by Aejaz Ahmad and M. Rafiq Wani

Introduction

The story of religious invocation and incantation in politics is as old as modernity itself. While modernity was supposed to release what is now called ‘modern politics', of all the parochial traditions that had fused religion and politics into one interdependent system for several centuries, it could not bring the presumed transformations in the developing world for several reasons. Instead, it opened up new avenues wherein the parochial traditions could play themselves out, of course now in the garb of modernity.

In India, the fusion between religion and politics is one such example. With modernity, the caste system didn't wither away; rather it became a fodder for the politics per se of what is often called as politicisation of caste. Similarly, politics and religion in India are so intertwined that their fusion has served as a persistent ‘avenue of investment' where the rate of return is tremendously high in terms of political dividends. This fusion runs deep into Indian history where temples were razed to the ground in places of Buddhist sites and mosques in places of temples and so on.

But what differentiates its contemporary form is its penetration into society, education, institutions and the language that it speaks. It is certainly not debatable that if there is any organisation or party that has best harnessed this fusion between religion and politics, it is BJP and its allies. In fact, its very origin can be attributed to that very fusion. Whether it be the case of re-invoking the ‘idea of India' in its own terms, the systematic lynchings, the hijacking of the public sphere, denial of the resurgence of intolerance, in all these the BJP has given us numerous illustrations and demonstrations.

Bihar Elections, BJP's Religious Rhetoric, and the Resultant Disappointment

Ever since the BJP took over, the fusion between religion and politics, that had been moribund after they left the national scene in 2004, has been supplied enough fuel to ignite it once again. This doesn't mean that the Congress acted saintly in all these years. Although in its new avatar, the BJP unfolded the developmental agenda as its very hallmark, but whenever there are elections in the States or an event of national or State importance, the ‘motor mouths', such as Sadhvi, Niranjan Jyoti, Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj have supplied content to its developmental agenda. On the other hand, the perpetual silence of the Prime Minister in all these issues has surpassed the former PM, Dr Manmohan Singh's “record of maintaining silence”. It raises serious questions about the developmental discourse that is being talked about.

On the eve of the Bihar elections, the religious invocation was unleashed with well-coordinated preparations. The cow issue was prepared much before and supplied to the Bihar cadre on time through speeches and pamphlets. In the political quarters, the co-opting strategy started by the Congress many decades ago was brought forth to co-opt Manjhi into the BJP to ensure Dalit votes. It was much evident as to who was to be cornered. In a rally at Buxar, Modi, despite being the PM, played the anti-Muslim card and said that Nitish Kumar was supposedly preparing to give five per cent reservation to a ‘particular community' at the cost of OBCs. This logic destroyed the very constitutional logic of India, for reservations in India are not awarded on religious lines because we don't follow the proportional representation system any more after independence. But then Modi is known for making factually erroneous statements!

Despite all the gimmicks and religion-politics combo card, the Bihar elections showed that far from the much-anticipated division of votes along caste and religious lines, the people of Bihar voted for both development and tranquillity, which the BJP too believes, according to its spokespersons, but its tacit approval of certain unwanted events, particularly the lynching episode and its aftermath, differentiates them from Nitish's development discourse.

The victory of the Mahagatbandhan in Bihar vindicated that the idea of India is much consolidated and inclusive and can't be oscillated to one side only. It proved to be a backlash against covert attempts of establishing unipolarity in the idea of India and showed that the idea of India is marked by multipolarity which is what helps that very idea to blossom.

Impending Multi-State Elections, BJP's Strategies and Challenges for Secular India

The elections are on hand for many States such as UP, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, and Kerala. Amongst all these, the important from the BJP's standpoint should be the State of Assam—where it thinks it can easily take over from the Congress which suffers from problems in local units given the anti-incumbency factor and defection lately of ten odd MLAs for whom the grass now looks greener on the other side. After the recently concluded Bihar elections analysts have suggested that the BJP needs to alter its ideology of religious gown for politics, some even saying it may do so after internal restructuring and rethinking. However, the question remains: will it do so in the case of Assam? Will the BJP fight on developmental issues or will it persist with its worn-out religious-politics mix to harness its dividends there where no Nitish Kumar is present as an alternative? We propose that the BJP will not alter its strategies at least in the State of Assam where the situation at the moment seems congenial to the BJP because of three reasons.

Firstly, the growth rate of Muslims in the recently released SECC-2011 is highest in Assam as compared to other States. The decadal growth rate of Muslims is 3.3 per cent as against the national average of 0.8 per cent and their population has risen from 30.9 to 34.2 per cent between 2001-2011. The BJP and its affiliates have always maintained that this growth is imported from Bangladesh given its porous borders, particularly along lower Assam and Barak valley. They have always blamed it on the Congress' appeasement of minorities. According to Mahendra Singh, the BJP secretary in charge of Assam, ‘'these are all illegal immigrants ..... They are protected by the government and the original inhabitants of the area, Scheduled Tribe Hindus, have been forced to leave because of the rising dominance of these immigrants.” Given this stand of the BJP and the general aura in the State of Assam, the BJP will surely attempt to capitalise on these vulnerabilities that are built into the politics of Assam.

Secondly, connected to the first reason—the panacea to this population growth rhetoric presumably is uniform civil code. The BJP's demand for the UCD in its manifesto is not driven by any humanist interpretation or women empowerment but mainly by the fear of growth of the burgeoning “other” in terms of population. Presumably, the development discourse will lend space to the religious discourse here also. In an article, titled “Time to Act Before Too Late”, in the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, the VHP head, Praveen Togadia, said: “a serious extinction seems to be on the anvil. And it is of Hindus. There is a method in the systematic growth of Muslims .... He even went on to say that if we do not stand up against population jihad Bharat will soon be an Islamic state ...census figures are a wake-up call.”

Even in the recently concluded annual congre-gation at Nagpur, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was very much concerned about the growth rate of Muslims and was quoted as saying in a tacit warning to the Central Government to take steps to restrict the growth rate of certain communities which is ostensibly a reference to Muslims. So this way too, the BJP cannot override the master control.

Conclusion

Every State in india is a nation in itself and the one-size-fits-all formula does not hold ground here too. Unity in diversity is what is holding India intact miraculously. The issue of immigrants has been the main bone of contention between the BJP and Congress in Assam in the recent years resulting in many riots, some of which are blamed to have been engineered Clearly, the BJP cannot afford to allow this issue to slip away so easily.

The Congress, though much elated by the Bihar results, suffers from anti-incumbency which it can't avoid but in Assam, the Congress will likely join the religious discourse by generating fear among the minorities likely to be triggered by the strategies of the BJP in Assam. In both cases the minorities can be put into the continuum of fear and this possibility will certainly make a case for the BJP to dig harder because the Muslim vote in Assam is considerable, running between 40-80 per cent in some districts; therefore it cannot be ignored.

All in all, religion is not leaving the stage for development, at least not for now, and in the coming months as the buzzer is hit by the Election Commission. What remains to be seen is when the ‘motor mouths' will be let loose.

Aejaz Ahmad belongs to the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. M. Rafiq Wani belongs to the Department of History, University of Kashmir.

by L.K. Sharma

Those who have seen the Indian Prime Minister's irresistible rise in politics and heard his inflammatory rhetoric over the years, were astounded by his speech in Parliament. Short of quoting from the Bible, Narendra Modi sought to convey to his opponents that his “idea of India” was no different than theirs! And it is this very “idea of India” over which the two sides have been battling with each other. Modi's critics would not believe the new convert, but his few conciliatory words may cool the tempers in an atmosphere of verbal and physical violence.

Prime Minister Modi refrained from making aggressive remarks or gestures. A TV anchor said Modi at last spoke like a Prime Minister after having gone around in Bihar speaking unlike a Prime Minister! The Prime Minister talked of sarva dharma sambhav (inter-faith harmony) and ruled out any move to amend the Constitution. Modi endorsed secularism, called the Constitution—not the Ramayana—a holy book, quoted from the Hindu scriptures lauding diverse faiths, stressed the importance of a political consensus and devalued the force of a brute parliamentary majority.

Such a speech would have normally made no news in India because statements on India's pluralism are routine. But these are no normal times. The nation is sharply divided between those protesting against growing intolerance and those attacking them for seeing what does not exist and asking them to migrate to Pakistan. In the current atmosphere, had Nehru called a dam a “temple” of modern India, the Hindutva brigade would have shown him the black flags. In today's India, every word is read for its sub-text. You utter the word “intolerance” and in seconds you will be abused on the social media and called “anti-Modi”.

Prime Minister Modi appeared in a new avatar ringing bells to herald a season of peace and goodwill at least in Parliament where he needs the Opposition's cooperation to pass some important Bills. He could have aptly quoted St. Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony...” Margaret Thatcher uttered these words while entering 10 Downing Street as Britain's new Prime Minister and went on to bring confrontation where there was accord!

Modi has often said in India and abroad that after more than 60 wasted years, India began its development journey only 18 months ago. Now Modi did a U-turn and giving credit to all the previous governments, he struck a note of conciliation. The political pundits attribute the emergence of Modi Mark II to his party's crushing defeat in the Bihar State elections for which the Prime Minister was the lead campaigner. So democracy has modified Modi's speech!

The context of Modi's speech in Parliament was a bit paradoxical. It was a celebration to mark the 125th birth anniversary of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, one of the architects of the Indian Constitution. The Congress leader, Sonia Gandhi, had a dig at “the people who had no faith in the Constitution now swearing by it”. The ruling BJP has been trying to appropriate the national leaders who had nothing to do with its ideology. Sardar Patel had charged the RSS with spreading communal poison and Ambedkar rejected Hinduism and chose to become a Buddhist.

The Prime Minister even praised Nehru whose contribution was completely ignored by him while addressing the recent India-Africa summit. A Hindu political party during an election campaign not long after India's independence had portrayed Nehru as a beef-eater and a cow-killer. But it got nowhere in the face of Nehru's drive to modernise India and promote the scientific temper to check the communal forces.

Modi's political formation achieved an outstanding success in the last national elections. But it was a poll battle lost by the Manmohan Singh Government rather than one that was won by the Hindu nationalists. Angered by political corruption, lack of leadership and degraded governance, a large section of secular voters saw Modi as a Messiah. Thus as a prime ministerial candidate, Modi attracted additional non-BJP voters while commanding an ideologically-fired committed support base.

However, Modi's secular followers started getting disappointed with him within a year of his assuming office. The verdict of the Bihar voters was the last straw. Even some party elders expressed their disenchantment. The communal card did not work and the BJP leaders' attempt to polarise the Hindu voters failed.

Apart from this failure, the movement against intolerance diminished his political stature at home and his credibility abroad. The rapid response teams of the ruling establishment denigrated the protesting writers, artists and scientists and issued more provocative statements to unnerve the minorities. But then references to India's tradition of pluralism started cropping up in the speeches delivered by the President of the Indian Republic.

The Prime Minister could no longer take the risk of the political atmosphere turning stormier. At last he realised what one of his predecessors from his own party instinctively knew—that India cannot be governed by ignoring its diversity. Modi found that he could not run the Government of India in the fashion he had run the Gujarat Government. India's diversity and the tradition of pluralism make it impossible to enforce the agenda of uniformity. Modi's performance in a new role thus became a political necessity.

The Prime Minister also faces the practical difficulty of the ruling coalition not having a majority in the Upper House of Parliament. The Opposition has to be talked to, not attacked all the time, if Modi has to spur economic growth and increase India's ratings.

After the Bihar elections and listening to some discordant noises within his own party, the Prime Minister found it necessary to invite the Congress leaders in for tea and make a new kind of speech in Parliament. In the face of a gathering storm, he could no longer care about hurting the psyche of the extremists in his political family whose destructive acts and provocative statements he has dutifully ignored. The Bihar election results have ended their dream of a Hindu Kingdom.

Prime Minister Modi refrains from taking them on. He is unlikely to sack any Minister for making statements hitting out at a religious minority and designed to disturb social harmony. Nor is his party going to take any action against an errant Member of Parliament. It remains to be seen whether Modi's soft Hindutva would make a hardliner call him a “sickularist”, a term coined by his partymen to abuse the secularists!

The reaction of the Hindutva base to Modi's speech will be known over the coming weeks. Will the hardliners feel let down by Modi Mark II? They may control their dissatisfaction unless Modi suffers another political setback. The RSS, which nurtured Modi since his youth and chose him as the prime ministerial candidate, is keen to expand its influence through political power. In the process, it has compromised some principles related to economic policies, self-reliance, the personality cult, simple living and not playing the regional or casteist cards in election campaigns.

Modi's speech in Parliament will be studied for its linkage with the core Hindutva agenda. After the parliamentary session, the Prime Minister may come out with some more, second thoughts. But that would only further affect Modi's credibility.

His speech, of course, pleased his secular devotees who had started advising him to be at a mini-Nehru and to control the fringe elements in his party. They can now defend him even with greater vigour.

It remains to be seen how far Modi can go in projecting his new image. Stealing the political clothes of rivals poses no great problem in countries that have witnessed the end of ideology. Tony Blair demonstrated this when he abandoned the Labour principles, appeared as a Thatcher child and led his Labour Party to victory. Electoral success is all that matters.

Modi understands the art of deal-making and offered incentives to domestic and foreign businesses. The RSS went along making small compromises in the economic policy areas. However, Modi will find trading in ideology difficult. The RSS likes political power but has strong cultural moorings; so it would not grant much ideological freedom to its creation called Modi.

The sectarian passions, intolerance and divisive politics crippled Parliament, degraded governance and made millions of Indians anxious about their future. The health of democracy calls for constant vigilance. Democracy can face a challenge from an elected government as well as from the state-empowered or independent vigilante groups who curtail the freedoms of the citizens. They can go to the extent of murdering the dissidents. The non-state actors at times are used by the ruling establishment hampered by the Constitution to implement its unconstitutional agenda!

Many mainstream political leaders run their poll campaigns by inflaming sectarian passions as is seen even in older democracies. Those disturbed by this trend start blaming democracy itself. National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah laments: “To hell with these elections. I believe every election weakens India instead of strengthening it as it divides people in the name of religion.” Some recent events and statements have indeed injected a large doze of sectarian poison into society and it could be hard to detoxify the body politic. And yet in the present surcharged atmosphere, even some temporary relief will be counted as a blessing. If Modi's partymen stop calling dissidence anti-nationalism, it will have a somewhat benign influence at a time when the nation is in a temper.

Modi's second thoughts are in keeping with the traditional political wisdom that any move to polarise the Hindu voters can take you this far and no further. In India's experience of democracy, the cause becomes the cure, as the voters who swing to an extreme soon return to moderation. A party may win one election by talking of building a Hindu temple and protecting Hinduism but then the Divine blessing does not last till the next election.

Democracy allowed a leader agitating against an elected government to call on the armed forces to revolt. The strength of Indian democracy lay in the fact that the armed forces just ignored the call. Democracy let an elected leader use the constitutional provision for Emergency in order to curtail civil liberties and jail the Opposition leaders. The leader was thrown out by the voters when the time was ripe. The new government, empowered by its majority in Parliament, deleted the draconian provisions in order to safeguard democracy in future.

Indian democracy tends to disturb social harmony on the eve of an election but it also activates a reaction. Consequently, India's civilisational values get reasserted and the threat of an authoritarian rule passes. The political leaders are made aware of India's diversity. This self-corrective mechanism overcomes a crisis and keeps Indian democracy alive and kicking.

(Courtesy: opendemocracy.net/)

L.K. Sharma has followed no profession other than journalism for more than four decades, covering criminals and Prime Ministers. He was the European correspondent of The Times of India based in London for a decade. He reported for five years from Washington as the Foreign Editor of the Deccan Herald and edited three volumes on innovations in India. He has completed a work of creative nonfiction on V.S. Naipaul.

by Arun Srivastava

It was soothing to the ears that the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, praising Jawaharlal Nehru, was reaching out to the Congress leaders, adopting a conciliatory attitude towards the opponents, emphasising “if there is any incident of atrocity against anybody, it is a blot on all of us for the society as well as the nation” and asserting that no Indian needed to prove her/his patriotism.

Listening to the speech on the floor of the Lok Sabha it appeared that the person, who till a few months back was spitting venom against Nehru and endorsed the jibes and abuses of his saffron colleagues against those who did not subscribe to their views, has undergone a change of heart and turned liberal, a believer in the politics of reconciliation and was following in the footsteps of Atal Behari Vajpayee with thrust on moderation and inter-faith harmony. Para-doxical indeed this came from a person who once regretted that it was Nehru, and not Sardar Patel, who became India's first Prime Minister.

Suddenly realisation has dawned on Modi that democracy is strengthened when there is consensus and discussion. Majority doesn't give (the government) the right to impose its views. Majority and minority is the last step because we have to promote consensus, debate and discussion. If Modi or the RSS had followed this dictum the present situation might not have arisen.

Besides deflecting the global skepticism, Modi through his overtures tried to create a political space for his government that would help clear the legislative logjam and allow, among other things, passage of important bills including the constitutional amendment to roll out the Goods and Services Tax (GST). True enough, Modi is trying hard to convey the impression that he was undoing anything wrong committed by his saffron comrades. Asserting his government's commitment to the Constitution, the Prime Minister told Parliament that the religion of the government was “India first” and the Constitution its “holy book”. This was simply aimed at reinforcing his commitment to reconciliation.

In fact his public posture is something akin to the hero of the fairytale. It would be wrong to construe that Modi has changed. The Bihar electoral rout has taught him the hard lessons of realpolitic and made him realise that the RSS's Hindutva formula cannot be applied in the Indian context. If the BJP really intends to fill in the vacant political space, it should have to reinvent and reorient itself. If the BJP, and especially Modi, would not have met with its Waterloo in the Battle of Bihar, it is sure that the Prime Minister would not have adopted a conciliatory approach.

RJD boss Laloo Prasad was absolutely right in saying; “Modi, who was earlier absolutely arrogant, is today visiting every member in Parliament and shaking hands with her/him. It is the impact of the Bihar result. All credit for making Modi a mild person goes to Bihar's poor and backward voters who ensured the astounding victory for the Mahagathbandhan.”

In a tactical move while the RSS has been taking forward the Hindutva agenda, Modi has embarked on the path of reconciliation simply to avoid direct conflict with the Opposition. His opening dialogue with the Congress leadership is part of this strategy. It was quite interesting to see the person, who called upon the people to create a Congress-Mukta Bharat, was striving to have a working relationship with the same party. As if this was not enough, he eulogised Nehru, against whom he had used harsh words and blamed him for the present situation. Apparently it appears that Modi has travelled a considerably long distance in politics but the fact is it is simply a façade to conceal his real face and intentions.

During his 18-month rule, Modi at no stage felt remorse for increasing intolerance in the ruling elite. In fact the saffron leaders went up to asserting that this was orchestrated against Modi with an ulterior motive. Its spokespersons even did not feel shy in assailing the intellectuals and writers as mercenaries. This simply manifests their political upbringing.

One development is absolutely explicit. After the Bihar rout Modi has become conscious of the emerging challenges. An insight would make it clear that he was simply following the RSS script. His emphasis on the Constitution as the holy book ought to be seen in the proper perspective. Interestingly, on the discussion on the Constitution he said that any debate on it should not be reduced to “you and I”, its purpose was to serve as a reminder of “we”.

Modi saying that all previous governments had contributed to the nation's development is quite revealing. It ought to be recalled that during the election campaign in 2014 he had blamed previous governments, implying the Congress governments, for all the ills the country was plagued with. Bashing Nehru had become the onerous task for the saffron leaders. Modi had even claimed that India was making a fresh bid for development and growth under his leadership, under the rule of the saffron brigade. It was like reinventing the country.

Even while Modi has been publically pursuing the policy of moderation, his senior partymen have been busy insinuating the minorities and intellectuals protesting against the intolerant attitude of the saffron rulers. In fact the BJP has not changed, as is evident from the words and actions of Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, Mahesh Sharma, Manohar Lal Khattar, Meenakshi Lekhi and others.

This is purely a tactical move: assuage the feelings of the Congress, the Opposition and secular forces and get well entrenched. There little doubt that this change of stance of Modi will create confusion in the minds of the people and make them believe that the Congress or secular forces were unnecessarily criticising Modi. He would then have the advantage. This façade also owes to the administrative compulsions of the Modi Government. Some vital reform interests are at stake. For pleasing and preserving the interest of the corporate sector, these reforms would have to be implemented.

Modi has declared that Constitution is a “holy book” and implicitly ruled out any review of it. He also conceded that “consensus is more important than majority rule”. Modi's remarks are invariably meant to alter the dynamics of the future political discourse. This is a strategic move to silence the critics of the saffronites and Modi would not have uttered these words without the tacit support of the RSS. The sudden declaration of November 26 as the Constitution Day is a tactical move to entrap the Congress and other secular forces. So far India has been celebrating January 26 as the Republic Day, the day Constitution was adopted. This is an attempt to showcase the saffron party in a different mode.

Modi has lost the rural people's support as is evident from the Bihar election results followed by the panchayat and municipal election results of Gujarat. Once the process has started, there is no guarantee that the urban middle class will continue to be loyal to him. This section has been most concerned of the secular values. Obviously with an eye on this section, Modi eulogised secularism as the core value in the constitutional system which has always been beyond debate, and its inviolability as a principle of governance has been taken for granted.

Though the Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, described ‘secularism' as the most misused word in Indian politics and argued that the time has come to end such misuse, he did not dare to question the continuing relevance of the very concept of secularism. It is true that the Constitution originally had no reference to secularism, and that the word was introduced only in 1976. But the emphasis it gave to religious freedom, freedom of conscience, equality and non-discrimination, was indeed imbued with the secular spirit.

Behind the façade of questioning secularism, Rajnath was in fact trying to usher in the concept of equality of sects

(panth-nirpeksh

) while so far India has been known for religious equality. It simply intends to emphasise that Hinduism was the only religion and others were no more than sects. His words ought to be followed seriously: “Secularism is the most misused word in the country. Instead of dharm-nirpeksh [religion-neutral], we should use a better Hindi translation of the word panth-nirpesksh [sect-neutral]. The misuse of the word should come to an end, as it has been the source of much tension and misinterpretation.” In this backdrop one should read Arun Jaitley's observations—“whether the House had again become the Constituent Assembly” and had “Dr Ambedkar proposed Articles 44 (uniform civil code) and Article 48 (ban on cow slaughter) today, how would this House have reacted?”

It is interesting to note that while Modi has been reiterating the line of equality and religious freedom, his senior colleagues were espousing the Sangh vision. In his pastoral letter—a communication from the Bishop to churchgoers which usually deals with spiritual and adminis-trative matters—the Archbishop of Faridabad-Delhi Syro-Malabar Church, Kuria-kose Bharanikulangara, said there are “appre-hensions” that some “ultra-religious fundamen-talists have started questioning the very fundamentals of the Indian Constitution”.

The saffron brigade has been using its might to deny the charges that intolerance is on the rise and cites twin examples of the 1984 Delhi riots against Sikhs and flight of Kashmiri Hindus as the classic case of intolerance. None would deny that both incidents were heinous crimes. But one wrong cannot justify another wrong. By raising these twin issues the saffron leaders are simply trying to communalise the latest issue of intolerance. They must confess that their strategy and approach was most devious and a potent threat to the nation's cause.

What is intolerance? Intolerance—an unwill-ingness to accept the beliefs or behaviour of someone different from you—is not a quality you want to have. Intolerance is what leads to hate crimes and discrimination. This is primrily used with respect to religious intolerance, which is an unwillingness to accept different religious beliefs.

No doubt Krishna Sobti was the first person to raise her voice and return her award. But it was the call of the President Pranab Mukherjee to the people of the country that made them speak out their minds and feelings. The fear of terror and tyranny was so acute that none dared to speak out. Ironically instead of appreciating the people's sentiment and cracking down on intolerance, the Sangh Parivar led a virulent attack against them. It was surprising to listen to the Sangh leaders denigrating the scholars. The government forgot the basic tenet of governance. Since Modi came to power, at least 43 deaths, 212 cases targeting Christians, 175 cases of targeting Muslims, and 234 cases of hate speech have been reported.

Dissent is fundamental to the survival and success of democracy, democratic institutions and their functioning. In a rational and reasonable society dissent is accepted as a norm and is encouraged. But in India under the Modi Government this space and privilege is being denied to the dissenting voice. And this is being done in a very planned and crude manner. Neither the Modi Government nor the RSS, whose diktat the government follows, are worried of the erosion of their credibility.

Instead of respecting the dissenting voices they took them as affront and challenge to their hegemony. The increase in intolerance to the dissenting voices is manifest in the BJP leaders' offensives against the minorities. The beef episode, the Dadri killing and the local BJP legislator threatening the Muslims are the indicators of the mindset of the Sangh Parivar. It is quite interesting to note that the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has endorsed the Narendra Modi Government, lauding it for lifting the country from “an atmosphere of hopelessness” while, at the same time, counselling it to gain feedback from the ground on its functioning. Modi and his RSS mentor, Bhagwat, have been engaged in a friendly fight: Modi should wear the liberal mask and RSS would continue to pursue its Hindutva agenda. His harping on the primacy of the “Hindu culture” in India and saying “small incidents” that keep happening should not be allowed to “distort Indian culture, Hindu culture” are testimony to it. It is not surprising that the present regime, instead of doing some kind of soul-searching as to why over 300 eminent persons have returned national awards, has termed these persons anti-national and mercenaries. Modi, through these liberal machinations, was buying time. He is waiting for the director's word, Action!!

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

When I spoke of the historical inevitability of the Constitution of India some months ago (see “Republic Resilient”), in contradistinction to inevitability of another kind that we have been taught to expect—namely, the demise of Capitalism at the hands of its own progeny—I could have had little idea that events would rush with such emphasis to prove me right. The crushing assertion of the sensible, secular vote in the Bihar elections—which must go down as watershed in the history of Independent India—and, especially, the refusal of the Dalit voter to tow the polarising line of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Paswan, Manjhi, Kushwaha troika notwithstanding, was not only to scurry the ruling RSS-led establishment to call upon Parliament to celebrate the one hundred and twentyfifth birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar—Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly (1946-1949), but to call the two-day session a “Commitment to Constitution” one. This from a political force that had at the time of Constitution-making suggested that there was no need for a Constitution since the Manusmriti would do fine; and that had, during the tenure of the amiable Vajpayee regime (1998-2004), set up a “Constitution Review Committee” with a barely-concealed view to supplant the parliamentary system of democracy with a presidential one, but happily failed to do so. Indeed, if one were to include the charming hosannas sung by the Prime Minsiter to the Constitution of India as “our only holy book”, a benign chuckle might be excused. This indeed has been the historical inevitability at work, like it or not.

What then is it about the Constitution of India that compels every consequential political force in the country who participate, willy nilly, in the electoral process, be it from the Left or the Right of the spectrum, to succumb to its virtues and wiles? If you listened to the uplifting debate in the Rajya Sabha, the best answer came from that cheeky member from the All India Trinamul Congress, Derek O'Brien: speaking on the issue, he cited what a Pakistani friend of his said to him—the member was asked by that friend which one of the world's books over five millennia he thought to be the best, and proceded to give the answer “Hindustan ka Dastoor”, meaning the Constitution of India, for being the “most inclusive, humane, egalitarian document ever written”. High praise now mightily endorsed by a ruling political force whose ideological predilections have been—and continue to be—anti-thetical to much that is within the pages of India's Constitution.

Yet, it would be a fatal error to think that this magnificent document is some sort of a scriptural wizard. Its genius draws upon the collective will of India's diverse, plural, accommodating, intermeshed, hard-working, peace-loving ordinary citizens, and on their repeated declaration that they wish its centralities, its tryst and covenant with them, to be diligently and honestly pursued. It is truly, therefore, a day of great relief and satisfaction that a Parliament under the aegis of an unlikely regime has made such a demonstrative affirmation of constitutional values, to the extent in the Rajya Sabha of adopting, unanimously, a resolution to that effect—one that makes mention, significantly, of both Nehru and secularism. Bitter pill for some, but one that they have swallowed.

Two cheers, therefore, for Indian democracy. The third must come only if and when that all-important caveat that the far-seeing Ambedkar had administered to the Constituent Assembly the last iime that he addressed it, namely, the obtaining of social and economic equality pursuant to political freedom and universal franchise. In his ringing words, the “contra-diction” entered upon with the making of the egalitarian Constitution—that politically adult Indians would comprise one man, one vote, one value, but be limited socially and economically to one man, one vote only—a contradiction that could either be resolved in the decades to come with a dedicated commitment to the enunciations of the “Objectives Resolution”, the Preamble that faithfully incorporated that Resol-ution, and the core pronouncements of the Karachi and Avadi Congress sessions before Independence, or be allowed to intensify to a point where the political edifice itself would be threatened with collapse. It would be wishful and camplacent to think that such a danger is behind us. Especially since the “Reforms” of 1991 and thereafter, the objective conditions for such intensification have multiplied manifold, as wealth has come to be centralised horrendously among a handful of people and the indigent come to be made more indigent in mind-boggling numbers. If India's GDP continues to be privatised at the rate that we have seen, and fewer and fewer rupees are allocated to public requirements, the magic of the Constitution may unravel before our celebrations are over.

Thankfully, there is evidence to the effect that the mother of all parties who piloted the Constitution but succumbed to neo-liberal enticements from 1991-2009 is rethiniking that course in favour of one more loyal to the enunciations of the Constitution. It will not be a surprise if such a turn around draws back to it the support of masses it has been losing both to its hitherto pro-reformist inclinations and its distance from the hoi polloi. There is hope in the fact that its younger leaderships seem now less hidebound and more articulate on behalf of secular and egalitarian values. Is it to be hoped that the major Left parties will in the days to come learn to make more realistic evaluations of what they can do on their exclusive own, and of where the qualitatively fatal challenges to the Republican future of India lie.

In the meanwhile, in celebrating the “Commitment to the Constitution”, tndia's Prime Minister has made a pronouncement that many among his political base may not have liked. It will be a matter of great interest to see how he handles the not inconsiderable contradiction between his oath of office and the thrust of the political ideology within which he has grown and come of age. There can, however, be little doubt that the drubbing in Bihar ought to have chastened and subdued the disdainful swagger with which he has tended to treat both the Opposition and the people of India.

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

The Hindutva propounder, V.D. Savarkar, in his book, Hindutva (1923), and the prominent ideologue of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, in his book, We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939), kept Indian Muslims and Christians out of Indian nationhood. According to their definitions, only Hindus could be part of the Indian nation (which was an exclusive Hindu nation) as they only had Aryan racial lineage, in their veins Hindu blood ran, they spoke the Sanskrit language, their ‘Fatherland' (motherland conspicuously finds no mention) was India and their ‘Holylands' were situated in India only. Muslims and Christians were out of it as they had none of the above characteristics and followed ‘foreign religions'. It is to be noted here that the ‘Indian' religions like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism were not treated as independent religions but part of Hinduism.

But recently this characterisation of the Indian nationhood has been revised by a senior swayamsevak of the RSS, Manohar Lal Khattar, who also happens to be the Chief Minister of Haryana State. As per his revised definition, a new condition was added apart from the above for Muslims and Christians to be included in it as Indian. In an interview to a prominent English daily of Delhi, he bluntly said: “Muslim rahein, magar is desh mein beef khaana chhodna hi hoga unko. Yahan ki manyata hai gau. (Muslims can continue to live in this country, but they will have to give up eating beef. The cow is an article of faith here.)1 It was sure that he was not singling out Muslims only when he said: “They can be Muslim even after they stop eating beef, can't they? It is written nowhere that Muslims have to eat beef, not is it written anywhere in Christianity that they have to eat beef.”

Khattar's attempt to communalise the debate over beef-eating in India is not some stray thought of some hyper-Hindutva cadre but part of a planned strategy to pit common Hindus against these two major minorities of India. The RSS and its leadership, while trying to whip up majoritarian frenzy, cares least for facts—even those facts which are part of Vedic history. A peep into it will show that beef consumption in India is not related to the arrival of Muslims or Christians in India. The RSS, which claims to be the greatest organisation of Hindus, must be familiar with the writings of Swami Vivekananda. This Hindutva icon, while addressing a meeting at the Shakespeare Club, Pasadena, California, USA (February 2, 1900) on the theme of ‘Buddhistic India', declared: “You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to old ceremonials, he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it.”2

This is further corroborated by other research works sponsored by the Ramakrishna Mission established by Vivekananda. According to C. Kunhan Raja, a prominent authority on the history and culture of the Vedic period,

The Vedic Aryans, including the Brahmanas, ate fish, meat and even beef. A distinguished guest was honoured with beef served at a meal. Although the Vedic Aryans ate beef, milch cows were not killed. One of the words that designated cow was aghnya (what shall not be killed). But a guest was a goghna (one for whom a cow is killed). It is only bulls, barren cows and calves that were killed.3

The Hindutvavadis are fond of Manusmriti and want to promulgate it as the Constitution of India replacing the current democratic-secular Constitution of the country. Savarkar described it as most worshippable after the Vedas. Its chapter V provides details of different kinds of flesh of animals to be consumed. The Verse 30 reads: “It is not sinful to eat meat of eatable animals, for Brahma has created both the eaters and the eatables” and the Verse also says:”When a man, who is properly engaged in a ritual does not eat meat, after his death he will become a sacrificial animal during twenty-one rebirths.” Nowhere it bars consumption of beef.

One of the greatest researchers on Hinduism, Dr B.R. Ambedkar produced a brilliant scholarly essay on the subject titled ‘Did The Hindus Never Eat Beef?'4 It is a must read for all those who are interested in understanding the Indian past and wish to challenge the supremacist myth-making by the Hindutva gang for cleansing and marginalising the minorities. He quoted hundreds of ancient Hindu scriptures to show that beef-eating was rampant in ancient India or Vedic India. His conclusion was “that the Aryans of the Rig Veda did kill cows for purposes of food and ate beef is abundantly clear from the Rig Veda itself. In Rig Veda (X. 86.14) Indra says: ‘They cook for one 15 plus twenty oxen.' The Rig Veda (X.91.14) says that for Agni were sacrificed horses, bulls, oxen, barren cows and rams. From the Rig Veda (X.72.6) it appears that the cow was killed with a sword or axe.”5

Khattar's statement not only shows his ignorance about the Indian past which he claims as Hindu past (despite the fact that no ancient religious scripture carries this nomenclature) but also about the present India. In the whole of North-East India, which includes seven States, and in States like Kerala, Karnataka, Goa and Bengal beef is legally available. Moreover in States like Assam, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar and AP, bulls and bullocks can be slaughtered for consumption after securing the ‘fit-for-slaughter' certificate. Here these are not Muslims and Christians who consume beef. It is consumed by people of all denominations including a large number of Dalits.

This hype on beef and selective targeting of Muslims and Christians on this issue is part of a larger plan by the swayamsevak rulers of the country. These Hindutva rulers have miserably failed Indians, 80 per cent of whom are Hindus. The farmers' suicides in droves are not confined to Maharashtra or AP only. These are taking place throughout the country, even in States like Punjab. The poor Indians' cuisine ‘dal' or lentil is selling above Rs 200 kg, the prices of staple vegetables like potato and onion have already gone beyond the reach of common Indians. Violence against the Dalits is galloping, jobs are being lost fast, agriculture is facing the worst crisis in history, the rupee has touched the lowest point, in fact, the ‘achche din' promised by the BJP/RSS leaders never began. The rulers can only survive by heightening the politics of polarisation. As cunning leaders, they know how to divide and rule and they want to divert the attention by pitting the majority against the minorities. History is witness to the fact that such gimmicks work for a limited period as the common people do not take long to understand the game.

Apart from Khattar's beef-eating comment that Muslims and Christians, if they want to keep their membership of the Indian nation, have to stop eating beef, another gem of his interview has skipped attention. About the mythical river Sarswati he said: “No, we will not discover the river in its original form in which it used to exist. But at least in a symbolic way, even if we have to create it artificially, it can maintain our social faith. We will dig and if we manage to flow some water into it, it can be seen as a pilgrimage site by the people.” So the agenda is very clear, they will manufacture a river after manufacturing history. One wishes that the huge amount to be spent on this project is diverted to the areas where the poor and hapless farmers are committing suicides in hundreds.

Lastly, Khattar must know that beef-eating was never religiously ordained by Islam and Christianity but, as Swami Vivekananda said, it was a religious ceremonial in ancient India. In fact, by linking non-beef eating to being Indian, Khattar is simply declaring his Aryan ancestors as non-Indians!

Endnotes

1. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/muslims-can-live-in-this-country-but-they-will-have-to-give-up-eating-beef-says-haryana-cm-manohar-lal-khattar/

2. Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Viveka-nanda, Vol. 3 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1997), p. 536.

3. C. Kunhan Raja, ‘Vedic Culture', cited in the series, Suniti Kumar Chatterji and others (eds.), The Cultural Heritage of India, Vol. 1 (Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission, 1993), p. 217.

4. http://www.countercurrents.org/ambedkar050315.htm

5. Ibid.

Shamsul Islam, a well-known theatre personality, is a former Associate Professor (now retired), Department of Political Science, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. For some of the author's writings in English, Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati see the following link: http://du-in.academia.edu/ShamsulIslam

The following is based on a lecture delivered by the author, a renowned historian, to the students of the Aligarh Muslim University at the AMU's Kennedy Hall on September 7, 2015. The author has himself edited the text of the lecture's transcript and sent it to us for publication.

Young Friends,

In the preliminary remarks here it was said that the concept of India is a growing one, and I, therefore, propose to discuss how the concept of India arose, how it developed and how India became a nation; and what are the dangers today that threaten the nation. We are at a very sad moment in our history. Rationalists—people who believe in science—like Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi have been murdered in our country. In the name of Gau Raksha (cow protection), Mohammad Akhlaq has been murdered. So, our country's name is being dragged into dirt,and it is, therefore, time for all of us to reflect and consider what the cause of our country is and how best it can be served.

We must remember that far from recognising that India became a nation in the relatively recent past, our BJP friends and their RSS mentors are fond of saying that India was a nation since the Rig-Vedic times. But, in fact, neither in the Rig Veda nor in the other three Vedas, nor even in the Brahmanas which followed them, or, even for that matter, in the still later Upanishads, is India mentioned at all. In the Rig Veda, there is not even a mention of any geographical region; but only of rivers and tribes. Even Sapta Saindhava (seven rivers) did not mean the region of the Punjab, as it meant later on, but just the main seven rivers that join to form the Indus. The area in which the Rigvedic hymns were composed was limited to the Punjab and parts of Afghanistan, and it was inhabited by migratory tribes; so there was not even the concept of a region, least of all,the concept of a “country” in the Rig Veda.

As culture developed, political entities arose. The first name of our country was in Prakrit Sola Maha-Janapada (Sixteen Great States), which occurs in texts going back to 500 BC. Remember Sola is a Prakrit word and many of our languages, including Hindi and Urdu, go back to Prakrit. These maha-janapadas ranged from Kamboja or Kabul to Anga in eastern Bihar and so were confined only to northern India; and there was not yet any concept of India as we now conceive it. In some Dharma Søtras, the term Aryavarta, ‘the land of the noble', begins to occur and the Manusmriti defined Aryavarta as the country from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas; but then again it is only a large part of India and not the whole country that the term encompasses.

The first perception of the whole of India as a country comes with the Mauryan Empire. Those who have studied Indian history would know that the inscriptions of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka range from Kandahar and the vicinity of Kabul to Karnataka and Andhra and they are in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. So it was with such political unity that the concept of India came, and its first name was Jambudvipa, a name which Ashoka uses in his Minor Rock Edict-1, meaning ‘the land of the Jamun fruit'. The term Bharata was also used in a Prakrit inscription in Orissa, at Hathigumpha, of the Kalinga ruler, Kharavela, in 1st century BC; it is the first known instance of the use of Bharat, and Kharavela uses it for the whole of India. So, gradually the concept of India as a country began to arise and a cultural unity was also seen within it as religions like Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism spread to all parts of the country. Prakrit was used, at least literary Prakrit, all over the country, becoming its lingua franca. So, there were things which, as people could see, united us.

There were also foreigners who could see that this was a culturally distinct country and it often happens [and this is an interesting point] that foreigners regard a country as such much more easily than its natives because they realise that there is some difference between, say, Indians and Persians; whether one, as a foreigner went to the Punjab or the South, Prakrit was the literary language and Sanskrit the priestly language. So, it is the Iranians who first time gave us the name ‘Hindu' and Hindu is the Persian form of the name of Sindhu River, that is, the Indus River. So, all regions east of the Sindhu River, called Hindu in ancient Persian, came also to be known as ‘Hindu' and from this the name, ‘India' comes. For Greeks, Hindu became Indu as Greeks did not pronounce the initial ‘H', and the Chinese name for India, ‘Intu', also came from the same source. Thence again came the later Persian name ‘Hindustan'. Remember, there is no such word in Sanskrit as Hindusthan. Sthan always means in Sanskrit a ‘particular spot'. But ‘stan' in Persian is a territorial suffix, so, we have Seistan, Gurjistan, Hindustan and so on. This name is used in Sasanid inscriptions in the fourth century AD. So these words and the word ‘Hindu' itself are of non-Indian origin. Those who talk about Hindutva and rejection of everything foreign, forget that their own name Hindu is Iranian in origin, and is not found in Sanskrit before the fourteenth century. Its first use in Sanskrit inscriptions comes from the Vijayanagar Empire where the Vijayanagar emperors call themselves Hindu raya suratrana,‘Sultan over Hindu Rays'. They regarded themselves as Sultans and their subordinates as ‘Hindu Rays'. So, our country, as its name indicates, is of a composite nature, illustrated by the very name Hindu, derived from ancient Iranian, then used by Iranian and Arab Muslims, and entering Sanskrit usage only in the 14th century.

I say all this because it means that the concept of India as a country was ancient, the assertion made by Perry Anderson in his book The Indian Ideology that India both as a name and concept has been given by foreigners parti-cularly Europeans in modern times, is a totally misleading statement. It is particularly misleading because there is another very interesting matter: True, there was a conception of India in ancient times, even before Christ; but when was there a conception of love for India, that is, patriotism? It is surprising that throughout ancient India you have no patriotic verse in Sanskrit expressing love for India.

The first patriotic poem in which India is praised, India is loved, Indians are acclaimed as a gifted people is Amir Khusrau's long poem in his Nuh Sipihr written in 1318. I am very sorry that now we are losing this heritage. How many people here would be able to read Amir Khusrau, and so appreciate that here is the praise for India by a native voice for the first time in its history? What does Amir Khusrau praise India for? For its climate first of all (which I think is a very unconvincing statement), its natural beauty, its animals and along with its animals its women, their beauty as well as faithfulness. Then he comes to Brahmans. He praises their learning. He identifies India not only with Brahmans, but also with Muslims. Those who speak Persian, as well as those who speak Turkish, he says, are to be found throughout India. He praises all the languages of India from Kashmiri to Mabari, that is, Tamil. All these languages that were spoken in India, not only north India but also in south India, are listed there. He called them Hindavi. He adds that besides these languages there is the Sanskrit language, which is the language of science, and of learning. And had Arabic not been the language of the Quran, he would have preferred Sanskrit to Arabic. He then says India has given many things to the world: India has given Panchatantra tales, as well as chess, and, most surprisingly, he says India has given the world the decimal numerals what are known as Arab numerals or international numerals. He is correct in all the three points. As for decimal notation, Indian astronomers had developed it by the seventh century AD.

Other historians, other writers, other poets also praised India but not in such detail, not with such fervour and not, of course, with such mastery of language as Amir Khusrau. In 1350 the poet, Isami, said in a poem dedicated to the praise of India:

“Praise be to the splendour of the country of Hindustan, for paradise is jealous of the beauty of this flower garden.”

So, you begin to find patriotic verses. I will not go in to details because they are all in Persian and Persian for Indians is almost a dead language now.

In the Mughal period patriotism turned into a more insistent assertion particularly with Akbar and Abul Fazl. They argued that India is a special country, having a large number of religious communities, and so there must be tolerance, under the umbrella of Sulh-i Kul, that is, ‘absolute peace'. It was proclaimed that the King, like God, must favour all without discrimination. It was not only Akbar and Abul Fazl who made this assertion but even Aurangzeb (when a prince), in 1658, using it to win Rajput support. Does God, it was asked, discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims when He makes rain fall or make sun shine on people? Does the sun not shine on Hindus, but shine only on Muslims? Does rain fall only on Muslims and not on non-Muslims? Where God is fair, where God is just, how can the emperor as a representative of God be different? There was thus a concept not of a secular state but of a “tolerant state” suited to the conditions of India. It was again and again said that in India every religion must be tolerated. Jahangir says that in Turan it is only Sunnis and in Iran it only the Shias who are tolerated, but in India every religion has to be tolerated. And there was thus something new in the Mughal experience and political development at the time almost unique in the world outside China.

Dr Tara Chand asserted in his well-known book, The Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, published in 1928, which has been republished by the National Book Trust (NBT), that these two successively large states, the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, by bringing all parts of India together created the sense of a larger “national allegiance”, an assertion he continues to make, even in the official history of Indian National Movement which he partly wrote and partly edited.

This concept of political India is also very strongly present in the revolt of 1857. Those of you who know or who have studied Modern India probably know that the rebellion of 1857 occurred with the revolt of the Bengal Army. A hundred thousand men out of 130 thousand, one of the largest armies in the world at the time, revolted and they were in majority Brahmans sepoys. But what did they say? ‘Let us go to Delhi and crown Bahadur Shah Zafar, the emperor of India'. Those of you who know Urdu, I invite them to read the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, the major organ of rebels in Delhi. For five months, it was the major organ through which the rebels spoke, and it is of ‘Hindustan' thatthey speak. They quote Sa‘di who said that all human beings must be one—Ayza-e-Yak-Digar and—”they are organs of each other”; if one is hurt the other is hurt. So Hindus and Muslims, the rebels proclaimed, must come together. The Delhi Urdu Akhbar actually issued a public declaration against the Wahabis who said Hindus and Muslims could not join in a rebellion against the People of the Book (English). And in fact, the Wahabis did not support the 1857 revolt. They occupied the Jama Masjid at Eid-uz-Zuha, and demanded permission for cow slaughter. Bakht Khan, the mutineers' commander drove them out and threatened to suppress them if they persisted in this demand.

Syed Ahmad Khan in his Sarkashi-e-Zila Bijnor says in fact that the whole people of India were guilty in 1857 and rightly punished. So whether they are rightly punished or wrongly punished, we must remember that those who revolted considered themselves to be standing up for India. In my old age, I have now often taken to quoting Urdu poets. I quote now a simple couplet of Bahadur Shah Zafar which he wrote, after he became a prisoner, in commendation/ memory of the fallen martyrs of the mutiny:

Ay Zafar Qayam Rahegi Jab Talak Iqleem-e-Hind,

Akhtar-e-Iqbal Is Gul Ka Chamakta Jayega.

[O Zafar, so long as the country of India endures, The star of the glory of this [fallen] flower would go on shining.]

So, a concept of India, politically independent, is already present in 1857. But was it sufficient? If the rebellion of 1857 failed, the reason was partly that it was not supported in

large

regions of the country. While the Bengal Army revolted, the Madras

and

Bombay Armiesdidn't. The rebels in their reply to Victoria's Proclamation of 1858 themselves spoke up for the whole of India reminding people of how the English had treated rulers from Tipu Sultan of Mysore to Dilip Singh of the Punjab. Yet though the rebel leaders thought of the country as a whole, the rebellion did not actually extend outside the Hindustani-speaking region.

Indeed, something more was needed to turn India from a ‘country' into a ‘nation'. Two

stages

seem to me to be very important for such conversion. First of all, there had to be a realisation that an independent country, a free India would be different. It would be better than India governed by the British. The whole point of very sincere people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Syed Ahmad Khan in supporting British rule was the belief that the British rule was the best India could get. It was for people to understand that we could have an India which could be much better off than that governed by the British. And here the role of people like Dada Bhai Naoroji, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Justice Ranade and a number of others was extremely important. They showed that Britain was exploiting India. From 1874 to 1901, Dada Bhai Naoroji, the Grand Old Man of the Indian National Movement, wrote essays and papers showing how India was being exploited, as the very title of his book of 1901, Poverty and the UnBritish Rule in India, shows so clearly. India was being impoverished by the tribute British were extorting and the de-industrialisation of India, caused through free trade. Dada Bhai Naoroji was least interested in his own community, the Parsi community, and you see him pleading the case of all kinds of Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Bengalis, Punjabis, etc. And that's a precious thing for us to remember when we think of these early writers like Ramesh Chandra Dutt or others. They have no element of communalism in their approach. They were talking about all Indians. Yet they were speaking to the English-speaking people, and so to a very small minority. They were talking about peasants, poor people, unemployed, the weavers and spinners, but they were writing in English and so addressing only small circles of people.

How could this audience be enlarged? One way was by supporting movements for social reforms. The initial voice was that of Ram Mohan Roy, who by the way knew Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, English, French, and Hebrew, being really a polymath. He wrote his first book (Tuhfatu'l Muwahhidin)' in Persian. He said in 1828 that Indians can't be patriotic because they are divided up among castes. If caste affinities continue, how can there be any patriotism for the country? And therefore the social reform movement, particularly as initiated by Keshav Chandra Sen (1838-84), was so important. He has practically been forgotten today; but look at the man who at the age of 20 was writing that untouchability must be abolished, inter-caste marriages should be allowed, women should have equality with men in inheritance and every other right, and modern education should be spread among both men and women. And he created a new Brahmo Samaj some of whose members by the way ate beef which shows that there were Indians who could defy religious orthodoxy. But that was a small thing; the real thing was that such an effort as Keshav Chandra Sen's made social reform movement possible. Everywhere these demands arose—abolition of untouchability, equal rights for women, and modern education. And Keshav Chandra Sen said in 1870 that as social reform progresses, India will become a nation, since India could only become a nation if its division into castes and religious communities was overcome.

I will not go into the early nationalist movement here, or to people who sacrificed their lives for the nation. I will only refer to the Ghadar movement that gave us the largest number of martyrs (before the INA), after acts of armed violence had occurred in Maharashtra, and under the revolutionary nationalists of Bengal. The Ghadar movement arose in the Punjab and among Punjabi settlers in Canada and the United States in 1913-15. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, particularly Sikhs, were greatly involved. But the biggest uprising was the mutiny in Singapore by the Muslim sepoys of 5th Light Infantry, inspired by the Ghadar propaganda and Ghadar agents. Fortyfive of them were shot in a public display in Singapore after the Mutiny had been suppressed. By their bold demeanour in facing death, they deprived the British of the propaganda value of public executions. This was the biggest mutiny in the Indian Army after 1857 with the largest number of martyrs. In the Punjab itself and other places, over 50 people were executed in 1914-15 including Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims.

But some of the records left by the Ghadarites in India are painful to read. Few among the public were supporting them. The people whom they sought refuge with went and reported to the police. They died seemingly unsung. Because the national movement was still limited to a very small number, India was a nation in the eyes of a very small number of people.

Here, I think, one must with almost unconditional, unqualified assertion, say that Mahatma Gandhi was one person responsible for bringing the masses into the National Movement, and so hastening the true creation of India as a nation. In the whole of Indian history before 1913 was there a case of 200 women—Hindus and Muslims—offering to go to prison because Indians were being ill-treated in South Africa? There had been no such protest against the British in India. Against acts of gross injustice, had anyone mobilised 200 women in India before? Speaking of 1913, 2000 miners marched into the Transvaal—the Great March of Indian Miners in South Africa. Indian history had never seen such a thing! Who was the man behind it? M.K. Gandhi had done it and he came to India in 1915 because after this agitation, the South African Prime Minister Smuts surrendered: he abolished Native Poll Tax, he legalised Indian marriages, and he gave some other rights. So Gandhiji came to India.

In 1917, there was the Peasant Satyagraha in Bihar the Champaran Satyagraha, which he led. For the first time in India peasants were brought into a political agitation. And Gandhi said: “When I met peasants I saw God.”He realised that the national movement could only succeed if the Indian peasants and masses of the poor joined the national movement. So we had the April Satyagraha of 1919 and then the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920. Can I quote an Urdu verse here? Akbar Allahabadi had once said that people regarded the British with such awe that he was led to say:Main To Allah Ko Collector Samjha—‘I thought God was a Collector'—since there could not be anything more powerful, more absolute, than the English Collector. But when Gandhiji began his Non-Cooperation everything changed. Then Akbar Allahabadi wrote: ‘Buddhu Miyan Bhi Hazrate Gandhi Ke Sath Hain, Ek Musht-e-Khak Hain Magar Andhi Ke Sath Hain.' (Buddha Miyan is also following Gandhji. He himself is a handful of dust, but he is part of a storm!): What was earlier the role of Buddhu Miyan or the Ordinary Man in Indian history? Nothing! He was nowhere. He is now brought into history. And as more and more ordinary peasants, ordinary women, joined the National Movement, India became more and more of a ‘nation'. Because there is no nation unless the larger number or mass of the people feel that they should be independent and they should rule themselves. With the poor coming to the movement, what do you offer them? What is to be their future? And here I submit Jawaharlal Nehru is very, very important, for from late 1920s he urged that the National Movement should have precise goals for peasants, workers, women, etc. fully worked out. There are also others who were important; Congressmen, revolutionaries Communists, Socialists and others, included; of course, I am not saying that Gandhi and Nehru just together made up the Indian national movement, but they were in fact the two crucial persons.

What did Gandhi Ji have to offer the common man? When you ask this question, you will have to go back to his book, Hind Swaraj (1909). Muslims may find it very gratifying that unlike other Congress leaders Gandhi supported the Indian Councils Act 1909 and its concessions to Muslims. He says, in Hind Swaraj, that those Hindu leaders who opposed the concessions to Muslims were wrong. If our Muslim brothers get extra benefits, what is the harm? Should your brother get something, ought you to be pleased or displeased?—This is what he says in Hind Swaraj. To him, India's past is not Hindu or Muslim but both. India was, he thought, very well governed under the rule of Maharajas and Badshahs, who were guided by Pandits and Maulvis. I myself consider it a horrible state but in Hind Swaraj he considers the government of Badshahs and Maulvis as very good government as compared to that of the British and equates it with those of Rajas and Pandits. He doesn't even condemn the caste system although he opposed untouchability in South Africa and in India too right from the time of his arrival in India in 1915. But this is not criticised in Hind Swaraj. All these things, he believed, would be left to private efforts—his own constructive programme, not government. Government should keep aloof. It is only through private efforts that people should be served. Peasants should be served by the Zamindars or landlords who should be their custodians. In factories, workers should be helped by the owners who should see themselves as their custodians. But in real life this was not sufficient, this was not going to draw the masses to the national movement. Here then was the importance of Leftand particularly of Jawaharlal Nehru. Right from 1928, he demanded not only independence, he also demanded that in independent India, peasants should get land, workers should get protection, women should get equal rights with men, and there should be total democracy with mass suffrage.

These demands were pushed in the Congress by Jawaharlal Nehru with the help of the Left and actually in the Karachi resolution of 1931, approved by the Congress—which I strongly recommend all to read—it was emphasised that the state should pursue “neutrality” towards religions, women should have equal rights with men, peasants should get land and rent-relief, and the state should control the basic industries, indebtedness to moneylenders should be scaled down, etc., etc.

Now, without the Karachi resolution, without these promises, I don't think there could have been that support for the national movement which it obtained in the 1930s and 1940s. In the Civil-Disobedience Movement unprecedented number of peasants went to prison and lost their properties. Remember, going to prison in British rule was not the same as going to prison now; you lost your property, you lost everything, you couldn't get employment, yet over hundred thousand people went to jail in the Civil-Disobedience Movement of 1930. Many lost their lands, properties, everything. They were mostly poor. Unlike the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921, the Civil-Disobedience Movement was the movement largely of the poor and that was the new thing. Once the movement took this form, it became increasingly difficult for British rule to continue.

I want here to bring to your attention something which appeared in the Dawn, the Muslim League organ from pre-1947 days which now comes out daily from Karachi. There was an article abstracted from it, which I read. In that article, the writer said that we have a problem in Pakistan our movement for Pakistan as a nation has no martyr, no hero. Because it never opposed the British rulers, it only opposed our fellow subjects (the Hindus). What shall we look to? Indeed those who went to prison against British rule in what became Pakistan, were Khudai Khidmatgars, Congressmen of the Punjab, nationalists of Sindh, and not the Pakistan leaders. Pakistan is, however, not alone in this problem. It shares it with those who are now in power in India.

The Hindu Mahasabha, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have the same psychological problem. The RSS was founded in 1925: one should ask them, what did you do for twentytwo years [till 1947]? Why didn't you join the National Movement and go to prison? Why don't you do something against the British if you are such great patriots? You ask the Hindu Mahasabha the same question. Savarkar in the Andamans gave an apology thus washing away his whole patriotic past, saying he will not oppose the British Government. He never did so, he only opposed Muslims, propounding a two-nation theory even before Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

What is the RSS doing now? It is looking for other figures like Bhagat Singh to count among its heroes! What has Bhagat Singh to do with the RSS, the man who in the night before execution wrote Why I am An Atheist, the man who said that if there could be any leader from the Congress he could support, it was Jawaharlal Nehru. The man who wrote that Hindu communalism is worse than any other opponent of the National Movement, how can he be your hero? As for Vallabhbhai Patel, do not you know that he always said that he was a close follower of Mahatma Gandhi?

Another hero—they claim—is Subhash Chandra Bose. Did Subash Chandra Bose ever say that there should be a Hindu Rashtra? He even made Iqbal's poem “Sare Jahan Se Achchha Hindostan Hamara” the National Anthem of the Indian National Army. He made Urdu and Hindi official languages of the Azad Hind Fauj. Look at the name —Azad Hind Fauj! He said—Jai Hind; he never said Hindu Rashtra. RSS men never say ‘Jai Hind' after Subhas Bose', nor ‘Inquilab Zindabad', the slogan Bhagat Singh used to employ. Before 1947 I was present at many Congress meetings and I remember that the meetings always started with the audience shouting—‘Inquilab Zindabad' in homage to Bhagat Singh. So, it is wrong when our newspapers say that Bhagat Singh had been forgotten by the Congress or that Subhash Bose once praised the RSS. Serious biographies of Subhash Chandra Bose show that he never had any dealings with the RSS.

RSS heroes like Shyama Prasad Mukherjee or Deen Dayal Upadhyay did nothing against British rule. Why are you exhibiting the latter's photographs in the Jawaharlal Nehru Museum? What did he do in the National Movement? Where was he? Nowhere! Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was a Minister in Bengal along with the Muslim League at the time of the ‘Quit India' Movement (1942). He remained a Minister. He never lifted his finger against British rule, but spoke out only against Muslims. So the Hindutva forces can claim no hero in the National Movement. Their entire theory and entire beliefs are totally opposed to those of the National Movement. Who in the National Movement ever said: “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”? None, It was only the Hindu Mahasabha! Who in the National Movement said: “Hindu Raj Amar Rahe”? None. It was only the RSS! So, you had those slogans directed at Muslims, not the British, and then you say that you actually opposed the British Government! The truth is that you, the RSS, actually supported the British Government because you tried to divide the National Movement; you tried to separate the Hindus and Muslims and so weaken the National Movement. The RSS men have not changed, they are the same! People say why does not Prime Minister Modi issue a statement [on Akhlaq's lynching]? I say what is the use? It would be always hypocritical, so let him remain silent about Dadri!

I now turn to two things: Fight for Secular India and Fight for Prosperous India. These are the two objects for the people of the nation. Since you are students of Aligarh Muslim University, I want you to remember August 1947. Aligarh had been described as the fortress of the Muslim League. We had insulted Abul Kalam Azad when he passed through the Aligarh railway station. What was to be our fate now? The first thing was that Nehru sent the Kumaon Regi-ment to protect the Aligarh Muslim University. But could it protect the whole district, when the whole of what is now Haryana was in flames? In Tappal, there was a massacre of Muslims. Muslim corpses were coming to the morgue in our neighborhood from somewhere all the time. The Kumaon Regiment was trying to protect the city and the university with huge flares by which they could see a crowd at a distance at night. Any time the crowd could come. Only one man stood forth to prevent the destruction of this University and massacres of Muslims in western Uttar Pradesh, and that was Mahatma Gandhi. He was insulted when he went to the Muslim refugee camps at Jama Masjid and he was insulted when he went to the Hindu refugee camps! Day in and day out, he suffered insults. He went to Panipat trying to protect Muslims. On 13th January, 1948, he went on fast. And what were the demands of the fast? One was that Muslims must be protected and those people who had been leading mobs against Muslims must sign that they would not do such thing again. And there were names of RSS and Hindu Mahasabha leaders in his list. He demanded that such Muslims should be allowed as have not gone to Pakistan to return to their homes so that refugees from Pakistan were being asked to vacate such houses for Muslims. This was the first demand and you can see what a huge demand it was in the circumstances. The second demand was that Rs 55 crores, an immense amount for that time, should be paid to Pakistan because Pakistan officials had not received salaries for a month and India had withheld that pledged amount. Can you imagine a man going against his own government in favour of a foreign government? And when he was asked, he said simply: I belong to both countries!

When the fast began on 13 January, 1948 all through Delhi the slogan was ‘Gandhi Murdabad'. There was a procession marching with such slogans towards Gandhiji's prayer meeting. But on the third day of the fast Jawaharlal Nehru addressed a meeting of ten thousand people in front of the Red Fort. I always ask who called that meeting? Did Patel call that meeting? Did Rajendra Prasad call it? Who had the courage to call it and face the crowd? And yet by the time Nehru had spoken the crowd was with him. And then within two further days there was a procession of a hundred thousand people in Delhi. Peasants of Aligarh, peasants of Meerut, peasants also from Muzaffarnagar—perhaps fathers and grandfathers of some of those who participated in the riots recently—were in that procession along with sweeper unions, tongawalas and factory workers, Congressmen and Communists. Thereafter crowds surrounded the houses of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS leaders forcing them to agree to sign pledges and bringing them practically by force to Gandhiji's site of fast until all of them had so submitted. And when Gandhiji ended his fast, and the government paid fiftyfive crores of rupees to Pakistan, violence was over, almost simultaneo-usly in both countries. So, you are not speaking of an ordinary man when you speak of Gandhi. We are speaking of a man of immense courage who didn't care for his personal status or dignity for the larger cause. He was always walking barefoot in total dirt among the homeless victims but he never minded it. He would go again and again to both Hindu and Muslim refugee camps for giving his message that Hindu and Muslims should be brothers and sisters.

So, it has been such people who have made us a nation. Things didn't fall of themselves from the heavens. What happened after independence, I would not go into in great details but touch on some unremembered achievements. For India, it was an immense thing that the Hindu Code was legislated in 1955-56. Hindu women had no right to inheritance, they obtained it now. They had now equal rights with men, except in a very few matters. It represented a total overthrow of the Dharmashastra and not through a coup but through a general election. The Congress (and the Communist Party) went into that election saying that women should have equal rights with men. The Jan Sangh and Ram Rajya Parishad stood up for the Dharmashastra, and they surely need to be asked today, why did you oppose the Hindu Code in the 1950s? Don't you think men and women should have equal rights? But they were totally rejected by the electorate—the Jan Sangh, the precursor of the BJP, as well as the Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad. So, India became a democracy, it changed civil laws where men and women, at least 80 per cent of the population, were made equal though unfortunately unfavourable social customs continue, like dowry. And simultaneously came the agrarian reforms. Millions of peasants throughout India got land. UP had the most radical Zamindari Abolition Act besides Kashmir, but every State legislated such Acts. Finally came the ceilings legislations of the 1960s and the construction of the Indian public sector. The basis of new India, with all its weaknesses that still remain, was thus laid in the 1950s and 1960s.

Well, the real thing is: how have the poor fared? As of recent time, they haven't fared very well. If you read an essay by Utsa Patnaik, The Republic of Hunger, you will see that until 1989 the per capita calories' intake continuously increased after Independence. Even in years of drought some food security was maintained by the Food Corporation's operations, subsidies and so on. Do you know what has happened after 1991? Calories' intake per capita declined! By 2003, it reached the level that it was under British rule. When Mr Modi and Co. speak of capital inflow, or go to various countries where they can give away billion dollars, as in Mongolia, they are only supporting the big private corporations. The RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, very much like Muslim League, never had an economic programme. The poor mean nothing to them; only the rich fund-givers are important. I read today in the newspaper that the upper castes, ‘of course', support the BJP in Bihar [Vidhan Sabha election 2015]. The word “of course” I liked. Not only the upper castes but the upper classes support the BJP. Therefore, in order to rule they must continue to raise communal issues, which is the only way in which they can continue to get votes from a section of the masses. They are not the first to do so, the Nazis did it by raising the racial question in Germany. Golwalkar, the RSS guru, actually praised Hitler for his policy towards the Jews saying that same policy should be resorted to in India against Muslims. So, to keep up the anti-Muslim fervour is now the RSS watchword. No opposition to religious fanaticism, that is, Hindutva can be tolerated. Even an ordinary history textbook which says that the Rig Veda was compiled in 1500 BC—and by implication not in 8000 BC—is unaccep-table. Therefore, what is happening today—the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare, and Kalburgi—is part of a pre-determined pattern: by threats they want to silence people. The Congress didn't much care who served in the ICHR, ICSSR, Jawaharlal Nehru Museum or other similar bodies, but the RSS cares! Everywhere they are filling places with fanatics. Everywhere they are giving a totally wrong picture of Indian history and of the Indian Constitution.

Therefore, on the shoulders of the educated people in India or those who can answer the RSS in print, on paper, in speech, on internet, a great responsibility rests today. A massacre of Muslims is not just an attack on the Muslim community, it is an attack on India as a whole, and large numbers of people are realising it. Read The Indian Express, or The Hindu or The Times of India, and other dailies, the realisation of this is amply there on their pages every day. And I am very glad to see that in the Hindi press too, they are realising it. Now is the time, therefore, for us to forget our small grouses and grievances and stand up together and smash the conspiracy of the BJP and RSS against the very “Idea of India”.

Prof Irfan Habib is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. A specialist in Medieval Indian History, his most outstanding work is Agrarian Relations in Mughal India.

From N.C.'s Writings

Time to Rally

There is nothing unusual for a nation with complex problems to face to go through difficult times, and a great nations like ours with myriads of problems to clear can hardly be expected to enjoy all the time an even tenor of development. Challenges are inevitable for it to encounter, and as it overcomes them, it comes across new heights to climb in its journey ahead.

What is being witnessed today in our country is, however, much more serious and intractable. The challenges before us can hardly be compared to any that had to be faced in the past. Each one of these by itself threatens not only the stability of our politics but practically the entire spectrum of the nation's life. A brief reference to them brings this out clearly.

The economic situation is grim. With five years of profligate spending by the previous regime, serious efforts at recovery have been thwarted by the unexpected Gulf crisis imposing back-breaking burden, which is faced by the people in the form of exorbitant price rise.

There were protracted periods of unrest in Kashmir in the past. There were grievances galore, shortcomings glaring, but there was never a concerted assault on the very proposition of Kashmir being part of this Republic. Pakistan's military and political attacks were warded off effectively whenever they were made in the past. But never before was there such a palpable defiance by militant secessionists, openly proclai-ming their resolve to effect the secession of the Kashmir Valley from India, as could be noticed since last year. Not only that. All political activity has come to a standstill except that of the pro-secessionist groups. Barring those who would prefer to bury their heads in the sand, it would be deceiving ourselves if we do not acknowledge that the government's authority today in the Valley is maintained almost wholly by the force of arms and nothing else. Obviously this cannot go on for long.

In Punjab, the situation may not have deteriorated to that extent. The secessionist Khalistanis constitute a small band, but the militant Sikh youth, unreconciled to conventional politics, resent what they call the Delhi raj; and as it happens in such situations, the moderates are paralysed and the militants dominate.

There have gathered in the North-East dark lowering clouds as various types of discontent are now converging into one formidable challenge of secession taking to the classical form of armed guerrilla action. It is an eerie unquiet that prevades over the seven sisters of the North-East.

Disturbances bordering on anarchy have become the order of the day and primordial loyalties are taking over losing sight of national objectives. An attempt at a modest degree of alleviation of traditional inequities, fostered by a caste-ridden dispensation, has brought out angry and violent offensive by the powerful upper-caste interests as could be seen in the last two months with the govenment decision to reserve government service posts for backward classes as per the Mandal Report.

Looming over it all has come a massive campaign of blatant communalism spearheaded by the BJP with its ally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, clamouring for the dismantling of the old Babri mosque to make room for their projected Ram temple. Despite all the patience and reasoned implorings by the government and the over-whelming section of public opinion, the leaders of the BJP have persisted in their dangerous course which would have inevitably led to the enthrone-ment of theocracy and the displacement of democracy in this country. It was to the credit of Vishwanath Pratap Singh and his government that they preferred to risk the renunciation of power rather than give in to such communal blackmailing.

With all these fearsome challenges converging at the same time, the nation today indeed faces a multi-dimensional crisis. To deal with it requires superhuman endeavour. Those who indulge in liberal attacks on the present leadership of the government forget that the current crisis can hardly be tackled by any single party, even if it had not been beset with frustrated traducers from inside and unscrupulous adversaries from outside. Here is a crisis which can be faced only with the united, determined will of all the patriotic forces, committed to the upholding of democracy. Pettyfogging sniping at each other must cease and opportunism abjured and principles upheld. If the political leaders have demonstrated their inability to come upto the mark, it is for all the patriotic forces to rally together and take the nation out of these turbulent times. 

(Mainstream, Annual Number 1990)

(October 27, 1990)

Insanity Enthroned

After forty years of the foundation of our independent republic, the Frankenstein has appeared again—the monster that is out to destroy democracy and plunge this nation into civil war that shall rend asunder thousands of towns and villages of this great country.

The term, communalism, does not convey the gravity of the crisis that confronts us today—let it be bluntly stated that what we face today is the demon of Hindu-Muslim hatred. Over a large part of this land, particularly in the northern States, straddles today this monstrous hatred in the majority Hindu against the Muslim who must be subjugated and, if unbending, then liquidated. In response to that, the minority Muslim, in deadly despair, tries to hit back as a means of survival.

The map of India today is dotted with bloodmarks—bloodmarks of brothers fighting brothers. Bhagalpur, Bijnore, Hyderabad, Aligarh and Kanpur have today turned into not only the disgrace-points but danger-signals for India's nationhood. The rule of the knife and the bomb has taken over from the so-called guardians of law and order. At every one of these places—and many others yet to come under the spotlight of the media—frenzied hatred has been spread with cynical design to fan the flames of insensate violence in which neighbours of yesterday have butchered each other, and the administration itself got affected in the orgy.

It does not require any academic research to point the finger at the agitation over the temple-mosque controversy at Ayodhya for having polluted the political environment in which communal antipathy has become the order of the day. And once the wind of hatred spread, the flames of violence have caught on unimpeded. The BJP leaders plead innocence, that their plea was for the building of the Ram temple only, but they cannot exonerate themselves from the responsibility of having unleashed forces that have taken to killing and loot. Inevitably, the minority community faced with such a grim situation has, at places, hit back. Hence, mutual hatred spread far and wide.

The time is over for the ideologues of the BJP to come out with the thesis that Islam does not fit into the national mould. They have to realise that the ponderous labours spent in building up such a thesis is being turned into good use by those indulging in killing and looting in the frenzy of communal violence. All the prattle about pseudo-secularism have only added grist to the mill of those who are wielding the long knife in the dark night that has descended over a large stretch of this beautiful land of ours.

For leaders of major political parties too, this is the hour of truth. The hands of a number of them can hardly be regarded as clean as they too in the past have sometime or other indulged in pampering communal urges to secure votes, and quite a few in their respective camps are ready to do so again, once the elections are on the agenda. That is a matter for them to settle with their conscience. What matters today above everything else is that the beast of communal hatred has been let loose and is playing havoc. If this ghastly apparition is allowed to roam about unchecked, there shall be no question of democratic functioning, no elections to legis-latures and Parliament, no civil liberties, but the drum-beat of communal fury with goose-step marching of the hatchet-gangs out to destroy civilised conduct of public life.

At this cross-road of India's destiny, we put this question to our leaders of all parties, those in office and those outside: Can you not bury your hatchets and join hands to stir the vast multitude of this great nation so that the fiendish forces of communal hatred are put down and chased out of our public life for good? This is the moment when your patriotism needs to be tested. Let all other differences and squabbles, allergies and misunderstandings, be set aside, and all, really all, together come forward at the call of the nation.

For heaven's sake, join hands and march shoulder to shoulder to fight the enemy that has entered the gates. Mother India beckons us all. 

(Mainstream, December 15, 1990)

Wanted: Statesmanship of Highest Order

The demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6 inflicted severe damage on our relations with Bangladesh and Pakistan. Whether the demolition squad that brought down the 450-year old structure had any idea about the consequences of their deed, it would be unfair to think that the government could not anticipate that there would be such a virulent outburst of anger over this vandalist act in our two neighbouring countries.

Perhaps the intensity of the flare-up has been more than was expected, but the chain reaction to Ayodhya was inevitable. For years the Babri mosque issue was a festering sore, but with the unlocking of the gates in 1986 by a local Court order—left unchallenged by the Congress Govern-ment of the day—it attracted extraordinary attention and became almost the touchstone of Hindu-Muslim relationship in this country. Hence, the spontaneous nationwide condemnation of those responsible for the misdeed and the reproach of the Central Government for its failure to protect the structure.

If things are allowed to drift and the government chooses to be a helpless bystander instead of taking fresh initiatives to recover the lost grounds, it will not only devalue its authority but the present state of embittered communal misunder-standing would be further accentuated. The instant reaction of the Centre has been to take certain drastic measures at the administrative level—the arrest of some of the leaders of what's called the Sangh Parivar, followed by the banning of five organisations—three Hindu and two Muslim—and ultimately the dismissal of the BJP-ruled State governments and the imposition of President's Rule on them.

These steps have the stamp of being amazingly haphazard. The inclusion of L.K. Advani in the list of those arrested has invited adverse comments by many who can by no means be regarded as friendly to the BJP. The general feeling is that as the accredited Leader of the Oppsition he should have been politically arraigned by the Lok Sabha instead of being detained and then hauled up before a tribunal which can hardly find any evidence of his direct complicity in the demolition of the disputed Masjid.

The clumsy manner in which the ban on the five organisations was clamped down—four days of advance notice, with sufficient loopholes in the charge-sheets—that it hardly redounds to the credit of the Central Government. Compare this with the lightening thoroughness combined with discernment that marked the ban on the Commu-nists in 1948—when the Communist Party as such was not declared illegal but its specific units and organs were.

While nobody has remotely questioned the dismissal of the UP Government since it failed to honour its commitment to the Supreme Court for the protection of the Babri Masjid and the disputed area adjacent to it, the ouster of the three other BJP-ruled State governments of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh by the imposition of President's Rule has been widely criticised even by cricles generally known to be friendly to the Congress. There is little doubt that the action offends the spirit, if not the letter as well, of the Constitution, since one can hardly prove that there was any breakdown of gover-nance in all the three States.

While the public facade put up was that the Congress was determined to oust the BJP from all political vantage points as part of an all-out crusade to combat communalism, one has to take into account the calculation of the hard-headed Congress politicians. With the imposition of President's Rule, the Congress itself would be the virtual ruler of the States concerned. And since all parties in the Opposition are today united in opposing the BJP, the Congress leaders expect that there would be no splitting of non-BJP votes, which will ensure the Congress coming back to office when the elections follow the end of President's Rule. It is not that the Congress leaders are thinking of a coalition with other parties: what they are interested in is to avoid the splitting of votes, which will enable the Congress to emerge as the party with the largest number of seats in each of the affected four States.

The miscalculation in such an anticipation lies in the almost sure possibility that the BJP will reap the harvest of being a martyred party for having upheld the honour and prestige of the Hindu community—the more so when it has the advantage of a well-knit cadre provided by the RSS. No doubt, Congressmen in these four States will be active in the coming months to present themselves as devout Hindus, but there is little chance of the Congress beating the BJP-RSS establishment in the game of one-upmanship as the champion of the Hindu cause.

In fact, the boomerang is already felt. While some of the senior Ministers have been talking during these days about disqualifying the BJP from the election process, Atal Behari Vajpayee's powerful speech in the Lok Sabha has received wide appreciation in many quarters which are firmly anti-communal. Virtually offering regrets for the tragedy of December 6, he asserted not only his commitment to constitutional politics but the right of his party to function within the four corners of the Constitution. The Delhi Administration's ban on his holding an indoor rally and his subsequent arrest, release and Home Minister Chavan's formal assurance to let the BJP carry on its functions as a lawful party—all this has brought out the fact that the government in this crisis has been moving without any strategy while betraying an amazing innocence about the tactical handling of a complex situation.

Faced with a difficult challenge such as the one that confronts it, one would have expected the government to try to placate the moderates and isolate the extremists in the camp of its adversary. This was the failure of the Centre in Punjab in 1983-1984 when, by its maladroit handling, the moderate Akali leaders were pushed into the arms of the militant extremists. And such a handling of the situation, step by step, led to the ‘Operation Bluestar' which in its turn led to the assassination of the then Prime Minister herself. This grim lesson from Punjab should have gone home to the Congress leadership, but there is no sign of the Congress leaders behaving better than the Bourbons. Any mature leadership of the government would have promptly grasped the significance of Vajpayee's outstanding intervention and thereby could have gained by setting its target only on the extremist hotheads in the Sangh Parivar.

Statesmanship is called for in many directions in today's crisis. While active mass campaigning for communal harmony is discernible on the part of a large body of concerned citizens outside the orbit of the ruling establishment, it is imperative on the part of the govrnment to seriously work out immediate steps to improve relations with our two neighbours, particularly with Pakistan.

It is a truism to say that the security of the Muslim minority here and the strengthening of the Hindu-Muslim accord have become the essence of our good relations with our two neighbours. This is dictated by historical circumstances and can hardly be wished way. While the stand that whatever has happened is a matter of India's internal concern is protocol-wise correct, the hard reality is that the maintenance of Hindu-Muslim goodwill acts as a decisive factor in the building of good neighbourly relations with Pakistan and Bangladesh.

To demarcate between Atal Behari Vajpayee and Ashok Singhal, and to discuss with Nawaz Sharif every thorny issue from Kashmir to Ayodhya—are not mutually contradictory. Rather they are called for by the very dialectics of the present complex situation. A crisis of such an unprecedented dimension that faces this country today demands statesmanship of the highest order.

Can this be the order of the day for a government in disarray? 

(Mainstream, December 26, 1992)

Ayodhya and Hindu-Muslim Unity

With December 6 only a month behind, it is too early to assess its long range fall-out. After the instant outburst of violence in different parts of the country, one could however gather reactions from different walks of life.

A dominant feeling among a fairly large section of what may be called the intellectual community that regards itself liberated from the shackles of religious obscurantism, is an overwhelming sense of gloom, of dark despair, that the basic values that they so long cherished, have all crashed. They view the Babri Masjid demolition as a hideous demonstration of fanaticism, and some go further and regard it as the onset of fascism. Talking to a good cross-section of them, one gets the creeping premo-nition that what happened on December 6 might turn out to be the beginning of the disintegration of the country—religious communal fanaticism leading to actual break-up of the country's territorial unity. If such a well-knit authoritarian system as the Soviet Union was, could break up and disappear without even a whimper, what guarantee is there about India not going the Yugoslav way when we could demonstrate such gross insensitivity about each other's feelings and concerns?

The structure of thinking of this elite among the intelligentsia is dominantly based on modern Western education and culture which admits of no communal urges and outlook. Even if a good number of them acquiesce as they do in caste rituals and taboos, they keep away from communal responses. While they participate in social festivals of the community, they as a rule keep away from, or look down upon, any form of community activity. This is true of the intellectual elite of both the communities, Hindu and Muslim. Under the circumstances, there is hardly any space for community interaction between Hindus and Muslims at the intellectual level, barring of course honourable exceptions.

This trend of community alienation began before independence—perhaps in the late thirties as the present writer can recall from personal experience. And it was certainly reinforced by the partition and its blood-soaked aftermath, which wreaked the most grievous damage on the inter-relations between the two largest communities in this subcontinent, namely, Hindus and Muslims.

In the period immediately following indepen-dence, the major concentration of the nation's energy and attention was focussed on economic development and the functioning of a constitu-tional, democratic system. Issues relating to communal diversities, caste barriers as also of the vast sprawling adivasi world were left in a state of laissez faire. The understanding was that with economic development, communal and caste issues will, on their own, be weakened, if not obliterated; at the same time, the expectation was that the bitter alienation generated by the partition would gradually fade away as yesterday's bad dream.

It is worth recalling that when the Mount-batten plan of partitioning the country was accepted by our national leaders, they genuinely believed—at least the top ones among them—that with independence, communal antagonism would progressively weaken and would be finally eliminated with economic development. Hence, there was calculated neglect of the task of fostering inter-communal activity, the means of knowing each other. The intellectual elite, which took such a conspi-cuously active interest in the freedom struggle, even to the point of actually participating in it by many of its adherents, totally neglected their respective communities, leaving these to the exposure to conservative, obscurantist elements. The fact of the matter is that though they opposed the so-called ‘two-nation theory', they acknowledged in practice the principle of partition along communal lines. Since neither history nor geography permitted the wholesale transfer of either of the entire communities, what followed in practice was that the minority community of either of the two countries became largely suspect in the eyes of the majority community in both the countries.

Here was a major failure in nation-building in the decades since independence. The national leadership did not seem to realise the pernicious after-effect of partitioning the country along communal lines. Jinnah felt it in the very morrow of the partition when his mandate before the National Assembly—that in the new state of Pakistan all citzens would be equal—was totally brushed aside and he himself soon faded out of political authority quite sometime before he actually passed away. In the case of India, Gandhi, who had not only demurred with the decision to accept partition but persisted on campaigning for Hindu-Muslim unity, was shot dead less than six months of independence by a young man for whom the idea of Hindu-Muslim unity was anathema in partitioned India. Although police measures were taken at that time against fanatical elements including the RSS, the national leadership undertook no nationwide mass movement to generate the national consciousness that the two commu-nities would have not only to live together but actively work together to build the new India as the proud inheritor of a civilisation enriched by many streams of culture, that there can be no Indian ethos based on the perceptions of one community, however strong in numbers it may be. In the fortyfive years since independence, the issue has been taken up as a ritual and not as an urgent imperative on the national agenda.

This laissez-faire approach could be seen on many issues. When the question of a common civil code was considered as a basic pillar of our democratic structure, the Muslim community was excluded from it—not because the national leadership had sought to look down upon that community, but because it was felt that the orthodox leaders of that community would know best what's good for that community, and since the Muslim orthodox leaders like their Hindu counterparts were opposed to the idea of a civil code, the proposed legislation excluded the entire community from its purview. The national leadership confined its fight for social justice only within the precincts of the majority community to which they themselves largely belonged.

The same mentality of inverted communalism could be seen when Hindu rituals were performed on ceremonial occasions relating to official functions in which Ministers and even the Head of State also participated: there was little understanding of how such ceremonial rituals would have an impact on the minority community. On the one hand, the attitude of don't-touch-the-Muslim community as it must not be made to feel that it was being pressurised by the majority community; and on the other, carry on even in public affairs in a manner that pleases the majority community.

Out of this strange mentality came the compulsions of election politics. In our func-tioning democracy, we are proud that we have been holding regular elections from Parliament to the panchayats. But the system that has come into operation has encouraged the tendency to appeal to caste and communal loyalties of the voter. As the system itself has got corroded over the years, this tendency has been strengthened; hence the emergence of communal/caste vote-banks. And as the vote-banks flourished, there has emerged a whole tribe of brokers in both the communities. As brokers they have a stake in keeping the community under their keep apart from any endeavour at forging a national approach as distinct from the communal or caste approach.

Since no ideological imperative for Hindu-Muslim unity has been built up after the demise of Gandhi, it is but natural that the communities by and large would come under the spell of religious leaders addressing their respective flocks. But the religious leaders are on thier own unconcerned with political activity. And here the political operators flourished in communal garb, claiming themselves as the custodians of communal interests. They have grown as political brokers in the two communities managing their protfolio accounts in the vote-banks. What happened on December 6 at Ayodhya was like the bursting of a scam in the political stock exchange. But it does not follow the brokers are all exposed. The brokers in the minority community are equally active as their counterparts in the majority community.

In the unfolding of this sordid drama, the intellectual elite, without having built a foothold in his own community, finds himself in a state of helplessness. His cry for secularism, for fight against fascism are no doubt well-meaning and they do have some effect, but that could only be a marginal effect—a sort of salvation army squad in the face an earthquake disaster. But marginal relief is also welcome.

What's, however, called for is to bestir those noble souls who have roots in their respective communities. They have to come out of their cloistered eminence and lead their flocks for Hindu-Muslim unity—which alone can provide the bedrock for India's regenerated nationalism.

(Mainstream, January 9, 1993)

EDITORIAL

As the year comes to an end with Mainstream entering its fiftyfourth year, one is reminded of what was written in these very columns a year ago.

Surveying the political scenario of the nation at the end of 2014, it was noted in this journal's Annual Number last year:

Seven months ago the outcome of the 16th Lok Sabha elections resulted in a political earthquake the tremors of which are still being felt even if the intensity of those tremors has lessened with the passage of time. The coming to power at the Centre of the BJP in a decisive mandate with one party securing absolute majority in the Lower House of Parliament found many among the middle classes hailing the unfractured verdict especially when the newly elected ruling party was headed by a leader as strong, powerful and focussed as Narendra Modi who had sought public support during his election campaign on the twin planks of ‘development' and ‘governance' in order to build what he called a ‘Congress-mukt Bharat'. However, those with foresight and endowed with the capacity to analyse the BJP/RSS' motivations and objectives were certain that these planks were actually intended to deceive the gullible and hoodwink the bulk of the electorate.

It would be unfair to make a comprehensive assessment of the Narendra Modi Government since it has been in power for just seven months. Yet the symptoms are already there—the spate of communal riots in UP owe their origin largely to BJP President Amit Shah's policy of effecting communal polarisation in order to garner votes for the party in the elecitons; the project of saffronisation of education has begun in right earnest with pro-Sangh scholars expressing their preposterous views while assailing distinguished academics of international eminence not prepared to accept the former's opinins bordering on the absurd; the concerted drives against love Jihad in the first instance and subsequently for reconversion of minorities to Hinduism in the name of the so-called gharwapsi that has incensed the Opposition reflecting the public outrage outside Parliament (the Upper House of the national legislature has been rocked and continually disrupted in the winter session on this vital issue as the PM was not forthcoming in issuing a firm assurance that such incidents won't recur in the short or long run).

The year, that is, 2015, that has gone by bears testimony to the reinforcement of the trend manifest in 2014. Several incidents took place strengthening the view that with Narendra Modi's assumption to power majoritarian communalism has definitely gone on the offensive with the hapless minorities being the worst victims. This was best manifest in the brutal lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq at Dadri, near the national Capital, merely on the suspicion that he had stored beef in the fridge at his residence. This was not a stray incident. The murder of eminent rationalists—Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi—constituted a vile attempt by the majoritarian fascists to silence the voice of such personalities who were not prepared to submit to the whims of the irrational obscurantists steeped in dogmatism of the religious brand. These killings clearly pointed to these elements having drawn sustenance and received encouragement from leading figures of the Narendra Modi dispensation.

The natural outcome of such developments (as also the anti-minority riots as in UP) was a growing sense of insecurity among the minorities in general. This was effectively articulated by superstar Aamir Khan at a gathering of the elite in Mumbai: he confessed, in utter frankness, that his wife had asked him some days ago if it would not be worthwhile to at least think of migrating to some other place, in the wake of the recent incidents of intolerance and violence against minorities, for the sake of their son. Instead of trying to understand and comprehend the pain of the actor inherent in his candid statement and seeking to soothe his hurt sentiments, the BJP-RSS stalwarts now in power trageted him for his utterances which, in their view, would tarnish the image of India in the comity of nations.

Against such a backdrop prominent writers, artists, scholars, scientists, film-makers—recipients of awards for their creative work and acheivements—have come forward to return those awards as a token of their protest against acts of intolerance and violence as mirrored in the Dadri mob-lynching episode as well as the wanton killing of renowned rationalists. They have been subjected to vicious verbal assauts by the Sangh Parivar constituents with the RSS taking the lead in such onslaughts.

All these developments, which have punctuated the political scene of 2015, pose a distinct threat to the idea of India as all of us have known it since the dawn of our independence.

However, this is not the only feature of this year.

One of the most striking events of 2015 was the outcome of the Bihar elections. These elections saw the total rout of the BJP-led NDA coalition which was literally humiliated in the State despite PM Narendra Modi having undertaken a whirlwind tour of Bihar and addressed a record number of election rallies which were largely attended. Whereas the mahagathbandhan (or ‘grand alliance') of the JD(U), RJD and Congress won the lion's share of 178 of the 243 seats in the State Assembly, the NDA had to be content with a paltry 58 while the others (including the Left) bagged only seven seats. It was indeed a moral defeat for the PM (which somenow he did not acknowledge in so many words). Actually this was the second major setback for the ruling coalition at the Centre, especially the BJP, the first having been in February this year at Delhi where the BJP could bag a mere three seats in the State Assembly having conceded defeat in all the remaining 67 seats to the Aam Aadmi Party notwithstanding Modi's personal campaign. But politically Bihar is far more important than Delhi and here the BJP had won a thumping victory in the Lok Sabha polls only in May 2014. In that sense it can be stated that the electorate of Bihar, under CM Nitish Kumar's dynamic leadership (with the unstinted support of former CM Laloo Prasad Yadav and the Congress acting as the cohesive force in the mahagathbandhan), has been able to halt the Modi juggernaut. This is of phenomenal significance because if the reverse, that is, the BJP-led alliance's triumph, had happened in Bihar, that would have made Modi and the majoritarian communalists enjoying his patronage unstoppable.

Even if he did not publicly concede his humiliation in the State, since the Bihar election results Modi's utterances have undergone a perceptible change both at home and abroad and he is now bending over backwards to convey that he is not what his detractors are attempting to show him to be. But this is just a tactical move on his part. At least that is the dominant impression of secular democrats of all hues.

However, there is no gainsaying that the Bihar results have also forced Modi to change his policy-course with regard to Pakistan. This is evident from the latest positive turn in India-Pakistan ties. This is doubtless a welcome sign that merits wholehearted acclaim.

Nevertheless, what is undeniable is the fact that Bihar has established that if all the secular parties unite in the electoral battlefield, they can defeat the Modi-Shah duo that is in no way invincible. The Bihar victory of the Nitish-led combination is all the more noteworthy as there was a deliberate move by the SP and its allies (including the NCP), MIM leader Owaisi as also the Left consolidation [of the CPI-ML (Liberation), CPI and CPM] to split the secular votes. Thankfully the disruptors' attempt in this regard has been thwarted by the enlightened voters of Bihar who have shown them their place. In future one hopes that all the them would be able to draw proper lessons from the Bihar verdict.

Precisely this is what was underlined in these columns a year ago:

... it is increasingly becoming as clear as daylight that if the juggernaut of the BJP/RSS dispensation headed by Narendra Modi and his Sancho Panza, Amit Shah, is to be halted in its tracks there is no alternative but for the secular democratic forces across the nation (including those of the Left) to unite to save the country from the depredations of the Sangh Parivar which now claims to control the levers of power in governance. This effort doesn't brook the slightest delay. And as in the past, Mainstream reaffirms its resolve to extend full support and help to this endeavour to the best of its ability.

In the first issue of this journal (which came out in September 1, 1962) it was pointed out in the editorial that “it shall be our endeavour to try relentlessly to demolish the wall of misundersanding, mutual suspicion and even personal pique that divides progressive sections in the country from one another”.

That remains the policy-perspective of this periodical even today.

In fact when dark clouds of uncertainty and chaos are hovering over the Indian horizon with the setting turning ominous as never before, that policy-perspective assumes greater significance than at any time in the past.

At the end of 2015, with the import of the Bihar election results fresh in our minds, we can only reaffirm the pledge to defeat the fissiparous forces unleashed by the Modi dispensation by repeating those lines.

Let it be abundantly clear: the primary task today is to defend, protect and preserve with all our strength the idea of India still under threat from the majoritarian offensive of those in power.

December 21 S.C.

TRIBUTE

by Ranbir Singh

The passing away of Prof Randhir Singh of the University of Delhi on January 31, 2016 has resulted in an irreparable lost to the discipline of Political Science. He was, indeed, a teacher with a difference in many ways.

Firstly, he was one of those rare teachers who gave priority to the interests of their students instead of getting higher posts through research manipulating their promotions. So much so that he concentrated on teaching instead of doing Ph.D or publishing books and papers for advancing his career. He taught with a passion and communicated his lectures in a very powerful manner. He kept his students spell-bound by his skill and his deep understanding of the subject.

Secondly, Prof Singh could be placed in the category of the vanishing tribe of organic intellec- tuals or public intellectuals or academi-cians as activist. He not only used his intellect for performing his professional duties but also worked actively for the cause of the peasant, the workers, the Dalits, the tribals and the women and the minorities.

Thirdly, he was a one-man army who stopped the juggernaut of American behviouralism which had hypnotised the political scientists of India in the 1960s. He made them realise that bahavioural approach is not helpful for under-standing the political reality of India. Prof Singh also convinced them that the concepts of political development, political socialisation, political culture and political communication too are of any use for this purpose. As a matter of fact, he convinced them that it is only the Marxian approach based on class analysis which can help us in comprehending the character of the power structure in India.

Fourthly, he was an unconventional Marxist, and was not at all dogmatic in his approach. Prof Singh was not a ‘Sarkari Marxist' who supported authoritarian regimes and state repression.

Lastly and above all, he was an excellent human being who changed the lives of all those who cared to come in his contact by encouraging and helping them from time to time. For me, who had the good fortune of coming in contact with him in 1973 when he visited Kurukshetra University on an invitation from Prof V.S. Budhraj, the then head of the Department of Political Science, for delivering a lecture. I also had the good fortune spending with him a week when both of us had gone for an on-the-spot evaluation in the Department of Political Science, Himachal Pradesh University. Prof Singh advised me to do Ph.D instead of remaining confined to teaching. He told me that it took him a long time to get recognition because of his decision to not do so. Hence his demise is a personal loss to me. So it is for a large number of his students and colleagues in Delhi and other universities of India who came into his contact during his long and never-ending innings as a great teacher even after his formal retirement.

Prof Ranbir Singh is a former Dean, Social Sciences and Academic Affairs, Kurukshetra University.

IMPRESSIONS

Yaksha asked: “What is ignorance?” Yudhi-shthira replied: “Not knowing one's duty.” That was a perfect answer in the days of Sanatana Dharma when good was good, bad was bad and all were agreed on what was duty. Sanatana Dharma is no longer practised in our country. So what is good is bad for some, what some see as duty is seen by others as abuse of duty. As a result, things that should never happen in a civilised nation—and has never happened in India before—are happening now.

A lawyer shouted slogans inside a court that was in session in the Supreme Court. No doubt he considered it his duty to violate his professional oath. Some two dozen lawyers inside the High Court premises in Delhi attacked students and journalists. Despite nationwide condemnation, the same lawyers repeated their violence the next day, this time throwing stones even at the eminent lawyers deputed by the Supreme Court to report on the situation. No doubt these lawyers considered it their duty to behave like street rowdies. On both days of violence, the police decided that their duty was to do nothing. Lawyers and policemen turned political partisans in what was obviously a planned ideological showdown. In today's India Yudhishthira would not have got away with his generic reference to duty.

Our country is in turmoil. Headlines are all about disturbances and violence, lynchings and suicides, about politicians speaking without restraint; one MLA, after belabouring a student outside the court premises in Delhi, said that it would be proper to kill anyone who mouthed “anti-national” slogans. The word “national” has become, like duty, a freewheeling term, its meaning changing with the politics of the user. Outfits with differing definitions of patriotism, such as Maoists, Kashmiri separatists, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Parishad have entered the fray with menacing moves.

Extremism often scares its own children. Three leaders of the Hindutva student union, ABVP, have resigned from their union posts in Jawaharlal Nehru University in protest against the government's policy of “oppression” against students. Their letter said: “Every day we see people assemble at the front gate of JNU with the Indian flag to beat up students. This is hooliganism, not nationalism.”

JNU turning into a war zone is a blow to higher education in India. The basic role of universities is to develop the spirit of inquiry in young minds, to foster dissent and debate. But things have been moving in the opposite direction in our universities lately. Ugly controversies, triggered by political interference, marked the recent history of the Madras Institute of Technology, Punjab University, Banares Hindu University and even Shantiniketan. Sedition charges are freely employed to silence critics. As the Supreme Court put it, “Something extra-ordinary is going on in this country.”

The real tragedy is that we cannot discuss these issues in a rational and mature way. Partisan politics does not welcome reasoning; a lone lawyer who supported JNU students was surrounded, beaten up and thrown out of the court compound by the activist lawyers. How then can reason prevail? British novelist Julian Barnes once said that “the greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonourably”. He was not dubbed anti-national in his country. We are different, we honour manufactured nationalism. And we enforce it without mercy.

A healthy mixture of nationalism and mercy would have cleansed our penal code by removing, or at least amending, the colonial era law on sedition. Britain itself abolished it in 2009. But both the Congress and BJP want to keep it in the statute books because it provides an easy way to shackle inconvenient people. As we fight and attack one another and turn universities into battlegrounds and courtrooms into slogan-shouters' arenas, we jeopardise our plans to progress economically. A disunited people cannot provide the environment for progress, economic or otherwise. The world wonders about our efforts to become a global power-house.

Yaksha asked: “What enemy is invincible? What is the incurable disease? What sort of man is noble and what sort ignoble?” Yudhish-thira answered: “Anger is the invincible enemy. Covetousness is the incurable disease. He is noble who desires the wellbeing of all creatures, and he is ignoble who is without mercy.”

We, the undersigned, condemn the ongoing harassment of senior professors of Delhi University Dr Ali Javed, Prof Nirmalangshu Mukharji and Dr Vijay Singh in the name of questioning over a seminar which is construed as an anti-national event. These professors were kept in the police station till 3 am at night and have been subjected to questioning for nearly 12 hours a day. Dr Tripta Wahi was also called for questioning on Monday (February 15) but allowed to leave in the evening.

All this is related to a meeting held at the Press Club in which Dr Ali Javed, Prof. Nirmalangshu Mukharji, Dr Vijay Singh and Dr Tripta Wahi had participated and spoken. It seems a case is being tried to be made that it was an anti-national meeting and these four academics who are involved in it.

Dr Ali Javed has made it very clear in his letter to the Press Club and in his statement to the police that he was not the organiser of the event. His role was confined to get the venue for Dr S.A.R. Geelani booked at his request. All four of them had spoken very clear in the meeting that for them the Indian Constitution was supreme. All problems, including that of Kashmir, needs to be resolved in the framework of the Constitution. They had also made it abundantly clear that they did not regard Afzal Guru as a martyr.

We also want to emphasise that India has a long tradition of various types of anti-establish-ment campaigns which have only strengthened Indian democracy and made it more robust and resilient. The state alone does not represent India. It is the people, of different shades and hues, of differing ideas of democracy which make India. India has witnessed protests in Mizoram, Nagaland, Bodoland, Manipur, Gorkhaland and other places. To criminalise expression of dissent and protest would subvert the very idea of a free and democratic India.

The Indian state cannot be allowed to turn into a police state which believes in only one kind of ‘nationalist' ideology. Expression of frustration and even anger by people who have a feeling of being wronged by the state cannot be termed seditious.

Kashmiri people, as Indian citizens, have a right to express themselves, however disagree-able their protest might be to some of us, as long as it is not a violent act.

The atmosphere of fear and intimidation that has been built in the last week bodes ill for Indian democracy. The capitulation of the Press Club before the police, its alacrity in lodging a complaint against the organisers of the above- mentioned event and its act of termination of the membership of Dr Ali Javed shows that autonomy of institutions is under severe stress.

For the last four days the four academics are being harassed by keeping them at the police station for long hours. It's very distressing and disturbing that all this is happening in the Capital of India and involves four well-known academics who have all their life fought for democratic and secular values of India and are being subjected to constant harassment.

We demand that the Delhi Police stop subjecting these senior academics to needless harassment and indignity.

Anil Chowdhary,

Social Activist;

Apoorvanand,

Professor, Delhi University;

Dhruv Narain,

Publisher; Dilip Simeon, Historian;

Harsh Kapoor,

Social Activist;

Kavita Krishnan,

Secretary, AIPWA;

Manisha Sethi,

JTSA;

Manoj Jha,

Professor, Delhi University;

Manoranjan Mohanty,

Former Professor, Delhi University;

Mansi Sharma,

Social Activist;

Nandini Sundar,

Professor, Delhi University;

N.D. Pancholi,

Advocate;

Ovais Sultan Khan,

Social Activist;

Rahul Govind,

Professor, Delhi University;

Ritwik Agarwal,

Professor, Delhi University;

Sanghmitra Mishra,

Professor, Delhi University;

Shabnam Hashmi,

Social Activist;

Sohaib Ahmad,

JTSA;

Sumit Chakravartty,

Journalist (February 17, 2016)

MUSINGS

State tyranny has reached campuses. This government is using every single ploy to crush any voice of dissent, to spread around an air of confusion, and to unleash terror. What happened at the JNU campus has layers to it. Foremost, it shows this government's desperate attempt to shift focus from Rohith Vemula's death at the Hyderabad University. It was a known fact that on February 23 hundreds of students from the different universities of the country would be reaching New Delhi to focus on the basic fact that Rohith was pushed into killing himself because of the dictates of two key Ministers in the Modi Cabinet... And the government thought it could shift focus with all possible twists well fitted into the JNU episode. It's a different matter altogether that students across the country can see through the ploys at work and are getting united by the day ...raising their voice against the tyranny of the very system hounding them.

Another emerging trend. A bunch of muscle- men—a private sena of sorts—seems to have been hired/trained/lured by this Right-wing govern-ment to beat and scare. This was writ large last fortnight when students who were protesting about Rohith Vermula's death outside the RSS headquarters were brutally assaulted by not just cops but also ‘unidentified men'. The same was writ large this week when students and scribes were beaten and threatened out there in the open, just outside the court ... This time BJP MLA O.P. Sharma and another BJP man Vikram Chauhan were caught on camera, beating and threatening unarmed students. And it's said that it's these musclemen who had managed to sneak into the JNU campus that fateful night and were part of the bigger ploy to raise slogans and cause the expected aftermath.

Expectedly O.P. Sharma and Vikram Chauhan were not arrested. Why? Quite obviously their Right-wing connections provide the necessary cushioning... If they were apolitical citizens or creatures from any other political outfit they would be sitting in a lock-up with all possible charges on their head.

Then, the basic query which each one of us has to ask, is entitled to ask—where is that democracy which promises that each one of us can think and talk and express and question and query and raise our voice as freely as possible? Alas! that basic sense of freedom crumbling ...going ....gone! Only there for the rulers of the day but not for us ...we the masses cannot even raise our voice at the tyranny going on! What is happening is nothing short of what was expected to happen if pracharacks and mahapracharacks govern!

Correct me if I'm wrong, soon a day could come when each one of us could have to carry an ID card with this one liner—‘I'm a Muslim/Dalit/Christian/Tribal/Leftist/Marxist/Trade Unionist... but no terrorist!'

Tyranny is on ...going on. When young students are getting pulled and pushed around to such an extent that the likes of Rohith Vemula couldn't cope with the daily dose of humiliation and killed himself. And now with this crackdown on the JNU campus and arrest of its students, including the President of the Students' Union, Kanhaiya Kumar, there is not just spotlight on the crumbling system but also on the ruthlessness with which voices of dissent are getting crushed.

There could be a hundred definitions of terrorism and terrorists. Why should I go only by your definition? For me, the masterminds behind the Babri Masjid demolition and also those behind the Gujarat pogrom 2002 are the biggest terrorists ... for they destroyed the very togetherness of this country, they sowed seeds of hatred and divisions. amongst the masses.

Today, all sort of distractions are getting fitted in by this government to bring about an air of confusion. Desperation to such an extent that even the utterances of that double or triple agent, David Headley, are being taken as truth! Can we stoop to such a level to put terror-striking agent David Headley and his utterances up there! Shame ...shame!

Don't ruin Educational Institutions... Jnu being one of the best in this Subcontinent

Each time I am inside the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, I wonder why people have moved outside it! After all, it comes across as a well-structured university township, with an air of connectivity to it. Unlike a typical university campus, there is less of chaos and more of the sprawling spread... complete with lush greenery and tall trees and well-defined roads which lead to a destination of sorts.... To an ‘outsider' or a casual visitor to the JNU campus, it seems an extension of a dreamy academic getaway, set in an isle of calm. Yes, the calm does get broken by stray dogs holding forth at every turn or crossing, intimidating people with ferocious barks and at times attacking them. However, most—insiders and outsiders—seem to overlook this drawback, highlighting the other aspects... There is no denying that there is something to this university that makes it stand out. It is well known not just in the country but also in the subcontinent and beyond.

In fact, when I had read Dr Rakesh Batabyal's book, JNU: The Making of a University (Harper Collins), I got a whole new insight into the inception of this institution, together with the lesser known aspects—from details of its first Vice Chancellor, the political ideologies to campus life....

by Sankarshan Thakur

Kewal Varma, the veteran journalist who led The Telegraph's team of reporters in New Delhi through the tumultuous 1980s and 1990s, passed away on January 25. He was 84.

Kewalsaab was a guru. Kewal Varma rings wrong, he was forever and for everyone Kewal-saab. For those of us who had the fortune of apprenticing in his shade, his passing is the opening of a void that won't be filled.

I came to this tribe of ours callow and quite collegiate in 1984. Delhi's Indian Newspaper Society (INS) building was a forbidding portal, roving with the profession's eminences. Among them was this striking likeness of Michael Foot—darting eyes behind professorial glasses, a mop of snow-white hair, an air that told you this man knew things you didn't.

Kewalsaab's great and salient quality was how ever-ready and willing he was to share his accumulated richness with anyone willing to receive it. Some of us from a different generation got extremely lucky.

Unlike most editors of his time, Kewalsaab never believed in sitting moated from mortal reporters in his ivory tower; he came to you with

an energy you wouldn't normally expect of a portly white-haired elder. But then you wouldn't expect a man of that description to walk into office in white sneakers. It didn't matter if he was in grey flannels or a pin-striped three piece, he only ever wore white sneakers. “Keeps you active,” he'd say. “On your toes.”

He walked to and back from Parliament each day that it sat, he would often make more than one sortie a day. And each time, he'd return with

either a crackling anecdote or a provocative idea. Few people were as proactively and consistently engaged as he. “Khabar kya hai? Ho kya raha hai? (What's the news, what's happening?)” he was forever asking, forever willing to hear.

Except when he donned those leather ear muffs to shut himself off the permanent clamour of The Telegraph's bureau room to write his piece, there was never a dull moment around Kewalsaab. When it threatened to get dull, he could be trusted to fire things up. One afternoon he said something so outrageous, a junior colleague picked up a Remington portable and flung it in his direction. She missed; Kewalsaab ordered gulab jamuns from the canteen to douse her anger. There was a time when so many young ladies populated Kewal-saab's bureau, someone cheekily stuck a bill on the entrance to The Telegraph offices. It read: “Kewal Mahilaayen”.

When V.P. Singh was rallying the Opposition against Rajiv Gandhi on the Bofors issue, Kewalsaab thought it an alarming moment. He knew he was running against the prevailing political temper but that barely seemed to bother him. Blind anti-Congressism, he would tell us to exasperation, was a bad idea for India. “You don't realise it but such politics will eventually strengthen communal forces, it is not about the Congress or Rajiv, it is about what a weakened Congress will unleash.”

In his departure, those words echo eloquently today. Kewalsaab never thought much of V.P. Singh's politics—“phukre hain”, bunch of losers. But he had emotional investments in the Left, and he appeared deeply disappointed the Communists “don't realise the perils of what they are doing by pitting themselves against the Congress“.

To many it seemed an overblown analogy to make, but when the Babri Masjid was demolished in December 1992, Kewalsaab called it Gandhi's

second assassination. “This is another death blow to the idea of India... it will be an uphill task to recover from this.“

He was obdurately unwilling to be persuaded he was wrong. It cannot be Kewalsaab ever tuned off the world around him, even in what had become a reclusive retirement. It cannot be he went away pleased his dire prophecy had begun to ring right.

(Courtesy: The Telegraph)

The author is the Roving Editor of The Telegraph daily, Kolkata. He was among several journalists mentored by Kewal Varma.

by Dwijen Bose

The BJP leaders from Prime Minister down-wards are unsparing in their criticism of the Congress. But paradoxically the NDA Govern-ment is following almost all the major policies of the UPA Government, including its economic policy of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation and its foreign policy of widening and deepening India's ‘strategic partnership` with the United States. Recently some reports have appeared in the foreign press that the NDA is engaged in (unannounced) parleys with Washington on a military Logistics Support Agreement (LSA). If this agreement is finally reached, all the major Indian seaports and airports will come under the ‘absolute control' of the Americans. What is intriguing is that the Modi Government has not contradicted these reports. This lends credence to the veracity of what has been reported.

The proposal of an LSA is not new. It has been there for quite some time. For instance, a paper by Saroj Bishoyi titled Logistics Support Agreemen: A Closer Look at the Impact on Indo-US Strategic Relationship and published in the Journal of Defence Studies (organ of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses) as far back as 2013, deals with the LSA in extenso. It says, inter alia, that:

“The crux of the defence cooperation is related to defence procurements, transfer of dual-use technologies, research and development, and India's defence industrialisation. The two countries now talk about collaborating on multi-national operations and strengthening the ability of their armed forces to respond quickly to disaster situations by mitigating logistics shortfalls. The US even looks towards building a long-term strategic partnership with India to support its ability to counter the emerging security threats and to develop procedures for facilitating cooperation infuture contingencies. However, such practical cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries and their ability to perform effectively get affected by the absence of proper logistics support arrangements. For removing such barriers and enabling practical cooperation, the US first proposed a Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), the India-specific version of the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), at the sixth meeting of the India-US Defence Policy Group (DPG) in June 2004. The arrangement aimed at the exchange of logistics support, supplies, and services between the armed forces of the two countries on reciprocal basis.” (Italics mine.—D.B.)

What is adumbrated is, in fact, an India-US military alliance. Jawaharlal Nehru never agreed to such an alliance. Even in the wake of the humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Chinese in 1962, Pandit Nehru refused to go under a US ‘umbrella' which was proferred to him at that time and tenaciously stuck to his policy of non-alignment. He was critical of all military alliances like the NATO, MEDO, SEATO, ANZUS, etc. It may be recalled in this connexion that the Soviet Union entered into the Warsaw Pact with her Eastern European allies only as a response to the NATO which sought to encircle the Soviet Union.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at the beginning of his tenure as a politician as the Finance Minister in Narasimha Rao's Cabinet, first scrapped the Nehru-Mahalnobis paradigm of development in which both public and private sectors would co-exist side by side but it is the public sector which would occupy the ‘comman-ding heights' of the economy. Thirteen years down the line, as the Prime Minister of the UPA Government, he abandoned the policy of non-alignment and opted for the policy of ‘strategic partnership' with the USA, although India had become far stronger militarily in the last fifty years.

The proposed LSA is, without doubt, a part of the US policy to contain China—its rising military strength and domineering stance which aims eventually to surpass the USA as a military power and emerge as the world hegemon. It is with the express objective of containing China that India has held several joint naval exercises with the US, Japan and Australia in recent times. Also without doubt, China's hostility to India has been unrelenting in the past half-a-century. But that does not, per se, provide a rationale to India's entering into a military alliance with the US which will compromise or abridge India's sovereign rights and deny its right to make independent policy options in times of crisis. The LSA will also undoubtedly further antagonise Beijing. Clearly, the LSA or any such Indo-US alliance will be a one-way street: it will be used in the interest of the US. When US and Indian interests do not coincide, it is the US interests that will prevail and decide how the agreement is implemented.

India has been facing continual terrorist attacks, big and small, planned and carried out by Pakistan and its ISI behind the fig-leaf of ‘non-State actors'. This fact is quite well to known to the US. Still, Washington continues to keep military ‘parity' between India and Pakistan. It continues to give financial aid and supply military hardware to Pakistan on the specious plea of helping Islamabad in the ‘global war on terrorism', knowing full well that such help will be used against India.

In fact one of the articles that has appeared in the foreign press says that the US wants to rope in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well so that it has complete control over this part of Asia not only vis-à-vis China but also Russia with which India has a long-standing relationship of mutual trust and cooperation. If signed, the LSA will enable the US to use Indian seaports and Army and Air Force airports for deployment and actual warfare. India's growing proximity to the US is worrying Russia at a time when Washington is vigorously pursuing a policy of isolating Russia and imposing economic sanctions on it in the wake of the Ukraine dispute. This has driven Moscow closer to Beijing. It is a development that works against India's overall strategic interests.

Two decisions taken by the Modi Government on assuming power in the field of defence were unexpected. One was to ‘scale down' the size of the Mountain Strike Corps which the UPA Government had decided to raise specifically to meet the growing Chinese threat in the North-East and to operate in Tibet if needed. The excuse the NDA offered was the high cost of its raising—Rs 64,678 crores. Much work had already been completed by then. But halfway the project was all but abandoned. It was said the money needed would instead be spent on building aircraft carriers. How the strengthening of the Navy could be a substitute for what the Army desperately needed for land-fighting in the North-East was not explained.

The second unexpected decision was to go slow over the acquisition of 126 French Rafale Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA). The Rafale was selected by the IAF from among six alternatives it had including one offered by the USA. The fleet strength of the IAF had been reduced to a mere 24 squadrons against the sanctioned strength of 40 squadrons. The IAF desperately needed to phase out its old fighter aircraft to retain its air superiority over Pakistan and replenish its fleet strength. When the French Rafale was selected after extensive trials in preference to the US alternative, Washington was palpably unhappy.

It was said the high cost of the Rafale was delaying the completion of the acquisition process and negotiations were on with the French for a mutually acceptable price. During Prime Minister Modi's visit to France in April last year, it was reported that for the present India would buy 36 Rafales in a fly-away condition in view of the ‘critical operational requirements' of the Indian Air Force. Co-production of the aircraft in India with the HAL was being discussed, but the French were not prepared to guarantee the performance of the aircraft built by the HAL. On the Indian side there were those who questioned the selection of the Rafale in the first instance.

When President Francois Hollande visited India during the Republic Day celebrations this January, there were press reports that the Rafale deal had not figured at all during Hollande's stay in India. Now the Rafale deal seems to be as good as dead because nothing has been heard either about the Rafale deal after this or about India seeking other sources for acquiring the required number of MMRCA the need for which is increasing by the moment.

The question of an India-US Logistics Support Agreement has re-surfaced at this time. If India is drawn into a comprehensive defence alliance with the US, with Washington having total and unconditional access to and control over our air and sea ports, it is quite likely that India will be asked to buy all its military hardware from the US or from close US allies like Israel.

What the country wants to know is whether the Indian defence policy is going to be dovetailed into the US defence policy and subordinated to it. If the USA were to be engaged in a war which was not in India's interests, or one in which India did not want to get involved, would India be willy-nilly dragged into it? The hush-hush manner in which the LSA talks are being held raises all these uncomfortable questions. The Modi Government owes an answer to the people.

by Murzban Jal

Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degra-dation, at the opposite pole. Karl Marx

At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium — the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie, and bands of the de-classed and demoralized lumpenproletariat; all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy. Leon Trotsky

Why are today so many problems perceived as problems of intolerance, not as problems of inequality, exploitation, injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, not emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? The immediate answer is the liberal multiculturalist's basic ideological operation: the “culturalization of politics”—political differences, differences conditioned by political inequality, economic exploitation, etc., are naturalized/neutralized into “cultural” differences, different “ways of life,” which are something given, something that cannot be overcome, but merely “tolerated.” To this, of course, one should answer in Benjaminian terms: from culturalization of politics to politicization of culture. The cause of this culturalization is the retreat, failure, of direct political solutions (welfare state, socialist projects, etc.). Tolerance is their post-political ersatz. Slavoj Zizek

Europe is Being Attacked! The “Eurobians” are Coming!

“Eurobians” is a very fictitious group of people, just as “Eurobia” is an imagined nation. Accordingly to phantasmagorical imagination invented by the Zionist Industrial Military Complex, “Eurobia” is Europe conquered by Arabs. Consequently “Eurobians” are Arabs who have not only entered Europe, but entered to conquer it. “Eurobians” are thus not only Arabs who live in Europe, they are Arabs invading Europe. And with the crisis in Syria and the mass migration of Syrians to neighbouring countries, these imagined “Eurobians” have turned into reality.

Take the case of the survey done in the USA on December 18, 2015 carried out by Public Policy Polling, when it was found out that 30 per cent of the Republican primary voters say that they support bombing a place called “Agrabah”. “Agrabah”, for those not having much knowledge in the arts and cinema, is from Disneyland's 1992 movie Aladdin. The fact that Republican voters want to bomb imaginary lands is the larger part of the macabre phantasies created by the global Media Industry. Whilst Agrabah is a work of fiction, Eurobia is also the same kind of imaginary-hallucinated work. Yet the latter functions as a real part of imperialist geo-politics and American foreign policy.

If for Israel and the European far Right, Muslims (from Aladdin to the modern Eurobians) flood into their countries making mosques, wearing veils and skull caps and then robbing people of their jobs and other possessions and then finally bombing cafes and concerts, the RSS, well before the European Right-wing discovered the imagined evil acts of Muslims and Arabs, had already made it their policy in the 1920s which led to the Balkanisation of the Indian subcontinent. They could in this sense take the credit to being the inventors of the imagined lands of Eurobia and Agrabah. They would be the real originators of the theme: Terrorists in Disneyland!

But if the European Right-wing is facing a phantom of their own imperialist intervention and invention (namely, Arabs entering Europe), the Indian liberal who imagines that fascism will bring in development in India is plagued by his own “Eurobian” imagination. In India, it must be noted, the liberal (whether the Indian or the global liberal) loves the Indian fascist. We find a certain postmodern pastiche that Fredric Jameson had outlined around two decades ago. According to Jameson, pastiche is “blank parody, a statue with blind eyeballs”.1 But not only do we have this postmodern pastiche, we have now (to recall Jameson once again) “schizo-phrenic disjunction or ecriture” which gives rise not to pain and suffering (that is, pain at the cruelties of wars), but to “joyous inten-sities....(and) euphoria,”2 in fact euphoria for imperialism and imperialist wars. But here we have ecriture that goes far beyond postmodernity and far behind into the dark ages of the rise of European fascism, that is, somewhere in the 1920s and early 1930s. This postmodern-premodern kitsch is of the liberal and the fascist all mixed up as the Indian nationalist, the nationalist who appears as a statue with blind eyeballs rejoicing at the gory acts of imperialism. The ability to have pain and relate to suffering is totally repressed. Let us have a look at this postmodern-premodern ecriture that has declared war on terror and now decided to bomb Disneyland's Agrabah. Once it was thought that Waziristan is the most dangerous place on earth. Now we hear that it is Agrabah. The mighty military forces of the American military with the help of Donald Duck and the RSS will finally destroy the terrorists.

What we see here however is that to help the Yanks, Mr Duck and the RSS Inc, the Indian liberal marches in. The Indian liberal does not think that the present political disposition is fascist. That is why we say that suddenly out of the blue when it became obvious to intellec-tuals and artists that the RSS-led government would true to its words start the process of converting secular and democratic India into a fascist managerial corporate state, and they started returning their national awards in protest against the fascistisation of public life, an avalanche of criticism was unleashed by certain liberals. This form of liberalism in India showed that beneath their liberal skins lay the not-so-rational kernel draped in saffron flag. Strange as it may seem, those who were thought to fly the tricolour on their patriotic mansions, have instead flown the saffron flag.

Writing in a national newspaper, a certain liberal writer claiming to be a “senior advocate” said that the idea that India was getting intolerant under this fascist dispensation was a myth.3 His argument is that “India's Consti-tution and Parliament have always protected the rights of minorities”. The argument is legalist in nature. But behind this liberal's legalist arguments stands the Indian liberal's fascist half.

This essay intends to show how Indian liberals, who do not openly support the RSS' idea of converting India into a fascist state, have deep-rooted anti-Muslim sentiments. And with the terrorist ISIS working with the logic of violent capital accumulation and also with the recent Paris massacre, the finger of suspicion turns unwittingly onto Muslims. The Indian liberal includes all Muslims into this version of silent and sophisticated hatred. In their radar are the actors Amir Khan and Shahrukh Khan (the present-day Eurobians from Agrabah) for their recent views on the rising tide of intolerance.

According to the learned liberal, “one swallow does not a summer make, one Dadri does not make a country of 1.24 billion people intolerant”.4 According to him, the “banning of beef, disruption of Valentine's Day celebrations, the chopping-off of a professor's hands and the banning of the works of Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rashdie are not indicators of a nation's intolerance”. They are merely “isolated regre-ttable incidents”. A small digression is necessary here. Let it be noted that the cry for the burning of books of Romila Thapar and Bipan Chandra by Subramanian Swamy and the banning of Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History by theShiksha Bachao Aandolan Samiti (the RSS' “movement to save education”) is not even mentioned by our erstwhile liberal. Instead there is a kitsch where Salman Rushdie and Doniger are made to look like twins fathered by the “Indian tolerance debate”. It must be noted that Rushdie's Satanic Verses banned by the father of Iranian intolerance, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, is in fact a popular book in Iran (though one must confess it is an extremely inartistic work of literature). Keeping our aesthetical sensibilities aside, one only hopes that the Indian public finds ways of subverting the Indian censorship hordes.

But let us go back to our fascist loving liberal. According to this liberal, a nation becomes intolerant only “when its Constitution and institutions are intolerant”. After stating that two Supreme Court judgments of 1994 and 2002 “declared secularism to be part of the basic structure of our Constitution” and like all conservatives (whether conservative democrats or conservative fascists) recall Gandhi and his idea of sarva dharma samabhav, the liberal turns his most tolerant mind towards what he imagines is the real problem: the Muslims.

For the liberal, Muslims constitute only a small fraction of the Indian population (13.4 per cent). But what does this minority community do? It sets up educational institutions and then refuses to abide by the law of the land. They refuse to admit 25 per cent of seats to the unprivileged as suggested by the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act of 2009. “Thus a Ramakrishna Mission school,” so says the enlightened liberal, “has to allocate 25 per cent seats to poorer students free of costs, but a St Anthony's School or an Al-Akbar matriculation school need not do so.” Despite not allowing poor students (should be ‘Hindu' students for this phantasmagorical imagination) in Christian and Muslim schools, Indians (that is, non-Christians and Muslims) have great tolerance towards minorities.

Not only do they refuse to let poor Scheduled Castes and Tribes into their schools, they take the right “to freely profess, practice and pro-pagate their religion” and then transfigure this fundamental right into a “right that is exercised effectively to convert people to another faith everyday”.

This is how the liberal living in the age of what Suhas Palshikar calls “neo-Hindu demo-cracy”5 bases his argument. Not only are Muslims (along with Christians) intolerant and breakers of the law of the land, not only do they refuse poor Hindus into their schools, they then forcibly convert them. And what does the Indian (or ‘Hindu') do? This Indian-Hindu does nothing. It is because this Indian-Hindu is tolerant. Hindus are tolerant even though they are poor and denied education by Christians and Muslims. Instead the Christians and Muslims set up schools, convert every next Indian-Hindu and refuse to obey the law of the land and refuse become tolerant towards the tolerant Indian-Hindu.

This is the strange argument of the strange liberal. We must sum up this strange argument. Christians and Muslims are not tolerant. They are advocates of the rich. They do not allow poor Indian-Hindu students in their schools as per the law of the land. They thus refuse to help poor Hindus. And even when they do not help the poor Indian-Hindus, the Indian-Hindus tolerate minorities. So how can India be said to be intolerant when Indians have been tolerating pro-rich Christians and Muslims who refuse to help poor Indian-Hindus? So who indeed is intolerant?

The liberal goes further. It was Shah Bano's husband (the original Aladdin) who was intolerant. He did not give a “princely sum of Rs 25 per month” as maintenance. He firstly could not tolerate his wife. He then divorced her by the Sharia law because he could not tolerate firstly his wife and then the Indian secular law. And seeing the intolerance of Shah Bano's husband, the Madhya Pradesh High Court enhanced the maintenance to Rs 179.20. But the Muslim community could not understand that Shah Bano's husband was intolerant and instead got angry because Rs 179.20 was to be paid by the intolerant Shah. Consequently this “triggered a storm of protest”. What does this mean? It means that Muslims do not want to pay Rs 179.20 to their divorced wives and move around with “triggers” protesting around?

So how can the claims of artists and intellectuals who return their awards be tolerated? How can one be tolerant to trigger-happy protesters who only have a “selective expression of anguish” and become blind to “the extreme intolerance in the Kashmir Valley”? Conse-quently the liberal says that the “outcry against ‘rising intolerance' is wholly unjustified”. Thus artistes like Amir Khan—who voice their fear when they say that their family members say that staying in India is a problem under BJP rule where the next target could be anyone after Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi—should “have weighed every word lest he provoked many and made some feel insecure”.6

A few years back in the happy days of the Congress brand of secularism I said that the citizen has been defined as an “imaginary terrorist” by not the RSS press, but by the liberal press.7 This is what I wrote when a well- known liberal columnist said that we are treading in “Nether Lands”, an apparent pun on the 2006 Dutch incidence (when young Bohri students with mobile phones were thought to be hijacking a Natwest aircraft) of what I call “imaginary hijacking”.8 I had then said the following:

“‘Nether Lands' does not mean the realm of the unknown spectral world of the diabolic comprador imagination. On the contrary ‘Nether Lands‘ (for the writer) is the space that the secularists are treading on—the support to Muslims and the refusal to see that we have something called an ‘Islamist problem‘. ‘Nether Lands' are also the lands of the Muslims who hide in mosques and then bomb innocent people. We must beware of this ‘Nether Lands‘. They have converted the whole of Europe; we are told, into ‘Eurabia‘. The Europeans could not contain the Arabs and the Muslims. Now this imaginary problem has supposedly spilt into India.”

This is also what I said in the same article:

“Let us have a look at the racist picture drawn from the perspective of an Indian neo-con: Europe is no longer Europe. It is now ‘Eurobia', because of the liberal European immigration laws. Now in this terrible ‘Eurobia' we find instead of the good white European (who are very good people), Muslims moving round (which for the writer seems to be a very bad idea). Not only do they move around, but also do bad things like going to mosques. And in these mosques of ‘Eurobia‘, they hear that ‘there is only one true religion Islam, and one true Prophet Mohammed. No room for discussion or compromise.' And it is in these mosques that the London bombers got a brainwave to plant bombs and murder people. The mosques in this imaginary ‘Eurobia' also gave them inspiration to blow up a number of aircrafts. ‘And what were they going to use? Liquid explosives and mobile phones and iPods as detonators.' Now what happened in the Natwest aircraft? There were Muslims and that too with mobile phones! Now is this not terrible? How dare Muslims carry mobile phones! Is this not terrible, if not an act of creating direct terror, as also the manifestation of ‘Terror' itself? This very able writer now informs us that this is proof of an ‘Islamist problem'. We are also told that it will continue to grow till we find out that ‘Indian Muslims have changed in recent years'. Just as Kafka's hero in Metamorphosis changes into a terrible insect, so too the Indian Muslim (inspired by Bin Laden and Kafka) have been transformed into something most terrible. After pointing her neo-con finger at Bin Laden (and probably at Kafka too), the blame game moves to the court of the secularists who refuse to understand this radical change, even after the Mumbai bomb blasts. She does not even ask: which political organisation was behind the blasts? Instead like a true racist we are told that there is an Islamic hand. The list of further criminal and anti-national activities is high-lighted: not only do the Islamists bomb trains; they now refuse to sing vande mataram. Muslims, we are told, have ceased to be patriotic. To appease the Muslims, the (previous Congress) Minister of Human Resource Development has declared that Muslim children need not sing it to celebrate the centenary of this song, though the whole nation wants to do nothing but sing songs. After the bombing of trains and the refusal to sing vande mataram, Muslims wear veils and send their children to madrasas whose mindset, we are told, has not changed for 1400 years. What should one understand from this? We understand that Muslims have changed, these metamorphosised Muslims who go to madrasas that have not changed. But how can there be change, when there is no change? We are caught in this schizophrenic double-bind: Muslims have changed because they have not changed. And in these madrasas, Muslims learn about the brotherhood of Islam which is in grave danger from crusaders, Jews and idol worshipers. Now from Kashmir to Kanya-kumari, the Muslims are doing nothing but looking up to Arabia for cultural roots. We must cease to look up to Arabia. Instead we must see the richness of ‘our own culture'. See thus the richness of the narcissistic reading of ‘our own culture'; stop looking up to Arabia!”9

Ten years have passed, but the imagination of the liberal has not become static. It has become much more violent. Because we know that the more capital accumulates, the more violent capitalist society becomes. And the more violent capitalism becomes, the more are the conjuring the spirits of the violent and communal politics of both the liberal and the fascist. What contemporary capitalism does is that it converts fear and violence into a commo-dity for sale in the global market. What is now being marketed is the commodity called “tolerance” (besides the commodity called “fear and violence”) which the RSS claims belongs to their warped up imagination of some deluded “Hindu Golden Age”.

Liberalism and Social Democracy

Whilst we denounce the Stalinist theory of conceiving social democrats as “social fascists”,10 and whilst we do not collapse the liberal ideology into the fascist one, we say that there is a linear movement from liberalism to fascism and that Marxism cannot wield the liberal stick to counter the Indian fascists. We saw how the Indian liberal was drenched in the ecstatic wine of liberalism. A dominant section of the Indian liberals sees the present political scenario as a possible rejuvenation of Indian civilisation, a civilisation that was betrayed by Nehruvian secularists (or should we say “pseudo-secularists”) and Left-wing historians. This present Indian liberal also sees the present Indian state as a force against corruption where a no-nonsense Prime Minister takes on corruption and under-development, this rejuvenated Prime Minister who works solely and wholly within the ambit of the Indian Constitution. Now let us see another version, the version (of the same kind of fascist-loving liberal) that was present in Germany one year before Hitler took power. Writing in 1932 Leon Trotsky said:

“In its New Year's issue, the theoretical organ of social democracy, Der Freie Wort (what a wretched sheet!), prints an article in which the spirit of ‘toleration' is expounded in its highest sense. Hitler, it appears, can never come into power against the police and the Reichswehr. Now, according to the Constitution, the Reichs-wehr is under the command of the President of the Republic. Therefore fascism, it follows, is not dangerous so long as a President faithful to the Constitution remains at the head of the govern-ment. Bruening's regime must be supported until the presidential elections so that a constitutional President may then be elected, through an alliance with the parliamentary bourgeoisie; and thereby Hitler's road to power will be blocked for another seven years.”11

Note this with what is happening here. The liberal legal luminary, that we mentioned in the beginning of this essay, said that India is not intolerant, since the Constitution is not changed. Relate with Trotsky's above quoted observation that “fascism, it follows, is not dangerous so long as a President faithful to the Constitution remains at the head of the government”. We know that Hitler's power was not blocked at all, but supported by the liberals and the parlia-ment-fetish worshippers.

Basically the triumph of the RSS and the inability of either the liberal Congress or the Stalinist Established Left are because of their reformist character. This reformism is because they are completely subservient to parlia-mentary politics, because they are totally alienated from the working classes and because the worship of capitalism is final for them. Reformism constitutes all these aspects. And this is precisely the case how the Right-wing in India can intervene and attack both liberalism and the Established Left at the same time.

What we saw in the early part of this essay is how the Right-wing of liberalism (we can call it “conservative liberalism”) attacks popular liberalism of the Nehruvian kind by saying that the very rights of minorities (probably the entire regime of rights) is the problem and that minorities are in actuality intolerant, whilst the majority of the population is tolerant to the presence of Christians and Muslims. What liberalism does not recognise is that a very different paradigm of operation is necessary and being fixated on constitutionalism.

Recall Trotsky once again:

“The politicians of reformism, these dexterous wire-pullers, artful intriguers and careerists, expert parliamentary and ministerial machi-nators are no sooner thrown out of their habitual sphere by the course of events; no sooner are they placed face to face with momentous contin-gencies than they reveal themselves to be—there is no milder expression for it—inept boobs. To rely upon a President is only to rely upon ‘the government'. Faced with the impending clash between the proletariat and the fascist petty bourgeoisie—two camps which together comprise the crushing majority of the German nation—these Marxists from the Vorwärts yelp for the night watchman to come to their aid, ‘Help! Government exert pressure!' (Staat, greif zu!) Which means, ‘Bruening, please don't force us to defend ourselves with the might of workers' organisations, for this will only arouse the entire proletariat; and then the movement will rise above the bald-pates or our party leadership: beginning as anti-fascist, it will end communist.'”12

Both the liberalism of the Congress variety and social democracy of the Established Left cannot see beyond the horizons of capitalism and the parliamentary system. They do not see that fascism is born out from the crisis of capitalist production. Both see the RSS as some sort of terrible accident and contingency in Indian politics. That is why both love Trotsky's reformists “from the Vorwärts (who) yelp for the night watchman to come to their aid, “Help! Government exert pressure!” (“Staat, greif zu!”) Both do not want a proletarian answer to the problem of fascism, but a bourgeois one. Both yelp for the President and the Consti-tution to intervene.

While the Congress celebrates globalisation with all the nonsense of imperialist restructuring of Asian, South American and African economies conducive for the imperialist economy, also seeing globalisation as some sort of Fukuyama-inspired “end of history”; the Established Left tries its best to reform the slings and arrows of outrageous imperialist fortune, and thus tries to create a world after its own reformist image. On the other hand, what Revolutionary Marxism does is that it does not react to fascist barbarism. Instead it sees that since capital has become a barrier to capital itself,13 it weaves the theme of the rise of fascism in India into the context of capitalist order itself. What Revolutionary Marxism does is that it evokes the Leninist principle of a “Revolution with a Revolution” and not a “decaffeinated revolution, a revolution that does not want to smell of the revolution”.14 It is with this “Revolution with a Revolution” that the crown put on the empty heads of the Indian fascists comes crashing down and along with the crashing of the crowns one also witnesses the crashing of their little fascist heads.

Endnotes

1. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 17.

2. Ibid., p. 29.

3. Arvind P. Datar, ‘The Myth of Intolerant India' in The Indian Express, December 5, 2015.

4. Ibid.

5. Suhas Palshikar “The Making of a ‘Neo-Hindu' Democracy” in Seminar, January, 2015.

6. Jay Mazoomdaar, ‘The Real Outrage. Today, Anguish over Violence seems to Shame India More than Violence Does' in The Indian Express, December 5, 2015.

7. See my ‘On the Communal-comprador Imagination' in Indian Journal of Secularism, Vol. 10, No. 2, October-December, 2006.

8. Tavleen Singh, ‘Treading Nether Lands' in The Indian Express, August 27, 2006.

9. See my ‘On the Communal-comprador Imagination' in Indian Journal of Secularism, Vol. 10, No. 2, October-December, 2006.

10. Stalin thought that social democracy was worse off than fascism. The social democrats who had the majority of the proletarian population in their ranks were called “social fascists“.

11. Leon Trotsky, ‘What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat' in Fascism. What It Is and How To Fight It (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2005), pp. 29-30.

12. Ibid.

13. See Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986), p. 250.

14. See Slavoj Zizek, ‘Introduction' to Maximilien Robespierre's Virtue and Terror (London: Verso, 2007), p. VI.

The author belongs to the Indian Institute of Education, Pune. He can be contacted at e-mail: murzbanjal@hotmail.com

by Probal Dasgupta

Does Rohith Vemula's suicide note make charges that can serve as the basis for judicial action against individuals who drove him to his death? This question has been under intense public discussion. There have also been claims that he was not a Dalit. Those claims are easy to refute: it is verifiable that his mother Radhika, who belongs to the Mala caste (an SC community), divorced her Vaddera (OBC) husband in 1990 and brought Rohith up in a Mala neighbourhood in Guntur. Rohith's upbringing, coupled with facts about his birth, is the decisive criterion according to the relevant Supreme Court judgment.

The main point, however, is that the framework governing all these debates rests on certain structural premises concerning the judicial-penal system. In the context of the punitive procedures that drove Rohith to his death, it becomes important to inquire how those structural premises bear on the autonomy of the university. In precisely what setting does the judicial-penal function operate in the management of universities and other HEIs (Higher Educational Institutions)?

Let us begin with what we all understand. We know that autonomy implies that the police cannot walk into an HEI campus except when requested by its management. That this management exercises a surrogate version of judicial and penal authority over its employees and students. That fully flourishing autonomy means a management willing and able to discourage interference from the government. Anecdotes that still circulate about Gurbaksh Singh, the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, highlight his ability to send a Chief Minister packing. These ideas mark the limits of the received wisdom as far as the autonomy of an HEI is concerned.

In the wake of Rohith's tragic passing, if we refuse to stretch these limits—to the point of acknowledging the idea of the universityper se as an autonomous imperative that goes beyond the capacity to repress, coerce and impose— then we will be irresponsibly prolonging the crisis that leads to such suicides, and not by Dalits alone. In this intervention, I raise some questions about the propriety of certain ways of punishing a university student in the context of the idea of the university. These questions arise under any set of assumptions. Public debates on this matter rarely address the issues raised here. If authors who hold views radically different from mine can be persuaded to respond to these questions, a serious debate will become possible.

For the sake of argument, it helps to put oneself in the shoes of penal authorities willing to characterise a person as an ‘offender'. I take it that in an HEI, as in the bigger judicial-penal system, the reason that leads penal authorities to punish is that they wish to help the offender to behave, that is, to reform his/her behaviour. (For convenience, I am italicising the HEI leadership's standard terms; any errors of perception on my part are inadvertent.) But the authorities at an HEI are not trained as penal specialists. They are acting on the basis of their own sense of the primarily educational mandate of an HEI. Therefore I further assume that the authorities at an HEI notice the recurrence of disciplinary problems in the case of students who come from certain backgrounds (however one chooses to characterise these backgrounds). It follows that the authorities at an HEI are bound to recognise the need to apply their mind to the serious problems at the level necessary in order to prevent their recurrence.

Now, consider the case of a Dalit student from an impoverished background. The sincere desire of the authorities of an HEI to help a particular Dalit offender to behave is bound to lead them to notice the social setting which exposed that offender to a less than idyllic childhood environment. The long-term impact of that exposure must be taken into account by any HEI leadership that does not confine its actions to the penal function. The managers of an HEI cannot help noticing these matters sooner or later, once they seriously try to put in place measures designed to bring about the behavioural changes they would like to see. Since one is dealing with human conduct, it also follows that the management of an HEI must be concerned with the perceptual and cognitive basis of such behaviour.

In this context, I need to note that the University of Hyderabad—where I worked from 1989 to 2006—is a site of particular interest in the context of sustained inquiry about such questions. In 2005, some of us kick-started interdisciplinary research there on cognitive science, now organised under a Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences. It so happens that Vipin Srivastava, who is the university's acting Vice-Chancellor at the moment of writing, has spent the last few years shaping the research profile of that centre. The fact that Srivastava, who started out in physics, has later moved into cognitive science is an encouraging circum-stance. It is perhaps understandable that today, under sudden pressures that he was unprepared for, he may be implementing purely adminis-trative measures based on what he perceives as procedural exigencies (I notice that an active cognitive scientist appointed during Srivas-tava's directorship of the Centre, Joby Joseph, is on the other side of the barricade: Joseph has been one of the faculty members taking part in the hunger strike.) In the long run, however, those of us who want all academics to seriously think about the crisis can expect the Srivastavas on all our campuses, for scientific reasons, to support our efforts actively—by the Srivastavas I mean those academics who realise the need for inquiry to cross the artificial ‘science/arts' boundary. If our Srivastavas fail to meet these expectations, we will have a scientific problem on our hands, not just a procedural, political or ideological divide.

This was an aside, though an important aside in the present context. We return now to our main point. We take it, then, that tough-minded academic administrators are bound to eventually realise that bringing about behavioural change requires serious cultural and cognitive improve-ment. It is possible that such administrators visualise a need for such improvement primarily in the mind of the individual ‘offender'. However, surely even they see that one individual's mind cannot be improved in isolation. The enterprise of improving anybody's cultural and cognitive profile, however one might pursue it, must be anchored, first of all, in some assumptions about social interaction, and must also envisage a societal intervention to change the atmosphere.

In this context it becomes important to notice that, in the wake of Rohith Vemula's tragic death, the initiative for changing the atmosphere on the University of Hyderabad campus is being led not by any Dalits-only lobby driven by identity politics, but by a coalition spear-headed by the upper-caste leadership of organi-sations working for social change. Academic administrators who find it difficult or inappro-priate to engage with identitarian organisations may find it easier, in this context, to take due part in the dialogue that has become imperative.

Academic administrators who emphasise adherence to disciplinary norms may have noticed that the one-man commission appointed on January 28 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development will be guided by the UGC (Prevention of Caste-Based Discrimination/ Harassment/ Victimisation and Promotion of Equality in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2012. Sukhadeo Thorat's article ‘Discrimination on the campus' (The Hindu, January 26, 2016, p. 10) draws attention to the SCs and STs (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 2015 and to the UGC Regulations, noting their limited scope and effectiveness. He concludes that “we need a separate law against discrimination in colleges/universities, to treat an act of discrimi-nation as a punishable crime [...] as in the case of gender discrimination and ragging”. He argues for “the legal route” by pointing to the ragging precedent: “when ragging was made a puni-shable offence, instances of ragging dropped dramatically”.

That the nation has to start a mid-day meal scheme to keep children in school, that every HEI has to establish a CASH to discourage sexual harassment, and that the same logic may now compel campuses to set up a mechanism to protect SC and ST citizens from harassment —these are gross measures. The fact that they are being put in place indicates the magnitude and starkness of the structural crisis. Now, if there is one thing we know about crises, it is that disaster management approaches, even if implemented with Japanese efficiency, are inadequate. Your superb management team may be able to rescue thousands of flood victims. But disaster managers are not in the business of foreseeing and preventing floods.

In this context, it becomes appropriate to focus on the exchange on NDTV on January 19, 2016 between Barkha Dutt and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, Apparao Podile. Dutt repeatedly asked him: “When Rohith wrote you an anguished personal letter why didn't you reach out to him at a human level? You tell me that he was a student you yourself had taught; couldn't you have reached out to him?” Apparao's responses ranged from “We have to follow rules and procedures; we make important decisions collectively” to “You must notice that I did not break any rules or laws; if I had, you would have been asking me why I broke them”. The point to note is that even in a crisis situation, publicly facing a journalist's question about why he had, as a human being, not reached out to a fellow human being, this leader of a university did not see any need to affirm the value of responding at the human level. He deeply believes that the only obligatory responsibility of the leader of a university is to adhere to acts, statutes, laws and rules.

The chilling point is not that Apparao is a particularly reprehensible member of the academic community; the point is that, in his adherence to rules alone, he is typical of the leaders of our universities. This is one symptom of the crisis that we are trapped in. If we want to find a way out of the crisis, firefighting methods are necessary but are not enough. We must find a way to get university managements to understand that in the context of university autonomy, punishment on a campus is not analogous to a court trying offenders and imprisoning them if they are found guilty. Any punishing that may take place must occur as part of the enterprise of educating that is the cultural responsibility of the entire campus, going beyond the scholastic duties of the teacher in the classroom or the laboratory. The question is how to help university managers to under-stand this. That they do not understand this is a significant component of the crisis that Apparao's remarks exemplify.

Will it help if we invoke the welfarist approach that postulates rights and entitlements and proposes measures that will build various capacities as part of the state's duty to the individual citizen? Does such rights-based welfarism have the wherewithal to actually address the crisis?

The discourse of the rights and capacities of citizens shares with our tough-minded academic administrators the assumptions of methodo-logical individualism. Even within this shared framework, all participants in the debate must recognise that the obligation of the state—or of the administrative authorities of a university— is not simply a rulebook-defined duty to provide physical and mental first aid to those in distress, and to stop relevant others from violating their rights. Remember that we are talking about a university. Tough-minded academic adminis-trators claim to be concerned with norms. Maximising the cultural and cognitive growth of young adults, in the company of experienced adults engaged in teaching them, is the constitutive, normative aim of the enterprise of a university. If teachers cannot provide culturally and cognitively optimal company to each other and to students, it becomes difficult for students who come from traditionally oppressive cate-gories to overcome their biases and customs and to stop themselves from persisting in their oppressive ways.

The obligation, at a university, is to provide literate and informed help to students, and if possible to do so pre-emptively, before crisis-level need for aid pushes an individual into panic and worse, a mental state that might make the giving or receiving of any effective help impossible. This obligation cannot be met by an administration per se; it is a cultural and cognitive responsibility, and those responsible, the teachers, need to realise that eradicating oppressive and oppression-fostering habits is not as straightforward a task as observing the laws of the land.

By saying the job is challenging I don't mean that cultural norms are elusive and obscure. I mean that the term I just used—‘traditionally oppressive categories'—is not an absolute but a relational term; it only makes sense in the context of a particular dyad. Men are tradi-tionally oppressive vis-a-vis women (that's the men/women dyad); Savarna Hindus, vis-a-vis Dalits and Adivasis; Mainland Indians, vis-a-vis North-Easterners; big city dwellers, vis-a-vis compatriots from small towns and villages; and many more dyads.

Now, these dyads have cross-cutting effects, best clarified by giving an example. Suppose you are a Savarna man from a small town. This means you are likely to be traditionally oppressive towards Dalits, Adivasis, women. However, when you encounter an elite woman from a metro-politan city, you may find her arrogant and oppressive. Your feelings of insecurity may lead you to behave badly towards her—at least playing up your social power as a male, even if you don't go so far as to harass her in the technical sense.

It is these cross-cutting effects of the dyadic relations between the backgrounds we come from that make it specifically difficult to understand our realities in terms of notions like ‘traditionally oppressive categories'. We are nonetheless bound to use such risky notions as we struggle to come to terms with the crisis. The take-away from this intervention is that I would like to propose some mutuality in this enterprise. Let us acknowledge the need to negotiate, to find new formats for dialogue, at every level, as part of our daily living on and off campus, as part of what it will take to overcome the crisis. I don't mean tolerance, though that is an essential minimum; I mean dialogue, without which we will be stuck where we are, as a polarised society.

One problem that has been decelerating our cognitive and cultural progress is that in our society we are not simply polarised: we are complexly polarised. If Hindu/Muslim had been the only dyad to deal with, we would not have had a crisis. Some of our fellow citizens, who go so far as to imagine that “those Hyderabad university Dalits shed tears when Yakub Memon was executed, that means they are in league with Muslim extremists, this is the fundamental problem, we need more patriotism in this Hindu- majority nation”, are not just trapped in a political package they have consumed. They have failed to notice that Dalit and Muslim organisations do not work together. At the deeper level of perception that we have to attain, they are missing the point that Dalit/Muslim is not even an operative dyad in the context of India's polarisations. The overall relation between Dalits and Muslims is mediated through the Dalit/Savarna dyad within that ‘Hindu majority' and the Hindu/Muslim dyad (though I acknowledge that this global formulation sets aside the marginalised status of Pasmanda Muslims within the Muslim fold).

The point is that we in India, on and off university campuses, are polarised in multiple ways. Bringing our literacy to bear on under-standing how we are situated is half the battle. This is one important responsibility that even the best of us have been failing to face. I don't wish to imply that all of us are avoiding the task on purpose. Many of our tough-minded academic administrators are well-meaning persons driven by the highest principles. We have been failing because it is a complex challenge. We badly need, we urgently need to get better at it. If we don't, the crisis won't just continue unabated; we will have a much deeper crisis on our hands.

[This author's intervention in Bangla on Rohith Vemula's life and death published in the daily Anandabazar Patrika on January 26, 2016 can be accessed at the following website, where an English translation is also provided: https://www.academia.edu/21275993/May_We_Never_Forget]

This author belongs to the Linguistic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.

Women of Shingnapur

Led by Trupti Desai, you marched
On Shani Shingnapur as did the women
Of Paris on Versaille—to level
Yet another edifice of demeaning
Prejudice. Knowing that it is not
The mute, untouchable stone that
Made you untouchable, but
The proprietership of those who
The gods of their making own.
Wretchedly, they hide behind
The ignorant rage of other women
Whom they have made imbecile
Mannequins on a cunning stage.
However that be, know that on
Republic Day of twenty sixteen,
From a metropolitan hinterland,
Your shaming courage born of
A simple conviction advances India's
Republican history irrevocably.
The sickening equivocation of Priest,
Mullah, politician melt to a dross
Of gibberish in the fire of your reason.
In the days to come, surely, many
Other brazen citadels of crass denial
Are set to fall. Women of Shingnapur,
Your resolve this day has made
Many fearful foot soldiers in the
Fight for justice tall. Brave Trupti,
You have given to the nation
A piece of Rosa Park's conversation.
Among heartbreaks and perfidies,
It is episodes of faith like these
That give purpose to our lives. Across
Centuries a good argument thrives.

Smart Cities for Smart Men

Smart cities are for smart men
Who drool not on other's pain;
Sequestered from human face,
They work but digital gain.

They will not look you in the eye,
But go past like hurricane;
While Bharat lags in bullock cart,
They take the bullet train.

They will pack their oxygen
In latest plastic lung;
Their water will come from hidden
Sack beneath synthetic tongue.

Smart will be our destiny,
Smart our indifference
To those who will not be smart
With no genius for the main chance.

Blasphemy or Sedition

We are a continent of choice,
You are free to choose either one—
Speak freely of god or man,
And pick blasphemy or sedition.

Be not your hate of our kind
But deriving from atrocity,
You invite either sedition
Or embrace blasphemy.

Our hates are nationalist—
Yours dangerously just;
Should you insist to disagree,
Well, we destroy you must.

God is that we think is god,
And State is what suits us best;
Refusing either postulate—
The police will have to do the rest.

From N.C.'s Writings

Acid Test for Mulayam

Varanasi and Kanpur are the danger signals which Mulayam Singh Yadav can hardly afford to underplay. The significant impact that was made on the Indian political scene by his victory in the December elections along with his allies, ousting the BJP in office from the key State of Uttar Pradesh, would be grievously dissipated if his government is shown up as incompetent to govern.

The very character of the support that Mulayam Singh's Government has been able to muster tempts its adversaries to indulge in the toppling game. In reality, his majority is largely a negative get-together of those who want to keep the BJP out of power. Apart from this single-point objective, there is very little of common interest or common objecives that bind these parties together. Even Mulayam's closest ally, Kanshi Ram, has been touring the country harping on the political importance of his own party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, instead of underlining the importance of the coalition as a whole.

The Congress having become so effete is no longer in a position to play a decisive role in the politics of UP. The Janata Dal is in a shambles as a political party since its leaders from V.P. Singh downward have throughout ignored the importance of building a party worth the name.

In this scenario, it is but natural for the BJP leadership to take every possible advantage to bring down the Mulayam Government. Caught within its own ranks by confusion and acute dissonance over the perspective before the party itself—the moderate parliamentary line or the rowdy path of fanatic militancy—there could not have been a better opportunity before the BJP leadership to take the maximum possible advantage of the Mulayam Government's discomfiture with the caste and communal tensions.

The ramshackle character of the Mualyam Government has also accelerated the tension that has been brewing between the Dalits and the aggressive elements among the Backward Classes, particularly the Kurmis and Yadavs. The conflict of interests between these two camps in the countryside in the Hindi belt can hardly be overlooked. At the same time, the expectations so long were that given the fact that Mulayam Singh's side could win the elections with the support of the underdogs—the Dalits, the Backwards and the Muslim minority—that at least for sometime to come the rift between the Dalits and the Backwards could be patched up in their common interest to ward off the long-held domination of the upper castes. It is on this point, the Mulayam Government has to do a lot of severe self-introspection.

A ruling establishment so precariously placed has to summon its strength, capacity and wisdom to the utmost limit to ensure a stable and competent government. Mass support spontaneously welled up when the Ministry was formed as it was instantly identified as the champion of the underprivileged. But spont-aneity on its own can hardly sustain a Ministry. If in the election campaign the caste solidarity was effected in a common front against the upper-caste domination, the morrow of the victory saw the assertion of the more powerful among the backward-Dalit combine against the more vulnerable ones. That is how the Yadavs and the Kurmis have been flexing their muscles in UP as they have started persecuting the Dalits who on their part have ceased to be docile as before.

Here lies the real challenge for Mualyam Singh Yadav. He has to understand that it is not enough for him to have won the poll battle, more exacting is to conduct himself as the leader of the entire combine and not just of his own caste and kith and kin. This way alone can he not only weld together the disparate elements that support his government but enlist the respect and authority of the bureaucracy to ensure a stable and efficient administration. Bureaucracy by its very nature responds positively to a firm and stable political leadership; but when it finds the political leadership weak or venal, its attitude becomes nonchalant.

There is another dimension to the UP situation today. The issues at stake there are far-reaching—not just a question of the survival of a Ministry standing as a roadblock to the BJP's path to power. Nor is it just a question of the collapse of an elected government and the imposition of President's Rule. If the UP Government cannot sustain itself in power and goes down before the onrush of caste and communal violence, then this would spread like a prairie fire all over the region which is considered as the very heartland of the country. It needs to be noted, therefore, that the serious happenings in Uttar Pradesh today have a profound bearing on the fate of the country as a whole.

(Mainstream, February 19, 1994)

Where's the Kashmir Policy?

What is the Kashmir policy of the Central Government? The Prime Minister warded off the attacks of his Pakistani counterpart twice abroad in the course of the last two weeks—once at Cartagena by challenging her with the official Indian position that Pakistan itself had been guilty of having occupied a part of the State of Jammu and Kashmir through aggression: and then at New York when participating in the golden jubilee celebrations of the UN, he did not respond to her at all by refusing to deal with any bilateral issue on such an occasion.

Returning home, neither of such postures can hold on the part of the Prime Minister. He has committed his government to the promise of an early election to the State Assembly and has more or less persuaded other political parties to comply with it. And the expected timing of the poll, to be finally settled by the Election Commission, is in the high snows of winter, anytime between mid-December and mid-January. While there is substantial misgiving in the public mind about the wisdom of holding any poll in the Kashmir Valley in the midst of the frankly unsettled situation with the Army operations against the armed militants still continuing, the question that faces all parties willing to participate in the election is: what is it that the Centre is prepared to concede for the settlement of the Kashmir crisis?

Nobody can deny that the alienation of the Kashmir people has gone so deep that there could be no end to the crisis without a measurable degree of concession on the part of the Centre. It is precisely on this point that there has so far been no response at all on the part of the government. In fact, in the Centre's handling of the Kashmir crisis, there has been a streak of the cavalier which is both unwarranted and highly dangerous. For over a year, the Prime Minister took no notice of the ugly demonstration of disunity and petty squabbling between his Home Minister and his Minister of State in the same Ministry until they earned the dubious distinction of having washed their dirty linen on the international media, when the Cabinet Minister was saved by the Prime Minister who shunted off the junior to look after the portfolio of Environment. There were other reports of disagreements at the official level which cast their shadow in the handling of such crisis-points as the Hazratbal siege and the destruction of Charar-e-Sharief.

Finally, it was given out that the Prime Minister himself would look after Kashmir affairs. What this amounted to was that another Minister of State was entrusted with it without having been given any clear perspective about the quantum of autonomy that the government would be prepared to offer. Meanwhile, the preparations were announced for the elections.

The only important development to signify the Centre's initiative was to permit the US Ambassador, Frank Wisner, to roam about and talk to the Hurriyat leaders and others in the Valley. It is understood that his assessment and advice have spurred the Centre to undertake the risky venture of holding the elections. It is also being given out that the government had been “assured” that the Pakistan authorities would be persuaded to hold back the militants' activity to enable the elections to take place. Although nobody in New Delhi would like to give out who could possibly have given such an assurance, few have doubts that such an assurance could come possibly only from the US authorities. After the setback over the Hank-Brown resoution in the Capitol Hill, one wounders how much can the Prime Minister depend on US assurances.

For quite sometime, Dr Farooq Abdullah was insistent upon the government announcing the Kashmir “package“ first before going in for the election, while the government position, as one could make out at that stage, was that only when an elected Ministry was formed in the State then alone could it discuss with it the question of reforms or the quantum of autonomy to be given to Kashmir. It almost became the chicken-and-egg dilemma. To any demand that the government should talk to the militant leaders, the official response was, how could one talk to so many of them, and even if one does with some of them, what's the guarantee that these militant groups and their leaders had any following among the people, and if so, who and how much?

In the recent talks that the Home Minister had with the leaders of the Opposition parties, there was no way of getting the government commit to any specific line of concession. The result has been that instead of struggling towards a common stand, the parties have fallen apart so widely that it would be practically impossible to bridge the gap later and thereby claim that to be the common Indian stand.

Meanwhile, Dr Farooq Abdullah has made it amply clear that in his considered view a settlement could be feasible only if the Government of India agreed to the position prevailing before 1953, that is, before the Delhi Accord was signed by his father. There is no comment, not to speak of commitment, on the part of the government whether it was prepared to consider Dr Farooq's suggestion. At the other end, the BJP has opposed this tooth and nail and has threatened to launch a campaign against any going back to the pre-1953 status for Kashmir. As it is well known, the BJP has been demanding the scrapping of Article 370 which is itself an offspring of the 1953 Delhi Accord. Where does the Congress stand in this polalrised situation—with Dr Farooq's pre-1953 or with the BJP's anti-370 position? There is really no way of evading the issue any longer. Dr Farooq Abdullah's stand takes into accound not only the changes that have been brought about since 1953, but also the change in the mood and consciousness of the people in the Valley. The BJP, on its part, is keeping up a forty-year old no-change stance, and proposes to budge not an inch from the position that the late Dr Shyama Prakash Mukherji has taken.

To a large measure, Dr Farooq's present stand is born out of the recognition of the existing ground reality in the Valley. If the alienation of the majority of the people is an undoubted reality—which indeed is what the militancy in the Valley has so long thrived upon—then something substantially more than the 1953 accord needs to be conceded if a fresh initiative towards settlement is to succeed. Dr Farooq knows that without such a stand there could be no winning over the people of the Valley nor can the moderates among the militants be won over or neutralised.

Keeping up a sphinx-like posture on this crucial issue can fetch no dividends for the government. Rather, this way the Prime Minister's silence would create distrust even among those who have decided to take the risk of facing the poll battle under the most difficult conditions. And the public in general may very well come to the cynical conclusion that the Centre really has no Kashmir policy at all—it's only waiting for others to act so that it has only to react.

Is it then the fabled Laddoo of Delhi—those who have eaten it shall come to grief as much as those who have not?

(Mainstream, November 4, 1995)

by Vijay Kumar

The slapping of the charge of sedition under Section 124(A) of the IPC on Kanhaiya, the President of the JNU Students' Union, has extremely grave implications for democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism. The foisting of the sedition charge followed by assault on Kanhaiya, his lawyers, including the panel of eminent senior lawyers deputed to inspect the situation by the Supreme Court, and the journalists including women scribes, when he was produced in the court, have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression, particularly the right to dissent, which is the core of the said right. The alarming situation is reminiscent of the pernicious binary of ‘either you are with us or against us' articulated by George Bush in the wake of the 2001 terror strikes on the US.

The events starting from liquidation of rationalists, dissenters, writers and culminating in the barbaric lynching of Ashfaq just outside the national Capital on the mere suspicion of having stored beef in his house, one had hoped, would be firmly behind us after the drubbing the BJP got in the Bihar elections. But that fond hope turned out to be completely misplaced. The slapping of the sedition charge on the President of the Students' Union of India's most prestigious university and he being assaulted in the campus of the court by a group of unruly lawyers owing allegiance to the BJP and RSS, and even the attack on mediapersons, including women journalists, and the team of distinguished senior lawyers sent to assess the situation at the direction of the Supreme Court underscores the prevailing frightening situation. When a group of lawyers start to take law in their own hands and indulge in assault, merely because their views are different, the rule of law is in danger of being completely annihilated, and the very foundation of constitutional democracy subverted. The comparison with the Emergency would be apt and the difference would lie in terms of degree rather than in kind.

The universities in the country are in ferment. The attempt to polarise the young minds has fateful implications for deliberative democracy. Here, the comparison with another era would be in order. When President Lyndon Johnson started the Vietnam war, the students all over the US protested. One of the students, who protested against the war, was Bill Clinton. When Bill Clinton was nominated for the presidential election in 1992 by the Democrats against Bush Sr., it was canvassed, rather aggressively, by the Republican Party that Clinton had opposed the Vietnam war. This aggressive campaign was rejected by a resounding verdict by the US electorate, who punished Bush Sr. for his misadventure in Iraq.

The word university is derived from ‘universitas litterarum' which means unity of knowledge. Multiple ideas and narratives ought to compete in the university campus so that ‘public reason' is engendered in the process. Slapping the charge of sedition against students lacks as much in proportion and reality as in legality and constitutionality.

Given the existence of democracy the freedom of speech and expression has critical relevance. The exceptions carved out in Article 19(2) of the Constitution do not include sedition. In fact, the constitutional validity of the draconian provision of Section 124(A) was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1962 in Kedarnath Singh versus State of Bihar, only after reading it down and making it subject to the condition that would entail incitement to violence. In Balwant Singh's case, the accused was charged with sedition because he raised the slogan ‘Khalistan Zindabad' at the time of assassination of Smt Indira Gandhi. The Supreme Court, again, held in as unequivocal terms as could be articulated that mere utterance without any overt act would not amount to committing the offence of sedition. However, in Kanhaiya's case, he did not utter anything which can even remotely have any nexus to incitement to violence. The result is a complete subversion of the right to freedom of speech and expression.

Unlike Article 1 of the American Constitution, Article 19(1)(a) does not guarantee the right to free speech and expression in absolute terms. But the Supreme Court, right from its inception in the Ramesh Thapar case (1950) till its latest judgement in Shreya Singhal (2015), interpreted Article 19(1)(a) broadly in tune with liberalism. Justice Rohinton Nariman, while striking down Section 66(A) of the Information and Technology Act, copiously referred to all the leading judgments of the US Supreme Court and emphasised on the critical significance of right to freedom of speech and expression in a constitutional democracy.

Professor Randhir Singh, the most committed and authentic Marxist scholar who passed away on January 31, 2016, in his original work of great importance, Reason, Revolution and Political Theory (1966), theorised that religion and nationalism were the two most regressive forces for social democracy. The nationalism espoused by the BJP and its master, the RSS, is extremely narrow, jingoistic and firmly anchored in the hideous doctrine of majoritarianism with religious overtones a la the demonic doctrine of Nazism and rise of Hitler. Aggressive nationalism, historically speaking, has been the cloak for any authoritarian dispensation. Therefore, narrow and militant nationalism would only pave the way for the emergence of authoritarianism grounded in majoritarianism.

Professor John Rawls in his monumental work of great significance, Theory of Justice (1971), conceptualised the concept of ‘public reason'. This was entrenched further by Professor Amartya Sen in his seminal work of equal importance, Idea of Justice (2009). For production of ‘public reasoning', there has to be a robust culture of freedom of speech and expression. The production of public reason through a liberating and pluralistic discourse is extremely critical for the health of democracy.

The chauvinist and belligerent conception of nationalism espoused by the RSS forecloses the imperative of dialogue. The concept of nationalism carries within it multiple conceptions and narratives. Prof Amartya Sen in Idea of Justice (2009) emphasised that “implicit in the very exercise of an engaging production of public reasoning entails supplementation of local knowledge with global knowledge and there is no harm whatsoever in looking to the wisdom of judges from abroad”. Prof Sen continued by asserting that “In the present globalised world also characterised by alarming rise in identity based policies and cultural relativism, the overreaching significance of cross-fertilization of local knowledge with the global knowledge cannot be over-stated. Even justice-enhancing changes of reforms demand comparative assessment” and “The requirement of producing public reasoning also warrants that justice should go beyond the boundary of state or a region, and these are based respectively on the relevance of other people's interests for the sake of avoiding bias and being fair to others, and on the pertinence of other people's perspective to broaden our own investigation of relevant principles, for the sake of avoiding under-scrutinised parochialism of values and presumptions in the local community.” In a similar vein, Prof Hans Kochler, one of the most respected professors of international law and philosophy and the founder of the International Progression Association (IPA), has been passionately advocating for an inter-cultural dialogue to be carried out on the twin concepts of ‘mutual respect' and ‘toleration'.

John Rawls termed the Second World War as a ‘just war' and justified it on the ground of the value of political liberalism and constitutional democracy in his last book, The Law of Peoples (Harvard University Press—2001). Rawls also justified the Second World War on the following grounds: “First, Nazism portended incalculable moral and political evil for civilised life everywhere. Second, the nature and history of constitutional democracy and its place in European history were at stake.”

Hitler came to power through the majority route and used the majoritarian impulse to establish fascism. The evil nature of fascism could be graphically captured in Rawls' own language:

“Not to be overlooked is the fact that Hitler's demonic conception of the world was, in some perverse sense, religious. This is evident from its derivation and its leading ideas and hatreds. His redemptive anti-semitism, as Saul Friedlander calls it, is one which includes not merely racial elements. ‘Redemptive anti-semitism,' Friedlander writes, ‘is born from the fear of racial degeneration and the religious belief in redemption.'”

It is only after the defeat of Hitler that realisation dawned that the majority route to democracy could not be safe and reliable and over-reliance on the brute force of majoritaria-nism had a structural linkage with the repulsive doctrine of fascism. The tyrannical majority or majoritarian tyranny ceased to be an oxymoron expression, and became a hideous realty. It is the fascism established through the majoritarian route that proved to be a catharsis for the evolution of constitutionalism. Once again, the project of constitutional democracy, envisioned and built so assiduously by our founding fathers, is in distinct danger of being subverted through aggressive nationalism anchored in majoritarianism.

The author is an Advocate, Supreme Court of India.

by Vikas Sharma

It is the season of spring characterised by the consistently blowing wind. You may say that the nation is blowing in the wind of nationalism and anti-nationalism. A recent action against a public educational institution by the govern-ment has now turned into a storm. I believe that the contemporary time is not merely about a debate between nationalism and anti-nationalism. It is about the conflicting/contradictory ideas of Hindutva and Hindustan. Hindutva on the one hand is a politically generated illusion in Indian society meant to derive political gain and mobilise on the basis of chauvinistic religiosity. Hindutva is a paradox within Hinduism that is utilised by the present government to colonise the consciousness of the Indian masses. And ironically this kind of mobilisation has not required much effort and has been able to successfully create a destructive nationalist fundamentalism. The kind of violence and hatred that has emerged in India has made it the need of the hour for each citizen to prove her/his love and dedication to nationalism, it is in fact now not enough to be a citizen; rather one has to come out on the streets and show one's availability for the cause of the nation. In this political irony, it is sad that our nationality today only comes to be defined by an agreement with a certain kind of aggressive Hindu Right-wing assertions such as the demolition of the Babri Masjid, lynching in the name of diet, brutal violence against religious minorities and so on. In other words, the present political scene establishes a very limited notion of what it means to love India, basically the definition propagated is that of mental closeness, support of fanaticism, chauvinistic national pride and extreme intolerance. If one is seen to possess these dangerous qualities one may call himself a nationalist.

Our discussion on the present crisis cannot, however, be complete if we do not look at the problem in its totality. Therefore, as I asserted in the beginning, the notion of ‘Hindustan' needs to be distinguished from that of ‘Hindutva'. I would like to elaborate upon this by pointing out that Hindustan is a confluence of great philosophic traditions, religions, cultures and ideals. The name Hindustan is only the symbol of a prospering history of the nation. Thus Hindustan grows and flows because of its accommodation and nurturance of diversity, its fragrance lies in its ability to be a confluence of many simultaneous value systems, cultures and traditions. Metaphorically the idea of Hindustan is similar to that of a garden which looks beautiful because of the different flowers that bloom in it.

We may understand each flower to represent a set of ideas/philosophic traditions; now the challenge before us is to allow each its own space and dignity to prosper and thereafter to create a culture of mutual exchange and collective growth.

In this contemporary scenario, in the name of Hindutva the government is misleading the masses, or you may say that the masses have been taken over by saffron politics that defines nationalism as equivalent to communal hatred and which in a deeper sense also disqualifies the great ideas of nationalism which Rabindranth Tagore, Gandhi or Ambedkar believed in. Is it not true that Mahatma Gandhi and Nathuram Gotse were both nationalist patriots according to two very separate definitions? But we, the people of this country, need to decide which kind of nationalism/patriotism is enriching for the nation. I wish to assert that we have never become familiar to the trueness of nationalism. Our politics and neo-liberalism have closed all the windows of debates and discussions that enable one to understand the true notion of nationalism. In a similar context, we the people of this country do not realise/experience the difference between Hindutva and Hinduism. It is a failure of our nation that this kind of Hindutva mentality has produced so many Godses but not a single Tagore or Gandhi. In Tagore's view, such a kind of nationalism is indeed a social disease that limits us from addressing humans as humans beyond religions, classes or nationalities. The very people who are upholding these ideals are most conservative in their social practices; this kind of idolatry has a very mechanical purpose, associated with selfishness and fundamentalist intolerance.

Nationalism is an expression of the love and gratitude that one has for the nation, with people sharing a land, culture, tradition and thoughts.

In recent times, where any serious engagement with deeper issues of cultural politics, religious difference and democratic ideals has been missing from the mainstream social culture, where the main source of information has become the television, there is an increased unawareness of the difference between nationalism and pseudo-nationalism.

The people at large are still not aware of the ideas of and differences between Hindutva and Hindustan, the true love for the nation and the paradox of nationalism. It is true that we, the people of India, have never got any opportunity to understand these differences. That's why, it is very difficult for India at large to accept a place like the JNU that reasserts this difference and wants to inculcate the same tradition of debate and discussions to illuminate every nook and corner of our country. Like to a garden that is rich because of the diversity of its flowers, this is a university that prospers because different schools of thought have the right to co-exist and engage in reciprocal conversation. And public institutions like the JNU have always debunked any idea that is against humanity and social emancipation. The JNU has never succumbed to any particular pattern of thought or dogma, it is a place that has debated even the most radical progressive ideologies like feminism and Marxism and that's why the JNU is politically alive. Perhaps it is this serious engagement with society that students and teachers keep sharing, debating and raising critical questions and developing reasoned arguments. Today the state and masses that have turned into mob frenzy are both showing extreme hatred for this university perhaps only because the JNU has not succumbed to the pressures of a neo-liberal society, and its struggle for issues deeply central to the cause of human dignity has still not faded away.

In these dark times, when so many Godses have emerged, wanting to assassinate not only Gandhi but all the great ideals of humanity such as freedom, equality and justice, we need to have faith and hope that the dawn will rise again and conquer all the darkness and flowers will bloom once again in this garden of the JNU.

The author edits The New Leam, a monthly magazine on pedagogy, aesthetics and imagination published from New Delhi.