this level, where even young children (four or five year olds) could be battling for survival, with impaired vision and life-long disabilities.

In fact, the severity of eye/retina damaged cases of the pellet-hit victims can be best described in the words of Chairman-cum-Managing Director of the Aditya Jyot Eye Hospital, Mumbai, Dr S. Natarajan, who had been flown to Srinagar by an NGO, Borderless World Foundation, to conduct these emergency surgeries at the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital—“At least 190 pellet-hit youth had been admitted to the Eye Department of SMHS Hospital ...140 of them need surgeries. This is very rare. I have never witnessed such a situation in my life where you have to operate 140 patients in a small time-frame. Injuries do happen but this is an emergency situation.” In fact, similar views were expressed by ophthal-mologists from AIIMS (New Delhi) who had been also flown in to conduct surgeries on the pellet-hit patients in Srinagar. These specialists had been quoted saying that such grievous eye injuries were seen only during wars!

Has even one security or government representative been charged with war crimes inflicted on young children of the Kashmir Valley? Mind you, a majority of the pellet-hit children were either sitting in and around their homes and were not part of any of the rallies or processions.

In fact, this brings me to write that rallies are permitted in any democratic set-up but what is not permitted is to shoot to kill or to blind or rupture the protestors—a majority of the protestors young and naïve, unarmed and clueless what the future holds out. They couldn't have ever imagined that the State would blind or disable them for life!

Why should the hapless Kashmiris be caught between political games of the various outfits and of their networks at work? Why should this generation of the Kashmiris be ruined because of political treachery of the political rulers? Why should an entire stretch of land be subjected to horrors of the worst kind? Why should appre-hension and worry compound that this stretch of land—the Kashmir Valley—could be used for expansionist plans of the vested powers and their allies?

Isn't it time we sit and ask the Kashmiri what does he or she want? There ought to be a dialogue with the Kashmiris. In fact, when I had interviewed Noam Chomsky in the autumn of 2001 and asked him what could be ‘an answer' to the Kashmir problem, he had told me—“Yes. There could be a solution to the Kashmir crisis. Two principles are to be involved—the voice of the Kashmir people is to be heard and also the UN's call for referendum.”

Deterioration has been On ...Ongoing

One has to walk down the lanes and streets of Srinagar and witness the sorrow that's been spreading out. Imprints of pain and decay. In fact, around the autumn of 2005 I'd met a young Kashmiri researcher, Aroosa Dijoo, in the office of a Srinagar-based activist, and she'd best summed up the then prevailing situation in the Valley—”What you see around is like a woman with make-up on, when its removed the reality stares!” She had detailed her own experiences, “as part of my research work when I was visiting rural homes at Qazigund, I was questioned by the security forces; all sorts of questions thrown at me—what I was talking and to whom? Does the establishment realise the harassment we go through day after day!”

When I had travelled to Srinagar in August 2006 to attend a conference on ‘Indian Federalism at work‘, organised by the Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), there were more than murmurs that that ISS could manage to hold this meet against odds; they were told (in more than subtle ways) by the then establishment that it would be advisable that they hold this meet in Jammu and not in Srinagar! Why? Perhaps, to keep the delegates far away from the stark ground realities prevailing in Srinagar! And as we had walked around the city a majority of Kashmiris had detailed the blatant human rights violations. And on January 16, 2007 the Academy of Third World Studies (Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi) had organised a daylong seminar on the ground realities and political options vis-a-vis Kashmir. Speakers had included Ved Bhasin, Ajit Bhattacharjea, Siddiq Wahid, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Gautam Navlakha, Uma Chakravarty, Nandita Haksar, Badri Raina, Justice Gauhar and several others... These speakers had spoken out. Veteran journalist Ved Bhasin had said that there persisted an atmosphere of distrust and fear and suspicion—“Human rights abuses have been going up in the Valley. All kinds of abuses are taking place, young boys being taken away by RR men. And as long as the Draconian laws are there, there will be a sense of insecurity ...no dialogue can take place in this climate of distrust and fear. So how can one even think of normalcy returning!”

Activist Gautam Navlakha had said: “Demo-cracy operating in the Valley is a myth. Why such a huge force if you say that the numbers of militants has gone down! Heavy deployment is there to subdue the local population... Kash-miris have offered a great resistance at a great cost to them. Indian intelligentsia has to face these hard facts and not fudge them.”

Nandita Haksar had said—“When I feel very isolated, I can't even visualise what the Kashmiris feel. This forced union between the rest of India and Kashmir is like a decayed marriage. Why is that so! Today I feel at home visiting jails and not in drawing rooms ...realities are there but nobody wants to talk about them—why don't we want to talk about realities?” In fact, in her book Framing Geelani, Hanging Afzal—Patriotism In The Time of Terror she focused on some of these realities—”the horrifying world Kashmiris inhabit: the terri-fying reality of illegal arrests, dark damp prison cells and the barbarity of the torture and the pain of a child waiting for his father to be hanged...”

And in 2007, veteran journalist Ajit Bhatta-charjea expressed his anguish at the deterio-rating situation in his write-up published in The Kashmir Times on May 9, 2007 (it had been earlier published in The Outlook magazine) which summed up the scenario in the Kashmir Valley in the summer of 2007. I quote from it—

“Tulips and tourists are not enough. Kashmir still looks and feels ‘occupied'... homegrown teenaged militants who come from families which have suffered repression, continue resistance to what they see as Indian occupation. For them, as for most Kashmiris, the sight of security forces, especially from the army, is a source of alienation. The army's reluctance to reduce their battalions despite waning militancy is seen as fuelled by the benefits of a posting here. Reports of innocents being killed in encounters staged by the army and police lend credence to this view. Officers are known to get rewards and promotions in return for the ‘kills‘ they claim. The army's presence in areas lacking militant justification—buildings, apple orchards, grazing grounds and forested areas (some since deforested)—feeds the impression. Since the downfall of Sheikh Abdullah, who had contested the Muslim communal forces, moves to satisfy Kashmir's claims to a special status have been squelched by the Hindu communalist forces. Today, the Manmohan Singh Government moves in fits and starts; its pace fettered by fears of BJP gains.... New Delhi needs to return to Pandit Nehru's speech of August 7, 1952, to regain Kashmiri confidence. He told the Lok Sabha: ‘We do not wish to win people against their will, with the help of armed forces; and if the people of Kashmir wish to part company with us, they may go their way and we shall go ours. We want no forced marriages, no forced unions.'”

The Kashmir situation is getting from bad to worse. The State has been on the boil since July 8, the day the Indian security forces took credit for exterminating a dreaded terrorist—the 22-year-old Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a commander of the separatist Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. The ‘encounter death' (a phrase which has become all too familiar over the years and decades with all its sinister implications—from the North-East to Maoist-dominated areas to Jammu and Kashmir) of Wani, son of a headmaster and a school dropout, was described by the Director-General of J & K Police, K. Rajendra, as a “major success for the security forces because he was instrumental in brainwashing many local boys to take up the gun”.

What baffled understanding and explanation was the fact that thousands of people, mostly young men, attended his burial at the Idgah in Tral town. Were all these people ‘separatists' or ‘secessionists' or ‘Pakistani agents' or ‘anti-India elements'? If so, then there must be something intrinsically wrong with our Kashmir policy that needs to be corrected before it is too late.

What exactly is the ‘Kashmir problem'? It is the problem of relationship between the Indian state and the people of Jammu and Kashmir. It is the problem of the psychological and emotional integration of the people of Kashmir with the people of India, their spontaneous feeling of a sense of identity, a sense of oneness, with India. It is basically a battle for the Kashmiri mind—a battle, not to mince one's words, India has been steadily losing.

When we say that ‘Kashmir is an integral part of India' what plays in our sub-conscious mind is the land of Jammu and Kashmir, not the people of Kashmir. Barring a part of that land which is under the occupation of Pakistan, the rest of the land is ours and we will not allow Pakistan to take a square centimetre of that land. This is our resolve. Kashmiris will have to be with us, in whichever way we treat them and whether they like it or not.

To understand the nature of the problem and the reason of the Kashmiris' growing sense of alienation from India, we have to delve into past history, we have to go back to the fateful days just after the independence of India and the creation of two states—India and Pakistan. The first India-Pakistan war took place in October, 1947, and Kashmir was the issue.

Brigadier (later Lieutenant-General) L.P. Sen was dispatched to Kashmir as the commander of the 161 Infantry Brigade to save the then princely State from the armed Pakistani tribal raiders who had crossed the border, poured into the Valley and were indulging in widespread loot, arson and rape. (It is only much later that the truth could not be suppressed that in the guise of tribal raiders, Pakistan had sent their Army regulars, too.) Brigadier Sen's book, Slender Was the Thread, is the most authoritative military account of that war. We will quote profusely from his book to understand the genesis of the war and how India became involved in it.

Sen writes: “In order to enable Supreme Headquarters to function effectively, the Indian Army Headquarters Signal Regiment provided it with all its communications, including those to Pakistan Army Headquarters. The links provided for Supreme Headquarters were for its exclusive use. With the breakdown of law and order in the Punjab, Supreme Headquarters found its traffic increased considerably, and began utilising the already overstretched channels of communications of Army Head-quarters, India. This resulted in unacceptable delays in the submission of the various summaries and reports by Military Intelligence to the Government and to the Directorates of Headquarters. Some other channels of communi-cation were desperately needed, and fortunately the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force found themselves in a position to assist. Their wireless sets while not linked to any specific stations were utilised as Intercept sets and any messages that they picked up were passed to Military Intelligence....

“It was from some of these intercepts received via the Naval and Air Force channels that the first indication was received of something amiss in the Jammu Province of Jammu and Kashmir State.

“Among the intercepts received early in October 1947 was the one that read: ‘Gorkhas are still holding out at Sensa.' As Gorkha units were part of the Indian Army, and no message had been received that any unit was in trouble, a study was made of the Order of Battle of the Indian Army to ascertain the Gorkha Battalion located in Sensa. There was no such place.....

“The following day a further intercept was received: ‘Commander to Commander. Owen captured. Wait until I join you then coordinated attack on Sensa.' At about mid-day came another: ‘Commander to Commander. Have received one hundred Poonchies. Arrange rations.'

“The word ‘Poonchies' at last gave a clue. It indicated that the area of operations was not the North-West Frontier Province or Balu-chistan, but Jammu and Kashmir State. As no maps of Jammu and Kashmir were available with the Military Intelligence, a Staff Officer was sent to the Map Depot which handed him the necessary map sheets, but with a note to the effect that stocks of these maps were very limited, the main stock having been collected and taken to Pakistan. The Jammu-Pakistan border was scanned, and first Owen and then Sensa were located. They were both in the Poonch District of Jammu Province. From the locations it was obvious that they were both Jammu and Kashmir State Force border outposts. Only then was it realised that the J&K State Forces enlisted Gorkhas.”

Later it transpired that Pakistan had made full preparations for the attack beforehand by suborning the loyalty of the Muslim troops of the 4 J&K Infantry, which had been moved up the road towards the Kashmir Valley which was in imminent danger. Half the troops of the 4 J&K Infantry was Muslim. The other half (the Dogras) was Hindu. To quote Brig. Sen again:

“In the early hours of the morning of 22 October, while their Dogra comrades lay sleeping, the Poonchie Muslim troops rose. They drew their weapons from the Company Armouries and trained light automatics and medium machine guns on the barracks occupied by the Dogras, and on their Armouries so that they would be incapable of reaching their weapons. They then moved in and killed their comrades, including Lt. Col. Niranjan Singh who had placed implicit trust in them. This accomplished, they made contact with the tribal convoy which had arrived and lay halted on the Pakistan side of the border. With the town of Muzaffarabad open to them, the tribals swarmed in. Rape, loot and arson engulfed the town. The tribesmen were only brought under control with the promise of even better booty ahead in the Valley. The tribal convoy, now led by the Poonchie Muslims of 4 J & K Infantry, moved up the road towards the Valley.”

Brig. Sen then makes an important comment: “One might form the impression from these incidents in Jammu and in Muzaffarabad-Domel area that the Muslims of the State had risen against the Government and wished to join Pakistan. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thousands upon thousands of Muslims in the Government, the State Forces and in the National Conference, the political party led by Sheikh Abdullah, braved death in stemming the invasion. Many Muslim officers and men of the J & K State Forces were later absorbed into the Indian Army. Their loyalty is beyond question. It was only a certain number that defected.”(Italics mine.—B.D.G.)

The besieged Maharajah, Hari Singh, facing imminent defeat and disaster, approached India to send its Army. India, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the Prime Minister, said Indian troops could be sent into Kashmir only if the Maharajah acceded to India. The situation was desperate for Hari Singh, denying him time for taking a decision. He signed the instrument of accession to the Indian Dominion on October 26, 1947. Next day, October 27, Governor-General Lord Mountbatten sent a communication to the Maharajah accepting the accession but with the remark that: “It is my Government's wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Jammu and Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invader the question of the State's accession should be settled by a reference to the people.”

But the ‘invaders'—that is, Pakistan—have never vacated the land they had occupied, despite a UN resolution specifically calling upon Pakistan to do so. The plebiscite question thus became infructuous. Meanwhile, much water has flown down the Jhelum. The Kashmiris have taken part in the elections in huge numbers every time. Strictly speaking, Pakistan has no locus standi in Jammu and Kashmir. The problem is between India and Kashmir or, to be more precise, between the Indian state and the people of Kashmir. It is India's failure to sort out this problem that has brought Pakistan into the picture and what was essentially an India-Kashmir issue has now become an India-Pakistan issue.

We will now come to the most important document—the Instrument of Accession of Kashmir to India which the Maharajah signed.

Instrument of Accession executed by Maharajah Hari Singh on October 26, 1947

Whereas the Indian Independence Act, 1947, provides that as from the fifteenth day of August, 1947, there shall be set up an independent Dominion known as INDIA, and that the Government of India Act 1935, shall with such omissions, additions, adaptations and modifications as the Governor General may by order specify, be applicable to the Dominion of India.

And whereas the Government of India Act, 1935, as so adapted by the Governor General, provides that an Indian State may accede to the Dominion of India by an Instrument of Accession executed by the Ruler thereof.

Now, therefore, I Shriman Inder Mahinder Rajrajeswar Maharajadhiraj Shri Hari Singhji, Jammu & Kashmir Naresh Tatha Tibbet adi Deshadhipati, Ruler of Jammu & Kashmir State, in the exercise of my Sovereignty in and over my said State do hereby execute this my Instrument of Accession and

1. I hereby declare that I accede to the Dominion of India with the intent that the Governor General of India, the Dominion Legislature, the Federal Court and any other Dominion authority established for the purposes of the Dominion shall by virtue of this my Instrument of Accession but subject always to the terms thereof, and for the purposes only of the Dominion, exercise in relation to the State of Jammu & Kashmir (hereinafter referred to as “this State”) such functions as may be vested in them by or under the Government of India Act, 1935, as in force in the Dominion of India, on the 15th day of August 1947, (which Act as so in force is hereafter referred to as “the Act').

2. I hereby assume the obligation of ensuring that due effect is given to provisions of the Act within this State so far as they are applicable therein by virtue of this my Instrument of Accession.

3. I accept the matters specified in the schedule hereto as the matters with respect to which the Dominion Legislature may make law for this State.

4. I hereby declare that I accede to the Dominion of India on the assurance that if an agreement is made between the Governor General and the Ruler of this State whereby any functions in relation to the administration in this State of any law of the Dominion Legislature shall be exercised by the Ruler of the State, then any such agreement shall be construed and have effect accordingly.

5. The terms of this my Instrument of Accession shall not be varied by any amendment of the Act or the Indian Independence Act, 1947, unless such amendment is accepted by me by Instrument supplementary to this Instrument.

6. Nothing in this Instrument shall empower the Dominion Legislature to make any law for this State authorizing the compulsory acquisition of land for any purpose, but I hereby undertake that should the Dominion for the purpose of a Dominion law which applies in this State deem it necessary to acquire any land, I will at their request acquire the land at their expense, or, if the land belongs to me transfer it to them on such terms as may be agreed or, in default of agreement, determined by an arbitrator to be appointed by the Chief Justice of India.

7. Nothing in this Instrument shall be deemed to commit in any way to acceptance of any future Constitution of India or to fetter my discretion to enter into agreement with the Government of India under any such future constitution.

8. Nothing in this Instrument affects the continuance of my Sovereignty in and over this State, or, save as provided by or under this Instrument, the exercise of any powers, authority and rights now enjoyed by me as Ruler of this State or the validity of any law at present in force in this State.

9. I hereby declare that I execute this Instrument on behalf of this State and that any reference in this Instrument to me or to the Ruler of the State is to be construed as including a reference to my heirs and successors.

Given under my hand this 26th day of October, nineteen hundred and forty seven.

Hari Singh, Maharajadhiraj of Jammu and Kashmir State

Schedule I of the Instrument of Accession listed the matters “with respect to which the Dominion Lelgislature may make laws for this State.” The power of the Indian legislature to make laws was restricted to three subjects: Defence, Foreign Affairs and Communications. Kashmir was to have its separate constitution, flag and Head of State (Sadar-i-Riyasat) and Prime Minister. So, when Kashmir acceded to the Indian Dominion, it was on the condition that it was not to be just like any other Province but would retain its special characteristics.

Unfortunately, all Central Governments in New Delhi, whether run by the Congress or the BJP or hotchpotch coalitions, were bent on obliterating these special characteristics and reducing Jammu and Kashmir to the status of any other State of the Indian Union. This was done ostensibly to ‘integrate' Kashmir with the rest of India. The more the so-called ‘integration process' continued, the more the gulf widened between the people of Kashmir and India. The persistent demand for the abolition of Article 370 of the Constittuion is only accentuating the process of alienation. Earlier, the flag of Kashmir used to be hoisted along with the national flag of India in all official functions in Kashmir. Last year, the BJP Government stopped the hoisting of the Kashmiri flag, further injuring the amour propre of the Kashmiris.

Have we ever asked ourselves why the Indian Army, which was hailed by the Kashmiris in 1947 as their saviour from the Pakistani marauders, is now regarded as a force of occupation? Why has the Kashmiri mind undergone such a sea-change in 69 years?

The answer is obvious. We have refused to recognise the Kashmir problem as a political problem and treated it all along as a law-and-order problem. Every unrest has to be put down with the force of the state. For this purpose, the security forces have been given a blanket cover by the AFSPA. This law empowers the members of the security forces to kill anyone who is merely suspected to be a terrorist or an insurgent and gives them immunity against prosecution in a court of law. So the tendency is to use force—more and more force. And the use of force is proving more and more counter-productive. The death of every ‘secessionist' gives birth to a dozen more. The people of Kashmir are turning against India.

Following Burhan's death, Kashmir went through a spell of an undeclared emergency. Local newspaper offices were raided in the dead of the night and their publication stopped. The police swooped on and seized several thousand copies of a newspaper that had reached the hawkers. Internet and mobile phone services were stopped. Local TV channels were shut down. There was a complete news blackout. The ‘Indian' media, print and electronic, took care not to report what was actually happening in Kashmir. They only toed the official line that terrorists and secessionists were creating trouble in Kashmir and the Indian state was determined to foil the conspiracy of the Pakistan-sponsored terrorists.

Suppressing anger is not the way to win over a people who have been alienated and are still being alienated. We are losing the battle for the Kashmiri mind. If we cannot reverse the process and set in motion a process of reconciliation, of healing, of winning the confidence of the Kashmiris, it is doubtful how long we shall be able to keep them with us against their wish. There is time yet. Let us recognise that the Kashmir problem is a political problem. Let us set in motion the process of reconciliation and removing the hurt and wounded feelings of the Kashmiris. It is no use blaming Pakistan. Pakistan is no friend of India and has never made secret of its inimical intentions against India. They will take advantage of every situation that can be used to whip up anti-India feelings. It is for us not to create situations Pakistan can exploit. Kashmir for India is not a tract of land but the people who inhabit that land.

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

Yet another Dalit family was hacked to death because it was suspected to have eaten beef. The laboratory tests of the “beef” showed that it was some other cattle. Some time ago, the Kerala House in Delhi was attacked by gau rakshaks because beef was served there. But the most shameful aspect is that there was no repentance among the upper castes and even the leaders of the RSS, who are supposed to work for social upliftment, did not utter a word of either condemnation or sorrow.

All religions indulge in social, economic or political discrimination but it is not a part of the religion itself as it is among the Hindus. And for centuries, it is going on without much challenge. There are still certain parts of India where the Dalits cannot use the road or well which are frequented by the upper castes. The worst part is that the funeral ground, which the upper castes use, is exclusive for them.

Islam, which teaches equality, has also been affected and the burial places of those placed high in life cannot be used by ordinary Muslims. In fact, a different kind of caste system prevails in Islam. For example, Sayyds are considered the Brahmins of the community and they practise the same kind of discrimination as the Hindus do when it comes to marriage or death. They refuse to consign the bodies at the common burial ground.

In fact, an ordinary Muslim suffers from both sides—one because he is poor and, two, because he is considered not at par with the well-placed Muslims. Here, the economic factor has come into play. And then it has got mixed with preferences and prejudices, making the poor Muslims' plight still more pitiful. True, the Indian Constitution does not allow discrimination on the basis of religion. But it is practised all over and even the police force has come to be contaminated and it connives at the violation of the upper castes without a demur.

The practice has become more glaring and persistent since the advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's regime. That the upper-caste people have been appointed to key positions in universities and other institutions at the behest of the government make some of the best brains rot. The RSS makes it sure that the people appointed are from the “right” background to ensure that the Hindutva philosophy is taken as the guideline.

Not long ago, the Pune Film Institute went on strike for months together when its head was replaced by a television artiste who had the blessings of the RSS. The government did not change its decision even in the midst of widespread discontentment. Ultimately, the students had to give in because their career was at peril.

The time has come for introspection. The upper castes have not accepted the presence of Dalits or even members of other backward classes in their midst. The numerous agitations in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh or, for that matter, in other parts of the country have not jolted the conscience of the upper castes. These are the results of the government pursuing with reservations despite the 10-year time-limit set by the Constituent Assembly way back in 1950.

I recall that during the debates of the Constituent Assembly Dr B.R. Ambedkar, a revered Dalit leader, declared that they did not want any reservation. He was persuaded by the assurance that the period will not be more than 10 years. Now the situation is such that as soon as the period is over, Parliament unanimously extends it to another 10 years. No political party, including the Communists, has stood up to resist and say enough was enough. Now that elections in Uttar Pradesh, the largest State in the country, are scheduled to take place in 2017, Dalit leader Mayawati is being wooed by all political parties. She has said that her party would go it alone and there is every possibility that she might return with a majority. Her advantage is that the Dalit voter obediently follows her instruction. She is the only one who can get the Dalit votes transferred to some other community. Even though the Congress has traditionally fought for social justice, Mahatma Gandhi was the only leader who believed in giving equal status to the Dalits. True, they did not like the title “Harijan” (son of God) given by him because they thought it was too patronising.

Dr Rajendra Prasad, after finishing his task as the President of the Constituent Assembly, was appointed as the Food Minister. He went to Gandhiji to seek his advice on his accommodation. The Mahatma, who was living then in a bhangi (sweeper) colony, told him to live in the cottage next to the one he was residing in. Dr Rajendra Prasad was so horrified over the idea that he went to the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and complained on Gandhiji's suggestion.

No legislation is going to help, as has been India's experience. Ultimately, it depends on the upper castes to change their attitude. They believe in democracy but not in equality which is an integral part of the system. People in the world feel hard to believe that the country, which has sent rocket to the Mars, something which the advanced countries envy, practises discrimination against human beings.

Their horror is glaring when they see that a democratic country, where people queue before the ballot box to choose their leader, cannot get over the prejudice which they have inherited from the time even before the British who divided the society caste-wise and religion-wise to make their rule easy.

Whatever Parliament does to eliminate this malady will not help until the upper castes realise that what they are doing is against the democratic polity which they cherish. The sooner this realisation takes place, the better would it be for the country and its polity.

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

Religion has emerged as a major source of conflict all across the globe. A perceptive writer points out that ideological strife has now given place to the “clash of civilisations” and predicts that in the foreseeable future, religion will be a major source of conflict within and among nations. Samuel Huntington asserts that possibi-lities of conflict are greater in what he calls the “fault-lines of civilisation”, those areas such as India where different cultures and religions do meet. Huntington further asserts that such clashes can be prevented if appropriate strategies are formulated and implemented at an early stage so as to ensure religious harmony.

Europe is the continent that pioneered the modern concept of secular democracy. In Europe today, whilst there is a definite effort to accept multiculturalism and to respect all religions, there is also a perceptive growth of racism and xenophobia. This trend is largely due to the rapidly changing cultural and political landscape in that continent and increased immigration into those countries. The end of the Cold War, the reform of the Welfare State and economic globalisation are transforming the European society and creating a climate of fear and uncertainty. Most Europeans want a solid and stable ground upon which to stand and this, they feel, can be provided by their traditional churches and religion as opposed to new churches and religions. Such a mindset, however, is a step backwards in the cause of religious freedom. The French law is the most sweeping law on religious minorities which currently exists in Europe. It is feared that it may pave the way for religious intolerance in that country. France pursues a restrictive legislation that stigmatises minority religions and associates them with dangerous “sects”. In June 1995, the French National Assembly established a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission also known as the Gest-Guyard Commisssion, after the names of its chairman and rapporteur respectively. The purpose of the Commission was to study the new religious groups appearing in France and labelled as sects. The Commission identified 172 groups as ‘sects”. Several of them are Christian groups originating mainly from the United States but some are organisations closely related to the Indian cultural tradition such as ISKCON, Association of Sri Satya Saibaba, Brahma-kumaris, Sri Ramakrishna Mission, etc. The Justice Ministry issued a directive to all government offices to be vigilant against possible abuses by the “sects”. All government offices were instructed to monitor potentially abusive sect activities. The only redeeming feature is the widespread international condemnation which this law has received and which may reflect in its actual implementation.

The Parliamentary Commission of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution in June 1999 giving priority to prevention of “dangerous sects”. The resolution, however, states that “major legislation in this direction is undesirable” and points out that any such legislation might interfere with the freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights.

A document—“The challenge of proselytism and the calling to common witness”—was formulated in September 1995 by the Joint Working Group of the World Council of Churches, which represents the major Protestant denomi-nations and the Roman Catholic Church. The document refers to “serious concerns about tension and conflicts created by proselytism in nearly all parts of the world”. It defines “proselytism” as “a conscious effort with intention to win members of another church”. It mentions “instances in the developing world in which proselytism takes advantage of people's misfortunes and situations of poverty in villages, to induce them to change their church affiliation”. It calls for awareness of “the reality of diversity rooted in theological traditions and in various geographical, historical and cultural contexts” and denounces “the use of coercive or manipulative methods in evange-lism”. The statement rejects “all violations of religious freedom and all forms of religious intolerance as well as every attempt to impose belief and practices on others or to manipulate or coerce others in the name of religion”. It states: “Proselytism can violate or manipulate the rights of the individual and can exacerbate tense and delicate relations between communities and thus destabilise society.”

Among the nature and characteristics of proselytism, the document mentions extending explicit or implicit offers of education, health care and material inducements or using financial resources with the intent of making converts and manipulative attitudes and practices that exploit people's needs, weaknesses or lack of education especially in situations of distress and fail to respect their freedom and human dignity. The statement points out: “While our focus in this document is on the relationship between Christians, it is important to seek the mutual application of these principles also in interfaith relations. Both Christians and communities of other faiths complain about unworthy and unacceptable methods of seeking converts from their respective communities. The increased cooperation and dialogue among people of different faiths could result in witness offered to one another that would respect human freedom and dignity and will be free from the negative activities described above.”

Organised attempts at mass conversion and re-conversion backed by financial or political power can have an explosive backlash to the point of undermining public order. In India, mainline Christian theologians see both the Sangh Parivar'sHindutva ideology and Christian campaigns for evangelisation of India as having a fundamentalist attitude and an aggressive methodology to achieve their respective goals. Most Indian Christian theologians disapprove of organised conversions, favour inter-religious dialogue and express the need to study other religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and even tribal faiths, so that Christianity learns from their many valuable spiritual insights.

Organised drives for conversion and recon-version should stop. They violate the Consti-tution of India. Yet, specific legislation such as anti-conversion laws can only promote religious intolerance and animosity, may be misused by executive authorities and is not justified from the very limited positive results obtained. The government should rather, in a subtle manner, promote an agreement among the religious heads of all the major faiths in the country to stop proselytism. Given the positive mindset of theologians belonging to the different religions prevailing in India, this is very much possible.

The following steps should be taken to ensure religious peace and harmony in India:

• Formulate a national policy and an action plan to combat religious intolerance, including proselytism, and create an independent national institution for this purpose.

• Ensure that adequate training and awareness programmes about religion and religious harmony are formulated for young leaders at all levels and government officials, particularly the police and other law enforcement agencies, judges, teachers and social workers.

• Assure all victims of religious intolerance adequate support and speedy administrative and judicial remedies.

• Combat all forms of expression which incite sectarian hatred and take action against dissemination of such material in the media, including the Internet.

• Counter social exclusion and marginalisation in particular by providing adequate access to all citizens to education, health and employment.

• Pay specific attention to development of vulnerable groups such as tribals and other weaker sections, and those who suffer discrimination on different grounds.

• Protect the religious, ethnic and linguistic identity of persons belonging to minorities.

• Provide effective access to all citizens, including religious minorities, to the decision-making process in society.

The author, a former Union Minister, is currently based in Goa.

by M.Hamid Ansari

The following is the text of Vice-President M. Hamid Ansari's Valedictary Address at the Centenary Celebrations of Mysuru University (July 22, 2016).

One hundred years is an important milestone in the life of any institution. For a university, which ignites the light of knowledge in the minds of women and men, it is especially so. For the past hundred years, your university has been contributing to the making of India's knowledge society. Thousands of students and scholars have passed through these hallowed portals.

The genesis of this university lay in the extraordinary vision of two individuals, the then Maharaja of Mysore, Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar, and Sir M. Visvesvaraya, one of the most brilliant engineering minds that India has produced. It was the first university in India outside of the British governed areas. Today, it has grown into one of India's largest, providing higher education to about 85 thousand students, of which over 10,000 are Postgraduates. Some 1400 students from 50 foreign countries are also enrolled at the picturesque main campus and various satellite and extension facilities.

The University has an excellent track record in research, especially in the field of micro-biology, and it is no surprise that it has out-standing rankings in the NAAC surveys. Your success, and your reputation as a centre of excellence, is due to the efforts and excellence of the faculty and the hard work of students. On this historic day, I congratulate you all.

The value of universities has long been understood across different cultures and societies. In this ‘age of Information', few would dispute the importance of universities. Universities are seen as crucial national assets in addressing policy priorities, as sources of new knowledge and innovative thinking and as providers of skilled personnel.



However, recent events in our own country have shown that there is much confusion about what a university should or should not be. It is pertinent therefore to examine in some detail what the role of a university should be in our society in its present circumstance as well as its future trajectory.

The term ‘university' originates from the Latin word ‘universitas'—simply meaning ‘a whole'. Universities, therefore, are meant to deal with the universality of knowledge and humanity in all its manifestations—physical, biological, mental, emotional—both objective and subjective—as well as all aspects of social, cultural and economic organisations and interactions.

The idea of a university, wrote Cardinal Newman in the late 19th century, is to be deter-mined without recourse to any authority and should be based on human wisdom. It should be a place for the diffusion and extension of knowledge, adding that ‘an academic system without the personal influence of teachers upon pupils is an arctic winter; it will create an ice-bound, petrified, cast-iron university, and nothing else'.

A High Level Task-Force constituted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the World Bank in the year 2000 to deliberate upon the nature of Universities in the 21st century identi-fied some important roles for the universities. These included:

• Unlock potential at all levels of society, helping talented people to gain advanced training whatever their background;

• Create a pool of highly trained individuals that attains a critical size and becomes a key national resource;

• Address topics whose long term value to society is thought to exceed their current value to students and employers;

• Provide space for the free and open discussion of ideas and values.

Speaking about the role of modern univer-sities last year, the President of the Copenhagen Business School, Per Holten-Andersen, similarly, identified four classical and one modern function of the university:

• To act as ‘knowledge vaults' or the repository of the knowledge of mankind, maintaining and securing crucial knowledge for present and future generations;

• To generate new Knowledge—to undertake the activity that we call research;

• To transfer Knowledge to the Next Generation, or what we call education;

• To transfer Knowledge to Society, or what can be called dissemination; and

• To generate economic development by playing an integral role in furthering economic growth.

In the last few decades, increasing importance has been attributed to this fifth goal. However, the addition of economic development to the accepted role of universities should be about augmenting the role and purpose of universities. To see universities simply as instruments for immediate economic benefit would be a fundamental error. To confine universities to such a mechanical place in the progress of society is to diminish them.

The universities, even as they valiantly play the role of ‘growth engines of the society' have a larger, long-term and transformative role to play. The transformative potential of universities is most acutely needed in societies like India where we struggle against societal inequalities and deep-seated prejudices.

Our Constitution, in its Preamble, promises to the citizen of our republic social, economic and political justice as well as equality of status and of opportunity. It seeks to promote fraternity among them while assuring liberty of thought and expression. Universities can be agents of social justice and mobility. They can foster fraternity and must contribute to social and cultural vitality and building an egalitarian society.

Some ways in which universities can contri-bute to these goals would include—

• Universities are seen as progenitors of ‘useful knowledge'. But this knowledge cannot always be limited to serving ‘immediate' needs, whether technical or social. A university that moulds itself only to present demands is one that is not listening to its historians. Today's preoccupations are inevitably myopic, often ephemeral, giving little thought for tomorrow. History is at its most illuminating when written with the full consciousness of what people wrongly expected to happen. Even in the domain of technology, future developments only a few years away have been shrouded from contemporary eyes. Many, possibly most, have arisen unexpectedly from research with other objectives, and assessments of techno-logical potential have invariably missed the mark. One of the roles of the university, thus, is to prepare knowledge that an unpredic-table future may need.

• Universities are also forums of free speech and debate. The long term viability and stability of a democratic polity is crucially dependent on the maintenance and develop-ment of the educational level of our population, and on the individual's ability to form independent and enlightened opinions. The universities can act as both the weather vanes and safety-valves of political dissent and direction. Suppression of such discourse only breeds mistrust, and begets social malcontent.

• The inculcation of general knowledge and ‘learnedness', which are the classical roles of the university have strong and long-term economic impacts on our societies in the form of increased trust, transparency, ability to handle change and social cohesion. Erosion of social cohesion can have massive personal, social, as also economic costs.

I am sure that this University, one of the premier institutions of the country, will continue to play its role as a neutral assembler of talent; that of an unmatched idea factory where the passion, creativity and idealism of young minds can be applied to meeting the transitional needs of our society, polity and economy. May your success continue to inspire you to ever greater heights. I wish you all the very best for the future.

Jai Hind.

Here is how the holy cow seems to have hooved the Sangh Parivar for now: following the Prime Minister's chest-thumpingly politic outburst against those that use the cow to beat the Dalit (Uttar Pradesh which goes to the hustings soon has 24 per cent Dalits), the Hindu Mahasabha has come out with scathing condlemnation of the numero uno, calling him anti-Hindu, and suggesting he resign office since he was supposed to be a Hindu Samrat. The VHP has said they always protected cows, and they always will protect cows. Remarkably, but unsurprisingly, since it remains primarily a political organisation, the RSS has supported Mr Modi, characterising attacks against Dalits “inhuman”. One lives and learns, you might say. No suggestion here that keeping Dalits tied to their ordained professions, in habitations at the outskirts of towns and villages, or out of temples, even as they are assured of being Hindus, and a lot more, might also be inhuman. But for now, the RSS has cannily understood that disaster awaits its progeny, come Assembly elections in the Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh. Note that the Prime Minister has said nothing about the desirability or not of attacks on Muslims and Christians, in the knowledge perhaps that those are lost causes anyway. He has not thought it worth his while to speak one word about the goings-on in the doomed Valley where no elections are due for now.

Meanwhile, coming events cast their shadows before: the urban and rural body by-elections in Rajasthan of all places has given the Congress 19 of thirtyseven seats, and the ruling BJP ten. With a near-total loss of Dalit and Muslim votes, not to forget the animatedly hostile Patidars in Gujarat, the forthcoming Assembly elections seem set to make those Assemblies relatively BJP-mukt. In Uttar Pradesh, additionally, a fairly substantial segment of Brahmins seems equally annoyed with the BJP which cannot make up its mind to foreground a Brahmin face as the chief ministerial candidate. Contrastingly, the down-and-out mother of all parties seems to be going smart thanks to a concatenation of moves tactically, but, more importantly, because of a general feeling of ennui among the UP voters with the three other parties that have been in power one way or another for some three decades now. The public response to the Congress' Varanasi road show has been stupendous and palpably zestful. Suggesting that the oldest of all parties may be positioned, ironically, as was the AAP in Delhi—an untried formation worth the trying now. Wonders may never cease.

What will be of interest is how the cleavages within the Sangh Parivar shape out in the coming months. Between the aspiration of its political vanguard to go the whole hog for privately-driven elitist development schemes in alliance with cutting-edge technologies and collaboration with the most ruthlessly expropriating foreign capital, and its atavistic allegiance to inhuman social and cultural practices, falls the shadow on its prospects. The Prime Minister may well continue to rope-walk this irreconciliable chasm through politic silence alternating with politc statement, but with increasingly diminishing returns.

The price of prevarication may indeed prove to be rather more lethal than the price of tur dal, or, if you like, the two together may come to be decisively deleterious to the largest party in the world.

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.

Editorial

As we approach yet another Independence Day, it has a special significance for all of us. For, next Monday we shall observe our seventieth Independence Day.

Ever since the BJP, headed by PM Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah, came to power at the Centre with absolute majority in the Lok Sabha two years ago, that is, in May 2014, there have been concerted attempts to attack minorities turning them into ‘outsiders'. First came the spate of communal riots in UP, most notably in Muzaffarnagar; thereafter communal violence was reported from Haryana's Ballabhgarh. Subsequently a Muslim gentleman, Mohammad Akhlaq, was lynched near his residence in Dadri, quite near our Capital city, on the mere suspicion that he had stored beef in his fridge. These incidents, constituting a direct and frontal attack on our secular democracy, have caused irreparable damage to the pluralist culture guaranteed by our Constitution. What is more, these have engendered a sense of insecurity among the minorities that are proving difficult to dispel.

Lately the Dalits have become the targets of the Hindutva forces. This was magnified by the public flogging of Dalits in Gujarat's Una district for having skinned a dead cow. This sparked massive Dalit outrage all across the State. Hindu majoritarian attacks on Dalits in UP (and on Muslims in Madhya Pradesh) on similar lines have generated deep resentment among the Dalit community. The PM, who remained silent over such incidents when those first hit the headlines, has lately denounced those attacks in no uncertain terms. But this has deeply antagonised the so-called gau-rakshaks much to the discomfiture of the BJP-RSS. Yet Modi knows that if he continues to adopt the same mauni -baba stance he had taken earlier, it could be disastrous and deleterious for the BJP in the forthcoming State Assembly polls. It is also not fortuitous that Modi's denunciation of the cow vigilantes came the day the New York Times carried an editorial asking the PM to break his ‘shameful silence' on the misdeeds of the perpetrators of such crimes.

However, what is most reprehensible is that influential sections of the media, primarily the corporate-driven electronic media, are playing a despicable role in this regard: instead of condemning the cow vigilantes in unambiguous terms, they have adopted a posture of silence emulating the authorities, at least till the time Modi decided to speak out on the issue. What does this indicate? Watchdog transforming into lapdog for selfish interests?

Meanwhile the situation in the Kashmir Valley has lately worsened primarily because of the mishandling of the unfolding events by the authorities, both at the State level and the Centre. Former J&K CM Omar Abdullah has aptly pointed out that the prevailing situation was not the handiwork of Pakistan which was only fishing in troubled waters. However, the Centre and strategic community alongwith sections of the media are hellbent on plugging the jingoist line without any trace of a self-critical attitude.

Independence, like democracy and peace, is indivisible. If freedom in any part of the country is imperilled, it cannot be secure elsewhere. Hence what is imperative is that the situation must be brought under control forthwith by revoking all strong-arm measures employed by the security forces and resuming the political dialogue. But for that to happen the government must bring about a qualitative change in its approach. The question is: is the present government under Modi at the Centre capable of taking such a step? If it is incapable of doing so, it must be removed from power through the united endeavours of all secular-democratic forces. There is no alternative to this course of action if our national unity and social cohesion are to be preserved.

Indeed a grim scenario stares us in the face on our seventieth Independence Day.

August 11 S.C.

The GST is expected to be implemented from April 1, 2017. While it has been hailed as the single biggest tax reform since independence, many worries have been expressed about it in the media. The FMs of Kerala and West Bengal (otherwise political rivals) have expressed concern about certain provisions. But most importantly, after this author pointed out that the implementation of the GST would raise the rate of inflation (Kumar, 2015), it is now widely accepted by other analysts also. This has been the experience of other countries that introduced the VAT or GST. This should worry the government since it is also said that in many countries the party in government that introduced this measure lost the next election. The NDA faces several important State elections in 2017 and the national elections in 2019.

Revenue Neutral Rate (RNR) and Inflation

Whether the GST would be inflationary or not would depend on the rate(s) fixed for the GST. If it is suitably low, it would not cause the rate of inflation to rise but if it is high or even moderate it would certainly lead to its rise. There is talk of a revenue neutral rate (RNR) of between 15 to 18 per cent. What is RNR? It is that rate of average tax (of the GST) at which the amount of tax collected under it would be the same as collected at present (before the GST is initiated). Collecting the same amount of revenue is important to prevent the fiscal deficit from rising since that is frowned upon by the international agencies. They believe, a deficit signifies fiscal profligacy.

A shortfall in revenue and likely increase in the budget deficit is a greater worry for the States since they cannot easily resort to a deficit budget. For the States, loss of revenue usually translates into cuts in the allocations to their welfare programmes, like, employment generation, education and health. It needs to be remembered that a bulk of the social sector expenditures are incurred by the States and not the Centre. Hence politically it is more important for the State governments that they do not curtail their welfare budgets and for that they need to collect at least as much tax as they do at present. The Centre has assured the States that if there is any shortfall, then it would compensate them for the same. However, if the States face a shortfall, then so would the Centre. So, where would it get the extra resources? Its deficit in the budget would rise even more. Under the circumstances, cuts in allocations are bound to occur.

A single RNR rate implies that some current rates of indirect taxes will rise while some others will fall. For instance, services are taxed at a rate of 15 per cent currently but if the RNR is fixed at 18 per cent, then all services prices will rise. However, if some good faces a combined excise and sales tax rate of 22 per cent, then its rate of tax would fall and so would its price. Thus, in the aggregate, prices should not rise with RNR. However, there is a catch—even with RNR, the rate of inflation is likely to rise. It is important to understand that.

Cascading Effect of Indirect Taxes

Indirect taxes not only ‘cascade' from one tax to the other but they also feed from one good or service to another. Thus, where one levies an indirect tax and where its impact is felt are different. For example, even though wheat does not bear an excise or a sales tax but when these taxes are increased on diesel, transport cost rises and so do the prices of wheat. Thus, even those commodities that bear no indirect tax find their prices rise when indirect taxes are raised. The implication also is that the more basic a commodity, the more it is used in the production of other goods and if its price rises it makes the prices of other goods rise. Thus, an increase in indirect taxes on energy (which is used in the production of all goods and services) feeds into all prices, GST or no GST. Further, if a single rate or a small spread of rates is introduced, it may imply an increase in the tax rates on basic goods (unless special care is taken to keep their taxation low) and that would feed into inflation.

The GST is supposed to get rid of the cascading effect of taxes. But the introduction of the VAT for calculation of sales tax and excise and service taxes had already removed the cascading effect within each of these taxes. What the GST is supposed to accomplish is that the cascading effect across the different taxes would also be eliminated. Namely, the cascading of service tax on sales or excise or of sales tax on services and excise and other such combinations are expected to be eliminated.

The impact of the cascading effect of taxes is that the effective rate of tax becomes higher than the one on the statute books so that the price rise is also more than implied by the declared rate. Therefore, in the example of wheat given earlier, even though the rate of tax is zero, the effective rate may work out to be a few per cent. Thus, if the cascading effect is removed/reduced, then to collect the same amount of taxes as earlier, the rate of tax under the GST must rise. But under a one tax (or a few taxes) regime that could mean higher taxes on basics and, therefore, a greater inflationary impact.

GST and Simplification in Taxation

It is also said that 17 Central and State taxes would be replaced by one single tax. This would make for efficiency and lower costs and prices. This is not quite true. The tax is going to be very complex, requiring massive computerisation and a strong IT backbone. Thus costs would rise. Further, given the fraud that takes place in computer operations, the risks would rise. In the case of Satyam the software had been manipulated to show fictitious fixed deposits to the tune of Rs 6000 crores and 12,000 fictitious employees.

It is also an overstatement that 17 taxes will be replaced by one. A manufacturing firm does not have to pay entertainment tax and other such taxes. It basically pays three taxes—excise, sales and service tax. Under the GST also there will be three taxes—CGST, IGST and SGST. For SGST, registration may be needed in 31 States. The unit maybe paying Central sales tax and Octroi/Entry tax. But, Octroi is mostly eliminated in the country. Entry barriers at State borders will have to remain anyway for checking. So, there may not be much simplification.

Big companies buy in bulk and use that input to produce several products. They would have to apportion how much input credit they would get for each product to do the pricing. For example, if they do advertising as a company, how much credit they would take for each product sold would pose problems and could lead to disputes with the tax department. This is only one example and there would be many others also. Costs could increase due to litigation, etc.

Progressivity and Regressivity of Taxes

It is well known that inflation hits the poor more and especially if basic goods prices rise more. It is in this context that the macro economic impact needs to be understood. The proponents of the GST had been arguing that the GST would lead to a rise in indirect tax collection. As pointed out above, that would lead to a rise in prices. Further, if prices rise, demand would tend to stagnate or decline and that would adversely impact production and growth rate of the economy. Indirect taxes are also regressive since they tend to be a higher per cent of the poor person's income than that of a well-off person. This would be the case even if luxuries are taxed more than the essentials. The reason is that progressivity/regressivity is defined with respect to income and not expenditures. For the rich, consumption is a small part of their income even though in absolute terms it is large. For the poor, almost the entire income is consumed (even though the magnitude is small) and often it is based on borrowing which implies that consumption is more than the income. Thus, what looks progressive with respect to consumption becomes regressive when calculated with respect to the income. The result is that increased collections of indirect taxes tend to increase disparities.

That is not the case with direct taxes which tend to fall directly on the individual's income. In India, those with higher incomes have to pay higher tax rates. However, the tax rate is flat at incomes beyond Rs 10 lakhs, thus reducing the progressivity after that income level. Further, there are a large number of exemptions and deductions which are available to the well-off sections. This reduces the progressivity of the direct taxes. The exemptions and deductions are deliberately provided to benefit the rich. There are batteries of lawyers and Chartered Accountants whose sole task is to find ways of reducing their client's taxable incomes using these loopholes; this is legal. In the famous Vodaphone case the company has managed to avoid paying thousands of crores of capital gains taxes due to the artful interpretation of the laws and the Supreme Court accepted their inter-pretation even though the company had lost in the High Court. Beyond the legal provisions used/misused, the huge black economy further reduces the progressivity of direct taxes because the rich do not declare much of their incomes. Thus, even though theoretically the direct taxes are progressive, in reality they also may turn regressive.

Warren Buffet in the US pointed out once that he pays less taxes than his secretary who earns around 0.001 per cent of what he earns. He started a move in the context of the global financial crisis that the ‘rich should pay more tax'. This was picked up in Europe by its rich also. Unfortu-nately, the Indian rich do not want to pay more taxes and seek to make the government depend on indirect taxes and that is the importance of the GST and a high RNR.

Feasibility of a lower RNR

The political implications of the GST are important. If inflation kicks up, inequalities rise, output stagnates and that impacts employment generation then the public reaction is bound to be negative even if big business is happy. It has also been argued (Kumar, 2015) that a single market may benefit big business but the small and the cottage sectors are likely to be adversely affected even if they are kept outside the GST net. Such a differentiation would further impact employment and growth of the economy since the small scale and cottage sectors are employment-intensive while the large scale is not. The rapid rise of the large scale production in the economy since 1991 and the decline in the share of the small scale production has led to the phenomenon of ‘jobless growth'. The GST could accentuate that.

The way out of this political quicksand would be to go for a rate lower than RNR. This is feasible because the tax base is supposed to expand both because the black economy is expected to be curtailed and because more stages of production are to come under the GST net.

A back of the envelope calculation suggests a low RNR is feasible. The GST would apply to non-agriculture which is 86 per cent of the GDP. Out of this, exempt items and those items that are not to come under the GST (like, petroleum goods) may be removed. Indirect taxes collected presently are about 10 per cent of the GDP and from this the customs duties may be subtracted along with those items which are left out of the GST (alcohol, tobacco, etc.). Further, assume that half of the unorganised sector production would be out of the GST but half of the black economy would come under the net (one of the suggested gains of the GST), then about five-six per cent of the GDP may have to be collected from about 50 per cent of the GDP. The RNR can then be between 10 and 12 per cent rather than the suggested 15-18 per cent. The NIPFP had apparently earlier suggested a rate of 24-27 per cent.

One may suggest, if the government believes its own rhetoric about the GST being a ‘game-changer' and the biggest ‘reform', it can keep the rate of the GST below what the official studies are suggesting and benefit both the common people of the country and itself. Further, to make it the biggest tax reform, the government can work to increase the direct tax collections by tackling the black economy and use that to further reduce the indirect tax collections.

[This article is based on a piece published in The Indian Express on August 12, 2016.]

Reference

Kumar, A., 2015, ‘Macroeconomic Aspects of Goods and Services Tax', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. L, No. 29, July 18.

The author is a retired Professor of Public Finance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also the author of Alternative Budgets. He can be contacted at e-mail: arunkumar1000@hotmail.com

COMMUNICATION

Veteran journalist, author and commentator Kuldip Nayar was lucid and specific in his column captioned, “A Page from ‘Quit India' Movement”. [Mainstream, Vol. LIV, No. 33, August 6, 2016] His anger against the colonial rulers for the atrocities committed against the Indians is fully justifiable and understandable. But may I request him to place alongside the atrocities Indians have committed against the underprivileged country-men because of caste prejudice?

This is utterly indefensible for any Indian to be perceived as a defender of Churchill at this point of time. This is not in defence of the imperialist Prime Minister any way. But my question is: have we kept count of Indians who have fallen to the hatred of Indians and lost lives because of caste hatred, animosity and brutalities nursed against them? The British officialdom in India had the duty to defend their colony and colonial rule here. What did the Indians achieve by killing, murdering, raping and violating the untouchables? Every Hindu Indian from the upper echelons believed to enjoy an inherent right to kill, destroy and damage another inferior Indian merely on the ground of hatred. Right to life, dignity, happiness and security for socially inferior are not recognised in Hinduism. And Gandhi was a firm devotee of that Hinduism.

This is because of caste in Hinduism. Actually as a common man finds no difference between caste and Hinduism euphemism for their religion. Gandhi proclaimed:

“I am a Hindu because it is Hinduism which makes the world worth living.”

(source: Young India,1-12-26) Look at India at any point of time in the history. Look at the treatment the devoted Hindus meted out to the underprivileged like Eklavya or Shambuka in the era Hindus are utterly proud of. Look at what has been happening across India from one end to the other. If Gandhi is proud, Eklavya or Shambuka had every reason to call it a beastly religion that favours a man because of his caste; it hates another also because of his caste. The Dalits across India are receiving treatment marked by intense hatred, mindless humiliation, glaring injustice and inequality sanctioned by Hindu scriptures. Murder, rape, arson, physical harm targeting the Dalits and tribals are routine. Hinduism decorated with the four-fold caste system is hell for those at the bottom of the society. It's, of course, a paradise for those at the top. The religion has invested a culture of disrespect in the Hindu mind for the lower social orders. Merit is caste-based and benefit caste-driven. Gandhi prophesied:

“If Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism will perish.”Gandhi's full testament for caste is abominable and unbelievable.

Is there any doubt Brahmanism is the soul of Hinduism? And is also there any grain of suspicion it has made Hinduism a beastly religion that denies dignity to a man inferior in caste? If a religion denies respect, dignity, justice, equality to any section counted as Hindu, how is it a creed? If a religion treats its followers savagely, how does it qualify to be a glorious faith?

In 1942 Akli Devi, a native of Shahabad district of Bihar, was shot dead by the police while participating in the ‘Quit India' Movement. Nobody in Bihar, not to speak of people outside, knows her name. Nothing has been done to commemorate her sacrifice. A widow, she was a Dusadh, one of Bihar's untouchables. Is her extreme sacrifice insignificant in comparison to any who have captured huge space in history? What Churchill curtly observed we may dislike it but it has tons of truth we can ill afford to overlook in national interest. The country can become a nation if we can kill the beast from the religion. The choice is ours. The initiative too rests solely with beastly Indians.

Should we blame others for pointing out the truth to us? Should our failure to rectify our own deficiencies and set our own houses in order lead us to accuse and vilify others as defence mechanism?

Dr A.K. Biswas

137, VIP Road, Kolkata-52