The Communist Party of India was born in the conditions of colonial rule of British imperialism. This imparted certain distinctive features to the party, in addition to its usual nature of a Communist Party.

The very first constitution of the CPI, adopted in its foundation conference in 1925, included the provisions for election of three general secretaries and two treasurers. Besides, the chairman of the conference was to be chairman of the party till the next conference. There was provision for annual conference. In the course of time, these provisions were amended.

These and some other provisions were reflections of those times and conditions, when the country was fighting for freedom. The CPI in its first political statement combined the tasks of national liberation and class struggle.

This reflected the fact that the Communist Party was born in distinct conditions of struggle against colonial rule.

Lenin versus Roy: Participation in Freedom Movement

We are living in an imperialist era. The Communist International discussed the tasks of the Communists in the freedom movement and also the role and place of workers and peasants. It is in this context that the controversy between Lenin and M.N. Roy took place in 1920 at the Second Congress of the Comintern.

M.N. Roy, adopting a sectarian attitude, opposed any cooperation with the bourgeoisie in the freedom movement. Lenin totally rejected his theses as sectarian and harmful. Lenin clearly advocated the active participation of the working masses and the Communists in the struggle for independence alongside all other forces including the national bourgeoisie, while maintaining their ideological-political independence.

Lenin considered the freedom movement as a crucial stage towards freedom from imperialism and then from capitalism. He characterised it as the bourgeois democratic revolution, which was then reformulated as the national democratic revolution. Communists in China, Vietnam, India and other Asian and colonial countries adopted the strategy of full and active struggle for freedom of their countries. Communists of India were in the forefront of the struggle of their country.

CPI General Secretary P.C. Joshi advocated formation of a national front for the struggle for freedom of India. It was a highly successful strategy. The CPI emerged as an influential national force.

This Leninist strategy was most suitable for the imperialist era. It coincided fully with the aspirations of the people for their freedom.

CPI as a Constructive Party

A Communist Party is usually seen as a party only of ‘revolution', a revolution that is very remote, replacing capitalism with socialism in some distant future. This is a prolonged transition period. The Party is supposed to destroy the existing order some time or the other. The Communist Party, anywhere in the world, is looked upon as a party of destruction.

But the colonial conditions in India (and elsewhere too) presented certain concrete and peculiar situations. People cannot wait for socialism in the remote future for the solution of their problems. The country has to be reconstructed immediately to overcome its urgent problems. Therefore, the Communist Party has certain constructive responsibilities towards the country, the nation and the people.

A Communist Party in the colonial country has the dual role of fighting both for immediate solution of development, construction and overcoming the colonial vestiges, and at the same time of raising the consciousness of the people in favour of socialism.

Struggle for Reconstruction and Development

Nowadays, development is a fashionable word. But it is the Communist Party which raised certain basic questions about the construction of an independent economy and of overcoming the colonial past.

Along with other progressive forces, the CPI suggested and struggled for certain solutions to its problems. It cooperated with other progressive forces on the question.

The communist movement called for the nationalisation of foreign monopolies, of restricting and nationalising Indian monopoly houses, all-out basic land reforms and distribution of land, for zamindari abolition, for abolition of the princely states and abolition of privy purses, etc.

It was the CPI which struggled and sacrificed for the creation and strengthening of the public sector as the main pillar and core of the Indian economy, around which other sectors of the economy were to be built. The public or the state sector was to attain the commanding heights of the nation's economic system. Other sectors were not to be ignored.

India is dotted with public sector establish-ments like Bokaro, Bhilai, Bhakhra-Nangal, BHEL, HMT, Indian railways, NTC, SAIL, Coal India, Mathura Refinery, Vishakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), and so on. They constitute the very core and basis of the Indian economy. The CPI has never been in power at the Centre, except when two of its leaders were Central Ministers for a brief period in the United Front Government. Yet, the party has a great role in creating, strengthening and defending the public sector. These struggles were the result of two socio-economic and political trends, which converged at least on this point. One was what is well-known as the Nehruvian Framework, which put India onto the path of independent industrial and agricultural development in an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist direction. Any act of creating even a single factory or industrial establishment is an anti-imperialist act.

At the time of achieving freedom, India was a backward colonial country. The Nehruvian Frame-work provided a framework for large-scale industrialisation and transformation of the economy into a relatively independent advanced economy, which was largely, though not absolutely, self-reliant, and heavy machine-based economy centred around the public sector. It also provided for anti-feudal agrarian and land reforms. It followed a direction of creating a mixed economy, and through it the creation of a multi-layered economy.

The economy was based on planning with emphasis on heavy machine production. Thus it could lead other sectors of small, medium and large sector economic production. It is this that has provided India its economic and political strength and clout. The strategy of production of the means of production created a strong India. India is a strong and powerful country today, a complete turnaround from what it was at the time of freedom.

There emerged many points of common-ness between this strategy and the strategy of the communist movement, both national and intervational. It should be remembered that the then socialist camp, headed by the Soviet Union, had a common strategy with the forces of national liberation against world imperialism and colonialism. The economic policy and was part and parcel of this struggle. Self-reliance, planning, economic development with emphasis on heavy industries and machine building etc. were main pillars of this direction, combined with the ideology of peaceful coexistence.

The CPI established certain common-ness and strategic meeting-points with the ideology of national liberation within India, in which the Nehruvian approach played a key part.

The CPI led memorable struggles for land reforms, against zamindari, that is, the Indian variety of feudalism, for nationalisation of key industries owned and controlled by the monopoly sections of capitalism, for the nationalisation of the 14 biggest monopoly banks in 1969, for abolition of privy purses and so on.

The main contradiction of the post-indepen-dence India was between the forces of progress and Right reaction, in which class struggle played a key role. The reactionary forces opposed all the basic progressive policies of independent India. The CPI played a crucial, even decisive, role in the formulation of the progressive and anti-colonial policies. Therefore, the CPI was in the forefront of the struggle for the policies.

Thus the communist movement, particularly the CPI, played an important constructive role in colonial India and in its post-independence reconstruction. The CPI is a party of cons-truction, not destruction. It is around these issues that the CPI had to fight, not only against the Rightwing reactionary forces but also against extreme Leftwing sectarian tendencies within the communist movement itself. The sectarian trends in the CPI failed to appreciate the historical importance of the basic economic policies centred around the public sector and other points such as related with the democratic system. They considered it to be just another ‘bourgeios' policy of no value. They saw hardly any positive constructive role for the communist movement in a colonial country. Consequently, they failed to take up concrete issues against Right reaction, which in its turn took advantage of this weakness.

The differences within the Indian communist movement were, along with international issues, built around these basic strategic and tactical issues, leading ultimately to divisions and formation of separate organisations. It is good that some of these issues are clarified and the various trends are coming together.

By playing this role and by struggling for these policies, the CPI carried forward the struggle for democratic revolution and transformation. Democratic and socialist revolutions are not something abstract. They are concrete struggles. Without democratic economic changes, the country cannot advance to socialism. The Communists contributed considerably to this advance.

Struggle for Democratic Institutions

The Communist Party is also a party of democracy and political rights and freedoms. The CPI played precisely this role in independent India. Democracy was very fragile and weak at the time of independence. It faced many challenges. Had democracy not taken roots in the country, India would not have been what it is today.

Therefore, it is wrong to dismiss democracy just as a ‘bourgeois' gimmick. It is in this parliamentary democratic system that the first Communist Ministry was formed in the general elections of 1957. Subsequently, several Left, and Left and democratic, governments were formed as also broad democratic regimes. They thwarted the designs of Right reaction. Communists emerged as a major Opposition force.

The Communists fought hard to establish the democratic parliamentary system in India and to strengthen it. Consequently, the Parliament in India has generally been Left and democratic in its political composition.

The success of the Communists and other progressives in elections disproved the traditional sectarian view that Communists cannot win in parliamentary system, they can only ‘use it' to propagate some views.

The Communists in India proved that the parliamentary democratic system can be used to win government power for the people and to bring about certain democratic changes for them.

The author is a Marxist ideologue.

by Purusottam Bhattacharya

There is a prevailing misconception that Rabindranath Tagore was not robust enough in his opposition to British rule in India. It is even thought in some circles, that Tagore composed his ‘Janaganamana Adhinayaka', which has been the national anthem of India for nearly 70 years, as an eulogy for King George V on the occasion of the King Emperor's visit in 1911 even though history has well recorded and even Tagore also offered numerous clarifications to establish that he composed the song for an Indian National Congress session. Again some people still think, that Tagore won his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 due to his connections with the famous English poet of the time, W.B. Yeats, and the influence Yeats peddled in this regard to clinch the Prize for Tagore. A retired Supreme Court judge even recently called Tagore a “British puppet” ignoring the fact that Tagore renounced the Knighthood given to him by the British monarch in protest against the Jallianwalabagh massacre of April 1919. The letter, written by Tagore to the Viceroy returning the Knighthood, remains a legend in the annals of protest literature. However, semi-ignorant and motivated people continue to cast a slur on Tagore due to reasons best known to them.

Rabindranath Tagore was a philosopher of universal humanism. He found no contradiction between his deep love for India and his commitment to universal brotherhood. Though basically a poet and writer, he found it difficult to keep himself away from some of the great debates of his time. These concerned the boycott of Western goods and education, the pristine values of Indian culture, the follies of begging reforms of British rule, the romantic extremism of young Indian revolutionaries, the hollowness of Western materialism or the aggressive nationalism in all its manifestations. Although Tagore had the opportunity to come in close contact with the English at a very early age in his life—which made him an admirer of many of the virtues of the British such as a broadly liberal outlook, their cultural achievements, a scientific orientation and their technological innovations—he was soon disillusioned with the sheer brutality and rapacity of the Western imperialist powers, notably the British. Tagore was one of the finest minds of his time in India who was clearly able to diagnose the exploi-tative and brutal nature of British rule in India. He put it all down to the aggressive nationalism which European civilisation had spawned during Europe's long transition from feudalism to a group of warring, marauding nation-states. The emergence of a mercantile class in Europe and their search for markets and raw materials culminated in the rapacious colonialist and imperialist depredations in the non European world,notably Africa and Asia.

So Tagore had no illusions about the character of British rule in India and the need to counter it. However, he was no political leader himself and therefore there was no question of his direct participation in politics with the exception of the period of the Partition of Bengal in 1905 by Lord Curzon when he provided active leadership to the Swadeshi Movement advocating boycott of British goods and promotion of indigenous products. His sensitive mind was clearly able to decipher the ills that plagued the Indian society of his time and he wrote extensively on this social malaise and the ways it could be removed. So Tagore had a multi-pronged approach: on the one hand, he was convinced that unless the sickness that Indian society was suffering from could be overcome mere achievement of freedom would be meaningless. Constructive social work was the crying need of the hour. Reforming education therefore became a cornerstone of his mission for society and nation building.

On the other hand, Tagore became very actively focussed on the beginning of the national freedom movement after the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885. He watched with weariness the tussle between the Moderates and the Extremists during the period leading up to the advent of Gandhi on the national scene in 1919. He wrote in his book Nationalism (probably his most important work on political thinking): “....it (the Congress) had no real programme. They had a few grievances for redress by the authorities. They wanted larger representation in the Council House and more freedom in the municipal Government. They wanted scraps of things, but they had no constructive ideal.” While Tagore had greater sympathy with the Extremists led by Balgangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh and others, he was looking for an alternative leadership under the younger generation. He, however, could not reconcile with terrorist extremism as in spite of all his trenchant criticism of imperialist rule he never approved of two things—namely, romantic adventurism and violence born of intolerance. While he was fully appreciative of the self-sacrifice and dedicated patriotism of the youth who had taken to the path of extremist violence, Tagore wanted them not to be trapped by the politics of stray violence totally dissociated from the real needs of the people.

Tagore wanted the struggle against British rule to be germinated from the grassroots of society rather than being confined to an elite section who were not always selfless and often had their own interests to safeguard. To quote Prof Radharaman Chakrabarti, a noted expert on Tagore, ”His (Tagore's) mind revolted against the symbolic, sporadic and short-lived promise of self-sufficiency held out by the charkha movement. Neither could he appreciate the tendency of uncritical acquiescence demanded of the people in Gandhi's programme of non-cooperation.” He was not convinced that mere weaving of their own cloth by the people and burning all imported textiles will pave the way for the regeneration of the Indian society facilitating the advent of freedom. Tagore found the non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhi in the 1920s as essentially negative which whipped up blind national pride. “His main apprehension was that the parochial anti-West tendencies within the national movement would augur ill for India's cooperation with the international community.” (R. Chakrabarti: 1985:181)

Tagore's opposition to the non-cooperation movement of Gandhi and his trenchant criticism of modern nationalism was misconstrued in some circles as not quite in tune with the aspirations for nationhood and freedom by the Indian people at the time. However, those familiar with the poet's philosophy and world outlook knew quite well his championship of the political freedom of India and Asia. But he saw no contradiction between Britain and India in India's emancipation though, as mentioned earlier, he was a severe critic of the exploitative nature of British rule in India. On the contrary, the poet felt India could learn lessons from the British experience in self-government and democracy-building. In a lecture at Tokyo University in 1916 he stressed the necessity of the freedom of China as well as India. While he believed in cooperation between India and Britain, this cooperation was to be based on friendship and trust which implied the recognition of the right of the Indian people to equality and self-determination.

The basic thrust of Tagore's approach to India's nationhood and freedom from British rule was his all-pervasive emphasis on root and branch social reform and removal of the gross inequities India's society suffered from. While he had no clear-cut guidelines regarding the attainment of freedom he had placed a great deal of faith in the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in the 1920s. Subsequently his disillusi-onment with Gandhi's leadership—though not with the Mahatma's qualities as a great human being—led him to repose his faith in Subhas Chandra Bose in the late 1930s; Tagore hailed Subhas as India's national leader and future liberator. It was Tagore's misfortune that he was not able to see the final liberation of his beloved India in 1947.

As mentioned earlier, Tagore was essentially a universal humanist who believed in the essence of human unity. He saw no contradiction between this universalism and India's nation-hood and the fulfilment of its own destiny. Tagore's Shantiniketan was an effort in bringing about a confluence of his universal dream. In the words of Prof Radharaman Chakrabarti, “Tagore was, perhaps, one of the very few among the modern thinkers of India who did not start and end by just assimilating Western ideas and moderating them to suit Indian conditions. His perceptions of what politics is and what it should be were inseparably linked with his reading of the social and political traditions of the country in particular, and the course of human civilisation in general.......the poet's main concern lay not so much in an early end to alien rule as in an all-out programme to pave the way for social regeneration.” In this lay all the misconceptions and misgivings about Tagore's approach to India's freedom from British rule. Short-sighted and narrow-minded persons are unable or unwilling to read this mindset of Tagore and impose unfair and inappropriate labels on him which do him no harm but show these critics of Tagore themselves in a poor light. 

References

1. Radharaman Chakrabarti, “Tagore: Politics and Beyond” in Thomas Pantham and Kenneth L. Deutsch, (ed.), Political Thought in Modern India, Sage Publications, New Delhi/Beverly Hills/London, 1986.

2. V.P. Varma, Modern Indian Political Thought, Agra, 1961.

Dr Purusottam Bhattacharya is a Professor of International Relations, and former Director, School of International Relations and Strategic Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He can be contacted at e-mail: purusottam.bhattacharya@gmail.com

Kanti Biswas took up teaching in Quaid-i-Azam Memorial College, Gopalganj in his native place and earned unreserved goodwill and approbation from all sections—students, guardians and the public alike. As a student of Dhaka University he was a member of the Action Committee which launched the historic language movement against the imposition of Urdu as the country's sole official language on the Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan. His celebrated friends—Barkat, Salam, Rafique and Jabbar—laid down their lives in police firing on February 21, 1952, which proved fatal for Pakistan leading ultimately to the birth of the new nation, Bangladesh. February 21 became a red letter day for the whole world, not to speak of the Bengali-speaking people alone. Declared by the UNESCO and recognised by the United Nations General Assembly, this day is the International Mother Tongue Day.

A towering political personality, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, founder of the National Awami Party, offered Kanti, much against his sincere entreaties, a ticket to contest the elections to the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly from Gopalganj against Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. High concentration of Namasudras in Gopalganj, according to the respectable Maulana, held bright prospects for his victory. But Kanti and Mujibur Rahman were not only residents of neighbouring villages in Faridpur, both were intimately known to each other also. Kanti immediately met and disclosed his intractable predicament to ‘Mujib bhai'. The tall man received Kanti with characteristic affection marked by a warm hug and wished him well in the upcoming hustings. Strangely, Field Marshal Ayub Khan appeared as Kanti's saviour. The military dictator placed Pakistan under martial law at this juncture and countermanded all elections much to the sigh of the people and Kanti's relief.

Kanti Biswas joined the communist movement while teaching in college. One day, in 1960, a friendly police officer tipped him of the government's intention to arrest him. To evade arrest he fled to West Bengal and soon began his life there as a school teacher in Nahata High School, North 24-Parganas district.

Madrasa education was under the umbrella of school education with Kanti Biswas. He was in favour of modernising and remodelling the curriculum and courses of Madrasa education. But his party and colleagues firmly opposed the idea. One of his influential ministerial colleagues publicly declared: “Madrasas have become breeding grounds of divisive forces!” This led to sullen resentment in the Muslims. Biswas argued that Muslims were educationally backward for social and historical reasons and their handicaps deserved to be removed urgently by educational empowerment. He cited instances from the life of celebrated educationist and social reformer, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, who, though a Sanskrit scholar, never opened Tols and Pathshalas to promote Sanskrit learning, which had little bearing on material well-being. Biswas advocated in several public meetings in Muslim-dominated areas that opportunities for Muslim students, both boys and girls, should be created by establishing more schools, colleges with hostels in their areas to facilitate access to modern and professional education coupled with technological knowledge. He received overwhelming support of the Muslim public as well as representatives. In the teeth of his opposition, the Madrasa education department was separated from the school education department and attached to the Home Department in the 1990s much against his wishes. Biswas counted as his own failure to carry the Party and Cabinet with him.

Kanti Biswas left his imprint at the national level by his meritorious performance. The Central Advisory Board of Education on Autonomy of Higher Educational Institutions in India was constituted with Kanti Biswas as its Chairman in September 2004. The committee submitted its report to the Minister, HRD, Arjun Singh, in June 2005. Though a School Education Minister, his appointment to head an office of the Union Government as such speaks volumes about Kanti Biswas' standing.

In 1999, the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS or NUJS), an autonomous law university, was established. Kanti Biswas had proposed that the university be named as the Dr B.R. Ambedkar Law University to commemorate the great leader's contribution in drafting the Constitution of India and eradicating untouchability, besides his indefatigable struggles for social justice. His proposal was not accepted; rather one of its buildings has been named after Dr Ambedkar. He had pointed out that Jogendranath Mandal, Mukunda Behari Mallick, Dwarikanath Barui, Nagendranath Roy and Kshetranath Singh—all untouchable legislators—worked to elect Dr Ambedkar from East Bengal for the Constituent Assembly when the Maharashtra Congress had closed all doors on his face. Dr Ambedkar, in any case, does not command any admiration in the mainstream academic discourses in West Bengal. The bhadralok are too narcissistic.

The autobiographer has erred by stating that in a report in 1913 or before that the Namasudras were returned as Chandals. He further noted that they were recorded as Chandals (Nama-sudras) in 1921. (p. 88) Finally in 1931, they were recorded as Namasudra. Following the census operation in 1911, the Government of Bengal notified, inter alia, that “.......... the Chandals have been entered (in census report) as Namasudras and the Chasi Kaibarttas as Mahishyas. The case of Namasudras is curious and instructive. A generation ago they were content to call themselves Chandals. Advancing with wealth, they adopted the title of Namasudra and at the census of 1901 they were entered as Namasudra (Chandal). In 1911 Chandal was dropped but their further prayer to be called Namasudra Brahman was disallowed.”13 There is a widespread misconception that only low castes had approached the British authorities for change of caste name. Baidyas and Kayasthas from Bengal and Babhans from Bihar, occupying high social standing, submitted memoranda at various points of time till 1931 to the colonial authorities urging change of their caste name. In the 1911 census, the sheer weight of the petitions submitted for this purpose was tad one-and-a-half maunds!14 Baidyas had prayed to be returned as Brahmans; Kayasthas as Kshatriyas; and Babhans as Kshatriya Brahmans or Bhumihar Brahmans. Save and except Namasudras and Mahishyas, representations of all others were rejected.

The silence of Kanti Biswas over the abolition of English teaching from primary school may not evade the reader's notice. The LF Government's landmark policy-decision invited bitter criticism from all corners. The education the boys and girls received made them almost unemployable, ultimately turning them into angry street agitators, who swelled the political stable to be used by political parties for destructive activities occasionally. Media reports at various points of time suggested that special trains were arranged for exodus of students, both boys and girls alike, for seeking admission elsewhere outside West Bengal. One effect of the LF's education policy can be traced in the State's contribution to higher civil services (for example, IAS, IPS, IFS etc.). The UPSC reports of 2010-11 and 2011-12 show that no alumni of the Calcutta University, the oldest in the subcontinent, has qualified for higher civil services whereas five of the Ranchi University alumni did it in 2010-11. I am aware of weighty counter-arguments that the Bengalis are more into science, technology, medicine, management etc. Those are mostly English-educated urbane youth from affluent families. What about the poor and deprived sections steeped in the dark abyss of rural West Bengal? With determination to serve their motherland young boys and girls, with all those qualifications, from all over India, however, have, since a few years, started trooping into the nation's higher civil services. Their success rate is admirably high. Tracing Bengalis out of the UPSC list of successful candidates, sadly, seems like searching the needle in a haystack.

Finally, Kanti was the Minister of Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation for five years (1996-2001). But he has refrained from recording the officially sponsored genocide in Marichjhapi. A regimented party imposes Stalinist discipline which might have sapped his uprightness and courage to record the bloody carnage committed on the poor and helpless people, all underdogs. Readers will view this as another glaring lapse.

The forcible eviction of Bengali refugees and the subsequent deaths due to police firing and “unknown number due to starvation and disease” in 1979 are refereed to as Marichjhapi massacre on an island of Sundarbans, West Bengal.15 Nobody knows exactly the number of victims of police brutalities under the cover of darkness. The refugees provided the instant ladder for political power. After they were rehabilitated in Dandakaranya [Madhya Pradesh and Orissa] by the Union Government, the Left party leaders and cadres kept hopes burning in their hearts, saying if and when they came to power, those settled in the rocky, inhospitable Dandakaranya would be brought back for resettlement in West Bengal.

It can rarely be denied that initially careful caste profiling was done for throwing refugees out of West Bengal. Only the low castes—overwhelmingly Namasudras—were shipped out of West Bengal. When the refugees from Dandakaranya arrived in West Bengal, they were cold-shouldered by the LF Government. Faced with inhuman rejection, they moved to an unmanned island, Marichjhapi, in the Sundarbans and self-helped themselves for settlement. But the Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, raised the bogey of a foreign power engaged in conspiracy with the refugees against the Left Government. So the government launched an offensive on January 31, 1979 to evict them forcefully deploying the police and cadres. The police action was prompted by the alibi that the settlees of Marichjhapi had attacked a police camp with traditional weapons. After 15 days the Calcutta High Court ruled that “the supply of drinking water, essential food items and medicines as well as the passage of doctors must be allowed to Marichjhapi”.16 Imagine, traditional weapons drove the State Police to resort to firing on settlers!

Media reports sometimes compared the Marich-jhapi massacre with the Jallianwala Bagh carnage which sounds a distant ripple in comparison to what happened in Marichjhapi under a democrati-cally elected government. The authors of the pogrom and authorities of the State did not have the moral courage or probity in public life to hold a formal inquiry into the gruesome tragedy. The Secretary of State had instituted the Hunter Commission to investigate into the Jalliawanwala Bagh massacre for fixing the onus of the cruelties.17

The allegation of a foreign power engaged in a conspiracy to topple the LF Government was a serious issue to merit a high level independent probe. It was nonchalantly ignored. Inaction of the government proves that the allegation of conspiracy by a foreign power was merely concocted and motivated for maligning the refugees. It was basically a fight of the bhadralok wielding official powers against the chhotalok. The LF and its government were accountable for the genocide. And justice yet eludes the victims who were mostly Namasudras. Are Bengalis nonetheless free from caste bias?

The volume is useful to those interested in understanding the Bengali society through the prism of non-conventional writers. This should help disabuse the impression created by the sono-rous and motivated propaganda that Bengali society does not suffer from the virus of caste. Caste is very much a living evil there. Those living in the paradise of the privileged do not see caste in play. The worldview of the underprivileged is vastly different and deeply dark. More and more underprivileged should take up the pen to record their experiences of life. They have to tell whether caste has ceased to survive in the Bengali society. Those propagating to the contrary can no longer be taken without serious reservation.

Footnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._R._Narayanan

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Stalin, K., India Untouched, a documentary on caste discrimination.

5. Biswas A.K., Namasudras of Bengal, Blumoon Books, Delhi, 2000, p.

6. Biswas, A.K., Anweshan, Kolkata, 1996, pp. 393-346.

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhatpara

8. Biswas, A.K., Merit: a Curse for Dalits? Elucidation of Discrimination, Mainstream weekly, New Delhi, vol. L, No 17, April 14, 2012.

9. The Telegraph, Calcutta, September 16, 2006.

10. Biswas, A.K., West Bengal Election 2006—A Review of Results and Analysis of Social Implications and Political Repercussions, Journal of Social and Economic Studies, vol. XVIII, January-June 2006, no. 1, A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna (India), pp. 1-27.

11. Biswas, A.K., West Bengal Election 2006.

12. Ibid.

13. Biswas, Sipra, Anweshan (Bengali) Adal Badal Patrika, Calcutta, 1996, p. 294

14. Ibid., 246

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marichjhapi_incident

16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

A retired IAS officer, Dr A.K. Biswas is a former Vice-Chancellor, B.R. Ambedkar University, Muzaffarpur, Bihar. He can be contacted at e-mail: biswasatulk@gmail.com

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Amar Jeevan: Kichu Katha (Bengali) by Kanti Biswas; Ekush Shatak, Kolkata; October 2014; pages 144, Price: Rs 150.

The privileged can rarely assess and analyse the damage and hurt caste can inflict to the personality and psyche of the underdogs. The cost to human dignity and esteem is incalculable. Memoirs of Dalit writers, who have suffered caste-based assault and humiliation, portray this aspect almost without exception. Caste-driven prejudice against the lower social strata invades the Dalit in total disregard for their accom-plishments in life and every Dalit, irrespective of glowing achievements in life, is exposed to the vagaries of ill-treatment from the society. This leaves indelible and permanent scars on the victim of hurt and humiliation arising out of caste hatred and discrimination.

The life of Dr K.R. Narayanan (October 27, 1920-November 9, 2005), who was the tenth President of India, illustrated this aspect very succinctly. He served as the ambassador to Japan, United Kingdom, Thailand, Turkey, People's Republic of China and the United States of America. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru described him as “the best diplomat of the country”.1 Nara-yanan obtained his BA (Honours) and MA in English Literature from the University of Travancore (1940-43). In his Masters examination, he had secured the first position in First Class and went to the London School of Economics (LSE) for higher studies. Reminiscing his dramatic entry into the prestigious Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Narayanan spoke about it.

“When I finished with LSE, (Prof Harold) Laski, of his own, gave me a letter of introduction for Panditji (Jawaharlal Nehru). On reaching Delhi I sought an appointment with the Prime Minister. I suppose, because I was an Indian student returning home from London, I was given a time-slot. It was here in Parliament House that he met me. We talked for a few minutes about London and things like that and I could soon see that it was time for me to leave. So I said goodbye and as I left the room I handed over the letter from Laski, and stepped out into the great circular corridor outside. When I was half-way round, I heard the sound of someone clapping from the direction I had just come. I turned to see Panditji [Nehru] beckoning me to come back. He had opened the letter as I left his room and read it. [Nehru asked:] ‘Why didn't you give this to me earlier?' .......‘Well, sir, I am sorry. I thought it would be enough if I just handed it over while leaving.' After a few more questions, he asked me to see him again and very soon I found myself entering the Indian Foreign Service.”2

When the alumni of Travancore University became the President of India after 54 years (July 25, 1997-July 25, 2002), the authorities of the University corrected their indiscretion and in a special convocation held at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, Delhi presented to him the certificate of Masters Degree. The University's ordinance as well as convention mandated the authorities to offer a lecturership to any student whosoever topped in MA examinations. They, however, chose to violate their own law than honouring an unstoppable untouchable topper. The authorities offered him instead a clerkship. In protest Narayanan did not attend the Convocation of the University to receive his Degree certificate. How were his days as the President?

“As the President of India, I had lots of experiences that were full of pain and help-lessness. There were occasions when I could do nothing for people and for the nation. These experiences have pained me a lot. They have depressed me a lot. I have agonided because of the limitations of power. Power and the helplessness surrounding it are a peculiar tragedy, in fact.”3

Some of the Malayalis in Kerala sneered at Dr Narayanan, saying: “Look, look, that cap may climb up the flag-post instead of unfurling the flag” while, as the President of India, he was hoisting the tricolour on a ceremonial occasion.4 This was a derogatory reference to his caste, Parawan, whose ancestral profession was to climb coconuts trees for harvesting its fruits.

The above narrative underlines the extent Brahmanical vitriol can propel them to target their victims without any rhyme and reason. The caste supremacists spare none if he is a Dalit, the euphemism for untouchables—be he the President of the nation or one in the street anytime and anywhere. Kanti Biswas' memoirs depict precisely this social panorama as well.

Minister of School Education,

Kanti under Harrow of Prejudice

Kanti Biswas' foray into the electoral battle began with his first victory on a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) ticket in 1977. The Cabinet with Jyoti Basu as the Chief Minister of West Bengal was formed sans any Scheduled Caste representative. This smacked of an uncommon discrimination, which Kanti brought to the Chief Minister's attention. The leader of the proletariat nonetheless bared his fang with an insensitive remark: “We know the Scheduled Castes are socially and economically backward, but what is the justification to include someone of them as a Minister?” (p. 77) This is precisely the sarcasm the All Bengal Namasudra Association in 1928 had hurled for attention of the Simon Commission about the insensitive bhadralok who had “assumed the position of the heaven-born guardians of the masses”.5 This is precisely their paternalistic attitude, a blatant lie though, that leads them to believe that they are capable of taking care of everything and every section—Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minorities. Kanti thereafter was inducted in the Cabinet without portfolio. Insulted, he resigned in a few days as he became a butt of ridicule to the Dalits at large. As a damage-control exercise, Youth Affairs and Home (Passport) were allotted to him. He gave a very creditable account of himself to earn spontaneous applause from even orthodox quarters.

No, make no Chandal Education Minister of West Bengal

In 1982, the LF coalition was voted back to power for a second term and Kanti was allotted School Education, a charge, though highly challenging, he held, election after election, till 2006. The reputation of the State in the field of school education the Left Front Government earned was for Kanti Biswas' silent and dedicated service. But Education in the hands of Kanti brought the harrow of prejudice of the orthodox vultures out in the open. Pramod Dasgupta, the CPM's State Secretary and a Polit-Bureau member, one day summoned Kanti and handed over some 400 letters to him. He had received those letters though Kanti was the subject matter of them all. He took out an inland-letter written by one Bhattacharya (name withheld) from Bhatpara, 24-Parganas and read out as was desired by Dasgupta. “What if,” wrote Bhattacharya, “he is highly successful as Minister of Youth Affairs in the first LF Government, Kanti Biswas, in any case, is a Chandal. Bengal would be disgraced to receive education with a Chandal in the saddle. Educational progress would receive serious setback and be retarded under his stewardship.” Proffering an advice to the party's State Secretary, Bhattacharya wrote: “the Chandal might be drafted for some other, if necessary, more important departments with higher responsi-bilities and authorities, but for heaven's sake, a Chandal as Minister must not be allowed to handle Education in Bengal, which will suffer irreparable damages in the end.” (pp. 87-88) To make his point foolproof the Brahman noted duly that he was aware that the Chandal was a meritorious student of Dhaka University.

To aSanskrit scholar, Chandal is no more than an untouchable. No ancient literature—comprising scriptures, Puranas, epics—was complete without fulmination against the Chandal. In the instant case, the highly educated victim of unearned hatred has maintained enigmatic silence and refrained from recording his feelings over the injury and agony inflicted on him by a Brahman. The images of the Chandal that conjured up before the Bhatpara-dweller propelled him to write the letter to the Communist Party's top leader. What are those images? Forty Brahmans of Bengal in 1901 wrote out a vyavastha outlining the characteristics of Chandals: Vagrant and not touchable, the Chandals live outside the villages in rags gathered from dead bodies with only assets comprising dogs and asses. Their principal occupation is to burn the dead and hang criminals by the command of the king.6 Bhatpara did not crawl out of its dark cave to light.

Bhatpara on the Hooghly river boasts of “rich traditions of Sanskrit learning”. “Bhatta-Palli” denotes ‘Bhatta', a sect of Brahmans versed in Sanskrit, and ‘palli', a locality or village.7

The overpowering influence of the renai-ssance of nineteenth century Bengal, which was the result of introduction of modern education and knowledge, coupled with science and rationalism, philosophy and literature, above all, respect for human dignity that made Bengalis proud, had miserably failed to make inroads into Bhatpara, a little dark continent dominated by the ancient learning till the last breath of the twentieth century. The wonder is that national independence on the demise of colonial domination, democratic way of life, foothold of Marxian philosophy in political thoughts and action, electoral politics and upsurge of aspirations of the common man—all stood trashed before it. This glamorous underbelly, emitting extensive moral toxin and pollution, has not driven yet the intelligentsia to shame.

Kanti Biswas a Bengali Brahman to Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi

“I hold Kanti Biswas in highest esteem. Nobody commands as much knowledge as Education Minister nor have I seen yet another who is comparable to him.” This was how the Human Resources Development Minister, Government of India, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, a former professor of Physics, Allahabad University (1885), paid handsome compliments to Biswas in a conference of State Education Ministers in Delhi in 2000. We have noted before how and why Bhatpara launched its tirade against Kanti. Prof Joshi did not know that the Chandal had survived blistering attacks from Bhatpara long before him. The conference was then dumb-founded by the Union HRD Minister's thunder: “But I hate him, ‘cause he is a liar.” ((pp. 89-90)

Did he lie at all and why? The accuser let the cat out of his bag thus underlining the reasons for his infatuation: “I know Kanti Biswas is a Bengali Brahman. To reap political mileage in elections out of the predominant Scheduled Caste population, he has procured a fake Scheduled Caste certificate.” In 2000, the State Education Ministers were consulted for adoption of ‘The National Curriculum Framework'. The Ministers from States ruled by the Indian National Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party were bitterly at loggerheads, rendering unanimity or consensus on the critical issue impossible. At this point, many State Ministers wanted Kanti Biswas to share his views and ideas. Kanti told the conference that in a vast and diverse country like India education must be above narrow and parochial frame and perspective. It has to be broad-based, bias-free for all and offensive to none. His approach appealed to all and settled the contentious issue. Prof Joshi did not know Kanti Biswas was an erstwhile Chandal.

He rebutted and turned the table on Prof Joshi. “Why and on what basis do you call me a liar? What drives you to believe a low-caste person cannot acquire knowledge and become accomplished in education? You are utterly wrong to believe that merit is an exclusive preserve of the Brahmans. I belong to a Scheduled Caste. I unequivocally condemn your puerile attitude marked by prejudice and orthodoxy. You have no knowledge about my caste.”

Caste has rigged every sphere of life—social, cultural, political, administrative, economic and even in death. On this Dr B.R. Ambedkar's observation on the Hindu psychological orientation is oft quoted. “The effect of caste on the ethics of the Hindus is simply deplorable.....A Hindu's public is his caste. His responsibility is only to his caste. His loyalty is restricted only to his caste [.....]There is no appreciation of the merito-rious. [...........] The capacity to appreciate merits in a man apart from his caste does not exist in a Hindu. There is appreciation of virtue but only when the man is a fellow caste-man.”8

In 1985, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) invited Kanti Biswas for speaking to the students, researchers and faculties of the Patrice Lumumba International University, Moscow which, according to the Ministry of Education of Russia, is the country's third-best university after the Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University. Kanti was loudly cheered by all those who heard him with the aid of an interpreter for over an hour-and-half. In an unusual gesture, his invitation was extended by the Soviet authorities for ten days during which Kanti, as an official guest, was taken to various important places across the USSR.

Jealousy and malice exploded in the cloistered world of Bengali Communists over this invitation. Some questioned his ability and entitlement for such an honour from the Mecca of Indian Communists. They wondered why a schoolmaster would go to address a university audience in Moscow while their accomplish-ments were more shining. Jyoti Basu, however, threw cold water on his cantankerous comrades, saying that the USSR would not invite any Tom, Dick and Harry without clinical verification of the invitee's credentials and abilities. On another occasion, the solitary overseas resource person was Kanti Biswas whose comments and obser-vations were solicited on the UK Education Commission report by the British Education Minister.

Memoirs not in Communist Culture

Writing memoirs is not in the communist culture. Few have done so. Those exceptions were Muzaffar Ahmed, B.T. Ranadive and P. Sundarayya besides Manabendra Nath Roy. Manoranjan Boral and Kanti Biswas, like Muzaffar Ahmad, recorded their experiences in Bengali. The Communists have created an aura that they do not dabble in faith or caste. This is untenable, if not hogwash, fit to be dismissed with the disdain it merits.

Unfamiliar with the dynamics and dimen-sions of caste, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels knew only about class, an economic postulate of human society. They had formulated a humanitarian ideology in an environ beyond the pernicious ambit and influences of caste which, therefore, did not find space in their lexicon. In India, caste is omnipresent and omniscient. Kanti's narrative corroborates this truth. A Communist Minister, when accosted by mediamen for his worship of goddess Kali at Tarapeeth temple, he declared that he was “a Hindu first, then a Brahmin, and mentioned nothing about being a Communist, immediately provoking the Bharatiya Janata Party to roll out the welcome mat if he wanted to join”.9 Though the memoirs omitted to note his name, the media reports disclosed that he was the maverick Sports and Transport Minister, Subhas Chakraborti. Their belief that class inequality would dissipate and disappear with mobili-sation of the masses under the Communists in India is untenable. The social, moral and attitudinal impact of Left rule for over three decades on Bengalis must be deep and deplorable though no systematic assessment has been attempted. But we dare say Marx and Engels have been decorated with sacred threads in Bengal at least.

Caste in Fertile Land

In West Bengal, the LF leadership has displayed elastic docility and obeisance to the caste syndicate called bhadralok, more than loyalty to Marxian philosophy. The Assembly elections of 1991 returned 56 Kayasthas and 55 Brahmans and five Baidyas, aggregating at 116 MLAs with Jyoti Basu at the helm whereas Buddhadeb Bhattacharya reversed the trend by putting 65 Brahmans in the top slot as against 59 Kayasthas and Baidyas. MLAs bearing surnames, for example, Banerjee, Chatterjee, Mukherjee, Ganguly, Bhattacharya, Chakraborty were 44, accounting for an awesome 22.1 per cent of the total strength and 29.6 per cent of the unreserved Assembly although the demographic reality scarcely justifies such disproportionately high share without injury to democratic norms and values. It is added that there were ten MLAs bearing the surname Mukherjee, all returned on the CPM ticket. It was a quizzical social message for the countrymen that none of this breed placed their faith on any other party at the hustings! Baidyas and Kayasthas won 59 seats equivalent to 26 per cent of the representatives.10 In 1991, to conform to political fairness and demographic justification, they together deserved a mere 19 MLAs. Muslims, who accounted for 23 per cent population, had 40 MLAs, equivalent to just 13 per cent representatives.11 The bhadralok usurped the shares of the cake of backward castes and Muslims and thus have fattened themselves opulently on others' shares. Observers have noted that Mamata Banerjee has maintained the trend set by her predecessors in office. And the bhadralok are nonetheless the loudest in their paeans for universal brotherhood, equality and harmony which many acknowledge with high decibel approbation.

In the Cabinet of 33 Ministers, headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, 16 Brahmans to account for 48 per cent whereas Baidyas and Kayasthas 21 per cent. Thus the bhadralok share in the Cabinet was 69 per cent!12 The State and its people thus saw complete monopolisation of political power in 6.1 per cent of the population, a bad day for democracy and public well-being. Caste, we are often told, plays a dirty role in electoral politics in backward Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Haryana, MP etc.

A Village Boy from Faridpur

Kanti was born at village Bukrail under Kashiani thana in district Faridpur, now Bangladesh. Mere 21 days before his birth, his father, Jogendranath Biswas, a primary school teacher, died. Prejudice over this tragedy befalling the family hit the newborn child with accusation that he was a curse. In the face of constant condemnation as a curse, his grandmother took Kanti to Guru Chand Thakur and solicited her grandson's death! The Thakur, on the contrary, blessed the child for long life and a promising future. Founder of the Matua religious order, Guru Chand's father, Hari Chand, was a great patriarch of the Namasudra community in social reforms and literacy.

In the teeth of grinding poverty and privations, Kanti displayed his talent as a student. His academic results were shining all through. In a highly competitive examination comprising thousands of students of East and West Pakistan, he secured the first place for selecting candidates for two scholarships under the Colombo Plan for higher education in England. He declined the prestigious scholarship because he refused to give (1) an undertaking to shun communist politics; and (2) a commitment to serve Pakistan after completion of higher studies abroad.

Religious tolerance and liberal acceptance of diverse faiths within an accommodative fold have always been the central concern of India's social character since ancient days. It can be said that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's views on how to build a strong and secular India were mostly an extension of that inclusive philosophic legacy. Through his speeches and writings runs the urge to revive that spirit of tolerance which suffered grievously under the post-1857 British policies, for he made it clear that any attempt to rob the country of its heterogeneous character would severely weaken its foundations, and dry the country's sources of life. Growing instances of intolerance in today's society which put a question-mark on the BJP rulers' real intentions strongly remind us of the broad base of the liberal, tolerant framework of Gandhian-Nehruvian philosophy that took shape in the testing times of the British Raj.

An avid student of history, Pandit Nehru had imbibed strict scientific discipline of approach to contemporary problems that ruled out the element of emotion in dealing with them. While the world was going through the horrors of a brutal warfare unleashed by the leading figure of intolerance and blind racial fury, Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru showed us that no society can hope to survive by resorting to passionate violence against the minority faiths and their ways of life. Partition riots had shaken the conscience of the country. Nehru was anxious to set things right in a proper rational manner. In a wave of slanderous denunciation of Nehru's ideas released by the Hindutva reactionaries, the basic tenets of democratic ideology have been deliberately ignored and vile attempts to denigrate the concept of secular India is being made.

Pandit Nehru was not against any religion; in an address made to the university students of Allahabad immediately after independence and later on published under the title of “Universities Have Much to Teach Us”, he affirmed that followers of different faiths should have the right to practice their religion but no religion should be permitted to interfere in the politics of the country. He was against reducing religion to banal tokenism and ritualistic chores which is what is being done under the saffron regime. Nehru's vision of religion shares the profound notion of spiritual quest for truth beyond the domain of the known. In an essay, entitled “Life's Philosophy” Pandit Nehru admits that he felt a strange mystical wonderment when he gazed at the vast night sky studded with countless stars, marvelling at the enormous invisible power that seems to drive life in the smallest particles and the gigantic galaxies. Sages and scholars of yore attempted to understand the human urge to explore the inner and outer sources of that power through the means and methods available to them.

Nehru felt strangely disturbed when in the name of religion obscurantist ideas were sought to be imposed. In his words, “... always we must hold to our anchor of precise objective knowledge tested by reason, and even more by experiment and practice, and always we must beware of losing ourselves in a sea of speculation unconnected with day-to-day problems of life and the needs of men and women.” (“Life's Philosophy”) The mere speculation cannot be allowed to form the basis of political projects and must not be permitted to rule over the reasoned, rationalistic approach. He was aware of the dangerous path of rousing religious passions being followed by certain fanatical believers whose game was to downplay the crucial role of secular politics. “The real problems for me,” he says, “remain problems of individual and social life, of harmonious living, a proper balancing of an individual's inner and outer life, of an adjustment of relations between individuals and between groups, of a continuous becoming something better and higher, of social development, of the ceaseless adventure of man. In solution of these problems the way of observation and precise knowledge and deliberate reasoning according to the methods of science, must be followed.”(“Life's Philosophy”) In a way these utterances appear to carry the force of intellectual awakening that stirred the air of Bengal, Maharashtra and other places of the country in the wake of the remarkable work of social reformation pioneered by such great leaders as Raja Rammohan Roy, Jyotirao Phule, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and others.

Revival of intolerance in the critical days preceding independence was regarded by both Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru as posing serious threat to the essential character of Indian society. Though Pandit Nehru was frank enough to admit that he felt confused by the vague metaphysical explanations based on mere flights of imagination, he possessed a childlike curiosity about the expansive approach of many a spiritual enquiry. ”I do not believe any of these or other theories and assumptions as a matter of religious faith. They are just intellectual speculations in an unknown region about which we know next to nothing.” He was impatient with the conservative view many proponents of religious dogmatism advocated. His critics today propagate it as evidence of his being anti-Hindu and non-believer! There is no doubt, he considered it madness to allow questions of one's faith to guide the direction of social development.

Possessing a thorough knowledge of history, Pandit Nehru knew how often stark social evils grew out of dogmatic and institutional religion's narrow-minded interpretations of its world view and received support from fanatical leaders. Intolerance is one strong element which proves to be the main tool with which these fanatics fight against liberal, democratic and secular ideas. In The Discovery of India the author says: “What a nation is it is difficult to define. Possibly the essential characteristics of national conscio-usness is a sense of belonging together and of together facing the rest of mankind.”(p. 401) Repeatedly in that book it has been asserted by Nehru that too much reliance on religious dogma robs a society of its dynamism and checks “the tendency to change and progress that is inherent in human society”. His observations about the importance of religion in society appear to give answers to the confused and absurd discussions initiated by the Hindutva supporters today: “With all the good they (religions) have done, they have also tried to imprison truth in set forms and dogmas, and encouraged ceremonials and practices which soon lose all their original meaning and become mere routine.” These words reflect Nehruji's anxiety about giving undue importance to matters of faith in political and social life.

There are two things involved here: one, Pandit Nehru was mystified by the profound questions that a spiritual exploration seeks to answer, wondering at the power that governs the cosmos and nature; and two, he found it foolish and dangerous to equate true religion with ritualistic pomposity and encouragement given to superstitious ways of thinking. “The diversity and the fullness of nature stir me and produce a harmony of the spirit, and I can imagine myself feeling at home in the old Indian or Greek pagan and pantheistic atmosphere.” (“Life's Philosophy”) But he did not agree with the whole paraphernalia of images and symbols overriding the spiritual messages: “....God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthro-pomorphic terms.... Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me.” In a sense true spiritual quest is always at war with its naïve inter-pretations.

Nehru's feelings appear to find a poetic voice in Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore's famous lines from verse 11 of Gitanjali,“Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner/ of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!” If Tagore appears to articulate the same breadth of vision, both he and Nehru can be seen to share the humanistic-tolerant catholicity of old Sufi poets like Rumi, Hafiz, Saa'di, Attar, and Sultan Bahu who openly mocked at the stupidity of mullahs and their degenerate religiosity. They propaga-ted the concept of Love which embraces all humanity in one larger fold and repudiated such things as segregation and mutual hostility. Pandit Nehru found kindred wisdom guiding the ancient Indian visionaries: “We can never forget the ideals that have moved our race, the dreams of the Indian people through the ages, the wisdom of the ancients, the buoyant energy and love of life and nature of our forefathers, their spirit of curiosity and mental adventure, the daring of their thought, their love of truth and beauty and freedom, the basic values that they set up, their understanding of life's mysterious ways, their toleration of other ways than theirs, their capacity to absorb other peoples and their accomplishments, to synthesize them and develop a varied and mixed culture; nor can we forget the myriad experiences which have built up our ancient race and life embedded in our sub-conscious minds. We will never forget them nor cease to take pride in that heritage of ours. If India forgets them she will no longer remain India and much that has made her joy and pride will cease to be.”(The Discovery of India: p. 509)

There is more need of understanding these aspects of Indian culture today than at any other time, when the destroyers of our culture have found it convenient to subvert the rich legacy Nehru refers to in order to foment communal hatred. In An Autobiography he writes: “I must say that those Hindus and Muslims who are always looking backwards, always clutching at things which are slipping away from their grasp, are a singularly pathetic sight. I do not wish to damn the past or to respect it, for there is so much that is singularly beautiful in our past. That will endure I have no doubt. But it is not the beautiful that these people clutch at but something that is seldom worthwhile and is harmful.”(p. 471)

In an advanced democratic society tolerance and not coercion should be the strength of the rulers. When we look at the way today's saffron rulers openly or covertly use violent methods to force people of other faiths to follow the practices of the majority, make attempts to harm or eliminate those who do not toe the line of the dominant voice and seek to create an air of general intolerance, we are reminded of Pandit Nehru's severe criticism of such a rule. Intolerance, in his opinion, is the growth of a dogmatic, unaccomodative position. He denounced it because “in it there is no room for argument. It reduces itself to the narrow creed of a sect which people may or may not accept. It loses vitality and application to present day problems.” (An Autobiography : p. 550) He envisaged a much larger role for the rulers than indulging in such things as putting ban on cow slaughter and beef-eating.

Great culture and society are neither built nor preserved on such absurdities, whatever the RSS-BJP bigwigs might think about the glorious past. “Any activity on a mass scale, and especially any activity aiming at radical and revolutionary changes, is affected not only by what the leaders think of it, but by existing conditions and, still more, by what the human material they work with thinks about it.” (AnAutobiography : p. 550) Warning us against those who never tire of fomenting communal sentiments, he in one of his speeches exhorts the youth, “A vast responsibility, therefore, rests on our universities and educational institutions and those who guide their destinies. They have to keep the lights burning and must not stray from the right path even when passion convulses the multitude and blinds many amongst those whose duty it is to set an example to others. We are not going to reach our goal through crookedness or flirting with evil in the hope that it may lead to good. The right end can never be achieved through wrong means.” (“The Universities Have Much to Teach Us”)

It is not just a coincidence that in recklessly pushing forward the Hindutva agenda without so much as giving room for consensual debate, the present-day rulers have shoved educational programmes way down their priority. In contrast Pandit Nehru's ideas reflect the anxiety of a socialist thinker who is genuinely concerned about making education the bulwark of the country, capable of preserving the old culture of India and consolidating its resilient spirit. They are more relevant today than ever before.

Works Cited

1. Nehru, Jawaharlal, The Discovery of India New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1986.

2. Nehru, Jawaharlal, An Autobiography, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1986.

3. Ramakrishnan, D., ed., Indian English Prose, New Delhi, Arnold Heinemann, 1980.

The author is a retired Professor of English, Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur. He is the author of 25 books on literature and language and a translator.

“To endeavour to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.”—Jean de La Buruyers, French Satirist

We are indeed passing through a saddening scenario when the birth anniversary of a gigantic hero of our nation does not receive the celebration he richly deserved. This is the case with Jawaharlal Nehru whose birthday on November 14 did not get the highly merited respect, like the year gone by. The present dispensation, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has shown a well-orchestrated desire to erase Nehru's legacy.

Modi did not utter a single word about the great Nehru during his first speech as the Prime Minister on the Indepenence Day while addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Thereby he demeaned the high office he holds. The same thing happened this year as well. How come that he ignored to talk about Nehru, one of the tallest leaders thrown up by the freedom movement, on the conclusion of which Independence Day is celebrated? Surely Modi exhibited his hate for Nehru and our first PM's legacy.

The solemn occasion demands enumeration of tributes paid to Nehru following his death or the opinions otherwise expressed by eminent people and leaders within the country or outside our shores. It is doubtful whether this will pinch Modi's conscience because the omission on his part is deliberate. In any case, it is prudent to recapitulate what eminent personalities felt about the great hero of our country. Apart from reputed leaders, writers, journalists, etc. in our own country, we may start with the distinguished BJP leader and former Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, In his address to the Lok Sabha after Nehru's demise, he stated as follows:

....a dream has remained half-fulfilled, a song has become silent...and a flame has vanished into the unknown. The dream was of a world free of fear and hunger, the song a great epic resonant with the spirit of Gita and as fragrant as rose, a flame a candle that burnt all night long showing us the way... Mother India was in mourning because her beloved prince has gone to sleep... The benefactor of the downtrodden has gone... The chief actor of the world stage has departed after performing his last act... In Panditji's life we get a glimpse of the noble sentiments to be found in the saga of ‘Valmiki' ...Like Ram, Nehru was orchestrator of the impossible and the inconceivable... he too was not afraid of compromise but would never compromise under duress... the leader has gone but the followers remain. The sun has set, yet by the shadow of stars we must find our way.1

The eminent CPI leader, Hiren Mukerjee, wrote thus:

For four decades and more, this gentle colossus strode our Indian world and his place among the great figures of our time is secure. But his uniqueness lay in the unobtrusive opulence of endowment which gave him, in the thick of politics and in the face even of furstrations, a peculiar refinement and grace of spirit.2

Writing in Mail Today on October 14, 2015, the senior politician, Natwar Singh, pointed out: “Jawaharlal Nehru read history, wrote history and made history.” He further wrote:

Nehru was not only a very great man, he was also a good, guileless, magnanimous and sensitive man and a hero of the Freedom Movement, in popularity second only to Mahatma Gandhi. I was with the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations when he died on May 27, 1964. I wept. (‘Nehru is still the best PM of India' by Natwar Singh)

Natwar Singh edited a book containing tributes by reputed contemporary personalities of international eminence, who cheerfully responded to his call.

Nikhil Chakravartty, an eminent journalist and founder of the weekly magazine Mainstream, writing in the ‘New Delhi Skyline' in the issue of May 30, 1964, observed:

The Titan has left behind a brood of dwarfs, none of whom can aspire even to that national eminence which was the hallmark of the Congress High Command when freedom came to this land. Under the shade of the mighty banyan tree no other plant did grow in stature or stamina.

Prof Mridula Mukherjee, formerly Director, Nehru Memorial Musum and Library, wrote in her article appearing in Mainstream of May 31, 2014:

...the name of Jawaharlal Nehru cannot but be singled out since destiny chose him as the one who shouldered the major part of the task of building and shaping democratic institutions and democratic habits and democratic culture in the newly independent India.

She added that there was in Nehru what his biographer S. Gopal has called “a granite core of intellectual and moral commitment to democratic values”.

A senior Supreme Court lawyer, Rajeev Dhavan, has paid glowing tributes to the memory of Nehru. He has also written about tributes by and opinions of a few distinguished personalities around the world. At the outset, he says that Nehru has become one of the metaphors of Indian life. And, the metaphor meanders into legend effortlessly. Regarding the views of the august personalities, he first points out that “an eminent historian—one of the greatest of our age—unabashedly discloses that in remembering Nehru ‘captivation comes nearer the truth.. (like) seeing the Sermon on the Mount practised in real life...without any apparent effort'.” No doubt such a person “deserved to be remembered and immortalised”.

Dhavan then adds that to an Indian publicist Nehru's “many splendoured life” made him, somewhat, “...like the Pope in the Middle Ages... infallible”.

Again, to his biographer Nehru was “a heroic and symbolic force” who would, perforce, “toil in one century so as to reap in another.. (as) India's once and—we may hope—furture kind”.

He avers that to a politician from Ghana it was “better, wiser and richer for having known” what a Sri Lankan Prime Minister was to describe as a “most charming personality”. He continues to say that to an Indian philosopher President he was “the liberator”, and to a Prime Minister from Singapore ”one of the great revolutionaries of Asia”.

Dhavan concludes by saying that Nehru's legacy was asking people “not to be petty”. “I cried when he died. Faced with today's pettiness, I am fored to tears again.”3

Reverting to foreign dignatories who paid their homage to the memory of Nehru, we may first take English logician and philosopher, Bertrand Russel. He wrote:

During the years that I was President of the India League in London, I know of the invaluable leadership and direction which Jawaharlal Nehru gave to India. It is a great tribute to him that he insisted that India should be non-aligned in the insane struggle for power which has pre-occupied the United States and the Soviet Union at the expense of the welfare of Mankind.4

Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State during the Truman years, said: “India was so important to the world and Nehru so important to India that if he did not exist, then—as Voltaire said of God—he would have had to be invented.”5

American leader Adlai Stevenson paid tributes by saying: “He was one of God's great creations in our time. His monument is his nation and his dream of freedom and of ever-expanding well-being for all men.”6

We also find that one of his biographers, the Australian Walter Crocker, tells us that “There were two men in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: there were more like twenty in Nehru.”7

Thus, evidently, profuse tributes were paied to the memory of the great son of India by leaders and eminent personalities in different fields of human activity belonging to India and to countries around the world. Yet it is disgraceful that deliberate attempts are being made to eradicate Nehru's legacy in various ways and dismantling institutions established during the Nehruvian era. It was high time that the existing ruling class eschewed their hatred towards Nehru and his legacy. It needs to be understood that parochialism has no place in our plural society and our ethos of social harmony.

References

1. The Hindu, November 10, 2002 (Article by Ramachandra Guha, the historian).

2. Mainstream, May 25, 2003.

3. Mail Today, November 17, 2014.

4. Mainstream, November 16, 2003.

5. The Hindu, May 27, 2004.

6. Nehru's India —Essays On The Maker Of a Nation, edited by Nayantara Sahgal, Speaking Tiger Publishing Ltd., 4381/4, Ansari Road, New Delhi 110002, p. 17.

7. Ibid., p. 156.

The author is a former Under Secretary (now retired) of the Union Public Service Commission.

The Indo-Naga Framework Agreement is a catalytic moment promising a more flexible template of peace-making. The agreement, signed on August 3, 2015, has established the broad principles that would guide the future delibe-rations between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-IM. The content of the agreement has not been disclosed. The Prime Minister did not share the details with members of his Cabinet or Members of Parliament. The NSCN-IM also did not give any inkling to the Naga people about what was included in the agreement. It was said that the details would be made public after the Union Government has discussed it with the Chief Ministers of other North-Eastern States and Members of Parliament.

Two aspects of the Framework Agreement have been made public—acceptance of the “uniqueness of Naga history and culture” by the Indian Government and the acceptance of the primacy of the Indian Constitution by the NSCN-IM. While Atal Behari Vajpayee had acknowledged the “unique history of the Nagas” in 2003, the NSCN-IM accepting the “primacy of the Indian Constitution” is a new develop-ment. It puts at rest the earlier ambiguities about the NSCN-IM's position on the Indian Constitution.

This also signifies that the NSCN-IM has abandoned the objective of establishing an independent sovereign state for the Naga people. Although the NSCN-IM has walked a long way from its previous position, the Government of India remains reluctant to make any clear commitment on the issue of integration of the Naga-inhabited areas within India. None of these States, which have Naga population, is likely to accept the NSCN-IM's demand. The past 18 years' experience shows that the Indian Government is unlikely to cede the territories of other States claimed by the Nagas.

Secrecy is one of the most distinguishing features of this 18-year-long negotiation process. Secretiveness comes naturally to intelligence agencies and underground armed insurgent groups. And, as the talks are being conducted by senior officers of India's intelligence agencies and the NSCN-IM, it is not surprising that they would like to keep their negotiations under wraps. While there may be many valid reasons for keeping the contents of the agreement a secret, the question arises: why publicise the signing of an agreement when you cannot disclose the content. The secretiveness also creates doubts and suspicions about the nature of the agreement among relevant stakeholders, both amidst the Nagas and amongst the neighbours who have been excluded from the peace dialogue. As we have seen, it has set off waves of anxiety, especially in Manipur, over the fundamental contradiction in the North-East—between claims to territory and people's self-determination rights. Many Naga civil society actors have expressed their unhappiness with this secretive nature of the negotiations and had turned away from the NSCN-IM-sponsored “civil society consultations”. In fact after the announcement of the signing of the agreement several members of the Naga civil society expressed skepticism whether New Delhi or the NSCN-IM would ever consult them when the final accord is reached.

After the signing of the agreement Mr Ravi, the interlocutor, has been visiting Nagaland and has held several meetings. I am given to understand that Mr Ravi is particularly interested in ascertaining the views of the Naga people on the integration issue as well as the idea of a “pan-Naga government” which will have a “non-territorial” jurisdiction over the Naga people outside the present State of Nagaland.

I understand that he has held extensive rounds of talks. However, I was told by a senior member of the Naga Peoples' Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) that Mr Ravi did not want to meet them. The NPMHR is perhaps the oldest secular civil society organisation of the Nagas and has a presence in all Naga-inhabited areas, and was formed long before both factions of the NSCN had come into existence. It has been a vocal critic of both the Indian security forces and the Naga insurgents for their human rights abuses. Generations of Naga youth have been involved with the NPMHR both in the North-East as well as outside. The NPMHR has a strong presence among the Naga students in several Indian universities in Delhi, Bengaluru, Guwahati and Kolkata. I am aware of the instrumental role played by some of the senior members of the NPMHR in bringing the leadership of the NSCN-IM and the Government of India to the peace talks in the nineties. They also played a significant role in the admission of the NSCN-IM in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples as well as the Naga people's admission to the UNPO. The NPMHR is not an obstruction to the peace process. They are an ally in the peace process. The logic of keeping them out is not clear.

What Does the Future Hold?

The “Framework” is not a new idea. Frustrated with lack of progress in the negotiations, nearly nine years after the beginning of the dialogue, the NSCN-IM had submitted a “Framework” for negotiations during its meeting with the Indian representatives in 2006 in Amster-dam.The NSCN-IM proposal had introduced a concept of a political arrangement based on the principle of “asymmetric federalism” which would be substantially different from the relationship existing between the Centre and Indian States. It was suggested that the new entity of Nagalim/Nagaland would have a separate Constitution, “within the framework of the Constitution of India” and it would be included as a “separate chapter” of the Indian Constitution. The NSCN-IM also wanted the agreement to set out the division of competencies between the Union of India and Nagaland, its substantive details would be incorporated within the Constitutions of both India and Nagaland. The “Framework”also contained a 20-point charter of demands. In this Charter, the NSCN-IM had sought the unification of all Naga-inhabited areas of the North-East, separate representation at the United Nations and greater rights over natural resources, finance, defence and policing.

On August 14, 2015 speaking at Hebron, Muivah claimed that it was “clearly stated in the agreement that both sides respect the people's wishes for sharing sovereignty. We have to work out to what extent to share our rights to sovereignty. We will have sovereign right on our respective competencies.” It would seem that the disagreements on the concept of “asymmetric federalism” have been resolved. However, Muivah has not disclosed the contents of the proposals but said the Centre has accepted a “shared sovereignty”. He has not elaborated how the Centre was interpreting it. Clearly the NSCN-IM has climbed down from the demand of total sovereignty to a federal relationship with New Delhi, perhaps taking into account the current global political scenario.

It is not clear whether Nagalim would be governed by its own Constitution within the Indian Union and what would be the nature and terms for the sharing of sovereignty. This would require an amendment to Indian Constitution. There is no clarity on the issue of a separate flag for Nagalim, a separate judicial system and local police. The economic relations between India and Nagalim will be managed by a joint Economic Development Council of India and Nagalim, which will promote trade, investment and joint ventures between the two governments.

An “asymmetric federalism”where the Centre shares “sovereignty” with one of its constituent units is external to the basic structure of the Indian Constitution. While the Indian Consti-tution put certain restrictions on the writ of the Central Government in tribal areas under Schedule 5 and Schedule 6 as well as the Article 370 in case of Jammu and Kashmir, those restrictions did not confer on the tribes living in the 5th and 6th Schedule areas or the people of Jammu and Kashmir, the status of dual citizenship which the co-federal status would entail. India's constitutional liberalism is founded on the basic principles of liberal democracies. While individual civil rights and political rights are well-articulated, however, it is difficult to define its approach to managing collective rights, particularly ethno-cultural diversity. Like most modern rationalist states, the Indian state has not been “neutral” on ethno-cultural issues. Its response to the demands of highly mobilised identities premised on cultural factors, and often demanding autonomy has been rather ad hoc—ranging from conceding minority cultural rights to denial of all such claims. The NSCN-IM's main argument is that the Nagas are a separate people and a separate nation, who practise a distinct culture, who profess a distinct religion and who have a history that has nothing to with the history of India. The question is: to what extent would the Government of India and Indian political parties be willing to accept and accommodate the stated position of the Nagas?

The Question of Sovereignty

As the “shared sovereignty” arrangement is to replace the Naga demand for sovereignty, let us first examine the sovereignty issue. The Naga demand for an independent Naga state including all Naga ancestral homeland was first articulated by the Naga National Council, under the leadership of Angami Zapu Phizo, when it declared an independent Naga state on August 14, 1947. Nagas had rejected the merger of their homeland into India and had also rejected the Indian Constitution. They claimed to have held a plebiscite in 1950 in which, according to the NNC, nearly all Nagas had voted for independence.

Nearly seven decades later, the NSCN-IM is asking the Naga people to accept the “primacy of the Indian Constitution”. We are told that the NSCN-IM's demand for sovereignty has been “addressed”. How it has been addressed is not clear. It would appear that the Government of India has been able to convince the NSCN-IM that under Indian Constitution sovereignty lies with the people and by accepting the Consti-tution, the Nagas would enjoy as much right over India as India has over Nagaland.

Have Nagas accepted this? There are sections of Nagas who seem to be willing to give up the sovereignty demand. The 18-year-long ceasefire has changed the minds of the Naga people, particularly in the Nagaland State. At least two generations of Nagas, who have come of age, have no experience of the freedom struggle and the brutal regime of the AFSPA. They are more familiar with the Army's new slogan —“friends of the hill people”. The ceasefire-crafted peace brought in economic development, improvement in education, wider and deeper penetration of the market economy and all these have broken down the traditional control of the Naga elders and large number of Naga youth are working outside the State. Across the villages and towns in Nagaland, that sense of “separate Naga identity” had been faltering. Moving around Nagaland during the past ten years I have witnessed a gradual change in the people's perceptions of tribal or communal identity, making way for individual aspirations and a search for other, more personal, identities. They are no longer inclined to take up the struggle for independence and face the might of the Indian military. Rather, they are keen to know what they would get beyond what the Indian state has given them till date. It would seem that Muivah is aware of this change in the mood and attitude of the Naga people. It is possible that he will be able to carry the process forward with the support of the younger generations of the Nagas.

But Muivah is also aware that sections of the older generation of the Nagas, who still wield substantial amount of authority in Naga society, might do what he had done after the Shillong Accord. Perhaps keeping that in mind, while speaking at the 69th Naga Independence Day function in Dimapur, he alluded to “rumours” that the NSCN-IM had given up the demand for sovereignty and integration. He claimed that these were the “core issues” and there would be “no solution whatsoever” without fulfilling the two issues. He proclaimed that there was no way the NSCN-IM would give it up as the whole idea of the Naga freedom movement was based on that very foundation. Giving up the sovereignty issue also means abandoning the ten Naga tribes who live in Myanmar to their fate. It would also mean formal acceptance of division of the homeland, division of tribes and division of families, which despite the international border the Nagas have not accepted till date.

Sovereignty and Eastern Nagas

In the Framework Agreement, there is no mention of what the Nagas call Eastern Nagas or Naga inhabited areas inside Myanmar. Clearly, the NSCN-IM has given up the Nagas in Myanmar. Yet, both the NNC and NSCN, before and after the split, had rejected the division of the Naga homelands by the Anglo-Burmese Yandabo agreement in 1826 and later 1953 under the Indo-Burmese demarcation in Kohima on the Naga territory by Pandit Nehru and U Nu, the then Prime Ministers of the two countries. There are more than 10 Naga tribes who live in Myanmar. The Nagas occupy a compact area of the northwestern region between the Chin state on the south and the Kachin state on the north of Myanmar.

In April 2012 Khaplang signed an agreement with the Thein Sein Government which granted autonomy in the ‘Naga Self-Governing Adminis-trative Unit'. Since then Khaplang with his base on the Myanmar side of the border has been trying to redefine his status and power in the changed context of the Burmese military junta's new constitutional arrangements and electoral politics. At the same time, Khaplang had been seeking to outflank the Kitovi-Khole faction by reaching out to India agencies. Also, in an effort to counter the ascendancy of the rival I-M group, and it its monopoly of the Indo- Naga peace talks, Khaplang has been claiming that the NSCN-IM were not serious about the unification of the ancestral Naga domain. The dialogue between the NSCN-Khaplang and the Government of Myanmar is a tactical one. The NSCN-K has been allowed to retain its armed cadre on the understanding that it will not engage in any military activity inside Myanmar. This gives Khaplang and his army an unofficial protection and they are able to carry out their attacks across the border inside Indian territory. However, this has come at a price. Until recently the Naga territory in Myanmar was under one district or one administrative zone, that is, the Khamti district of the Sagaing division with a small part in the Kachin state. However, in 2008, the ruling the military junta of Myanmar decided to split the Naga territory. It created a Naga Self-Administered Region which included the hill townships of Layshi, Lahe and Namyung and took out Khamti, Homalin and Tamu and put these under the Sagaing division. This has created a lot of resentment among the ten Naga communities, of which the Konyaks are perhaps the largest, and put them into confrontation with the Government of Myanmar and with the Chins who have laid claim on nearly one-third of the Naga territory in Myanmar. The other reason for dissatisfaction is the USDP-led government's programme of compulsory recruit-ment of Naga youth in the Border Guards Force. If what is being written by members of the nascent civil society actors of Nagas in Myanmar in their blogs is any indication, there is a growing voice against Khaplang's leadership. It also seems that many of them are looking to the “elders in Western Naga” for support and guidance.

Changing Fortunes of NSCN-K

The relationship between the Nagas in India and Myanmar is not limited to only the NSCM-IM and NSCN-K. In 1997, a Naga National League for Democracy (NNLD) was established with its headquarters in Dimapur, Nagaland (India). It was constituted as a peaceful, nonviolent political organisation formed with the aim of restoring democracy in Burma and uplifting the lives of the Naga people and associated itself with the National League for Democracy (NLD). However, it did not partici-pate in any elections and did not get involved in any governance mechanism in the Naga townships of the Sagaing Region.

During the nineties the Khaplang group formed an important part of the Indian state's efforts in combating the influence and power of the NSCN-IM. Multiple Indian agencies, politi-cians and even diplomats had for years patro-nised Khaplang and his faction of the NSCN. In Nagaland, no less than in Assam and other States in the North-East, there is an intricate nexus between the mainstream politicians and militants which particularly surfaces during elections. Khaplang has enjoyed the patronage of Nagaland's Congress party Chief Minister, S.C. Jamir, whom the group assisted in the 1993 Assembly elections. Jamir is said to have made generous donations of cash and weapons to the group to militarily take on the NSCN-IM. A 1995 report of the National Human Rights Commission corroborated that the Khaplang group had been operating with impunity as it enjoyed the patronage of the Chief Minister. Evidence of Jamir's patronage became public when the conspiratorial activities of the Nagaland Youth Liberation Front were exposed and it was revealed that members of the Khaplang group were working alongside functionaries of the State's CID and the Nagaland Armed Police.

Khaplang has also been a valuable ally of Indian diplomats in countering the NSCN-IM's bid to internationalise the Naga issue in the 1990s. In 1993 the NSCN-IM was admitted as a member of the international NGO, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples' Organi-sation (UNPO), at The Hague, thus acquiring a legitimate presence in South-East and East Asia. In 1998, the NSCN secured a notable achievement when the UN Commission on Human Rights allowed the NSCN Chairman to address the 54th session of its Assembly in April 1998. Isak and Muivah have made several speeches in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (UNWGIP). It was at that time that in the corridors of Geneva, Khaplang was spotted. Covert agencies had facilitated Khaplang crossing over to Bangladesh where he acquired a passport to travel to Geneva. Khaplang was accompanied by R.K. Meghan alias Sasayama, the chairperson of the banned outfit, UNLF, a Meitei militant group with camps in Myanmar. He was the interpreter in Khaplang's campaign to challenge the NSCN-IM's claims to represent the Naga people. India's representative to the UN, Arundhati Ghosh, was a quiet but obtrusive patron. The Government of India continued with its policy of dealing with the Naga insurgent groups separately often using one against the other to keep them disunited. However, the scene changed when the govern-ment decided to talk to the NSCN-IM.

One of the critical aspects of the “Peace Talks” that the Government of India has held with all insurgent groups in all parts of the country is that it has always decided who it would talk to. This is a part of the policy of divide and rule as well as harvesting the fruits of that policy. In this case also we see a repeat of the same practice. While speaking at the anniversary function of the UNPO in The Hague on February 11, 2011, NSCN-IM's General V.S. Atem said that when the NSCN leaders Isak and Muivah during their meeting with the Indian Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao, in Paris in 1995 had asked: “Why don't you talk with the Khaplang group and NNC? We will not stand in the way, but we will not be a party to it”, P.V Narasimha Rao had replied: “Why should I talk with them? The issue is not with them. The issue is with you. The people are with you, and so if we talk with you, we believe a solution can be worked out. I will not talk with others. I know who they are. They are in my hands.” Clearly, Indian patronage was running out for Khaplang.

The government's new interlocutor, R.N Ravi, is a former intelligence officer. He has been involved in the North-East for a long time and was an architect of the policy of keeping the insurgents divided which was premised on a vision of a fractured Naga society of ferociously independent militarised tribes. He now seems to be skeptical of his earlier policy. Ravi has made known his differences over the Home Ministry's moves to isolate Khaplang, which precipitated the ‘K' group leader's decision to abrogate the 14-year-old ceasefire. In particular, cross border adventurism has been questioned especially in view of Khaplang's “protected” status in Myanmar and the likely high risk consequences for Indo-Myanmar diplomatic relations.

It is apparent that the Naga civil society has also not completely accepted the total margina-lisation of the Khaplang faction. They are also aware, and the Khaplang faction's June 4, 2015 military ambush of the Dogra Regiment in Manipur's Chandel district shows, that the Khaplang faction would continue to demonstrate its presence and relevance. That is precisely the reason why the Naga civil society is stressing on the need to once again try and get the outfit back on the road to peace. The Naga Mother's Association has already gone across the border into Myanmar and met with the leaders of the Khaplang faction. The All Naga Hoho is now preparing to send another delegation to meet with Khaplang. It is clear, that unlike the NSCN-IM, which is keen on keeping Khaplang outside the peace process, the larger body of the Naga civil society is interested in making it an all-inclusive process. While the NNC and its various factions and the breakaway group of the Khaplang faction of the NSCN may not present a serious security problem, the main Khaplang faction which is located inside Myanmar will continue to be a source of problem particularly as long as the situation of the Nagas in Myanmar is not settled to their satisfaction.

Integration of Naga Inhabited Areas

Now let us look at the other demand—the integration of all Naga inhabited areas within the Indian territory under one political adminis-trative set-up: Nagalim. Speaking on this issue at the 69th Independence Day celebrations of the Nagas in Dimapur, Muivah did not address the integration issue directly. He said the framework agreement would pave the way for the final accord. He also promised that “all Naga groups and stakeholders would be consulted before the final deal is done”. He further said: “Nagas will have their rights, but we should also respect the rights of the neighbouring States.” Muivah talking about Nagas respecting the rights of neighbouring States adds an interesting twist to the Naga demand for integration of the Naga inhabited areas which had emerged as one of the core demands not only of the NSCN-IM but that of the Naga communities living in and outside the Nagaland State. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while announcing the peace deal with the NSCN-IM, had indicated that the final solution rested on a breakthrough formula which did not involve redrawing the State's borders.

It is an old demand and figures in the succession of peace agreements to resolve the Naga conflict—the Akbar Hydari Agreement of 1947, the Sixteen Point Agreement of 1960 establishing the Nagaland State and the Shillong Accord 1975 which precipitated the emergence of the NSCN. In fact the demand for unification goes back to the last days of the British Raj. The Naga National League (NNL), headed by Athiko Daiho was organised in September 1946 to consolidate the Nagas of Manipur in order to bring together the Naga people separated by the colonial boundaries. In the colonial period, the Political Department of the British Crown administered the Naga areas of Manipur. The Manipur Maharaja and his durbar administered the valley areas. The Naga League had categorically asserted that they will not remain in Manipur after the departure of the British. The movement had demanded merger with the Nagas Hill district of Assam. The Manipuri Nagas had boycotted the preparation of the electoral rolls in the Naga areas and the election to the first Legislative Assembly of Manipur in 1948.

One of the first resolutions adopted by the Naga People's Convention (NPC) in 1957 had demanded the integration of all Naga areas.This was followed by the Mokokchung Convention of the NPC in 1959, where the Sixteen-Point memorandum was adopted. Clause 13 of the 16-Point Agreement stressed for the consolidation of contiguous Naga areas. The Nagaland State Legislative Assembly had adopted a resolution on December 12, 1964 which said that: “It is hereby unanimously resolved that the Govern-ment of India be urged for the integration of the Naga areas adjoining the State of Nagaland to fulfill the aspirations by the Naga peoples' Convention held at Mokokchong in 1959.” The Nagaland Legislative Assembly has adopted similar resolutions on several occasions.

If we may recollect, before the formation of Manipur as a full-fledged State in the Indian Union, the Naga Integration Committee (NIC) of Manipur had made several efforts to seek integration of the Naga area of Manipur with the State of Nagaland. The Naga People of Manipur, which was formed in 1970 at its first convention held at Mao Gate, had unanimously resolved that the Naga people wanted to “live together in one State has undoubtedly been motivated by genuine patriotic urge”. The Naga Integration Central Committee (NICC) under the leadership of Rev. Savino and T. Chuba, with its headquarter at Kohima, was formed for the integration of all the contiguous Naga areas. It had appointed an Action Committee which included Rani Guidiliu, who had joined the Congress party. November 20 was adopted as “Naga Integration Day” to be observed through-out the Naga areas.

The NICC delegation had submitted a Memo-randum to Smt Indira Gandhi on November 9, 1970. The memo claimed that the movement of the integration of Naga territories, was nearly as old as the freedom movement in India. The movement gained momentum under the leadership of Rani Guidiliu which was in essence against the British Government that kept the Nagas divided into Naga Hills, Manipur and North Cachar of Assam. Even after the formation of Manipur State, the Naga Inte-gration Central Committee (NICC) had appealed to the Government of India and the Naga leaders to lose no time in resuming the negotiations, and had warned that protracted uncertainty and insecurity would have the most harmful effect on the material, mental and moral well-being of the Nagas, as well as on the whole North- Eastern region of India.

The past three-and-a-half decades' experience shows that the exclusion of more than a million Nagas spread across the territories of Manipur, Assam and NEFA/Arunachal Pradesh in the Indian Union from the Nagaland State created instability and reinforced violence. Curiously, both Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh were at the time under the Central Government's control and the redrawing of the State boundaries would have been less of a democracy flashpoint then.

Today, “integration” of the Naga peoples has emerged as a core issue, while the cartographic anxiety of the neighbouring States—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur—present serious political obstacles.

Conclusion

India's approach to the Naga peopleso far has been dominated by the colonial anthropological assumptions about the fixedness of tribal identity, which prevents the possibility of the development of socially cohesive “people”-based democratic politics and nation-building. This view has guided all the peace accords/ ceasefire agreements. These agreements have produced betrayal, division and renewed cycles of conflict which have made the Naga people wary of peace. Students of conflict resolution and peace studies have termed the Naga peace accords of1947, 1960 and 1975 as ‘accords of discord' which divided the armed struggle and precipitated greater violence. In particular, the 1960 Naga Peace Accord, which laid the template for the grand strategy of devolving power to ethnic homelands, resulted in territorially and ideologically dividing the movement.

One of the significant achievements of the 18-year-long ceasefire and the peace process is it provided security and freedom for the Naga civil society to interact and give expression to their ideas. The civil society actors also interacted with the insurgents often on terms of equality, sometimes even questioned them, which was unthinkable earlier. Giving up the demand for sovereignty, the Nagas have had to redefine their concept of Naga nationalism. They have moved away from the inward looking politics of “unification and nation building” to the politics of building a multi-ethnic Naga political community. The demand for inclusion is driven more by the promise of rights and entitlements than by ethnic or tribal affinity. The outcrop of such new demands as the Eastern Nagas' demand of the Frontier Nagaland state or the Southern Nagas demand of an Alternative Arrangement suggests the need for a more complex reading as it reflects a “a geo-political” framing that transcends tribal lines. Logically, the next step would be to locate the political organisations—the IM and K groups, less with tribes and more within the context of geopolitics of the region, the ‘K' faction with its Eastern Nagas linkages, while the I-M group has strong roots in Nagaland and the Manipur hill districts. The division is Eastern, Western and Southern Nagas.

The consensus among the political theorists was that with increasing modernisation and communication, more particularistic identities would eventually be eroded or would be sub-merged into national identities. However, the experience of post-Second World War modern state shows that instead of abandoning their traditional ethnic identities in the quest for socio-economic and political equality, ethnic groups have retained them along the way. Even when they have made it to the top, ethnicity continues to be an important and meaningful source of identity for millions of people in the world.

Through the instrumentality of the “Pan-Naga Government” the NSCN-IM is promising control over a larger land mass, access to greater resources and the security of numbers to resist Central intervention. This cannot happen with-out the cooperation of the Indian Government and, more important, without the cooperation of the political parties.

A noted film-maker and the Secretary-General of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), the author was also the General Secretary of The Other Media, an organisation set up to support people's movements in India. During his tenure as the General Secretary of the organisation, he undertook several peace missions to Nagaland and established contacts with the Naga underground; he was thus able to win the confidence of the Naga leaders. His interventions finally led to the establishment of a dialogue forum between the Naga underground leaders and leaders of the Naga civil society; this process of dialogue was nurtured by The Other Media, which created a North-East Solidarity Forum that brought leading civil rights activists from different parts of India to Nagaland to work together on human rights and peace issues. A noted film-maker and the Secretary-General of the South Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR), the author was also the General Secretary of The Other Media, an organisation set up to support people's movements in India. During his tenure as the General Secretary of the organisation, he undertook several peace missions to Nagaland and established contacts with the Naga underground; he was thus able to win the confidence of the Naga leaders. His interventions finally led to the establishment of a dialogue forum between the Naga underground leaders and leaders of the Naga civil society; this process of dialogue was nurtured by The Other Media, which created a North-East Solidarity Forum that brought leading civil rights activists from different parts of India to Nagaland to work together on human rights and peace issues.

The following is a note by the author on a discussion on Affirmative Action in the private sector during a two-day international seminar on ”Dalits and African-Americans in 21st Century: Learning from Cross-Cultural Experiences” in Bengaluru on July 10-11, 2015. It is rejoinder to the comments in favour of reservations made by Prof Sukhdeo Thorat.

During the customary question-answer session following the presentation of Armugam Raju on Affirmative Action (AA) at the international seminar, I commented on the mistaken emphasis on this fancy issue of Affirmative Action (AA) in the private sector saying that its potential to provide jobs to Dalits is extremely constricted.

Rhetoric and Reality

I cited figures to give an idea of the size and composition of the private sector which is likely to be the candidate for extending the AA. Briefly, I stated that the Indian workforce is about 480 million. It is broadly divided into two segments. Nearly 94 per cent of the workforce is in the unorganised sector and the balance six per cent is in the organised sector. Over the years, the organised sector has shrunk from nearly eight per cent in the 1970s and 1980s to six per cent today because of the shift towards informalisation of labour during the neoliberal period. This tiny organised sector is further divided into two: public sector and private sector. The public sector still contributes close to 68 per cent of the organised sector employment and the private sector contributes the balance 32 per cent.

Unlike the public sector, which had some definitive structure, inherited from the adminis-trative bureaucracy (but which is breaking since the 1990s under market pressure to be competitive), the private sector reflects a spectrum with amorphous structure, one end of which could be depicted by fly-by-night operators and the other by the megalith multi-nationals like the Tatas and Reliance of this world. The space of the private sector could be seen further divided in terms of workforce into two segments: Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and the big private companies, the former comprising approximately 70 per cent and the latter 30 per cent. While AA can be theoretically imagined to be applicable to the entire private sector, practically, only the big companies in the private sector can be seen as the real candidates. Notwit-hstanding this division, if one takes increasing casualisation, informalisation and contractuali-sation of labour, which today may be to the tune of 1:3 ratio (if one person is on the roll of the company, there shall be three workers on contract), the potential space reduces to a range of 0.019 per cent to 0.08 per cent, the realistic figure being closer to the former. This tiny space also may be deceptive. Much of it might comprise the working class space which may already have a preponderance of Dalits. The only difference it would make is that today they are incognito, unstigmatised; tomorrow they would be counted and get stigmatised as the undeserving beneficiaries.

The huge space of the private sector is occupied by the service sector companies like IT and telecom, which employ thousands of people every year. They face a huge crunch on the supply side and have been recruiting Dalit students en masse from the campuses. It is a different matter where these Dalit students get placed; they do get relatively lower rungs than others in the organisational hierarchy. It is not, however, only because of their caste but factors which constitute their class. They may not look as smart as non-Dalits in campus interviews, they may not speak as good English as others, may have relatively poor grades, etc. The difference can be marked in cases of first generation of Dalits and the second and third generation of Dalits. (first generation refers to the first-time beneficiary of reservation, second generation to the sons/daughters of parents who availed reservations and so on). Today they are respectably there without the caste stigma and have been progressing on their own steam. Tomorrow they will get branded as undeserving ‘sons-in-laws'. The potential space for AA in the private sector thus reduces to very small, may be just 10 to 20 per cent of the theoretical space that is computed above.

If one takes stock of the experience with the implementation of the quota system in the public sector, which infamously reflects insincerity of the establishment to give the Dalits their dues, it stands to anyone's imagination what would happen to AA in the private sector. The potential benefits to the Dalits from AA in the private sector will as such be extremely small and nowhere close to constituting a solution, even a partial one, to the burgeoning problem of jobs for the Dalit youth. It is therefore that I called it constructing a mirage which most Dalits, reared in the identitarian culture, will be running after.

Aspects of Cost-benefit

The next point I made was about the cost-benefit analysis of the reservation, particularly in reply to a question asked of me by Comrade Bharat Patankar seeking elaboration of what I said. To his metaphorical question about what I would do in a drought situation, insinuating that reservations in the private sector were necessary to alleviate the drought of jobs being created by privatisation, I said that whatever we do cannot ignore the cost-benefit aspect of the action. We cannot pour money into the ditch in the name of drought eradi-cation. There is no benefit that does not have its associated cost. Reservations, if they were seen as benefit, also must have had cost.

However, I have not come across an iota of suggestion, much less discussion, about the cost of reservations that the Dalits paid. As a matter of fact, Dalits, though blissfully unaware, have already paid a huge cost for the reservations. The cost could be gauged in terms of the psychological damage Dalit children incur when they are made to stand up in a class as Scheduled Castes. It is the cost that conditions them to persistently produce self-fulfilling prophesies in terms of their performance.

The cost could be conceived in terms of political emasculation of educated Dalits, who are the only investments of this poor community. The cost may also be counted in terms of lifelong loss s/he accumulates through prejudiced prospects and eventually untimely burnout. It is therefore that I called the public sector a veritable burial ground for Dalit aspiration. For the sake of statistical compliance, the managements over the years strategised to take due numbers of Dalits but thereafter unleash a complex caste-dynamics by which they move up the ladder with the slowest pace, all others passing them by inducing demotivation and setting in a vicious cycle. In order to stress how this obsession for reservation has completely neglected the demands for inputs such as education, health, and livelihood security, indisputable basics for the empowerment of human beings.

What is the use of inclusion of a fellow who cannot even walk into a cricket team with reservation? This is no rhetoric; it depicts the reality today. Even reservation requires some basic wherewithal which is being systematically denied. It can be seen glaringly in the fact that the seats reserved in our IITs and IIMs are not getting filled for the last several years. I argued with Comrade Patankar, that if the state ensures that a child coming into the world without carrying an imprint of his parents' disabilities and gets equal quality education through neighborhood schools, gets basic health care through the public health care system, one can see much of the need of such palliative as reservation being eliminated.

Another Mirage

The thrust of my argument was that reservation in the private sector might prove to be a mirage. It does not have the capacity to compensate the losses due to privatisation. This, of course, was in a familiar format. The larger target was the obsession of the educated middle class for reservation to the utter neglect of the basic needs of the masses, which unpardonably betrayed their ignorance that even reservation subsumed them. If the masses are guaranteed basic ingredients for empowerment, reservations may not be needed, but never vice versa as the current situation of rural Dalits amply illustrate. If Dalit children continue to be stunted and anemic, excluded from quality education, what is the use of reservations? If there is no supply base to avail of reservations, any amount of reservation is bound to remain on paper.

Does this reflect the either-or proposition (either reservation or redistributive policies)? Actually, reservation itself being a redistributive measure, I did not quite understand how reservation could be pitched against redistribution, whatever the latter meant. However, Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, who was chairing the session, spoke for nearly an hour assuming that I was taking an either-or position between reservation and redistributive measures, conveniently marshalling historical arguments Dr Ambedkar made to emphasise his agenda of social justice in contention with the Congress as well as Communists. He did not counter any of my arguments about the incapacity of the private sector or the cost-benefit aspects of reservations or the primacy of the redistributive measures. He just focused on a single point: how redistri-bution (mistakenly equated with socialism) will not solve the problem of social discrimination and how most countries have some form of reservations in favour of their weaker sections in appreciation of this fact.

While I may deal with these points later in this note, I must say that they did not relate at all with the points I made. While his entire comment thus was off the point, it clearly created an impression in many superficial listeners that he refuted my points and reinforced the popular sentiment of the middle class Dalits in favour of reservations.

A Ruling Classes' Weapon

No sane person can discount the need for historical reservations for Dalits simply because without them the Indian society would not have given them their dues. But the way the policy is formulated and enacted, it loses this sense and reduces it to become a powerful weapon in the hands of the ruling classes. It turned the concept on its head and consequently distorted everything to the detriment of Dalits. One can note many other infirmities of the provisions which not only produced deficient outcome but also had seriously affected the lives of Dalits in other spheres. One does not have to smell conspiracy, but if one takes a hard look at these policies one cannot miss that these policies have served the interests of the ruling classes many times more than they benefited the Dalits. It is unfortunate that none smelt this rot and kept singing praises to reservations.

Most people know that I am not sold to uncri-tically upholding reservations. I have presented my outspoken analysis to people over the last three decades exposing the politics and econo-mics of the policies along with some of its infirmities. I have also engaged in contemporary debate such as ‘sub-categorisation' that first arose in Andhra Pradesh in 1995 and thereafter has spread across the country like a virus. I had proposed a solution in the pages of EPW as to how this issue could be best overcome while simultaneously criticising the Dalits' obsession for reservation and readiness to be a plaything in the hands of the ruling classes for petty gains. I have even written on reservation in the private sector when the demand first popped up in the Bhopal Declaration and thereafter was nourished by the people who openly upheld neoliberal globalisation. While I upheld reservation as it was initially instituted in colonial times as an exceptional policy measure by the state for exceptional people, and problematised it for having arbitrarily restricted it to only the public sphere, I have unequivocally denounced the dilution of this principle in the Constitution that made reservations the most potent weapon in the hands of the ruling classes. I have been critical of the implicit premise of backwardness behind reservations and its faulty design that perpetuates inequality rather than eradicating it. It was not just sterile criticism; I provided simultaneously alternative remedies.

Painting Ambedkar Neoliberal

Post-1990, when the government adopted the elitist neoliberal reforms, a section of so-called Dalit intellectuals uninvitedly rushed in to support them, obviously to seek favours from the ruling classes. They shamelessly invoked Ambedkar painting him as a petty neoliberal to sell their arguments to the gullible Dalits. Many of these low calibre people made their careers in the process during the neoliberal years.

The people however could not be fooled for long as they began facing the heat of these policies in terms of widespread job losses, curtailment of basic services, and general livelihood crisis. The ruling classes rather sensed the heat early on and threw up ideas of reservation in the private sector through a bunch of Dalit intellectuals to vent off the building-up resentment among the Dalits. The idea caught on when the government began speaking openly about privatising the public sector, particularly when the Vajpayee Govern-ment created a Ministry of Disinvestment. Globalisation since then became a threat to reservations for Dalits.

Such a constricted meaning of this monster itself was unfortunate but instead of exposing its social Darwinist character, the Dalit intellec-tuals fed into their ignorance and projected the idea of reservation in the private sector as the mitigating measure. While the juggernaut of globalisation was fast reversing the wheel of progress and pushing the Dalits back into the dark ages, Dalit intellectuals busied themselves with discussing reservations in the private sector in their state-supported seminars, feigning concerns for the people. While in speeches few were foolish enough to treat reservations as a panacea, practically it meant the same inasmuch as none pointed out the rapid devastation of education to the rural masses or paltry public health services or increasing informalisation of jobs.

My intervention in this discourse was to dispel the widespread misconception of the private sector, as the one who is formally trained in business management as well worked in the corporate sector, both in public and private, right from the shop-floor to the board-level positions. Firstly, the amorphousness of the private sector was unsuitable to institute reservations in the familiar quota form, as imagined by most people and secondly its capacity to contribute jobs was extremely limited. A US type of affirmative action could possibly be considered keeping in mind the cons of it in the present context. My overriding concern was to show that reservation in the private sector was creating another mirage for the gullible Dalit masses who have squandered the energies to run after the existing mirage of reservations.

My opposition basically related to attempts of the vested interests to disorient Dalits from rejecting the neo-liberal globalisation and accepting reservations in the private sector in exchange, obviously at the behest of the ruling classes. It obviously did not amount to an ‘either-or' position between reservation and redistri-butive measures (sic), while certainly I will unequi-vocally stand for the latter if someone forced me to take it.

In retrospect, I am happy and grateful to Prof Thorat that he really picked up the point and put forth his views in an almost comprehensive manner. As one who has been in the forefront in seeding the demand for reservations in the private sector and pushing it into the consideration zone both in the government and corporate circles, his views are undoubtedly most important. It has created an opportunity for me to put forth my counterpoint, which was articulated hitherto in a piecemeal manner through the pages of EPW and elsewhere.

Private Sector's Capacity

Although Prof Thorat did not contest any of my points, he did comment that there was no need to assume away the MSME part of the unorganised sector from the purview of reservations. It meant that there shall be reservations even in the farm wage employment or the seasonal labour engaged by petty contractors and industries. This sector may not be clear to the readers and hence some idea of its size and shape may not be impertinent. There are 15.64 lakh MSMEs in the country in which the Micro enterprises are 14.85 lakh (94.94 per cent); Small, 0.76 lakh (4.89 per cent); and Medium, 0.03 (0.17 per cent). In terms of ownership, there are 14.09 lakh (90.08 per cent) proprietary units, 0.63 lakh (4.01 per cent) partnership units, 0.43 lakh (2.78 per cent) private companies, 0.08 lakh (0.54 per cent) public limited companies, 0.05 lakh (0.30 per cent) co-operatives and 0.36 lakh (2.36 per cent) others. In terms of caste composition, there are 1.19 lakh (7.60 per cent) SC-owned enterprises, 0.45 lakh (2.87 per cent) ST-owned; 5.99 lakh (38.38 per cent) OBC-owned and 8.09 lakh (51.26 per cent) owned by others. In terms of employment, Micro units employ 65.34 lakh (70.19 per cent); Small, 23.43 lakh (25.17 per cent); and Medium 4.32 lakh (4.64 per cent). That means a majority of them employ less than five employees per unit (which would include significantly self- and family employment). This being the feature of the SMEs, one can imagine their capacity to implement reservations for the Dalits.

Notwithstanding this, there cannot be a theoretical objection to the proposition that there should be reservation in the MSME sector. However, the only problem with it is that the application of AA might restrict the opportu-nities of Dalits to the ratio of their population. These sectors are subsistence sectors where they already preponderate. It is wrong to imagine that Dalits do not have entry into the private sector or they just do not exist there. As a rule, the hierarchy of jobs approximately corresponds to the caste hierarchy. While the bottom is preponderated by Dalits anywhere, as one goes up they simply become scarce and vanish. Even the public sector projects the same picture despite reservations over the last seven decades; the lowest sweeper category comprise over 80 per cent of Dalits, but none in the top slots in Class A category (Secretary in government, CEOs in the public sector and banks, etc.). The only difference in the private sector is of degree; the lower labour category may have Dalits but thereafter (technicians, engineers) they may vanish.

The right question to ask therefore is not the employment but the level of employment. One should not ignore the influence of supply and demand behind these numbers. The Dalits preponderate in the sweeper category because there is no supply from the non-Dalits. Now in the modern sectors of the economy, where the sweepers become janitors equipped with liveries and modern gadgets, the old caste associations are disappearing, Dalits getting displaced from sanitary jobs by many non-Dalit/upper caste youths. The inertia of the Dalit intellectuals may not let them see this phenomenon. As one goes higher up the organisation ladder, the employers have more options to choose from and hence prejudice creeps in.

An example of the modern service sector to further illustrate this point may not be out of place. It faced until recently huge shortage of qualified people, and therefore they employed people en masse irrespective of castes. Many Dalit engineers got into IT and telecom companies. But now when supply is in excess of demand, prejudices necessarily creep in. This dynamics is more pronounced in our elite institutions (NITs, IITs, IIMs, etc.). In the campus recruitments, invariably, Dalit students, with some exceptions, find the lower-end jobs. Many a recruiter make it a point to screen out people of the reserved category right at the beginning in the process (they could be identified with a digit in their enrolment code).

It is an empirical fact that barring a few exceptions, Dalit students, besides having a cultural deficit (family background, proficiency in English language, mannerism, confidence, etc.), also possess lower CGPAs (I would attribute it to the psychological factors and take them as the cost of reservations) and get even secularly pushed down.

The simplistic discussion on reservations does not reflect awareness of this dynamics. Therefore, the application of reservations to the farm sector and the MSME sector may prove to be counterproductive. Many SMEs constitute a subsidiary link in the supply chains of big firms as shock absorbers, which they accomplish through contract labour. There are specialised companies that have come up in a big way to supply all grades of manpower. They facilitate these new management strategies. An employee, so long as he is employed, remains on the roll of these companies but works for some other company. Once he is out of the job, he auto-matically ceases to be on any company's roll. This is the increasingly preferred model for the companies, to variablise their costs.

How shall the reservations be implemented in such cases? The only impact of these policies will be to re-incur the stigma of caste to the already existing employees. It stands to anyone's imagination that in the MSMEs, where the owners are the managers, there is no question of AA bringing in any likely change.

Redistributive Policies

Prof Thorat stressed that redistributive policies were necessary but not sufficient; they needed to be supplemented by the AA policies. He belaboured the point that special safeguards were necessary as equal distribution of endow-ment among the socially unequal people was no guarantee of justice. He gave several examples of countries where some kind of AA in respect of certain sections of their population is extant. In China, Mao instituted AA policies in favour of China's 55 minorities; the USA has its AA policies in favour of its minorities and women; South Africa has reportedly gone to household levels in imposing conditions on the White employers that they should adopt and educate at least one Black member of their household employees; Northern Ireland mandates reports on religious affiliation of employees from employers; and Malaysia has reservations for its Bhumiputras, Malaya people not only in employment but also in investments and in management (that is, in the Board of Directors) of companies.

As explained above, I had not discounted the necessity of AA policies per se; I am prepared to engage with these issues in order to bring clarity to these oft-repeated arguments. When the problem is posed in terms of AA versus redistribution (sic), it necessitates clarity on what is meant by redistribution. The redistribution could range from liberal to revolutionary programmes. All the patch-up, calibrated redistributive measures we speak about are in the liberal realm which, as we know, may prove to be in the long-term interests of the entrenched structures. The so-called land reforms carried out in this country may be a case in point. It may institute AA as a buy-in for the subject people without their basic empowerment. The revolu-tionary redistribution, on the other hand, aims at serving the long-term interest of the society. It would ensure basic inputs in terms of education, health and security of livelihood to all people and thereafter think if any sections needed special safeguards to bring them up expeditiously on par with the rest.

Actually, this contrast itself is erroneous because, as said above, AA itself is a redistri-butive measure. The question reduces as such to what kind of redistributive measures? Whether to provide basics to all population and devise some extra for some who need it or to promise pieces to some sections without providing for basics to all and thereby unleashing manipulative politics? India's reservation is purely a manipulative device to fragment people along identitarian lines and engage them in internecine conflicts.

AA Policies of Other Countries

The AA policies of other countries cannot be analogised with India's reservations. The most differentiating factor is caste apart from its mechanics. The caste is a pervasive poison that manifests itself into social prejudice, which is most pronounced against the people called Dalits. The classical view of caste that it is a graded inequality is neither useful here nor is it true anymore. The caste is practically reduced to class-like formation into Dalits and non-Dalits.

AA in other countries is not against pervasive social prejudice against the benefi-ciaries, except perhaps the African Americans in the US. AA in the US is in the form of a diversity-promoting measure. The state of the intended beneficiaries (Hispanic, Blacks, Asians, women) can be analogised with the backward castes with ordered prejudices probably according to the shades of darkness excepting for African Americans who can be compared with India's Dalits. Although Prof Thorat said that some Black intellectuals had praise for India's quota system over their AA, the latter to my mind appears better in certain crucial respect.

Much is said about AA in the US being based on the Executive Order whereas India's reser-vations coming directly from the Constitution. The implication is that the AA policies can be challenged in courts of law, whereas India's policy cannot be so challenged. I do not understand the significance of these statements. Because although at the level of principle it is true, in practice India's policy is also effected through Executive Orders and can be challenged in its operational parameters. What great difference does it make? The virtue I see in the US AA is that it assimilates many communities and ordains their fair representation. It thus tends to dilute the racial stigma associated with the African Americans. Another plus with their policy is that there is a monitoring and control mechanism with punitive powers in place whereas the Indian policy has only cascading reporting structures which can only lament over deficient implementation. AA in the US is not in the form of concession to the beneficiary, it just expects the outcome and process is to be decided by the implementing institution. While these processes have been subject to legal challenges, courts have generally validated them. The Indian quota system brings in concessions and therefore explicitly induces grudge in others, adding fuel to the existing fire of caste prejudices.

Chinese Case

China has AA policies, called Youhuizhengce, for its 55 recognised minority groups, ranging in population from a few thousand to maximum 17 million against a single ethnic majority of Han Chinese who account for its 91.59 per cent population. However, their traditional home-lands occupy over 65 per cent of the total Chinese territory, which are not only strategically located but are also resource-rich. These strategic and economic imperatives impelled China to continue basically the same tenets of nationality policy (alternative to the Leninist national self-deter-mination) with minor modifications. They have their own histories and culture and may be compared with our tribals, physically segregated from the mainstream. There is social prejudice against them quite like tribals in India but no social stigma like caste.

The policies began in 1949 but explicitly operated since the mid-1980s, and were modelled after those of the Soviet Union. Three principles inform them: equality for national minorities, territorial autonomy, and equality for all languages and cultures. The entire tax collected in the minority regions can be spent locally. Minorities receive proportional representation in local govern-ment. The Chinese Government encourages business to hire minorities and offers no-interest loans to businesses operated by the minorities. Prominent government posts may be filled with “model” citizens who are also minorities. Minority students applying to universities receive bonus points on the National Higher Education Entrance Examination. There is a system of universities exclusively for minority students. The minority families can officially have two children instead of one demanded of the Han people and in practice ignores families having even more.

It is said that these policies are prompted by the analysis of the Soviet failure which was attributed to the ignorance of minorities. The AA in China takes the form of preserving their cultural identities, concessions to provide them with the best quality education, etc. But these policies were instituted over and above the democratic reconstruction of China and not a patchy solution merely to woo the minorities.

Many other liberal democracies have some kind of AA, but they are of type to take care of historical asymmetries in the populations. Malaysia's Bhumiputra polices are openly racially discriminatory in favour of the native majority comprising Malay, natives of Sabah and Sarawak, comprising comprehensive measures to uplift the entire population. It was meant to eliminate power asymmetry in the Malaysian society which used to manifest into riots between the dominating Malaysian Chinese and local Malays. In these and rather most other countries where some kind of AA exists, it is in the nature of evening out such secular asymmetries.

Continuum of Inequality

In India, the continuum of inequality of the caste system made such AA inapplicable except, as some people advocate, to parcel out everything in accordance with the population of all castes. The AA policy in India, therefore, in order to be viable, had to be exceptional and aiming at not the power asymmetry but its root in the deep-drawn social prejudice against Dalits. I think this conceptual difference is of utmost importance to avoid the mistaken analogy between India and other countries.

When the colonial rulers instituted the reservation policy in favour of Dalits, it, although not described in so many words, had a basic feature of being an exceptional measure for exceptional people. When the transfer of power took place, could this policy be discontinued? Although the theoretical answer to this question could be affirmative, none having political acumen could accept it. Politically, it would have been the riskiest folly on the part of the rulers. If so, the reservations were not to be freshly instituted; they were principally stabilised in the colonial times. More importantly, the colonial powers, despite their zest for marshalling everything to serve their divide-and-rule strategy, created an administration category of ‘Scheduled Caste' to supersede the religion-ordained caste of the Untouchables.

There was a clear opportunity for the new ruling classes, who took over from the British, to outlaw castes. But they hoodwinked the people outlawing untouchability which happened to be the fond song of all the upper-caste reformers, best represented by Gandhi; but in effect they preserved castes with the tacit alibi of doing social justice to the lower castes. Now even a child could see that with castes surviving untouchability cannot go, which is what survey after survey right from the 1950s to just the previous day (NCAER report) reveal. They had not stopped at that; they diluted it by extending it to potentially all and sundry. They created a separate schedule for the tribals to have provisions that are the same as those for the Scheduled Castes. Notwith-standing the lack of foolproof criteria to identify people in this schedule for tribes, they could have been merged into the existing schedule (suitably renaming it) and thereby diluted the caste stigma associated with the schedule for Dalits (because the tribals did not have any caste).

They haven't even stopped at that. They would create a vague provision that the state would identify the ‘backward classes' (read castes) so as to extend similar provisions in future. It verily amounted to constructing a can of caste-worms the lid of which could be opened at an opportune time in future as the Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, did in 1990. The entire schema about castes being kept alive comes out clear when we see similar scheming around religion, the other weapon to divide people. The Constitution scrupulously avoided the term secular that could create a separating wall between religion and politics with an alibi to have space for the state to carry out religion-related reforms. The only reform that one could imagine was in the form of passing the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987 in the wake of the burning of Roop Kanwar on her husband's pyre. It is important to understand these matters because they directly cross the emancipation agenda of the Dalits.

Generational Loss of Dalits

Prof Thorat repeatedly stated that the reservation policies were meant as compensation for the historical discrimination suffered by the Dalits. I do not understand how it accounts for the generational loss suffered by the Dalits. If the intention is to compensate for the sufferings of Dalits over the last 2000 years, India may have to sell itself million times over to compensate them. I do not think any of the AA policies in vogue in the world aim at really compensating the present generations for the sufferings of their previous generations. This is pure rhetoric; neither is it possible nor is it even warranted. I am not aware of this kind of articulation in justification of our reservation.

Logically, the AA policies in favour of some social groups expect to promote their development with such a pace that they come on par with others over a reasonable time-frame. The Malaysian policy in favour of Malays has achieved this feat within less than four decades. In China, the minority nationalities have been similarly elevated to the levels of the Han majority. How does the reservation policy of India fare on this count? The representation of Dalits in government services cannot be taken as proxy of development of the entire community but even there, the reservations did not reach the prescribed levels.

If one peeps into the categorisations of these services, one would smell a bigger rot. For example, the Class A job itself has a dozen rungs and the 11-12 per cent representation reached by the Dalits (against the prescribed 15 per cent) would be mostly around its bottom, revealing the conspi-cuous absence of Dalits at the top. The hugely prejudiced organisational dynamics against Dalits remains without remedy. The dynamics subsumes promoting pliant mediocrity of Dalits to crush the competent ones leaving the balance mass as passengers. It surely contradicts the notion that all Dalits suffer caste discrimination. A tiny fraction of the Dalit population benefit from reservations and as such has little influence on the development of Dalits as a whole.

Our reservation system does not appear to have even the objective of bringing Dalits on par with others. It merely envisages prospective equi-table share of the public sphere. In other words, their historical development deficit is to be carried on perpetually. It envisages Dalits to be relatively backward forever. If the objective behind reservation had been to bring Dalits on par with others, in the present framework the reservation should have been logically applicable to all spheres of life and at a rate much higher than the ratio of their population. None of these issues bother the Dalit intellectuals. I have heard protagonists of reservation saying that they enable Dalit participation in the decision-making process; they enable power-sharing.

It is utter naiveté to assume that mere existence ensures participation in decision-making. The accumulation of Dalits around the bottom of the highest class and the organisational dynamics obviate any such participation. The participation, however, is allowed for select Dalits, as demo pieces, who carry the writ of their masters. These days another term, ‘inclusion', has got into academic discourses. It belongs to the neoliberal taxonomy devised by the Bretton Woods Institutions. It has overshadowed the discourse of equality of the Dalit movement and is rather the international equivalent of the RSS's samarasata.

Peep into the Policy

One could look into the policy per se the way in which it is framed. Any such exceptional policy has to have terminability embedded within it. When can one say that the objectives behind the policy (which itself remain unstated) are accomplished and therefore decide that the policy be terminated? Whose responsibility is it to see that it is terminated? Today, the entire society is divided into two warring camps: one comprising the beneficiaries wanting the policy for eternity and the others not hopeful of getting the benefits, comprising the upper castes, wanting the policy to be terminated at once. As stated above, there is no arrester to the prejudicial behaviour of the society against the Dalits except for the assumed force of the state, which cannot really perpetually act against the society at large.

Therefore, the policy could have been formulated in such a way as to make the society realise that it has a disability that it cannot treat its own members equally and hence the policy to help overcome that disability. To the Dalits, it would simultaneously communicate that it is in their larger interest to do away with their historically stigmatised identity and aim at larger progress in society. Needless to say, this conception only applied to the Dalits who were the stigmatised people because of the caste system and may be the tribals who, though not belonging to the caste society, are in someway looked upon as inferior by the society. This should have been the conception of reservation in India, which could have convinced the larger society of its rationale and eliminated the communal strife; motivated the society to overcome its disability so as to remove this anomaly at the earliest possible time.

On the side of the Dalits, they would have also sought to discard their stigmatised identity at the earliest possible time and come forward to demand the end of the policy. By doing so, they could have aspired to make far more progress than what reservation promised them. Such a secularised formulation would have eliminated the stigma and preserved the self-esteem and confidence of the Dalits.

Intra-Dalit Inequality

Reservations are essentially a redistributive measure not only in the society but also within the Dalit castes. It is necessary to ensure that the benefits of reservations reach the needy and not an increasingly smaller number of beneficiaries. This could be easily accomplished with conceptual integrity. Since reservations benefited individuals and their own families, family (husband, wife and their children) should be the unit of recognition, not the caste. Once a family availed reservation, it should get dampened in its chances to get further reservations, thereby pre-empting the beneficiaries from monopolising the reservation benefits at the cost of marginalisation of the balance people. If such a principle had been followed, it would have secularised the operation of the reservation policy and ensured that the benefits are reached equitably across sub-castes within the SC-category.

As against this, the reservation policy as it exists is grossly ill-formulated. It does not spell out the premise and what it tacitly conveys is that reservations were warranted because Dalits (and later tribals and backward castes) were ‘socially and educationally' backward implying thereby that the state would help them out to rise. It naturally gave rise to an ill feeling in the rest of the society that its resources were unduly wasted over undeserving people as there is nothing in policy that communicates to them that they are equal but are prejudiced against by the society for certain historical wrongs. The policy did not give assurance that reservation would end when some goal was met. As it exists, it appears irrationally perennial; creating vested interests in the subject people to claim backwardness and correspon-dingly aggravating the ill feeling among others. It does not motivate anyone to mend the prevailing situation that warranted this policy. In a backward country like India, backwardness could not be the criterion for any such policy. Any and every caste could claim it by playing up backwardness and thus strengthen caste consciousness among its members, paradoxically against the Dalits, identified with reservations. The reality glaringly testifies to this fact.

The policy thus can be seen to have aggravated the problem instead of solving it. If atrocities are taken as a good proxy for caste consciousness, which I think they are, then there is incontro-vertible evidence that castes are far stronger today than ever before. The atrocities, by the police's own records, have galloped to stratospheric levels of 40,000 today and have become far more vicious in their ferocity. While the ruling classes have systematically worked through their policies towards this end, there is no denying the fact that the reservation policy has its lion's share. Sadly, the grudge of the society against the Dalits (it is important to understand that although the so-called OBCs get more reservations, at least 27 per cent, it is only Dalits who get identified with reservations) translates into atrocities on the lower strata of the Dalits that lives in villages nearly cut off from reservations. Such is the prowess of caste consciousness that the poor rural Dalits as well as the poor non-Dalits (who perpetrate atrocities) do not realise that they identify with their caste elites against the people of their own class.

Tinier Section of Beneficiaries

Another flaw of the reservation policy is that it does not flow to those who need it most and tend to create an increasingly tinier section of beneficiaries. It surely aggravates the class divide among Dalits which, in absence of the class idiom, is identified as sub-caste division. It is not realised that the most populous sub-caste of the Dalits in every region reflects more adaptability, more entrepreneurship and more agitation compared to other less populous sub-castes, not because there is something special with them but just because their population could not have a specific caste vocation. They had thus low valence with the village unlike other sub-castes which had their caste vocation and thus a stake in the village. These were the people who grabbed the opportunities that came their way relatively faster than the others and later followed Ambedkar.

Ambedkar himself could be seen as the product of this process. It is natural that that the populous castes like Mahars, Chamars, Malas, Pariahs, etc. reflect more progress than others. But it is foolish to imagine that they uniformly progressed. It is only a few families that benefited earlier and kept on benefiting, keeping others at bay. One may easily find a similar degree of inequality among them as could be found among other sub-castes. It is, however, true that those families that appear to have benefited from reservations happen to be from these populous Dalit castes. It is not by any misdoing either of those casters or the implementers but it is by the very design of the policy.

While the argument that the majority Dalits castes such as Mahars and Malas have monopolised all the reservation benefits is thus wrong, it provides space for politicians to exploit it and divide the Dalits along sub-caste lines. The Mala-Madiga syndrome is thus intrinsic to the current policy which is a corollary of the basic anomaly that reservation benefits an individual but is attributed to the entire caste. Its fall-out was the demand by the other sub-castes for sub-categorisation to divide reservation among them, decimating the ‘Dalit' that symbolised their unified identity. This demand, duly prompted and supported by the ruling classes, has spread all over conclusively defeating the Ambedkarian project. It is sad that a plethora of writings on reservations or Dalit movement could never note these flaws.

Annihilation of Castes and not Reservations

Such is the obsession of Dalits for reservations that they do not want to understand that the actual employment base for reservation has been eroding from 1997 onwards. I have spoken with the statistics in numerous public meetings and seminars, that over a single decade (from 1997 to 2007) there has been a decline of over 1.7 million (and it is going on thereafter) in the public employment. This clearly meant that in net terms there has been negative growth in reservations, meaning thereby that by 1997 reservations have de facto come to an end. But no one wants to stomach this harsh reality. The problem with the middle-class Dalits is that their sole agenda has been reservations and they cannot imagine their social engagement without reservations.

Beyond these arguments, I have presented some historical facts to provoke people into rethinking their obsession for reservations. In 1936, when the British made the ‘schedule' of the Untouchables, the criteria of untouchability worked well all over the country except for the two regions, namely, the South and East. In the South, with the criteria of untouchability, nearly 70 per cent people would enter the schedule; but in the East, none would come in. They adopted additional criteria to normalise the population to the national average. In the process, many castes such as Ezhawa, Gounders, Nadars, who were Untouchables, escaped being included into the schedule. Broadly speaking, their condition was not significantly better than that of the Dalits. If one takes stock of the comparative progress of these two commu-nities (the ones that escaped the schedule and the Dalits who got scheduled), one cannot miss the fact that those who escaped the schedule, and hence the stigma of Dalithood, made thousand times more progress than Dalits who had reservations!

I am aware that the vested interests would simplistically label me as anti-reservationist. I cannot compete with their irrationality. But in deference to it I can certainly reiterate my position that given the societal prejudice, much of it could be attributed to reservation itself, some kind of affirmative action is necessary in their favour. But if the current model is to be operated, I would prefer Dalits discard it and instead demand from the state due prenatal care to every needy pregnant woman so that she brings a healthy child into the world, and thereafter equitable inputs of child care, equal quality education through neighborhood schools, and health care; in exchange of reservations. Let them forget the past and focus on their coming generations to fight it out. Howsoever we try, the past wrongs cannot be undone. Using the deceitful discourse of the past, however, the present can be easily mani-pulated. The only way to end the Dalits' woes is to annihilate castes as Ambedkar said. But this project unfortunately cannot be accomplished by Dalits alone. However, they hold the key. They must understand that caste is their bane and not the boon; the earlier they annihilate it, the better it is for their future.

The author is a writer and civil rights activist with the CPDR, Mumbai. He is currently a Professor of Business Management at the IIT, Kharagpur.

BOOK REVIEW

The Many Faces of Kashmiri Nationalism—From the Cold War to the Present Day by Nandita Haksar; Speaking Tiger, New Delhi; 2015; pages: 335; Price: Rs 350.

The Many Faces Of Kashmiri Nationalism— From The Cold War To The Present Day (Speaking Tiger) is Nandita Haksar's latest book and, perhaps, the most significant. It not just captures the very historical backgrounders to Kashmiri nationalism but in that process also throws open the dark realities of the prevailing situation.

She has traced this history not through any of those conventional modes but through the very lives of two Kashmiri men: Sampat Prakash, a Kashmiri Pandit and a communist trade union leader who became active during the Cold War years, and Mohammad Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri Muslim who became active in the early years of the Kashmir insurgency and who was later hanged in Delhi's Tihar Jail...

In fact, the very forte of this book is its focus on Afzal Guru and with that the focus on the ongoing conflict in Kashmir. Nandita has very, very deftly weaved in Afzal's letters/correspon-dence with her and this includes a 10-page-long handwritten letter which he'd written from his prison cell. Nah, none of his long and short letters tucked in the pages of this book carry terrorising offloads or thoughts or sentiments. On the contrary, they come across as not just philosophical but humane and emotional—written with raw emotions...

To quote Nandita from this book,

Although Afzal had lived in the closed and claustro-phobic cells of Tihar Jail, his mind was open, and he continued to read extensively. Tabassum said after Ghalib was born, Afzal would complain: ‘Waai Pyaari mye mileha kanh goaph (O Pyaari, I wish I could find a cave to read in).' After his imprisonment, Tabassum would tease him: ‘Goaph mileye? (Have you found the cave now?)', to which he would respond: ‘Zabardast goaph! (Incredible cave!)'

...Afzal wrote long letters to friends. Sometimes he would make copies and give me one or send it to me through his channels. Most of these letters were in English. In the letters he discussed his ideas about religion and nationalism...

Like many other Kashmiri Muslims, Afzal too had become disillusioned by the idea of nationalism and had taken refuge in Islamist ideologies. For Afzal, both India and Pakistan had betrayed the Kashmiris. He was worried about the radicalism of the new generation. He called it indoctrination and expressed his concern in a letter written from Jail No 2, in Tihar Jail, to a fellow Kashmir: ‘Our home is in a state of ANARCHY (morally, politically, socially etc.) sandwiched between two antagonistic Forces. One country is simmering other on indoctrinating the highly volatile kids mobilising the noble feelings of these uneducated and unaware youth for their own existence and survival. They want to engage the huge Army stricture with huge budget by handful highly motivated people. The other side the Army want to rest and to have highly luxurious life. It is this hypocrisy that made few people to change the state of simmering of pot into boiling state. It got boiled but unfortunately these two countries do not learn rather they do not want make people live in peace.They are living on the threshold of the same boiling stage. I was not alone nor am I. I do not belong to any org. I belong to feelings and ideas (felt globally) by those who are being humiliated, tortured and silenced unwilling.'

In fact, Nandita's focus on Afzal through his letters makes him stand out as a well-read man who was thinking ever so constantly. I quote her from this book—“Afzal was wrestling with the ideas of religion and nationalism. In a long letter written to me on January 8, 2008 he asked: ‘Respected Nandita, when Naga conflict is not Christian why conflict in Kashmir is branded as Islamic. Fundamentally it is political, social and historical in nature. Robert A. Pape's book, Dying To Win, has given a sophisticated analysis of 300 suicide attacks (from 1980-2003) out of which 76 were executed by the LTTE. The common cause he says is political and social injustice, oppression and brute policies of the political establishment or occupational powers.”

In this book she also focuses on yet another of his letters in which Afzal Guru writes on the state's senseless policies:

The constant humiliation and trauma will ...ignite the heat of conflict. These policies will cultivate the militant and radical culture towards irrever-sible end. Police stations have become terror and slaughter houses. Families of killed people do not go to police station because it is police station which is spreading the sense of terror into the hearts and minds of people. You may be feeling this exaggeration of state terror but this is a bitter fact of constitutional colony that is Kashmir.

She further highlights yet another letter of Guru wherein he reasons out why economic packages alone will not solve any of the problems in Kashmir—‘Jesus, the son of Mary (Maryam) (Peace be on them) says man cannot live by bread alone. Economic packages cannot bring peace in Kashmir. The people who are constantly living in the flux of humiliation and fear does not need bread for which Allah has given every person for a single mouth. What people need is a political framework in which they don't feel themselves vulnerable, humiliated or terrorised...

‘The closure of all democratic means and vents will naturally push the educated youth towards radical wall. Noam Chomsky says if we do not believe in the Freedom of expression for the people we despise we don't believe in it at all. RSS's philosophy and its political, social and militant offshoots and offsprings are communalising and polarising whole of political and social fabric and this culture of hatred is penetrating the other local institutions as well and don't exclude Tihar Jail. There is no doubt ISI is also playing its own role in this process through its own devices of hatred. In fact, ISI is nurturing on anti-India rhetoric.'

In fact, this 335-page long book ends with a 10-page-long handwritten letter which Guru wrote to Nandita (which she'd received on January 8, 2008) and the sentiments and thoughts contained in this letter makes you sit up, and makes you introspect on the very concept of death penalties, on state hangings! Because of space constraints I cannot quote extensively from it; just these last lines from his handwritten letter—‘In the end I request you don't colourise or dress my words in any colour or dress except a purely responsible human concern for humanity ...I am in universe in such a way that I am myself universe - I live in a space but I am spaceless.'

As I had mentioned right in the beginning, this focus on Afzal Guru's letters is the very forte of Nandita's book, for through these the reader is aware of not just the ground realities but also of the undercurrents.

Of course, there's ample focus on the other significant developments and the continued, rather continuing, political mess in Kashmir. In fact, compounding the mess is the BJP-PDP alliance, to put it in Nandita's words—‘The results of the latest elections of 2014 show how deeply divided the people of Jammu and Kashmir are along communal lines ... the two parties who have formed the government in Jammu and Kashmir, the Jammu and Kashmir People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are as different as the North Pole is from the South Pole.... Some public leaders have hailed this alliance as a triumph of Indian democracy and an opportunity for reconciliation between Hindus of Jammu and Muslims of the Kashmir Valley. But there are those who warn that this could well be the beginning of the partitioning of the State's people by two colluding communal blocks.'

And it's through the fire brand trade union leader, Sampat Prakash, that the reader gets introduced to many other realities of Kashmir, which had otherwise been brushed under the many-layered political complexities These are detailed racy accounts which bring to the fore those lesser-written-about characters and locales ...each standing out to relay the complex realities of the region.

What's remarkable is Nandita's candid and fearless honesty in baring out stark realities. She doesn't mince words to expose the various realities, so that the reader is aware of the truth. Truth at any cost. There are no dilutions and no slants or twists.

This book is important, a crucial must, for all those who want to read the truth about the ongoing conflict in Kashmir.

by Gull Wani and Effat Yasmin

Introduction

The democratic renewal globally has created opportunities for more decentralisation of economic and political power. Panchayati Raj Institutions or democratic decentralisation is the development of the reciprocal relationship between the Central Government and local governments and between local governments and the citizens. Decentra-lisation has been helpful in the process of democratisation of polities and societies. In India, since 2005-06 the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has been operating what it calls the Panchayat and Accountability Incentive schemes, under which the constituent units of the Indian Union are assessed for their performance in empowering the Panchayati Raj Institutions and accountability of the Panchayati Raj Institutions in the discharge of their functions.

The introduction of local self-government in Jammu and Kashmir commenced with the promulgation of the Panchayat Regulations, No.1 of 1935 by Maharaja Hari Singh of the Jammu Kashmir state. In 1936 a special Depart-ment of Panchayat and Rural Development was established to administer the 1935 regulations. The main attribute of the Act of 1935 was the provision regarding the right of franchise by the people in the villages and the right to be elected as a Panch on the Panchayat.

In 1951 the Panchayat Raj Institutions were sought to be re-established by an Act defining their features, functions and allied objectives. The majority of its members were to be elected on the basis of adult franchise and by a show of hands. Encouraged by the concern shown by the Union Government to further institutiona-lise the Panchayats, the Jammu and Kashmir Government passed the J&K Panchayat Act 1958 to ‘'make better provisions for the administration of village Panchayats in the Jammu Kashmir State”. The Act provided for a two-tier Panchayat Raj—Halqa Panchayat at the village level and Block Boards at the block level. The Act also provided for the establishment of Panchayat Adalats (courts) to decentralise the administration of justice. The Act further laid stress on revenue resources through taxes without any commitment on the part of the government in this behalf.

The Jammu Kashmir Panchayat Act 1989 is the latest on the democratic laundry-list of the State. The Preamble to the Act states that “whereas it is expedient to promote and develop Panchayat Raj in the State as an instrument of the vigorous local self-government to secure effective participation of the people in the decision-making process and for overseeing implementation of developmental programmes.” The Act of 1989 is the harbinger of the second democratic upsurge in the Jammu and Kashmir State, the first being of course the radical land reforms.

The main lacuna of all the above Acts has been the lack of provisions for women's participation in the Panchayati Raj Institutions. However, the State framed the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Rules-1996 based on its own 1989 Act to overcome the deficiencies so as to put it at par with the Central Act though the women's dimension of democratic decentra-lisation finds better reflection in the progressive Naya Kashmir Manifesto prepared in 1944.

New Kashmir Manifesto 1944: Article-52 of the charter provides that in order to help women in the attainment of their just, equal and rightful place in the society and to enable them to make their full contribution to the task of nation-building, complete equality shall be ensured to them in all fields of life including political, economic and social. While ensuring equal rights to women in administration and political bodies, provision shall be made for their minimum representation of seats. Women shall be given equal pay for equal work done by them. Further, women shall be given all help and protection in discharging their duties. For this purpose the following measures shall in particular be under-taken:

i) Ante-natal and maternity facilities; ii) adequate arrangements for nursing during maternity period; iii) maternity leave to all working mothers; iv) nurseries and kinder-gartens shall be set up for the children of working women, leave to feed the sulking children after every four hours during the working period; v) the status of women shall be protected by law; economic and socio-economic causes of immoral traffic in women shall be identified for their complete eradication; vi) every woman shall have the right to consent for her marriage; dowry system shall be abolished through social awakening and direct legal provisions; vii) special provision shall be made for the cultural development of women in the villages and remote areas. (New Kashmir Manifesto 1944)1

The New Kashmir Manifesto is perhaps the first document of its kind in the subcontinent in which the issue of women's empowerment has been addressed in such a forceful manner. Today it is common to talk of providing 33 per cent reservation to women at political/ adminis-trative levels. The New Kashmir Manifesto had already envisaged it and the State ensured it through reservation to women. The J&K Government has also provided 50 per cent seats in medicine (MBBS) course in favour of girl students and this move is the first of its kind in India. Keeping pace with contemporary times the J&K Government amended the Panchayati Raj Act of 1989 in the light of the 73rd Constitution Amendment Act-1992 of India to provide reservation to women. This became essential in order to bring the Kashmir Act at par with the Union law and also to silence detractors of State autonomy for Kashmir who were finding fault with the State Act. Elections were held in the years 2001 and 2011. But the seats were not reserved for women in the first amendment. In 2003, however, the Act was further amended and not less than one-third seats were reserved for women. In the next section we will discuss some of the important features of this amendment as an essential catalyst for women's empowerment. The shortcomings in the amended Act also need to be underlined.

Political Evaluation of the 1989 Act

The Jammu and Kashmir State is one of the very few States to experiment with decentralisation in spite of the fact that it remained politically turbulent in the post-1947 period.2 Jammu and Kashmir got “The Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act” enacted as early as July 11, 1989 vide Act No. IX of 1989. The Preamble to the Act reads and defines the Act as “An act to provide for the constitution of Halqa Panchayats, Block Development Councils and the District Planning and Development Boards and matters connected therewith”. The Act is an affirmation of faith of the Jammu and Kashmir State to power-sharing at different levels. The State leadership had always to face tough questions on less power to the Panchayats and simultaneously more forceful demand for restoration of the special constitutional position of the State under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. There were questions related to power-sharing with and within regions and sub-regions of the State. There were doubts always about greater autonomy to Kashmir leading to political despotism. Hence the State leadership had always to prove its commitment to decentralisation of both economic and political power. This despite the fact that the State's record of power-sharing remained fairly appreciable.

The J&K has been operating successfully the “single line administration'' system. Through this instrumentality district is the unit of planning and development. This system helped the State in decentralisation of power and further augmenting of the bottom units of the political system. This innovation in development administration was brought in at a time (1977) when there was a wave of centralisation swee-ping the Indian polity. There was a unitarian thrust both in political and economic decision-making and J&K had bitterly tasted the erosion of its own autonomy granted under Article 370 of the Constitution of India. Be that as it may, the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in the Indian Constitution created the new template and the Act of 1989 of J&K had to undergo necessary change. As far as reservation and women's participation in these institutions are concerned, the Act in amendment of Section 4, sub-section (3) of the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act, 1989 (therein referred to as ‘‘the principal Act'') reads, among other provisos, the following: ‘‘Provided that the Panch seats shall be reserved for: (a) The Scheduled Castes; and (b) The Scheduled Tribes. As provided by section 4 subsection 3 of the Actnot less than one-third of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election in every Panchayat shall be reserved for women and such seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in a Panchayat by such authority and in such manner as may be prescribed.” The J&K State, as already stated, enjoys autonomy and many laws made by the Parliament of India do not apply directly to the State. However, the State can formulate laws modelled along the lines of the Central legislation. The 73rd Amendment dealing with Panchayati Raj is a case in point. The 1989 Panchayati Act in the State has not prevented it in accepting new changes and the Panchayat institution is undergoing change and transformation as per requirements of the new governance agenda. There is nothing inherently wrong with the J&K Act and it is only the issue of implementation which comes as an irritant. There are, however, weaknesses within the system in Jammu and Kashmir. The next section pinpoints some of these constraints.

Institutional Operation of Panchayati Raj in J&K: Major Irritants

The institution of panchayat in J&K suffers from both structural as well as operational weaknesses.

Structural Problems:

Structurally, the Panchayati Raj Act 1989, despite the recent amendments, remains flawed and does not serve the purpose of making the Panchayats as units of self-governance. The main flaws of the Act from a gender perspective are as under:

1. The Panchayats, as per the State Act, are not democratically structured at all the three levels. The principle of direct election of the Panchayat, for instance, is applied only at the village level, neither the Block level Panchayat nor the District level Panchayat is comprised of the directly elected represen-tatives of the people and hence women as margins are at the receiving end.

2. It is only the Chairman of the Block Development Council who can be elected but the process of election is not direct but indirect—the Electoral College comprises of the Panches and Sarpanches within that block. The election for the same is yet to take place in the State. Similarly there is no provision for direct election in the District Planning and Development Board. It is only the Vice-Chairperson of the Board who is elected, the Electoral College being comprised of the members of the Board itself.

3. Presence of the government officials at all three levels hampers the democratic structuring of the Panchayat. The Secretary, Panchayat at all the three levels is a government official: the Gram Sevak at the level of the Halqa Panchayat, the Block Development Officer at the Block Development Council level and the Deputy Commissioner at the level of District Planning and Development Board. Besides the Secretary, the Chairperson of the District Planning and Development Board is also a nominee of the government. As per the practice, the govern-ment generally nominates a senior Minister to be the chairperson of the Board. The meeting of the Board is attended by many senior Ministers, including the Chief Minister and senior bureaucrats. The presence of such high powered government officials and Ministers cannot in any case allow the Panchayat at this level to be a democratic body autonomous of governmental control and influence. (Staffin etal 2011)3 True, most Gram Sevaks are women but they are government servants and not elected representatives.

4. The structure of the District Planning and Development Board is more in line with the Single Line Administration system (where the district is the unit of administration) that was introduced in the State in the mid-seventies of the last century rather than in line with the Panchayati Raj Institutions. Under the scheme of the Panchayati Raj Institutions, the idea of decentralised planning remains incomplete without its democratic structuring and content.

5. The Halqa Majlis, which is the foundation of local self-governance, has not been recognised as an institution in the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Act. A good thing about the Act is that it makes it mandatory for the Halqa Panchayats to ‘lay for sanction' its plans and budget to a ‘meeting of voters'. (Rekha 2012)5 However, this ‘meeting of voters' and its mode of functioning have not been clearly defined. Also the Act does not state whether the recommendations given by the Halqa Majlis are binding legally and cannot be tampered with.

6. Women's reservation in the Act was limited to the level of Panches and was not extended to the level of Sarpanches. It was further specified only at the level of Village Panchayat and not at the other two levels.

7. The Gram Sabha (Village Assembly), which should have been the most powerful body demanding accountability from the Panches and Sarpanches, remains subordinate to the Panchayat. Gram Sabah is conducted once in a blue moon and that too by some Panchayats only. The meetings of the Village Assembly could have helped in cultivating the debating skills of women and creating role models.

Operational Problems:

1. At the operational level, the biggest issue remains the powerlessness of the Panchayat. There are pronouncements regarding devolution of powers and empowerment of the Panchayat, and yet, the Panchayats remain without power. Many women Panches, including a prominent Kashmir Pandit woman, Asha Rani, who got elected through the support of Muslim majority from the North Kashmir region of Barmulla, voiced the concern in the conference held at Kashmir University under the auspices of the Institute of Social Sciences in September 2013. However, this is an all-India problem as pointed out by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (GOI 2007). The Commission has noted the reluctance of State governments and the bureaucracy to let the PRIs become independent self-governing entities in accordance with the principle of subsidiary, which states that any activity that can be done at a lower level should not be delegated to a higher level. The ARC report blames the skewed concentration of political power at the higher levels for the prevailing sorry state of affairs.5

2. The absence of funding should not have been a problem in view of the provisions in 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992. The J&K Government can be asked to take a cue from the above stipulation. But there is a more intricate problem which needs to be hammered out. The fact is that State governments are starved of funds due to the imbalances in the Indian fiscal federal system tilted towards the Union Government. So State governments are reluctant to give away their meagre resources to the Panchayats. In Jammu and Kashmir, as in the case of other States, the only funding that is available to the Panchayats is tied with some Centrally sponsored schemes. Other than that, neither are the Panchayats provided basic funding by the State nor are these directhy empowered to raise their resources through taxation even though the power of taxation is detailed in the Act.

3. The mere devolution of funds by itself will not result in improvements in the functioning of the Halqa Panchayats. Equally important is the need to build the capacities of elected representatives to handle these funds, plan and implement programmes in Halqa Panchayats. In most States the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MOPR) has taken up the initiative to train the elected representatives and instituted reward schemes to promote devolution. The MOPR reports do indicate the significance of capacity-building of elected Panches. The first statement of panchayat report (2006-2007) thus notes: a big bang approach was recommended for overcoming the sluggishness in the devolution of functions, functionaries and funds (3Fs) to the PRIs. (Rahul 2013)6 The logic was that if substantial functions, functionaries and funds were devolved at one go with accompanying investment in capacity building and training of staff and elected representatives to handle the greatly increased responsibilities, then this big-bang would blow away much of the inertia and inexperience that were proving to be the major hurdle. The success of PRIs in Kerala where this approach was first followed was held up as an example.7

4. Overlapping of functions and powers between the administrative and field agencies under the control of the State Government and the Panchayats is also an issue to be sorted out. The PRIs in the State are not structured on the basis of federal principles. The principle of devolution of powers between the State and Panchayat is not reflected in the Act in any manner. The Act provides the powers of the three tiers of the Panchayat, but it does not in any case guarantee that there is no overlapping of functions and powers between the adminis-trative and field agencies under the control of the State Government and the Panchayats. The PRIs should be planning and implementing their own work at their level, but this comes into conflict with the centralised top-down administrative and planning process.

5. The issue of honorarium to Panches and Sar-panches is still not resolved. The government announcement made any number of times—that the Sarpanch will get an honorarium of Rs 2000 and Panch Rs 1000 per month respectively—has not been implemented till date. In the above mentioned Panchayat Conference, held at Kashmir University, we heard many women Panches voice their demand for it not as an employment package but as a cushion to face odds in an otherwise extraordinary political situation in Kashmir. This is also thought to be necessary to curb lower level corruption in development schemes executed at the Panchayat level where a nexus has emerged between Panches, contractors and lower functionaries of the Rural Development Departments. However, in our ancestral village of Panzath Qazigund in District Anantnag, we found women generally not involved in corruption practices regarding execution of development schemes. In an informal interaction with some women Panches we noticed how some of these innocent women consider bribe-taking as a sin against God.

Gendering the Panchayati Raj System in J&K

The matter of women's representation in politics has dominated the Indian political discourse in recent years resulting in phenomenal democrati-sation of the polity and deepening of democracy. The women's exclusion is attributed to the rigid social structure which has perpetuated discrimination against women. This is true in the case of women in Jammu and Kashmir as well. However, it needs to be reiterated that the J&K State, due to early land reforms as state policy and free education, marked itself as being more egalitarian compared to the other States in the Union of India. The pre-1947 political movement was progressive/secular and resultantly led to the enactment of the 1944 New Kashmir Manifesto which laid the foundations for an egalitarian social order. According to the Manifesto, all institutions of democracy—from Panchayat to the National Assembly—were to be constituted through the due process of election.

The gender dimension was brought into the local governance system and women were elected to the grassroots level democracy in J&K in 2011. It is too short a period to evaluate their performance, especially in the context of the huge violence the J&K State has gone through over the decades. However, from the field observations certain generalisations can safely be made. First, these elections assumed huge local and national importance and women's participation added a critical dimension to it. Panchayat elections were held in a State which saw violence and the decline of both social and political institutions and consequent elimination of social capital. The women are still at the receiving end as many reports documented the impact of violence on women and their placement in the society. Second, the elections were held at a time when the political discourse was dominated by issues of devolution, autonomy and self-rule in the State as means of conflict resolution and conceding it at the lower level only disappointed many important stakeholders. Further, the elections were held in an atmosphere of fear as violence saw many political workers being killed in elections to the State Legislature in 1996, 2002 and 2008. Though the elections to the Panchayat were held on non-party basis, yet political parties cleverly fielded proxy candidates to control the Panchayati Raj Institutions. The fact that many Panchayat members were killed may partly be the reason that their political affiliations became noticeable. There is an additional reason for low women visibility in the Panchayat institutions and their diminishing role in policy-making and that is due to the entry of lumphen elements in the Panchayat institutions. Their entry is partly due to the non-involvement of educated and socially conscious people in the system. The major side-effect of this lumphenisation has resulted in the nexus of those lumpen elements with the government field officers, and contractors on the one hand and the emergence of a muscular political environment in the State on the other. This only discouraged women of ability and civility from contesting the elections. This has given rise to corruption at the bottom-level and the benefits of many government schemes have not reached the poor people. However, in spite of the above discussed stifled political environment, the women's entry in the Panchayati Raj system in J&K is a sort of mini-revolution.

Overview of Women's Participation

in J&K (2011)

Out of 4128 Sarpanches posts in the 22 districts of the State, only 29 women managed to win the elections with a dismal success rate of less than one per cent (0.70 per cent). According to the data compiled by the Chief Electoral Officer of the State, there is no woman Sarpanch in 10 of the 22 districts as male candidates have won the elections for all the posts in these districts. Although there is no scientific evidence, the data also corroborates to some extent the preference for males over females in the Kashmir Valley as shown in the Census 2011. Out of the 10 districts in the Valley, eight districts do not have a single woman Sarpanch. Baramulla in north Kashmir and Anantnag and Shopian in south Kashmir have been the saving-grace but the three districts have elected just four women as Sarpanches out of 453 posts. Surprisingly, Leh district, of the State, where women are considered to be far more assertive than their counterparts in other districts, has also failed to elect woman Sarpanches. The only district in the Jammu division not to elect any woman as Sarpanch is Kishtwar. The remaining nine districts of the Jammu region have representation of women as Sarpanches but again the percentage of winners is negligible.

Women's participation in the Panchayat elections started shaking up the political culture of the State. Panches and Sarpanches joined the fray and we found rural Kashmir undergoing a sort of renaissance. Women-related issues were agitated at the bottom level. The number of women Panches and Sarpanches gives an idea about the evolving women-friendly and emancipating Panchayat politics in the State and its defined future. It is as yet premature to assess the extent to which power has been bestowed upon women through the PRIs, as not much power has been devolved to the Panchayats and only 0.70 per cent women Sarpanches getting elected is an indicator of the nature of politics at the grossroot level. The empirical evidence also suggests that elected Panches do not have sufficient education and understanding of working and functions of grassroot level institutions. However, one cannot underestimate the impact of women's participation in the PRIs on politics, governance and delivery mechanisms. (Effat and Javaid 2012)8 Many elected women do have an understanding of the issues related to women and general society and expectedly can play an important role in providing a gender perspective of grossroots planning and empowering initiatives for womenfolk.

In our village interviews it was noticed that the social status of women Panch members has been enhanced. The birth certificate of any child born in the village is to be attested by a Panch member; this gives women Panch members and women in general a sense of prestige. An entirely illiterate woman, Dilshada, from our village has been regularly meeting officers at the Block Development Office of Qazigund (block head-quarter), this is proving beneficial for her to gain knowledge about different government schemes meant for the rural poor. The women Panches also getting involved in resolution of minor village and ward disputes is an indicator of the influence of women as well. The general society and more importantly civil society actors need to help in building up capacities of elected women Panches. It is encouraging that a majority of women Panches are young; this may help in creating women leaders in the foreseeable future at the lower level of the social structure. There is evidence that many women happen to be the proxies of their husbands as in other parts of the country and contested elections and got elected without having much knowledge about the type of job and the role they have to perform. Some of the women have never had access to even primary education. But all this is not unique to the Jammu and Kashmir State. In many other States in India, where Panchayats have established their position as vibrant democratic bodies, women's role remains a matter of debate for all the above reasons.

Further, formal education is no indicator of being most eligible for jobs which are purely meant for rural development. This was immed-iately understood by government and civil society actors and consequently training and orientation workshops were conducted to train women in Panchayat-related politics. Hopefully, with the passage of time women in our State, who constitute a creative force, will rise to the occasion and stake their claim to the legitimate exercise of power at the ground level. The national debate on women's empowerment and reservation to the women in Parliament and State legislatures will also shape the discourse in our State. Women will learn through periodic elections the value of their vote and voice leading to democratisation of the polity and society.

Future Road-map

The three-tier Panchayat system in the State is not only a constitutional binding but a democratic necessity as well. Hence there is a need for the three-tier system in the State and the following steps must be taken in right earnest:

1. Workable linkages should be established between the village, block and district level governing bodies to allow smooth transfer of funds and coordination of functions. The idea of decentralised planning through democratic, rather than the administrative, structures is the need of the hour and an assertive civil society must play its due role.

2. The clause ‘not-less-than-one-third-seats' should be honoured in future elections and elections to all the three-tier Panchayats must be held regularly.

3. The political parties in our State as political agencies should provide the necessary space to women in their party apparatuses that may in turn open the political space for women. Already many women like Mehbooba Mufti, President of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Sakina Yatoo, a Minister in the present dispensation, have emerged on the political landscape of the State and this should lead to genuine women's political mobilisation.

4. Women's economic empowerment should be taken up simultaneously so that one feeds into other to empower them finally. The market-oriented economy has a certain gender bias.

5. Women's participation in Panchayats has also the potential to turn them into active peace activists so that they establish themselves as social connectors of a bruised society. The victory of Asha Rani (a Kashmiri Pandit woman) in a predominantly Muslim ward is indicative of how women can be very good connectors between communities. This we were able to ascertain in a sort interview with Asha Rani at the Kashmir University conference.

6. Both men and women should be trained about the importance of social equilibrium in the society.

7. Educated and socially conscious women need to join the Panchayati Raj movement so that the power-sharing arrangement becomes meaningful.

8. The 33 per cent reservation of women must be extended to the level of Sarpanches.

9. In the absence of Gram Sabhas, local mosque and Awqaf committees need to be mobilised to make the system accountable at the village level. Traditional social institutions in rural India have a lot of potential to act as catalysts of change and transformation.

10. The New Kashmir Manifesto of 1944, a women-friendly document, should be made part of the school curriculum so that women's politics is further reinvigorated. The role of iconic Kashmiri women figures who played a leading role in political movements in the pre-1947 days should be highlighted in school text-books. Here reference can be made of Begum Akbar Jehan, the wife of the legendary Sheikh Abdullah, and Miss Mehmooda, a great educationist, who have left a rich legacy behind them.

11. The decision-making bodies must be made women-friendly and a space be created for women so that their feeble voices get public attention.

12. The woman should not be just tolerated because of reservation but accepted as an entity, stakeholder and equal participant in decision-making.

13. Training courses/workshops for women should be organised on a regular basis in the local language at the block level in order to empower them to address development and gender-related issues. In this context the Women's Studies Centre, long established at Kashmir University, needs to be made fully functional. The Institute of Management and Public Administration in Srinagar can also be brought into action.

14. Gender budgeting for local bodies must figure as the topmost priority of the Central and State governments.

15. A model Panchayat women-headed ward with a special package for development from various funding agencies may be established so as to boost the morale of the elected women members.

By way of conclusion one can say the there has to be greater pressure from different quarters to involve women in local governance in letter and spirit and not just for the sake of participation. This, to our knowledge, has worked well in the case of Kerala and West Bengal. In Jammu and Kashmir there is need for dialogue between the regional and national political parties on issues related to powers and extension of the 73rd Amendment to the State. There is a clear clash of political interests between the State Government and Union Government and basic to this clash is the larger question of greater autonomy to the State which has remained an unresolved issue. The reluctance of the Union Government to settle the issue of autonomy has impacted the attitude of the general political class to devolve power to the lower levels. Power-sharing becomes easy if and when powers are devolved at all levels. This has not happened in our State. However, women's entry in lower level institutions is definitely going to open new spaces which will further expand the peace constituency in the State and help in fighting varied forms of conservatism in the society.

Endnotes

1. New Kashmir Manifesto of National Conference 1944.

2. Government of Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act, 1989 And Panchayati Raj Rules, 1996 (Amended up to April, 2011), Rural Development Department, Jammu and Kashmir.

3. Staffin, L., Vankatesh, B.A., Vidyasagar, R., Goran, D., Rajagopal, A. (2011), “A Silent Revolution of Women Empowerment in Rural Tamil Nadu”, EPW, Vol. XLVI, No. 13, March 26.

4. Chowdary, Rekha (2012) “Panchayat Raj Institutions in J&K: Critical Analysis and Positive Suggestions”, Kashmir Times, October 17.

5. GOI (2007): ‘Local governance—An inspiring journey into the Future', Second Administrative Reforms Commission Report: Sixth Report, Government of India, Delhi.

6. Rahul, B. (2013), “What Ails Panchayati Raj?”, EPW, Vol. XLVIII, No. 30, July 27, pp- 173-76.

7. The States of West Bengal and Karnataka were also credited with early experimentation of Panchayats.

8. Effat, Y., Javaid, I.K. (2012), ”Women Empowerment Through Panchayat Raj Institution: A Case Study of District Kupwara of J&K State”, The Business Review, Vol. 16, No. 1 & 2, pp. 99-109.

Prof Gull Wani is the Director of the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Institute of Kashmir Studies, University of Kashmir, Srinagar. Dr Effat Yasmin is the Head, Department of Economics, University of Kashmir. Prof Gull Wani can be contacted by e-mail gullwani@gmail.com

While hunger, deprivation, mass distress and migration have been widely reported from Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh in recent years, this year has seen the peaking of these distress conditions. Adverse weather conditions have worsened due to official neglect and apathy. If urgent steps to check the fast deteriorating conditions are not taken imme-diately, the situation will get out of hand within a few weeks resulting in avoidable loss of precious human lives. In addition many farm and dairy animals are badly endangered due to hunger as well as thirst.

While the above analysis is based mainly on a recent visit to nine villages of Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, almost equally serious conditions also prevail in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh.

The Uttar Pradesh part of Bundelkhand is spread over seven districts—Banda, Mahoba, Chitrakut, Hamirpur, Jhansi, Lalitpur and Jalaun. Detailed discussions with villagers as well as social activists recently confirmed that conditions of mass distress have aggravated very rapidly during the last nine months or so.

First, the previous rabi (winter) crop was destroyed very badly by untimely heavy rains and hailstorms during February to April. Then the Kharif (summer) crop suffered very badly due to severe drought conditions. Now in recent weeks due to continuing drought the new rabi crop (wheat, gram, mustard, peas) could not be planted in most of the normal crop area. In the area that has been sown (leaving aside a few irrigated fields) there is little hope left of any significant yield.

This year of repeated weather failures has come on top of a series of below-normal harvests, leading to a peaking of distress conditions among farmers and farm workers.

This situation has been aggravated by denial of work under the rural employment guarantee law at a time when it was needed the most, and long delays in payment when work was provided for a few days. Compensation payment for ruined crops have been late, below the people's expectations and influenced badly by corrupt practices so that small, non-influential farmers got very less payment. Nutritional programmes, mainly ICDS (anganwadi) and mid-day meals, have deteriorated further. In particular, the nutrition for adolescent girls (kishoris) has stopped almost entirely, on account of cut-downs in the Union Budget.

The overall impact of all this is seen in very high levels of hunger and malnutrition, including possibilities of hunger deaths in the coming months. A large number of farmers' suicides, trauma deaths and some hunger deaths have already been reported from this region in recent years, while very high levels of malnutrition have been confirmed in recent surveys. The rabi harvest is likely to be too meagre to provide much relief. So for the most part 2016 is also likely to continue to be a distress year. If next year's kharif crop is good, this relief will come at the time of kharif harvesting only in October-November 2016. So preparations have to be made for several months ahead to avoid even more extreme forms of hunger and thirst. The shortage of fodder and water is already a serious problem for cows, bullocks and other farm/dairy animals. Drinking water for human beings is also likely to become increasingly scarce in the coming weeks.

Profiles of Six Villages

The hamlet ofNawapura

of Balataal Jaitpur panchayat (located in Mahoba district) is inhabited mainly by people of the Dheemar caste who work mostly as small farmers and fisherfolk. This year the water tank has very little water and fish. The drought has destroyed the kharif crop and there are very little prospects of getting anything from the current rabi crop. Hence people are migrating in large numbers mostly to work in brick kilns in Rajasthan and elsewhere. Many others will go soon for construction work in Delhi.

No grain or pulse from the farmers' own fields are now left in their storage and they have to depend entirely on buying food from the market. This in turn depends on their ability to get local employment which is very scarce. No work is available under the MGNREGA (rural employment guarantee law) at present and payments were delayed for a long time earlier when the work was available for a short duration. So people have no option but to accept advance payments from labour contractors who send them to the brick kilns. Many farmers and workers were recently crammed into a bus and left for Rajasthan. Several of them sent their wife and children, leaving behind old parents. Some were even seen clutching their poultry and goats in the bus.

Among the villagers who remain, people say that only about 10 per cent are able to fill their stomachs. Pulses are out of question. A cheap vegetable like potato may be available once in a while but mostly people subsist on chutney made from chilly and salt mixed with small quantity of coriander leaves and tomato, if available. Many of these people are also now planning to leave the village soon as migrant workers. They have to go, as due to lack of work, their debts keep on mounting.

Amazingly, in the midst of all this an old farmer, Chiddi, brings us a present of water chestnuts which he insists we must eat. A very small farmer of two bighas of land, he says this year for the first time in his life he could not get water in the tank and he had to use a pump-set to ensure partial survival of his singharas (water chestnuts). An affectionate man with a sad smile, when questioned in greater detail about his family, he could not recollect the name of his wife despite trying hard to do so.

Thurhat—

This village, located in Jaitpur block suffered almost 70 per cent destruction of the previous rabi crop and nearly 80 per cent destruction of the kharif crop. Some farmers did not get any kharif yield at all. There was little rain before this rabi's sowing and farmers, who have to live on hope, borrowed money to sow seeds in many fields. However, after this there has been no rain (till the date of our visit) and the prospects of getting any yield now are very low.

Villagers here say that a lot of protection from drought could have come if a project, promised by a former MLA from this area (Mahoba), had been completed. This project involves digging a channel from the Urmil river to Barkhera. They say that this small project will not harm anyone but will protect about 10 villages like theirs from the worst ravages of drought by providing protective irrigation. They say that most of the work has already been done on this project and only the balance of about 25 per cent is to be completed. The villagers say that the MLA, who promised this project (Uma Bharati), is now the Union Water Resources Minister and they have passed a resolution for speedy completion of this project.

At present only about 10 per cent households in the village are able to meet the nutrition norms. The rest subsist on meagre supplies of roti,chutney and some small supplies of diluted chaach obtained from a few better-placed families in the village. Pulses have almost disappeared from this village following the failures of two crops. Milk is not available either for children or for making tea. Very few families have BPL cards. For all others, wheat flour is selling at Rs 21 per kg. A six-member family needs 5 kg in a day to keep away hunger. Hence at a time when almost all families in the village have become dependent on market-purchased food, a family has to spend Rs 105 on buying wheat flour needed for one day (Rs 150 would be needed for rice, so wheat is a much cheaper option). Keeping the same amount for meagre supplies of vegetables, spices and oil, over Rs 200 would be needed for one day's food which is adequate to provide certain minimum nutrition norms. This does not include milk, pulses, fruits, tea leaves etc. But the total daily wage of a worker is only Rs 200 or even less and work is available at this wage only on few days. In addition, sudden emergency expenses have to be provided for treatment of illness and this means becoming more dependent on private services. Even if one gets treatment in a government hospital, medicines have to be purchased. Again, loans have to be taken for marriages in the family. Hence there is a state of perpetual deficit and debt driving farmers and workers towards migrant labour without which there would be even more hunger. However, migrant workers also face increasing problems and exploitation and what people like most of all is to get employment near their home. The rural employment guarantee work is not available and more and more people are preparing to leave the village soon as migrant workers (apart from those who have already left). Acute problems of survival exist for many elderly, weak and ailing persons left in the village due to this surge towards migration in recent times. When I expressed a desire to meet some such persons, so many appeared that I was overwhelmed and soon stopped taking down details as they were simply too many— extremely poor, old, ill, physically challenged. People said Mahamaya pensions received earlier are not available now while new ones started by the present State Government are also scarce.

While hunger is a serious problem for 90 per cent of the village households, it is particularly acute for these helpless, old persons. Drinking water problem is also going to become increasingly serious in the days to come, the villagers said. Arunodya, a voluntary organisation, has made several efforts to improve people's access to development and welfare schemes. It is now planning to start a grain bank soon in this village to provide some grain to the most needy families in time. This is a good but small effort and more resources are needed.

Rawai—

This village is located in Charkhari block of Mahoba district. This village experienced 90 per cent destruction of rabi crop followed by almost full wipe out of kharif crop. The present rabi crop has been planted but prospects of another big crop failure is staring the people in the face as there has been no rain after an initial shower which encouraged them to plant the crop. All the time they are looking skywards for signs of rain.

Two crop failures have resulted in acute hunger and malnutrition in the village, forcing the villagers to migrate in large numbers, particularly to Ahmedabad. This village normally grows wheat, peas, grain and masoor pulse in the rabi (winter) crop and moong,urad pulses and til oil seeds in the kharif (summer) crop. All these crops have been destroyed and so now people depend on market purchase of grain. Pulses have almost vanished from their diet.

Due to destruction of crops there is scarcity of fodder. Bhusa (dry fodder) is selling at a very high rate of Rs 600 per quintal which the villagers cannot afford. So animals like cows are also badly endangered due to hunger.

The rural employment guarantee work has not started. Compensation payments for destroyed crops is very meagre. No compensation at all is given to share-croppers or to those who lease the land of others for a fixed cash advance (balkat system). These land-leasers work hard and borrow money to invest in farming but do not get any compensation when adverse weather destroys their crop.

Ghasraut

village

—

This village is located in panchayat Gurhasla of Naraini block (Banda district). This village is almost entirely dependent on rains with hardly any irrigation. The rainfed crops are grown on sandy, one-crop-in-a-year land (if winter crop is grown in one field, then summer crop is not taken in that field). Shankar, a farmer, says that during the last four years or so, there has been adverse weather of one kind or the other but this year has been the worst.

The main winter crops are pulses—gram and arhar—and mustard oilseeds while the main summer crops are millets, jowar and bajra,moong pulse and til oilseed. This year both the summer and winter crops were wiped out—winter crop by excessive untimely rains and hailstorms and later the kharif crop by drought. Due to continuing drought, the recent rabi crop also could not be planted. Hence now people here have become extremely dependent on market-purchased grain.

However, at the time when the rural employment guarantee scheme is most needed, people have not got any employment opportunity under the MGNREGA. There has also been very little compensation for the ruined rabi crop and none so far for the lost kharif crop. There is no hope of any rabi sowing as the village's time for the rabi sowing is already over.

Again, at a time when nutrition programmes are most needed, the performance of the ICDS has deteriorated further. Adolescent girls have not received nutritious food (panjiri) for several months. Mid-day meals are of poor quality and highly diluted with water. Milk is served very rarely while vegetables are highly diluted with excess water.

In this situation to keep away the pangs of hunger people are migrating in large numbers to Delhi, Surat, Ahmedabad and Punjab. The others intend to leave soon after the panchayat elections. Many of the elderly, ill, destitute and physically challenged persons are left to be helped for their survival by other village families who are themselves very poor. If migrant workers can get an advance payment, they leave this for the old family members but this is not possible always.

On top of all this are the marriage expenses. Siya Dulari says: “I had already taken loan to marry off one daughter earlier, and now the marriage of another daughter is due. Please tell me how can I make arrangements for this marriage.” The mothers of daughters appear to be on the verge of breakdown when they talk about marriage-related problems, particularly when the date of marriage has already been fixed but there is no sign yet of how any money for this can become available at a time when there is a severe scarcity of daily food needs. Some are in the process of losing their land as they go to private moneylenders for loans, borrowing at a high compound interest of three to seven per cent per month, depending on the circumstances in which the loan is taken. In most cases these days it is very difficult to pay back the interest, leave alone the principal amount. In addition most people are indebted to banks as well.

But it is not just parents who worry about daughters; daughters also worry about parents. Keshkali, a 16-year-old girl from a kumhar-prajapati (potter) family suddently emerged from the group discussion to confront me and said in an emotion-choked voice: “All you people will somehow push me into marriage, but do you know all the time I worry about my parents. I don't have any brother. When I was a child I was injured and my father incurred debts for my treatment. Now his health is in a bad shape. My mother also cannot do any rigorous work. I worry all the time about who will look after them after my marriage.” Keshkali's parents Pehlu and Maiki have not been keeping well. They are worried about her marriage, but she is even more worried about their health.

In this distressing situation the Vidyadham Samiti (VS) has provided a ray of hope by starting a grain bank (anaj bank) and bhusa bank (fodder bank). These have so far been started in 30 villages including Ghasraut. They have provided much needed grain and fodder to some farmers to save them and their animals from hunger, but the need is so much that these stocks must be replenished from time to time. Partly this is helped by a donation from Action Aid and partly by personal donations. The Vidyadham Samiti keeps appealing for such donations.

In addition to involving relatively better-placed families, Vidyadham Samiti has started an ‘ekkotoraanaaj' or ‘one bowl of grain'campaign within villages in which activists and villagers visit homes of better-placed households to collect some grain from them and also to appeal to them to take care of villagers who are facing the threat of starvation. I also participated in the door-to-door collection in this village and the collected grain, to which the grain brought by the Vidyadham Samiti was added, was then distributed among the most needy villagers, particularly the elderly destitute persons.

This village faces a serious drinking water problem as very little water is available from a single distant working handpump forcing the villagers to obtain drinking water from the Bagain river which is not fit for drinking. Animals also drink water from this river.

The

Neebi

village is located in Naraini block of Banda district. The mostly Dalit farmers and farm workers to whom we spoke said that they have no other option but to migrate to distant places in search of work. At a time when various households have become entirely dependent on market-purchased food (rationed BPL supplies last for only a week or so), a family needs about Rs 200 per day to keep away hunger while the village wage has shrunk from Rs 100 to Rs 70 in some cases. Ram Dayal, a Dalit farmer-cum-farm-worker, says: “I can starve but I will not work for the reduced wage of Rs 70.” Migrant labour in distant cities is the only option in such conditions as the rural employment guarantee work is not available.

The ICDS nutrition packets are available only once in several days, while mid-day meals have not been served for several weeks in this hamlet. Even though the Commissioner had adopted this village some years back, very high levels of malnutrition exist here. The interns working with the Vidyadham Samiti conducted a survey here in August which revealed that most children here were malnourished.

High and increasing indebtedness is another reality of the nearly 100 families of this Dalit hamlet. Marriages have been extremely difficult and parents are increasingly tense regarding the marriage of their daughters.

The condition of migrant workers is also difficult and it is not possible for them to save adequately from their meagre earnings and inflation-driven expenses in cities like Delhi. They work very hard and cut expenses so that they can save a little to take to their village after about six months or so. Some like Gyani become victims of pick pockets on their way back home in crowded trains. Gyani lost all his savings and in addition was injured by the blade used by the thief. There are incidents also of migrant workers being given poisonous substances and robbed while on their way back home.

One handpump is used to provide water to about 100 families. The drinking water problem may get very difficult in the coming days. In addition animals are suffering greatly due to lack of fodder as well as water. Dalits face discrimination in getting drinking water.

Several years back several of these families were supposed to receive land under the land ceiling laws but this land has not yet been provided to these Dalit families.

Grain and fodder banks, started by the Vidyadham Samiti, have provided some badly-needed relief to people.

The

Mausingh Ka Purva

hamlet is located in Naugawan panchayat of Naraini block (Banda district). Despite loss of three successive crops, very little work has been provided under the NREGA during this year. Even when this work is provided, wages are delayed for several months. So villagers have lost faith in the NREGA, although they say that if this scheme is implemented properly, then this will be a big help for them.

This is a one-crop area, growing gram and wheat in rabi season and jowar and arhar in summer. However, nothing could be sown this rabi season while the kharif crop was lost entirely. In fact even the kharif crop of 2014 was not good, as only 40 per cent of the normal crop yield could be obtained. So one after the other difficulties have piled up for the people. Very little compensation was received, in fact none yet for the kharif crop loss of 2015.

Leaving aside about five families in this hamlet of about 35 households, others face hunger and malnutrition problems—skipping breakfast and having two meals of just rotis and salt or chutney in a day.

Raja Bhaiya, co-ordinator of the Vidyadham Samiti, says at the group meeting: the Everyone suffers in such a crisis situation but women generally suffer the most. They are generally the last to eat in the family and if nothing is left after feeding all family members, then they may remain hungry or somehow manage to chew a few left-over crumbs. This scarcity also sometimes makes men vulnerable to anger, particularly if a guest is expected and in anger they may turn violent against their wife.”

I asked the assembled women if this is true, and they nodded in quiet agreement. The men present at the meeting did not object, expressing silent agreement that such situations do arise from time to time.

Another factor contributing to simmering tension for women as well as men is the growing worry of the marriage of daughters. Raja Bhaiya who is liked so much by villagers that he can raise the most uncomfortable situations, discusses the possibility of a number of marriages being held at a community gathering. Villagers say this is a very good idea but the groom's side will have to be convinced first.

Meanwhile many more villagers are preparing to leave the village after the panchayat elections because, as Rani says, “our mandas (grain storages) are entirely empty now”.

Oram—The Oram village is located in Bisanda block of Banda district. In this village a farmer, Mannu Lal, had committed suicide by hanging himself in broad daylight on an eucalyptus tree right in front of his house. Everything happened very unexpectedly and quickly and several onlookers had no chance to rescue him.

At that time several officials had rushed to the spot and made all kinds of promises and so it was shocking to know several months later that this family has received no help and is living in great poverty. At the time of our visit only the daughter, Shyama, was at home and she called her brother, Surdar. Another brother had migrated in search of work while her mother had gone for work on someone's field.

Explaining the circumstances of suicide we were told that Mannu Lal had also migrated in search of work in brick kilns but due to unseasonal rains he did not get work. He returned home to find that his crop too had been ruined. As he was already indebted he lost hope and committed suicide.

It was clear that the poverty of this family has only increased since then. The entire area is in the grip of a severe drought with cultivation confined to a few fields around bore villages. Yet work has not been provided under the employment guarantee scheme. Very meagre compensation was received by small farmers to whom we talked. Manan, a share-cropper, said: “No compensation is given to the likes of me who take land as batai. We are ruined entirely by the adverse weather. We invest our money and labour but get no compensation.”

In the absence of employment opportunities, village youths agree to work in dangerous small factories in extremely hazardous conditions. Two workers, Anshu and Budhvilan died recently in an accident in a small fire-cracker unit in which they were badly burnt. Anshu's mother, Munni Devi, said that the government provided no help at all.

People here expressed shock that officials made many promises but even in the case of a farmer's suicide and a very serious accident the government did not provide any significant help and also did not keep the promises made earlier.

Animals face very serious shortage of fodder. The bhusa rate has risen to Rs 900 per quintal and a sach or bojha of bhusa is being sold for Rs 50.

To check the fast aggravating distress in Bundelkhand before it is too late, the government should start the MGNREGA and/or drought relief work on a large scale. This region has already been officially declared to be drought affected. Hence all recovery of loans should stop and in addition no interest should be added to the loans during the drought period. A loan-waiving scheme should be considered. Adequate compensation should be given for crops which have been badly ruined. From a longer term perspective, ecologically protective alternative development policies should be implemented with honesty so that the increasing problems of this phase of climate change do not prove too overwhelming for the people.

[This report is based on group discussions of the author with the people of nine villages held on November 27, 28 and 29, 2015. This report has been written under the InclusiveMedia-UNDP Fellowship 2015.]

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

Control over Land

Land is a non-renewable resource. Along with water, it is essential for survival of human and non-human species. It is not merely a source of food and livelihood for the food-producers, but also a socio-cultural basis of life, especially in India, where “bhoomi” is sacred, along with rivers. Land and water are two of the “panchamahabhutas”, the five fundamentals of life itself.

The British politically unified India and brought central laws to India at a time when India was far wealthier than Britain, and was the “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire. These were required to impose colonial rule and efficiently exploit India's enormous natural and human resources to feed the industrial monster at home. Establishment of railways and posts and telegraphs were among the measures introduced for this purpose, using the latest (at that time) technology.

The colonial rulers had a clear eye on the importance of land, and invented the principle of “eminent domain” to administer land of all kinds in India. This was done by enacting the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (LAA-1894), according to which the Government of India was the primary owner of land, private ownership of land was only at the pleasure of the government, and any land could be acquired by the government for a “public purpose”.

Post-Independence

After a 90-year-long struggle, India won Independence from British rule in 1947. The number “90” is piquant because it also took 90 years for the first amendment to the LAA-1894. In 1984, 34-years after We the People gave unto ourselves the Constitution of India, Parliament amended the LAA-1894, but retained the principle of eminent domain. However, the questioning of land acquisition had started and the demand for land rights by forest and rural communities had commenced. In this, the role of activist-intellectuals with a sense of justice and equity, was not inconsequential.

Apart from the Preamble of the Constitution assuring justice, equality and freedom to all citizens, the Constitution also calls for land reforms for distributive justice, and special treatment for historically oppressed commu-nities. These contents of the Constitution have a direct bearing on land, because it was tribal or rural people whose lands and livelihoods were impacted by the juggernaut of development introduced in independent India.

Watershed

The British established industrialised mining of coal, gold and other minerals. Since the timber needed for ship-building was in forests, and the land beneath the forests was rich with minerals, the British enacted laws concerning forestry. This, along with the LAA-1894, consolidated the British control over resources.

Post-Independence, industrialisation included rapidly growing demand for land and water. Land was required not only for the construction of industrial infrastructure, but also for resources underground. The control over resources, established by the British “sahibs”, was continued by Independent India's new masters.

Land-losers to development in independent India continued to be the forest and rural farming communities. In 50 years starting 1950, over 50 million people were displaced by dam projects alone, and the largest segment of them —about 40 per cent—were adivasis or Dalits. (European and American slave traders of the 16th and 17th century took about 200 years to displace 60 million African people across the Atlantic Ocean as the labour force for the economic growth of America.)

Protests by the affected people concerning displacement for development projects continued, but were barely reported by the media, and, when reported, restricted briefly to the inner pages. However, in November 2007, the West Bengal Left Front Government cracked down on the people at Nandigram, who were peacefully resisting displacement for establishment of an industrial chemical hub, pleading loss of land and livelihood. The crackdown was conducted by using not only excessive police force, but also allegedly sending armed lumpen elements who raped, killed and humiliated village people who were resisting displacement. This attracted wide condemnation and received unusually extensive media coverage, possibly because a Left Front Government was responsible. Nandigram was a watershed for people demanding land rights, and led to concerted demands for the repeal of the LAA-1894.

Land and Livelihood Rights

Considering that over 50 million people had been displaced over the decades and many of them more than once, the NAPM made a demand for the Union Government to prepare and circulate a White Paper on all land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation which had happened since 1947. It also called for a moratorium on land acquisition until the White Paper was brought out, and until all displaced people were actually resettled and rehabilitated. The demand was essentially for “no forcible displacement”, “alternative sustainable liveli-hoods” and “prior consent of Gram Sabhas”. All these primarily demanded recognition of land and livelihood rights as a part of the funda-mental right to life, justice and participative democracy for people to determine their own future. No White Paper was prepared.

The initial demand was for development without displacement of poor adivasi and rural people, and challenged the development model itself. But the inevitability of development for industrial growth according to the economic reform agenda of the New Economic Policy, 1991 (NEP-1991) resulted in a more pragmatic demand for development planning with transparency and consultation, with minimum displacement and just rehabilitation. This led to the drafting of a National Land Development Planning Bill, which was expected to provide participative justice through involvement of Gram Sabhas.

Effects of NEP-1991

Together with the people-excluding focus on economic growth, liberalisation and privati-sation are important components of the NEP-1991. These resulted in governments approa-ching international financial institutions for loans for various projects. State Chief Ministers travelled abroad to negotiate loans to attract foreign investors, and some States enacted laws for land acquistion for industrial parks, with provisions making it easier to acquire land than possible under the LAA-1894.

Chief Ministers held Global Investors Meets at which business and industrial honchos were offered facilities to establish their enterprises. Among the important offers was land from government-created “land banks”, which were nothing but parcels of land acquired by the State Government and placed in a catalogue on offer for foreign investors to establish commercial and industrial projects. Thus, governments traded in land acquired from poor landholders. Also, the Special Economic Zones Act 2005, called for land to offer to investors. With these measures of economic reform due to the NEP-1991, there was a breath-taking jump in the scale of land acquisition for industrial, commercial and infrastructural projects.

The NEP-1991 was effectively a policy of industrialisation-at-any-cost, and resulted in neglect of the rural-agricultural sector. Farming became increasingly a victim of industry which raised the cost of inputs, while the national agriculture policy states: “Privatisation of agriculture .... would be part of government's strategy to synergise agricultural growth ... Private sector participation will be promoted through contract farming and land leasing arrangements ...”, clearly showing the tilt towards entry of private capital into land.

The governments' thrust towards industriali-sation-at-any-cost was because of a strengthened politician-bureaucrat-corporate nexus. It is necessary to note that compensation, such as provided for in the LAA-1894, was for people who could prove ownership of land or property. Thus landless people, who were part of the agricultural economy, and often constituted over 40 per cent of the displaced persons, were not entitled to compensation, leave alone resettlement or rehabilitation. Such arbitrarily and summarily displaced people with no place to go, often drifted into urban slums or onto unoccupied or unused land, and governments treat them as encroachers and evict them. However, when corporates in active connivance with political and bureaucratic officials forcibly displace people and illegally occupy land in contravention of extant laws, the governments regularise the occupation. This asymmetric policy brings out the clear government bias in favour of corporates and against poor people.

Progressive Legislations

Notwithstanding the trend towards pro-corporate and anti-people policies in relation to land, besides the historic 73rd Constitution Amendment (1992) which created the Panchayati Raj Institutions, the progressive legislations are the “Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996” (PESA, hereafter) and the “Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006” (Forest Rights Act or FRA, hereafter).

Since the 73rd Amendment providing self-governance to panchayats exempted schedule areas, PESA was enacted to enable tribal self-rule by empowering forest village Gram Sabhas. However, two decades later, there remain several impediments to the effectiveness of PESA due to lack of political will and resistance to change in the social power hierarchy, but more impor-tantly due to the machinations of the politician-bureaucrat-corporate nexus, which blatantly neglects or over-rides tribal rights.

FRA is intended to end the historic injustice concerning livelihoods of forest-dwelling communities by securing their tenurial and access rights and provide them a stake in forest conservation. It also enables preservation of traditional, indigenous knowledge systems, intellectual property and biodiversity. Further, FRA recognises and secures community rights over community forest resources in addition to the individual rights of forest dwellers. However, FRA suffers in implementation like PESA, and for similar reasons.

People Resist and React

People threatened or confronted with displace-ment and loss of land and livelihood have always resisted, but they have been either unorganised or the government-corporate nexus has been too strong. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is the best-known movement to secure the rights of displaced people in the context of rising waters of dam reservoirs. The NBA has resisted peacefully at various levels, and even caused the World Bank to withdraw from funding. The NBA's call is not merely “Narmada Bachao”, but also “Desh Bachao”. This has resulted in ideas encapsulated in slogans like “Jal-Jangal-Jameen konyachi? ... Aamichi! Aamichi!” and going beyond resistance to re-construction according to a people-centric model of development, “Desh Bachao, Desh Banao”. More recently, recognising that the neo-liberal forces are violating the Constitution, the people's move-ment policy is encapsulated in the slogan “Samvidhan Bachao, Desh Bachao! ... Desh Bachao, Desh Banao!“. The NBA's example has been a clarion call for people across India and even abroad to resist the onslaught of neo-liberal forces of industrialisation-at-any-cost.

The Durge Forward

In 2006, a Development, Displacement and Rehabilitation Bill was drafted and placed before the National Advisory Council. Important features of this draft Bill were the need for mandatorily conducting a social impact assessment (SIA) due to displacement, in consultation with the concerned Gram Sabhas. This initiative resulted in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 (LARR-2011).

The foreword of this Bill reads: “Infrastructure across the country must expand rapidly. Industrialisation, especially based on manufacturing has also to accelerate. Urbanisation is inevitable. Land is an essential requirement for all these processes.” Further, “[This Bill] seeks to balance the need for facilitating land acquisition for various public purposes including infrastructure development, industrialisation and urbanisation, while at the same time meaningfully addressing the concerns of farmers and those whose livelihoods are dependent on the land being acquired.”

The intention of this Bill was “to ensure, in consultation with local institutions of self-government and Gram Sabhas established under the Constitution, a humane, participative, informed consultative and transparent process for land acquisition for industrialisation, development of essential infrastructural facilities and urbanisation with the least disturbance to the owners of land and other affected families whose land has been acquired or proposed to be acquired or are affected by such acquisition, and make adequate provisions for such affected persons for their rehabilitation and resettlement thereof, and for ensuring that the cumulative outcome of compulsory acquisition should be that affected persons become partners in development leading to an improvement in their post-acquisition social and economic status and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.” The bias favouring industrialisation is clear, but this Bill included the essential elements of land rights, justice and transparency, even if the contents were flawed in some respects for people who would suffer displacement.

After due process, the LARR-2011 was comprehensively renamed as The Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement and Rehabilitation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Bill, 2013. But two major flaws remained—the ill-defined “urgency clause” and the sly, manipulative inclusion of private purpose into “public purpose” for acquiring land.

The Bill was passed in Parliament and became law, namely, The Right to Fair Compensation, Resettlement and Rehabilitation and Trans-parency in Land Acquisition Act, 2013, referred to briefly as the Land Acquisition Act 2013 (LAA-2013), and included repeal of the LAA-1894. The LAA-2013 came into force with effect from January 1, 2014, during the evening months of the Congress-led UPA-2 Government, before the Central Election Commission enforced the code-of-conduct prior to the general elections.

In bringing the LAA-2013 into force at this time, perhaps the UPA-2 expected electoral gains, but whatever the timing and its defects and infirmities, the LAA-2013 was a necessary and welcome change from the LAA-1894. However, expectations of electoral benefits from operationa-lising the LAA-2013 were dashed, as the Congress suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat in 2014.

The BJP Dispensation

The BJP won a ruling majority in the 17th Lok Sabha, and formed the NDA-2 Government on May 26, 2014. However, notwithstanding the NDA-2's overwhelming strength in the Lok Sabha, the Opposition had the upper hand in the Rajya Sabha. The demands of industrialisation under the growing influence of the corporate lobby to destroy rural resistance to land acquisition led the NDA-2 Government to attempt further diluting the LAA-2013.

Accordingly, the already-flawed LAA-2013 was tweaked by the NDA-2 regarding conduct of SIA and consent of people who would be displaced, to bring out a Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2015 [LA(Amdt)Bill-2015, hereafter]. It was tabled in the Lok Sabha even before the LAA-2013 was implemented, indicating the impatience of the land-hungry corporate backers of the NDA-2. The LA (Amdt) Bill-2015 caused a huge outcry from people's grassroots movements across the country and raised the hackles of the Opposition in Parliament, and the Bill was stalled due to the NDA-2's lack of strength in the Rajya Sabha. Considering that the UPA-2 was responsible for the infirmities in the LAA-2013, it is worth conjecturing whether the support that people's movements received from the Opposition in the 17th Lok Sabha was with the clear intent of supporting the rights of the people on-the-ground.

In June 2015, the NAPM sent its objections and constructive comments on the LA (Amdt) Bill-2015 to the Parliament's Joint Committee. Frustrated by the stalling of the LA (Amdt) Bill-2015, and possibly by the strength of the NAPM's arguments, the NDA-2 Government attempted the “ordinance route”. This was also stymied by a determined Opposition, and the NDA-2 was obliged to announce in August 2015, that it would not promulgate the land ordinance.

People's movements are not complacent with this reprieve, being convinced that the NDA-2 will make renewed attempts to ease land acquisition for corporate business and industry. People's movements have created a platform to demand land rights, and formed the Bhumi Adhikar Andolan (Land Rights Movement).

The Days Ahead

TheBhumi Adhikar Andolan has observed December 15, 2015, as the Chetavni Divas (Day of Challenge and Warning to neo-liberal forces) to not only realise full forest rights as envisaged by the FRA but to take the movement beyond, to achieve the people's sovereign rights over land, water and natural resources, and to oppose forced land acquisition. This approach will also address the decades-long, ongoing agrarian crisis.

People's movements are set to take a more proactive role in the coming days. This will surely attract the use of force (police and perhaps even military) by the corporate-led state against the protestors, demonstrators and dissidents. One-hundred-twentyone years after the LAA-1894, the stage is set for another independence movement in India.

Major General S.G. Vombatkere, VSM, retired in 1996 as Additional DG, Discipline and Vigilance in the Army HQ AG's Branch. With over 400 published papers in national and international journals and seminars, his area of interest is strategic and development-related issues.

As part of his overall policy to counter China in the Indian Ocean region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is widening and deepening Indo-Japanese cooperation. It spans a wide area, from defence to nuclear power generation; from high-speed rail corridors to information and communication technology and electronics. The first of the high-speed railway corridors that will come up will be from Ahmedabad to Mumbai—a distance of 505 kms. The bullet trains on this line are expected to run at an average speed of over 300 kmph and reduce travel time from the present six hours to just two hours.

So far so good. Let us now go into the costing of the project and the fare that will have to be charged to the passengers to make the project economically viable. The total project cost is estimated to be nearly Rs 1 lakh crore (ninetyeight thousand crores, to be precise). In terms of hard currency it will be over $ 15 billion. Work will begin in 2017 and is expected to be completed in 2023. Any time-overrun will naturally lead to a cost-overrun. Given the way the civil and rail bureaucracies work, it is doubtful if such a project can be completed in time. Legal complications in acquiring land may also cause delay. Japan has agreed to offer loans to finance eightyone per cent of the project cost at a nominal one per cent interest rate.

So far no estimates have been made about the fare for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai journey by the bullet train. Only the Economic Survey of the government has said high-tariff and high passenger volume will be necessary to justify investment in such a costly project. But it has given no idea of the fare structure. In July this year, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, himself both a mechanical engineer from IIT, Kharagpur, and a former member of the Indian Revenue Service, said that according to his calculation a one-way ticket between Ahmedabad and Mumbai would cost Rs 75,000. No Minister or official of the Railway Board is known to have contradicted him so far. How many of Narendra Modi's own super-rich industrialist friends would feel like travelling in the bullet train when an air journey takes just a little over an hour from Mumbai to Ahmedabad (or vice versa) at a much less cost?

A cheap air ticket from Mumbai to Ahmedabad now costs a little over Rs 3200. Even if the actual train-fare turns out to be just one-fourth of the amount calculated by Kejriwal, it will be far cheaper to travel by air rather than by a bullet train. What possibility is there of the ‘high passenger volume' being achieved to make the project sustainable? These questions are unavoidable because the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project will only be the first of its kind. Half-a-dozen more bullet-train corridors are being contemplated. The Indian Railways have already set up the High Speed Rail Corporation (HSRC) as a subsidiary of the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited for the specific purpose of building high-speed railway corridors that would allow passenger trains to run at speeds of up to 350 kmph.

What afflicts India is malnutrition, especially in children, hunger, infant mortality, diseases like cancer, TB, etc., illiteracy and poor quality of education and acute unemployment. Even a fraction of the money that is proposed to be spent on the bullet trains would go a long way to enable India to register creditable achievements in these fields. Modi's costly bullet train will be a showpiece that people will see from a distance and marvel at. There will be little more than that for the common man or aam admi. The picture will be no different for the other bullet train projects as well.

The bullet trains are a part of the paradigm of corporate-friendly and investor-friendly develop-ment that the governments in the era of globali-sation and privatisation have set for themselves. There is no basic difference in this in the attitude of the UPA Government and the NDA Government. In fact the idea of introducing bullet trains in the country was conceived during the Manmohan Singh regime.

High energy consumption for sustaining industrial civilisation is threatening the world with climate change due to carbon emission that will make this planet unfit for life. The main source of energy—whether for power generation or as fuel for motor vehicles—is fossil fuels: coal and petroleum. What the need of the hour is to turn to alternative, renewable and non-polluting sources of power generation like the sun, the wind and the sea.

Today we are utilising an infinitesimally small amount of light energy of the sun to make electrical energy. Will it not be far far better to earmark the amount proposed to be spent on bullet trains for spending on research and development on inventing technology that can tap the inexhaustible source of energy called the sun to generate bulk electrical energy—not by setting up PVCs on rooftops which generate only a few kilowatts of power to meet domestic needs but generating thousands of megawatts to meet the needs of vast metropolises like Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata? It will go a long way to keep the earth habitable for humans for many more centuries. The obsession with bullet trains betrays a paranoid state of mind that cannot think rationally and fix priorities.

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.

by Binoy Viswam

Finally the world has come to an agreement in Paris. It was the outcome of intense negotiations for two weeks, with representatives of 190 countries attempting to find ways and means to face the challenge of global warming. The Paris agreement undoubtedly is a step forward in rescuing humanity from a climate catastrophe. But, there are ambiguities still revolving on the climate agreement. The world will have to witness further debates focused around the interpretation and implementation of the commitments reached at Paris. And the divide between the developed and developing countries is likely to continue. The latter would take their positions in tune with their proclaimed stance in the possible conflicts that may occur in future.

The Paris agreement is to come into effect by the year 2020. How far the contentious issues could be settled by then is to be seen. The expectations that the voluntary pledges made by 186 countries would make the Paris agreement simple and straight did not come out to be true. The reason is quite known to all sensible people. The present-day world and its socio-political compulsions on various counts are not so simple!

The negotiations at the Conference of Parties (Cop 21) at Paris set an upper limit for global warming at two degree Celsius from the pre- industrial times. At the same time an unsubs-tantiated wish has also been expressed: to limit the same to 1.5 degree Celsius. The text of the agreement has provided reasons for both sides—the developed and developing world—to claim that they have come out victorious. Prakash Javadekar, India's Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, voiced the mood of the developing countries in the following words: “The agreement has deep links with the Convention (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and CBDR (Common But Differentiated Responsibility) is imbibed in it. More importantly differentiation of developed and developing countries is mentioned across all the elements of the agreement, in mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity building and transparency. That is very important.” Deve-loping countries also point to the 100 billion dollars from the developed ones, earmarked for the mitigation targets. They further argue that differentiation is manifested in references like “developed countries shall take economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets”, while “developing countries should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts”.

At the same time, the developed countries would also very well claim that their concerns have been taken care of in the agreement. When compared to the ‘Kyoto protocol' of 1997 they have ‘achievements' to their credit in Paris. Most important among them is that their ‘historical responsibilities' in global warming are not mentioned in the Paris agreement. In the Kyoto protocol those countries were assigned specific emission reduction targets. It is worth remembering that provoked over this the US refused to be a signatory to the protocol. The Kyoto protocol, which was the existing international arrangement on climate change, had an annexure. In annexture I the developed countries were named categorically and the developing countries were termed as the non-annex countries. Now the responsibility has become common but differentiated. The definition for developed and developing countries is absent in the agreement. Regarding the financial commitment undertaken by the developed countries, it is said that there is no legal binding. On the question of stock-taking every five years too there exist varied interpre-tations.

All these were expected. Because the world is so divided, economically and politically, one should be clear that global warming is not an environmental issue alone. True, it affects the environment and the existence of life on earth. Hence global warming is a political as well as an economic issue. No government or political party can ignore the challenges of global warming any more. Further, nobody can deny the inter-connection between globalisation and global warming. The growth rate of global temperature from the advent of the industrial age till the 1980s was moderate. Then the political balance of the world witnessed major changes in which market forces became the determining factor. In political policy-making profit alone became the driving spirit for the neo-liberal capitalist development. Environment was the victim of this so-called ‘development'! Climate equilibrium was badly affected and the earth is becoming an unsafe place to live. Masters of fossil fuel transactions and their political friends were all along trying to ignore the impending danger. For them profit was the god! Now the time has come for everyone to open one's eyes to the unpleasant reality, the aftermath of global warming.

India did play a role in Paris defending the interests of the developing countries. But those countries, including ours, are also undergoing ecological disasters, many of which are government-sponsored! The fearful floods in Chennai are the latest in the list as the one in Uttarakhand sometime ago. The policies of the government, hand in hand with those of the mega-rich and their profit motives, are least concerned with environment. The Government of India is on a move to do away with all the existing environment and forest laws at one stroke. The Paris Summit warrants the Union Government to initiate a relook at its environmental policy. It should be remoulded in order to address the serious concerns of the poor who are denied even safe drinking water as an evil impact of global warming.

Among all the modern political philosophies, Marxism stands distinct with its clear vision on environmental matters. Marx and Engels have elaborately discussed the environmental peril caused due to the onslaught of capital. During their time questions like global warming were not faced by humanity. Still, Marxism applied its wisdom to understand and interpret environ-mental matters. Now, Communists living in the ‘era' of globalisation and global warming have to take up that responsibility. It is their historical duty to enrich and further develop Marxist philosophy to effectively meet the challenge of global warming.

The Paris Summit has called upon all to be on guard and maintain a strict vigil to save the earth from global warming. Governments, ‘think-tanks' and political parties are not supposed to make statements or sign agreements alone. They are asked to take clear positions and initiate actions. Development is the right of all. But development at the cost of environment can no longer be allowed. No amount of profit and wealth can redress the damage caused to the earth because of the market-driven development. It is imperative to wage class struggles and political battles in future for a development path where people will be placed before profit.

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

The 21st Conference of Parties (or CoP 21) has just ended. Signed by negotiators from nearly 200 countries a legal agreement has set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and hold govern-ments to account for reaching those targets. Perhaps the goal of 1.5° C is a big leap from the 2° C agreed six years ago at the Copenhagen Summit and also for the first time rich countries, rising economies and some of the poorest countries have agreed to work together to curb emissions. Rich countries have been forced to agree to raise $ 100 bn a year by 2020 to help poor countries transform their economies. On the whole, the agreement has been hailed around as a landmark one cutting fossil-fuel emissions to trim global warming.

It appears that the rich Western nations, backed heavily by international petroleum, automobile giants, banks and other multinational corpo-rations, have intelligently hijacked the summit agenda by manipulating the ambitious tasks of reduction of emissions with no commitments (legal) for financial and technical assistance to the developing nations. On the whole the Paris agreement is weak and unambitious, as it does not include any meaningful targets for the developed countries to reduce their emissions. Also the agreement reached did not consider the historical responsibilities of the rich nations. It does not operationalise equity and the term carbon budget didn't even find mention in the text. This will end up furthering climate injustice. The very mention of ‘historical responsibility' has been erased from the agreement and this weakens the obligations of the developed countries to take action because of their past emissions. It incorporates commitments from 187 countries to reduce emissions, and the overall agreement is legally binding, but some elements are without historical responsibility—including the pledges to curb emissions by individual countries and the climate finance elements. Equity will now be interpreted only through the words ‘respective capabilities and national circumstances' further removing differentiation between the climate actions of the developed and developing states.

True, the agreement sets out procedures for review at regular intervals to deepen emission cuts, but with countries aiming to peak global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, and then rapidly scale these down in the second half of this century, the accord clearly lacks teeth bereft as it is of a regulatory supervisory authority under the United Nations. Also the signed agreement would not allow hundreds of million people living in low-lying coastal areas and small islands to question and seek appro-priate compensation from the ‘historically responsible' nations, as the US negotiators demanded the exclusion of any language that could allow the agreement to be used for a legal liability claim against climate change.

Scientists have for a long time been warning that we have arrived at a turning-point in human history and unless the current generation acts to control the damage, there won't be any turnaround or simply we are nearing the end of our human civilisation. It evidently shows how capitalism has been squandering the earth's resources to feed the treadmill of mass production driven by profit impulses without regard to the natural limits on growth set by the biosphere. For example, today we have in India more than a crore of mobile phones, though half the population is malnourished and lacks even a toilet in their homes. This impulse makes the process of capital accumulation inherently unsustainable and anti-ecological.

Big Polluters refuse to Accept Historical Responsibility

According to the IPCC's Synthesis Report, by 2050, the temperature is likely to rise by 2° C, accumulating 1136 Gigatons of CO2 (one giga ton is equal to 100 crore tons) and other gases into the outer atmosphere. This is called Carbon Budget. Out of which already 667 Gt has been emitted into the atmosphere, which is responsible for the current 0.8° C rise in temperature resulting in global warming. It means that for keeping the planet now practically left with 650 Gigatons of carbon below 2° C, the world nations should drastically make cuts in the release of emissions so as to go back to the 2005 levels of emission release. During the last 150 years of industrialisation, the USA alone is the major polluter with 28.8 per cent of total emissions. It is interesting to note that with just five per cent of the world population, the USA consumes nearly 30 per cent of natural resources and stands out as a major polluter with a majority of carbon footprints. To undo the damage Western nations, especially the USA, is skirting responsibility for its acts of pollution and has offered negligible cuts in gas emissions.

Neoliberalising Nature

Till recently resources in nature such as rivers, mountains and forests, were under state owner-ship and freely accessible to public. But the neoliberal ideology, promoted during the last 30 years, is actively converting our beloved and life-sustaining nature into a market commodity. Value is tagged to rivers, mines and forests and brought to markets so as to facilitate easy plundering of resources by major multi-nationals. On another side, these are taking a toll on the livelihoods of millions of poor forest- dwellers and also forcing the common people to pay for the water they drink in the market.

Renowned scientist and environmental Marxist economist John Bellomy Foster, while describing Karl Marx's ‘metabolic rift', convin-cingly explained how capitalist production alienates man from nature and breaks the existing equilibrium arising from unprecedented plundering of resources for big profits.

An Alternative

Everybody knows that to maintain a livable planet we should immediately cut the present fossil energy budget. But it is sad that the Paris Summit completely failed to discuss and evolve an alternative industrial production plan for transition from the current fossil energy-based system to an alternative one relying on renewable energy. Unformately at the Paris Summit, there was no mention of a plan for transition from energy-inefficient production (depending on high fossil energy sucking combustion engines) to environment-friendly and many times efficient industrial production. In a recent study, Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson from the United States stated that the industrial capacity exists for transition to entirely renewable sources of energy within a matter of a few decades or less and also nearly 2.5 times efficient than the present industrial manufacturing system. Deliberations at the present summit awfully lacked suggestions for a level of planning and coordination on an international basis needed to implement such a transition from fossil fuels to recycled and eco-friendly energy based production systems both in agriculture and industry. The rich nations are not ready for such environment-friendly production transition simply because it threatens the profits of hydrocarbon and automobile cartels and the accumulated capital with major world banks.

Discussing soil degradation and environmental problems way back in the mid-1850s Karl Marx, in the context of metabolic rift, argued that a sustainable solution to the global environmental rift requires a society of “associated producers” under collective ownership accompanied by least expenditure of energy in a rational way. That means we need an alternative environmental management strategy that transforms the present energy-hungry production system into one which collectively owns nature and serves the requirements of society by borrowing only how much is available from mother narture and sustaining and enriching it for future generations. A wonderful example is Cuba. Struck with hydrocarbon shortages in the early 1990s it adopted nature-friendly production strategies and technologies and could thereby successfully tide over its production problems. Today Cuba stands first in the world as the only one with the lowest carbon footprints. Leading scientific environmental journals, even the World Bank, applaud Cuba for its transition to a nature-friendly production system.

After 21 years of failed conferences to tackle the problems of global warming, to save livelihoods of millions of youth and workers, there is an urgent need to shift to an alternative low energy consuming, nature-friendly production system. This simply demands fighting for the reorganisation of society on the basis of human needs, not private profit.

Dr Soma S. Marla is the Principal Scientst, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi.

COMMUNICATION

This is a mystery of history. Veteran columnist and author Kuldip Nayar want us to believe that the Koh-i-Noor ”belongs to them (British) and that Lord Dalhousie fraudulently took it away from Maharaja Ranjit Singh's son, Dilip Singh, a minor then during the British rule”. [‘Claims over Kohinoor' in Mainstream, Vol LIII, No 49, New Delhi, November 28, 2015] In various capacities, for example, as journalist, Member of Parliament and High Commissioner of India to UK, he has been in the forefront of campaigns for return of the priceless diamond to India. During the recent official visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to England [November 12-14, 2015] the media had hyped the issue saying that through his diplomatic influence and skill the Koh-i-Noor would return to India. Nayar believes that the Prime Minister, though received red carpet reception in the UK and dined with the monarch in Buckingham Palace, did not, under the influence of the British Establishment, even mention directly or indirectly about the diamond. Did over-hyped hospitality and show of courtesies by the former colonial masters extended to the dignitary silence him to raise the inconvenient issue?

An unassailable authority offers a different story of how the diamond passed to the British hands. W.W. Hunter (July 15, 1840-February 6, 1900), ICS, the meticulous chronicler of the history of the British empire in India, recorded that “Ranjit Singh bequeathed, by will, the celebrated Koh-i-noor which now forms one of the crown jewels of England, to Jagannath.” [W.W. Hunter, A Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. XIX (District of Puri and The Orissa Tributary States, Trubner and Co., London, 1877] This runs contrary to Nayar's assertion that “........Lord Dalhousie fraudulently took it away from Maharaja Ranjit Singh's son, Dilip Singh, a minor then during the British rule.” So the real mystery that shrouds the issue is: did the diamond disappear from Lahore, the capital of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, or from Puri, the seat of Jagannath? Did the latter hand it over to the British? R.C. Majumdar is of the opinion that the peerless gem was seized by the British under the terms of the Lahore Treaty signed in March 1849.

Before we throw the aforecited official document out through the nearest window in disbelief, let us recall that Rabindranath Tagore had paid handsome tributes to Hunter by appreciating his monumental work. The poet observed that if we were to seek information on any aspects of Bengal, Hunter's account was the unfailing source. This is no exaggeration. Hunter's 22 volumes of Statistical Account containing 50,000 pages covering all districts of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa are a monumental feat. Information on Koh-i-noor, so critical an issue integral to the affairs of Empire within 30 years of the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (November 13, 1780-June 27, 1839) as recorded by the chronicler in the circumstances, can scarcely be questioned. The historical volume, The Real Ranjit Singh, of Fakir Syed Waheeduddin published by the Punjab University, claimed that the Maha-raja had “willed the Koh-i-Noor to Jagannath Temple in Puri, Orissa while on his deathbed in 1839.” [Fakir Syed Waheeduddin, The Real Ranjit Singh, published by Punjabi University, ISBN 81-7380-778-7, January 1, 2001, 2nd ed.] The supreme Sikh monarchpassed away on June 27, 1839.

He had six successors, the longest tenure being held by Maharaja Duleep Singh (born on September 6, 1838) between September 15, 1843 and March 29, 1849. The tenures of five of his predecessors were short, marked by turbulence and disorder. Two Anglo-Sikh wars—the first in 1845-1846 and the second during 1848-1849. The second war drew a curtain on the Sikh rule in Punjab. By then James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, known as the Earl of Dalhousie (April 22, 1812-December 19, 1860) had served as the Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856.

The character and contributions of Maharaja Ranjit Singh form an outstanding chapter of the Sikh rule in Punjab. George Eden, the Earl of Auckland, who was the Governor-General of India (1836-1842), was told by the Foreign Minister, Fakir Azizuddin, of the Sikhs in reply to a question, “The Maharajah is like the sun and the sun has only one eye. The splendor and luminosity of his single eye is so much that I have never dared to look at his other eye.”Small pox had damaged one of his eyes. His successors did not possess any of the qualities that distinguished him as a ruler. If we believe that Dalhousie had fraudulently taken away the diamond from Maharaja Dalip Singh, we have to accept that over ten years his successors did not show respect to Ranjit Singh's last ‘will' on deathbed. This goes entirely against Indian ethos characterised by abiding love, reverence and cordiality between the father and his offsprings.

On the other hand, the possibility of the diamond passing from the Jagannath Temple, Puri to the British Crown seems pretty high and convincing. The victorious Army of the East India Company that overran the province was not only invited by the clergy of the Puri temple but they (the clergy) handed over its management to the Army in 1803. Till 1841 the Company was in charge of the shrine and the pilgrims visiting it were taxed and its huge proceeds shared and gobbled by both the priests and the Company jointly.1 A shameful nexus bereft of morality and ethics drove them. This is little focused in Indian academic discourses. The obliged priestly class might have handed the Koh-i-Noor to the British bureaucracy to appease the monarchy. This well-kept secret has never been focused in academic discourses lest it opens up muck to shame the whole country for the unholy alliance and honeymoon between a trading company and a Hindu shrine.

Dr A K Biswas

(Retired IAS and former Vice-Chancellor,

NOIDA B.R. Ambedkar University, UP Muzaffarpur)

Footnote

1. A K Biswas, ‘The Last Devadasi', Mainstream, Vol LIII, No 16, April 11, 2015. A K Biswas.

REFERENCE

• ‘The Foreign Hand In Puri', Outlook magazine, August 26, 2013.

I liked the idea of a Museum on Partition. There was a lot of enthusiasm for it. But I find to my horror that the Partition Museum would be a branch of the British Museum, which would also supervise it. The whole purpose is defeated because the British are the ones to blame for the partition that resulted in the killing of one million people and uprooting of thrice that number.

The partition was a parting kick by the British before they quit. They drew the line on the basis of religion which got institutionalised in the shape of Islamic Pakistan and not-so-certain secular India. True, India has adopted a secular Constitution and has the word secula-rism in its Preamble. But what cannot be denied is that in the same India, the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992 and thousands of Sikhs were killed in 1984. Secularism seemed a farce. Secular India could not prevent two wars against the Islamic state of Pakistan and the latter's misadventure at Kargil. On top of it, both sides have nuclear weapons which may be serving as a deterrent but the fringe elements on both sides use the possession of these to threaten each other. Against this background, the Partition Museum will not serve the purpose.

Even otherwise no museum can depict the real happenings if it does not show the horror that people went through. Any picture or painting depicting what happened at that time may reopen the wounds. Already, the two countries or, for that matter, the Hindus and Muslims, are not at the best of terms. In their endeavour to establish a separate identity, the two communities talk more of what divides them than what can unite them.

After all, the two communities lived together for centuries before the British introduced the separate electorate, Hindus exercising their vote only in favour of Hindu candidates and the Muslims for the candidates of their own religion. Even though after independence the separate electorate was abolished, vote-bank politics has taken in its place, making only a slight difference.

During the drafting of the Constitution, the then Home Minister, Sardar Patel, offered reservations to the Muslims. But their leaders at that time said that reservations on the basis of religion had led to the partition and therefore any step that creates division between the Hindus and Muslims would again take some shape of partition.

Today, the community leaders are demanding reservations because, as the Sachar Committee has pointed out, the plight of Muslims is worse than that of the Dalits. Still the Sachar Committee itself did not propose reservations and asked the government to take affirmative steps, as America has done in the case of Blacks, to provide jobs and admission to top educational institutes.

Viewed from any point of view, there is no go for Hindus and Muslims except to integrate. Any concession on the basis of minority character is mole in the eyes of the majority. What has happened over the years is the stoppage of social contacts between the two communities. They meet as traders, businessmen and industrialists but never as neighbours or normal human beings. Their contact remains confined to business and seldom gets reflected in their relationships.

I recall when there was a communal riot in the Kishangaj mohallah in old Delhi, I lived among the Muslims to experience their hardships and apprehensions. What I found was that they were living in a world of their own and had developed such fears which were difficult to allay. I negotiated with the then government and was able to get a large track of land where they could resettle. Their insistence was for a mosque. The government agreed to it.

Yet ultimately, the Kishanganj inhabitants felt that they were more secure behind the iron gate of their mohallah than elsewhere. I vainly argued with them that it did not take much to break open the gate. Yet, my pleas fell on deaf ears and they preferred slum-like conditions to the open space which was there for them to choose.

Today the situation has worsened because the Muslim population has grown at that very place. The community is afraid of staying in a mixed locality lest they should be singled out as it happened during the Mumbai riots. The fact also remains that there is an increasing tendency among Hindus to keep the Muslims at a distance. Every Muslim is a suspect in their eyes during tensions with Pakistan.

Against this background, how would the proposed Museum depict the partition? Pakistan has done a better job by establishing a Punjabi Cultural Centre instead of a museum. The Centre was essentially the idea of the progressive poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. He collected old folk songs, doors from village houses and recorded folk music that was used during weddings as well as deaths. This Centre near Islamabad is frequented by thousands of people, especially the young, to connect themselves with their roots.

The supporters of the Partition Museum can build upon what has been done in Pakistan, recreate the fabric of old culture where both the Hindus and Muslims live like human beings and pursue together trade, business and industry. Even today the best solution for amity between India and Pakistan is to have joint ventures and investment in each other's country so that they develop mutual trust.

If this takes place, the chance meeting between the Prime Ministers of the two counties at Paris will be replaced by regular contacts between the two. One side will be able to pick up the telephone at any time and talk to each other and share their problems and predicaments. The recent meeting of the two National Security Advisers at Bangkok would not have looked something extraordinary even though it lasted for four hours.

Whatever shape the proposed Museum takes, we should keep the British out in any type of participation. Theirs was not a benevolent rule but that of cruelty. India opened more schools within one year after independence than the British did during their 150-year rule. True, they have laid the railway network but this was essentially to haul the troops to suppress those engaged in the independence struggle. The idea of the Museum is welcome, but the British association in any way is not.

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

Last year, the then brand new government of India declared 25th December to be Good Governance Day in honour of Atal Behari Vajpayee, a bachelor activist of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a founder of the Jana Sangh and its successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the first of the Swayamsevaks to become the Prime Minister of India from 1998 to 2004. Twentyfifth December is also Christmas, celebrated across the world, and also in India where over 27 million Christians live. Christmas will again be a working day in many places, with Maharashtra leading the way declaring a slew of programmes, a sort of desert to follow its ban on beef earlier in the year. The Union Government, including the pro-active Minister for Human Resource Development, has so far not announced anything new.

And, for the record, the crosschecked list of violence against Christians till December 2015 is touching 120. Christmas is the season for such violence. The list may touch 150. The unrecorded ones will never be known.

On Christmas 2014, near Khandwa town in Madhya Pradesh, Shyamlal invited people of his community for a feast, and they included Karunakar, a preacher with the Friends of Missionary Prayer Band, who lived in the town of Dhulkote, about 15 km away. Karunakar, born in Odisha, came with his family and friends from Gujarat and Tamil Nadu includng three children. Abhilasha, his daughter, was the youngest being eight months old. They came to a warm welcome. Within minutes, they were ambushed by an aggressive group who accused them of distributing clothes to convert the villagers to Christianity. The police came soon thereafter, as if on cue. The local BJP leader, Naval Singh, arrived with his supporters, demanding strict action against them. The police charged them under Section 295 A for insulting the religious sentiments of the local people. In police custody, they slept on the bare floor without sheets. Next morning, the local Magistrate refused them bail. They remained in jail till December 31, 2014, New Year's eve. The eight-month-old baby was with them in jail. The news was given short shrift in the national media. The local media said Christian missionaries had been caught converting innocent people. The truth was exposed in a detailed story by Scroll reporter Supriya Sharma many days later after she visited Khandwa and other places in Madhya Pradesh. [http://scroll.in/article/698484/How-Madhya-Pradesh-sent-8-month-old-Abhilasha-to-jail-in-an-anti-conversion-case]

Narendra Modi, the second BJP leader to become the Prime Minister of India after Atal Behari Vajpayee, won the 2014 general election with the promise of development for the emerging aspirational India, and an unprece-dented galvanising of the BJP's majority core constituency. The pungent mix of supremacist religious and nationalist rhetoric, and the accompanying demonising the Muslim and Christian minorities raising the bogey of demographic threat to Hinduism in India, polarised the electorate. The obvious hatred was against Muslims. Much of the ground action was against Christians.

In office, Modi has spoken a few times against communal and targeted violence, without naming the victims or the aggressors. Christians and Muslims, however figure prominently, and routinely, in the statements of his Ministers, as well as the non-state actors and cadres that make the broad spectrum of his political support-base.

Modi's failure, if not refusal, to name and chastise the Sangh Parivar conglomerate has led to a singular aggression by cadres of the party and the Sangh in small towns and villages across the country. And exacerbated the impunity inherent in the state apparatus, specially the police.

“Don't you know this is a Hindu Rashtra,” the Station House Officer of a Greater Noida Police Station in Uttar Pradesh told a group of pastors as he beat them up to “appease” a mob from Kulesra village that had attacked them, accusing them of carrying out illegal conversions to Christianity. Unlike Madhya Pradesh, Chhattis-garh and Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh neither has the notorious Freedom of Religion Act, the ironically named law against conversions mostly to Christianity, nor is it governed by the BJP. But that is the mood prevailing in most States since May 26, 2014. [http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/villagers-allege-forced-conversions-in-greater-noida-pastors-questioned/]

The year 2014 had seen a marked shift in public discourse. The hate campaign is well docum-ented. The Evangelical Fellowship of India and Alliance Defending Freedom recorded 44 separate cases of hate speech by prominent politicians which merit criminal charges against them. But most cases go unreported, unrecorded by the police. The year 2015 kept up the tempo.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has repeatedly asserted that everyone in India is Hindu, including Muslims and Christians, because this is the land of the Hindu people and civilisation. Speaking at the 50th anniversary of the foundation of its religious wing, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the RSS Sarsanghchalak bluntly stated that “Hindutva is the identity of India and it has the capacity to swallow other identities. We just need to restore those capacities.” In Cuttack, he asserted that India is a Hindu state and "citizens of Hindustan should be known as Hindus”. Bhagwat, arguably the second most politically powerful and culturally influential person in the country, has been unremitting in his pronouncements.

Such hate, inevitably, leads to violence.

Desecration and destruction of churches, assault on pastors, illegal police detention of church workers, and denial of constitutional rights of Freedom of Faith aggravate the coercion and terror unleashed in campaigns of ghar wapsi and cries of ‘Love Jihad'. In Chhatisgarh, villages are passing orders banning the entry of priests of faiths other than Hinduism.

Chhatisgarh remains a particular focus of attacks on Christians, with Madhya Pradesh coming close behind. In both the States, the direct involvement of the State Government, including Ministers, senior bureaucrats and even the district police and justice systems upto the village level, makes a mockery of the rule of law. Odisha, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana are also becoming States of concern for their anti-Christian environment in rural and tribal areas.

Christians in Chhattisgarh, especially in the Bastar area, have been facing massive politically-inspired opposition, which has manifested itself in the form of physical violence and social discrimination. The apathy, impunity and partisanship of the administration at various levels has compounded the human tragedy, and the gravity of the violation of constitutional guarantees of Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Association and Movement and, most important, the Freedom of Relgion and Belief.

Social exclusions are one of the primary tactics to victimise minorities denying basic human rights that is common to every citizen. These exclusion orders often make Christians vulnerable to excessive violence and denial of social privileges like access to water, electricity and work.

Days before United States President Obama's Town Hall speech in New Delhi went viral for commenting on the need for communal harmony and protection of freedom of faith as intrinsic to the thrust for economic development, India's President, Pranab Mukherjee, noted the rise of communalism and the targetting of religious minorities. In his address to the nation on January 25, 2015, that is, the eve of Republic Day. President Mukherjee said: “In an inter-national environment where so many countries are sinking into the morass of theocratic violence ... We have always reposed our trust in faith-equality where every faith is equal before the law and every culture blends into another to create a positive dynamic. The violence of the tongue cuts and wounds people's hearts. The Indian Constitution is the holy book of democracy. It is a lodestar for the socio-economic transformation of an India whose civilisation has celebrated pluralism, advocated tolerance and promoted goodwill between diverse communities. These values, however, need to be preserved with utmost care and vigilance.” The President, and Vice President Hamid Ansari have repeated this caution against intolerance in many of their speeches through the year.

The Prime Minister, however, refuses to reprimand his Cabinet colleagues, restrain the his party members or name the Sangh Parivar which proudly proclaims it has propelled him to power in New Delhi. His response has been an aggressive rebuttal, accusing the church leaders of making mountains out of trivial molehills. He has accused them of inter-nationalising trivial incidents in a motivated campaign that injures India's image and his development agenda. In May 2015, the Home Ministry planted reports in a compliant media saying the six incidents of big arson and discretion of churches in Delhi in 2014 were either short circuits, or petty crimes by local drunks, including three Sikhs and two Muslims. The Police Commissioner said there had been hundreds of thefts in temples and gurudwaras in the same period and no one had made a public agitation over them. The Ministry of Home Affairs published data of the last three years of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government to say there had been no sharp rise in violence against religious minorities. It did not release the data for communal violence since Modi took over as the Prime Minister.

Cardinal Mar Baselios Cleemis, the President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and the National United Christian Forum, in a statement on March 17, 2015, said: “The cultural DNA of India of pluralism and diversity is being threatened. We are anxious about the implications of the fundamentalist political thesis that India is ‘one nation, one people and one culture‘. A nation of cultural homogeneity is an impossibility and any effort to impose it is fraught with grave ramifications for the country. We are deeply concerned about the physical violence—arson, murder and rape of our religious personnel, both men and women—as with the structural violence which is manifest in urban and rural India, in social and administrative excesses, and aberrant judicial pronouncements. We welcome the occasional statements of those in authority of adhering to the Constitution of India and, in particular to its assurances of the Freedom of Faith. However, these statements fail to have any impact on the leadership of socio-political organisations that are polarising the nation with the language and acts of intolerance, hate and violence.”

We wait for 2016 to see if the situation changes for the better.

The author is a senior journalist, human rights activist and member of the National Integration Council. He can be contacted at e-mail: john.dayal@gmail.com

The author was recently in Italy and Greece, the two European countries most affected by the refugee-migrant influx. Here he shares his experiences and impressions of the visit with our readers.—Editor

In late-November, anti-war rallies were criss-crossing squares and avenues in European cities waving placards and banners and calling for peace and amity. The day Turkey brought down a Russian jet (November 24), the fear of an impending war spilled over and peace activists, academics and Leftist politicians went hyper-active. TV channels and the print media pored over the disconcerting signals of European countries getting increasingly shrill and abusive against each other amid fast-spreading waves of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and intolerance towards economic and political immigrants.

2015 began as a year of unprecedented levels of political refugees fleeing the war-ravaged Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan into Europe, and for many months thereafter governments in Europe were preoccupied with the immediate task of bringing the unending inflow of refugees under some kind of discipline and order. That the majority of the refugees were Muslims was not an issue in the beginning; and more importantly, while Rightists and ultra-Rightists, who were gaining in political clout in recent years, began calling for a halt to the inflow, Leftists and human rights activists were far more vocal in calling for unhindered entry for illegal immigrants, those who were being smuggled into Europe.

By September, however, the mood in Europe drastically changed as Germany was increasingly isolated on the immigrant issue while southern and eastern European governments hardened their positions and virtually signalled their complete rejection of the immigrants' case for entry into their territories.

As the squabble over immigration boiled over, the situation was further complicated by the ingress of several factors. The most visible and effective of these was the increasing identification of immigrants as mainly Muslims, co-religionists of those who were terrorising European cities and seeking to wreck the European way of life.

However, no less pertinent to the situation was a second factor, the rising tide of ultra-Rightist sentiments and politics which were, inter alia, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic. With the far-Right National Front snatching power in as many as six out of the 13 regions of France in the first round of elections held on December 6, the ultra-Rightists' and ultra-nationalists' ascendancy reached the heart of Western Europe. These elections were held primarily on the issue of illegal and unchecked immigration, and conservatives and the far-Right naturally hailed the results as a major vindication of their stand on the deeply divisive question. However, it is important to note that the issue of illegal immigration and the necessity to checkmate it gained traction because the economy in almost all the European Union member-countries had been stagnating with rising unemployment and harsh austerity measures.

It is also important to note that the present scenario in Europe is being compared to the eve of both the World Wars. “This is how the eve of the First World War could have looked like,” wrote Pinter Bence, a perceptive Hungarian journalist in The Express (September 23, 2015). “Complete hesitancy, the termination of the usual channels of diplomacy, the lack of solidarity (among the EU partners), the pressure to take a step, and the countries issuing threats to each other, (these are) reminding us of that (the situation on the eve of the First World War). It definitely does not look like a cooperating Europe.”

US trend forecaster Gerald Celente wrote: “The current crisis draws parallels with a previous huge global conflict—the Second World War.” Breitbart, London, said in its website that “the rise of Right-wing politics is what European elites fear most from the migrant crisis”. And the New York Times called it “the most dangerous moment for Europe as fear and resentment grow”.

The expressions of apprehension about what the future holds for Europe were not confined to journalists, academics and other non-state actors. Even elected heads of government were not immune from expressing their dire forebodings about the future. Both the Italian and Hungarian Prime Ministers have spoken in terms of apocalypse and “huge dangers of unchecked floods of immigrants” from Africa and the Middle East which have set the “previously peaceable” EU nations against each other.

As noted above, sections of Europeans are expressing themselves unabashedly not only against Muslim migrants but also against European Jews, residents in their countries for generations, and this factor in particular seems to have alarmed political leaders, academics, journalists and others. As many as 7000 Jews left France in 2014 to relocate themselves in Israel. Frequent attacks on Jews have been a regular phenomenon over the recent years not only in Europe but in various other countries as well, compelling the United Nations to examine the issue in detail in January 2015. The French philosopher, Bernard-Henry Levy, told the UN General Assembly at the time: “The world has to confront the renewed advance of this radical inhumanity, this total baseness that is anti-Semitism.” In November 2014 the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steineier, said: “(The) hatred of Jews is on the rise across Germany and the rest of Europe, spurred by violence in the Middle East.” Chants like “Gas the Jews” were hurled during protests against the six-week-long conflict between the Arabs in the Gaza Strip and israel during July and August 2014. This conflict left as many as 2150 people dead, more than 98 per cent of them Arabs.

In fact, anti-Jewish sentiments have been so palpable in Europe since 2014 that Jewish leaders in Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain and Germany have been demanding that the governments should guarantee Jews' safety “wherever they live”. They have also vowed “not to be chased out”, a sad reflection of the race's history.

Analysts in Europe tend to view the rising Islamophobia and anti-Semitism—apart from the embedded racial prejudices—as essentially an outcome of the combined consequences of a number of internal and external factors. These are the continuing decline of the economies of a majority of the EU member-states and the consequent rise in unemployment and depri-vation, the civil wars in Iraq and Syria, and the expanding US-led war against the Islamic State (IS. ISIL or Daesh) and Russia's military involvement. The fact that the IS has declared that it will endeavour to get the United States involved in a ground war with its jihadis appears to have drawn considerable attention in various circles in Europe, contributing to the feeling that the present situation may eventually facilitate a catastrophic conflaglation involving multiple European states.

However, saner voices are still being heard. For example, German Chancellor Angela Markel said in the aftermath of the jihadist attacks in Paris on November 15: “We believe in the right of every person to seek happiness and enjoy it, in the respect for others, and in tolerance.” And Ashley Gilbertson, an Austraian photographer who interacted with West Asian and African migrants in Greece, wrote: “On the rocky shores of the Greek island of Lesbos, people scrambled out of their boats, welcomed by an ad hoc group of dedicated and passionate volunteers. Almost 700, 000 refugees have arrived in the country this year after making the dangerous passage by sea from Turkey. ‘Welcome to Europe,' they called out, hugging relieved refugees. They were many in tears.... Their welcome is to me the only warmth in a cold and ardous journey... I expected the scenes of grief, trauma and desperation. I was surprised to find the many moments of relief, even joy, as the refugees built bonds and passed through hardship together. It is crucial that we bear witness to all of these aspects of the story.” (‘Uncertain Journeys', International New York Times, November 24)

Apratim Mukarji is an analyst of South and Central Asian affairs. He has recently returned from Europe. Apratim Mukarji is an analyst of South and Central Asian affairs. He has recently returned from Europe.

A bigger tragedy than that of Syria is taking place in the small, poor Middle-East country of Yemen, which is being constantly bombed by a coalition of nine countries led by Saudi Arabia, fighting on behalf of Yemen's deposed govern-ment. Over 6000 civilians have been killed in the bombing and its people are now fleeing to Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden. From across the Red Sea are arriving fierce Sudanese soldiers to fight the Yemenis. The devastated country is facing starvation because its ports have been blocked by a coalition of Gulf countries involved in the bombing.

Of late soldiers from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are also involved in fighting there against the Shi'a Houthi people and their supporters, the Iranian volunteers. The fighting in the south of the country is moving north, where the Houthis, backed by forces loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's former President, still control most of the territory, including the capital, Sana'a, which is under constant bombardment.

Various elements are involved in the fighting there. The Islamic State (IS), operating in Yemen's ungoverned spaces, have attacked the strategic port city of Aden and the United Arab Emirate's command post and a hotel housing Yemeni politicians. Services have broken down in Aden with sewage splling everywhere. The Al-Qaeda, in control of the eastern city of Mukalla, imposing their radical brand of Islam on the people in their push to the west, are moving towards Aden, a region where people are armed to the teeth. The exiled Government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, made a show of returning in September, but quickly went back to Saudi Arabia, unable to make progress.

Yemen was formally divided after independence until 1990. The flag of old South Yemen is now seen in Aden. Southerners have been complaining of unfair treatment by the north, which they say had been denying them jobs and plundering the region. Thousands held a demonstration in Aden against the north on October 14.

Discord has emerged in the Gulf coalition against Yemen. The United Arab Emirates, which dislikes Islamism, scorns Islah, Yemen's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a source of resistance fighters. Saudi Arabia supports Islah and also provides financial backing to the ultra-conser-vatist Salafist. It hosts Hadi, the internatio-nally recognised President, who is opposed at home.

Hadi and the Houthis have agreed to take part in a new round of talks sponsored by the UN. The peace prospects are however dim. The Houthis have besieged Taiz, Yemen's cultural capital, and have threatened to step up their attacks on Saudi Arabia. The Gulf coalition against them appears to be preparing for a ground attack on heavily populated Sana'a. The situation is getting worse as the fighting progresses.

The author is a veteran journalist who has written extensively on West and Central Asian developments. He also covered the 1962 Yemen war.