by Vikas Bajpai

The Struggle

When we at JNU embarked on our struggle against the slanderous and repressive onslaught that has been unleashed on the Jawaharlal Nehru University, we did so with our backs to the wall. Three weeks later we have managed to push back this campaign to finish off JNU, for what it stands, to an extent that now the polity, the media and the common people are divided into two clear folds—one, that buys into the Sangh Parivar's version, and the other that opposes it. We need to acknowledge that this fight back would not have been possible without the support of the larger academia from within and outside India; the support of a section of the media who were compelled to question the evidence being rolled out; and the support of the progressive sections of the Indian society.

The JNUTA (JNU Teachers' Association) alone has received hundreds of letters of support, of which only a few are individual letters, while the rest are from universities, large groups of scientists, scholars, writers and artists from India and across the world. Demonstrations and protests have taken place in support of JNU in a number of States. And the deluge goes on. Much information regarding this is available from the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/standwithjnu/.~

The crowning glory of this resistance was a massive rally in support of JNU that was held in Delhi on February 18. By various accounts ten to fifteen thousand people participated in the rally. Drawn from different walks of life, largely from within Delhi, but a good number of them from places and universities outside Delhi, they marched shouting slogans and singing songs in defence of the right to think, debate, dissent and agitate, and demanded an end to the fascist onslaught on higher education of which JNU is one of the foremost national symbols.

All of this notwithstanding, crossing half-way through and standing in the middle of the road is not quite the same as having crossed it. The more crucial part of the struggle still lies ahead. In order to successfully comprehend the future course, the developments till now need to be put in perspective.

Why This Tirade against JNU

The Sangh Parivar's attack on JNU is not about ‘nationalism' inasmuch as any conceptuali-sation of nationalism ought to be, as a necessary condition, built around the well-being of the people who constitute a nation. This is in direct contrast to geographical nationalism that the ruling classes propagate. Nor is their campaign based on facts, truth or logical reasoning; rather it defies every tenet of rational thinking.

This is an ideological assault by the Hindu Right to undermine leading centres of higher education in the country; render them conducive to the growth of a rabidly Right-wing intelligentsia and kill the ideas that pose a challenge to the rulers; that elaborate a vision of an alternative future before the people and therefore are potentially seditious. This attack did not begin from JNU, nor will it be restricted to JNU, but since, within the academia, JNU has always constituted the cutting edge of the resistance to the designs of the ruling classes, special attention has always been reserved for JNU by various governments ideologically wedded to the idea of neo-liberalism; albeit this attention has been packaged differently by different governments. Admittedly, the antagonisms have never been as sharp as they are with the present RSS-backed government in power.

The impetus to this ideological assault by the Sangh Parivar need also be seen in the context of the approaching Assembly elections to the States of Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The BJP-led government at the Centre is mired in failures on all fronts—sagging economy (the contentious GDP growth rate figures notwith-standing); further intensification of the agrarian crisis in the light of the drought in at least eleven States; raging food inflation; political losses in the States of Delhi and Bihar; student unrest beginning from the FTII, the withdrawal of UGC non-NET (national eligibility test) scholarship, the Hyderabad Central University and now JNU. Little wonder that the promise of ‘achche din' (good days) has turned into the pursuit of a chimera.

This lays the ground for the BJP to seek to divert attention from the performance of the Union Government, inasmuch as it sullies the image of the party in the eyes of the electorate, to an issue much closer to their divisive political agenda. Hence, the ‘national'-‘anti-national' cacophony suitably fits the bill.

This also explains as to why the RSS and its cohorts remain unfazed by the exposure of the many video clips, used by the pro-RSS television channels to establish JNU as a den of anti-national activities, to have been doctored. In fact the Human Resource Development Minister, Smriti Irani, dished out greater lies, with superb aplomb, right from the floor of Parliament (read the rebuttal of the charges made in her speech by the SC and ST faculty of the Hyderabad Central University, dated February 28, 2016, available at http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160228/jsp/frontpage/story_71798.jsp#.VtLlyUBOcrg); these are being circulated by the government to shore up their “nationalist” agenda.

Taking Stock of the Tirade

It is important here to take stock of all that has been produced in the public realm to malign JNU in order to clear the larger public perception on the facts of the case.

So many instances have come to light in the past few days to show how facts were distorted and evidence cooked up to build the situation towards a pre-meditated end. The police was present in plain clothes on the evening of February 9, 2016 when the purported anti-national programme was held at JNU. They did not find anything anti-national about the programme then; nothing happened during the whole day on February 10 either, until the BJP Member of Parliament from Delhi, Mahesh Giri, had an FIR filed with the police based on a complaint by the ABVP that anti-India slogans were raised at the programme.

There are two different versions of the happenings at the same programme in the two reports filed by the security officer of JNU apart from the doublespeak and lies spread by the JNU administration itself (http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/exposed-in-letter-jnu-vice-chancellor-s-doublespeak-on-police-action/403943). It was later conveyed by a Home Ministry official to The Hindu newspaper that, “There is some video footage available with the police, but the audio component is missing. It is not clear whether Kanhaiya actually shouted anti-national slogans. If there is no evidence, then the Delhi Police will have to drop the sedition charge when the charge-sheet is filed.”

Anyhow, all these facts, claims and assertions can be verified or rejected only if there is a thorough and impartial inquiry into the whole affair without any sort of intimidation, of which there are no signs as yet. What has, however, constituted the mainstay of the assault on JNU are the videos that were circulated widely on the social media and by some channels, most notorious among them being the Zee TV, News X, Aaj Tak and Times Now.

Interestingly a journalist—Vishwadeepak, working as news producer with the Zee television network—tendered his resignation from the channel as he could no longer cope with the moral dilemma that he was confronted with given the biased reporting against JNU and on other occasions that he had been forced to do. His entire resignation letter was made public by him by pasting it (available from https://www.facebook.com/vishwa.deepak.587/posts/1049717571737332?fref=nf&pnref=story in Hindi and http://scroll.in/article/803852/two-charts-that-make-you-wonder-why-hyper-nationalists-arent-signing-up-for-the-armed-forces in English) on his facebook page and is a must read piece to gauge the perversity of the motivated campaign that was launched against JNU by a section of the media.

The Video Evidence

There are three incriminating videos in all. The first video, that was relayed by Zee TV channel, showed JNU students shouting ‘Pakistan Zindabad'. It was to be established later that those shown raising slogans were actually ABVP members themselves (the video proving this is available on https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs1sCRVxoHY). The faces of the students in the video were clearly visible; even their names are known, and indeed if they were shouting ‘Pakistan Zindabad' then why did the police not arrest them? But the channels, which tirelessly propagated that JNU was a den of anti-national elements, never cared to show the video exposing their chicanery, for obvious reasons. Neither were the students shown in this video the target of police action, again for obvious reasons.

No sooner was this video debunked, the ABVP released another video on February 15 (available on http://www.abplive.in/videos/abvp-releases-new-video-of-students-shouting-anti-india-slogans-290775) to claim that anti-India slogans were shouted by the activists of the AISA, AISF, SFI and DSU in the programme held on February 9. Remarkably, in this video, that is of extremely poor quality, not a single face except one can be made out, let alone the faces of the people who were allegedly shouting slogans or the identity of the organisations they belonged to. The person whose face can be seen is also not shouting slogans. In fact the author has doubts on whether this video is of JNU at all.

The spokespersons of the imputed student organisations, on their part, denied these slogans were shouted by any of their activists. Since this video did not seem to have been unequivocal enough to have the desired impact, the new trick that was adopted was to use its audio and plaster it over another video in which the JNUSU President, Kanhaiya Kumar, was shouting slogans of azadi (freedom) albeit ‘azadi' from poverty, from feudalism, from capitalism, from communalism, from rioters and a host of other ills.

The fake video went viral on the social media and did deliver the intended damage. However, the exposure of the truth behind this was not long in coming. The ABP news (available from http://www.abplive.in/videos/abvp-releases-new-video-of-students-shouting-anti-india-slogans-290775) and the India Today (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/panelists-debate-whether-kanhaiya-sedition-video-doctored-or-not/1/599933.html) channels conclusively showed how the video had been doctored. The same was also confirmed later by forensic experts (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/video/forensic-experts-back-india-todays-expose-on-kanhaiyas-doctored-video/1/600881.html).

With the exception of the video of the last exposure, the earlier exposure of fake videos was however not relayed by the television channels in a manner as to embellish the nefarious designs of the Sangh Parivar in public perception. Nevertheless, this sequence of events along with the nefarious but failed attempt to link the students of JNU with Hafiz Saeed do establish the malafide intentions of the Sangh Parivar in orchestrating the present attack on JNU. But the Sanghi zealots are made of a different material; the spokespersons of the BJP, RSS and ABVP not only claimed these doctored video clips to be the clinching proof of the anti-national character of the JNU students, but shamelessly remained unfazed in insisting upon the same despite these videos being proved to be doctored. Shamelessness, it seems, is one characteristic that is never to be found in short supply with their credo.

Even if there were no videos to prove or disprove things either ways, common sense dictates that slogans like ‘Pakistan Zindabad', ‘Bharat tere tukde honge' or ‘Inshah Allah' are not the slogans that the Left of any kind in the country subscribes to. However, there still remains one point of contention—the support for Afzal Guru which the Sangh Parivar spokespersons are harping upon to establish that JNU is a bastion of anti-nationals. Their point is simply based on the premise that he was a terrorist who was convicted by the highest court of the country in the Parliament attack case and hence any support for such a terrorist is anti-national and seditious. We need to look at this more closely.

The Case of Afzal Guru

Afzal Guru had been a medical student at the SKIMS (Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences) who got attracted to a call given by the JKLF in 1989 for armed struggle for the liberation of Kashmir and joined the same at the age of twenty years. However, he soon got disillusioned and surrendered to the BSF (Border Security Force) in 1993. This detail is important for the reason that the life of a surrendered militant is almost entirely controlled by the security forces with there being little possibility of dodging their oversight. Since his surrender, Afzal had been under the watch of the STF (Special Task Force) and in fact his involvement with the chain of events leading to the Parliament attack case was brought to bear upon by the STF. For better knowledge of the details and the intricacies of Afzal Guru's case the readers may refer to the Mainstream article —‘In Defence of Afzal Guru' available at http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article3994.html.\ (Hazara, N., 2013)1

Suffice it here to state that Afzal Guru was convicted based on circumstantial evidence at best and despite a number of manipulations in evidence done by the police. The Supreme Court observed: “The conviction under section 3(2) of POTA is set aside. The conviction under section 3(5) of POTA is also set aside because there is no evidence that he is a member of a terrorist organisation, once the confessional statement is excluded. Incidentally, we may mention that even going by the confessional statement, it is doubtful whether the membership of a terrorist gang or organisation is established.” (Puniyani, Ram, 2013)2

Despite this the Court, however, goes on to state: “Afzal, who is a surrendered militant and who was bent upon repeating the acts of treason against the nation, is a menace to the society and his life should become extinct.” (Centre on Death Penalty, Undated) Further, the judgment recorded: “The incident which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation and the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.” (Ibid.)3

The author does not wish here to call upon the readers to revise their opinions on Afzal Guru or indeed on the movement in Kashmir on the basis of these facts, but to consider this much—should a person be punished for a crime that s/he is alleged to have committed even in the absence of a conclusive proof, especially when the punishment to be handed down is as severe as death? If the answer to this is ‘NO', then do the facts stated above lend themselves to an interpretation that a great injustice was done to Afzal Guru by convicting him for a crime in which his complicity could not be conclusively proved?

By its own admission, the Court's premise that ‘he was bent upon repeating acts of treason' was based on the fact of his being a ‘surrendered militant' rather than fresh evidence of any terrorist activity. Does this not facilitate an understanding that Afzal Guru cannot be branded as a terrorist in view of the Court's own observations?

Last but not the least, whose collective national conscience was satisfied by Afzal's hanging? That of the unelected Supreme Court Justices, who do not even consider themselves answerable to the elected representatives of the people (in Parliament), let alone the Indian people being able to seek answers from them? Or is this ‘national conscience' a mere euphemism for the opinions of the Hindu Right on issues that constitute ‘national conscience', which is nothing but a reflection of the interests of the upper-caste, upper-class Hindus?

These are contentious issues, to say the least, that lend themselves to varied interpretations and opinions. Just because an opinion does not match the prevalent attitude of the rulers, does it become anti-national? Just because the students at JNU refused to accept Afzal Guru's depiction as a terrorist, do they become anti-national seditionists? A number of jurists, journalists, commentators, writers and political activists condemned the judgment of convicting Afzal. They were never branded anti-national.

I personally would tend to think that after his surrender, Afzal was an ordinary Kashmiri who wanted to live a peaceful life with his family as any other ordinary person would. He certainly was no visionary or a great leader of the Kashmiri people, but he was wrongly convicted and the manner of his hanging stood in denial of his basic human rights—something that deserves strongest condemnation. Another person may, however, consider him to be a martyr for a cause; and a third may even like to consider him to be a great leader of the Kashmiri movement. They may coin their slogans likewise—some justifiable, some of exaggerated, but does this qualify to call these differing shades of opinion anti-national? Not so in my opinion, especially as those accusing the JNU students of raising slogans in support of a terrorist themselves went ahead to form a coalition government in Kashmir with the PDP (People's Democratic Party) whose stated position is that Afzal Guru is a martyr to the Kashmiri cause and we can all see how desperate the BJP is to form the government with the PDP once again, only if Mehbooba Mufti would relent.

On this the RSS ideologue, Rakesh Sinha, has been arguing in television talk shows that the BJP is seeking to co-opt the PDP into the national polity in order to integrate Kashmir with India closely. If so, then they are trying to co-opt the already co-opted, while refusing to talk to those who need to be co-opted. This stance is laughable and certainly is an argument of convenience to shroud their lust for power.

The Prospects for the Coming Days

We need to acknowledge here that the upsurge of support for JNU among the academia and other intellectuals notwithstanding, a great damage has been done to JNU's perception among the laity. There is a need to see that no stone is left unturned to change this perception.

Due to the expose of the videos presented as evidence and the violence unleashed by the ‘nationalist' goonda hordes of the Sangh Parivar in the court, the government has had to suffer a considerable loss of face. The need of the hour is to go on the offensive along the lines discussed above and put the government on the mat.

This, however, is not going to be easy. The police still appears open to making further arrests in the case, albeit its earlier aggressiveness seems to have waned. The atmosphere of apprehension still prevails on the campus. In fact the JNU students have had to face hostility from the local community in areas like Munirka where many students live on rent and even from the auto-rickshaw drivers. A professor of Sociology from the Centre for Studies in Social Systems (CSSS) was attacked in Gwalior where he had gone to deliver a lecture. Likewise there are reports of attack on another professor. Reversing this is going to take quite an effort that may be strenuous but a possible and winnable prospect nonetheless.

There is a need for the JNUTA and JNUSU (students' union) to keep up practical agitational measures that can be sustained over a long period of time while constructively ensuring the participation of teachers and students. The foremost objective of the agitation would obviously be to accomplish some of the immediate demands such as withdrawal of the false cases of sedition slapped on the students; an end to the witch-hunting of the students; and a free and fair internal inquiry to expose the conspirators within JNU and appropriate action against them as per the university statue.

However, doing just this much may not constitute sufficient condition to put adequate political pressure on the government. There is a need to directly attack the draconian colonial-era law of ‘sedition' and ‘national chauvinism' that is propagated in the name of ‘nationalism' by the Indian ruling classes. Indeed there is no place whatsoever for the ‘sedition' law in a democratic polity and society. As for nationalism, there is a need to push for a nationalism based on the unity of hearts and minds of the Indian people living in different parts of the country as opposed to a coercive unity enforced under the jackboots.

The JNU teachers and students are suitably placed and perfectly capable of leading such a campaign. There is a need to rope in other political and human rights organisations in this campaign such that it can be taken to the people at large rather than remaining confined within the four walls of JNU. If this could be done, it would indeed be a original contribution that JNU can make to further the cause of the toiling masses of India whose struggles are increasingly being targeted in the name of national interest or nationalism.

So long as the JNU community remains firm in its stand, a sizable section of the society shall be willing to align with them in this struggle, especially as the government's designs become increasingly exposed.

Conclusion

In having to take the present struggle forward JNU has been conferred with a historic responsibility to fight this struggle not for itself alone but probably for a number of universities in this country that may not find themselves equal to the task of confronting the onslaught of the present government to saffronise higher education; to commercialise it in order to make it an exclusive preserve of the rich; and last but not the least, to regimentalise it in order to purge the right to debate and dissent from our universities such that they are rendered safe for the rulers of the day.

Nevertheless, JNU continues to believe, ever more strongly, that a ‘challenge' is also an ‘opportunity' and that ‘we shall overcome' the present fascist attack on JNU. 

References

1. Hazara, N. (2013): ‘In Defence of Afzal', Mainstream, Weekly, Vol. 51 (9), February 16.

2. Puniyani, Ram (2013): ‘Hanging Of Conscience: Case of Afzal Guru', Countercurrents.org, February 26.

3. Centre on Death Penalty (Undated): ‘Afzal Guru', National Law University, Delhi. Available from http://www.deathpenaltyindia.com/executedprisoners/afzal-guru/ on February 21, 2016.

Dr Vikas Bajpai is an Assistant Professor, Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He can be contacted at e-mail: drvikasbajpai@gmail.com

by Sandeep Pandey and Rahul Pandey

As we know, the great revolutionary Bhagat Singh was an atheist. He wrote a famous article ‘Why I am an Atheist?' Even after he knew that he was going to be hanged by the British Government, his commitment to his principles was not shaken. Neither did he regret his action of exploding the harmless bomb in the Central Assembly at Delhi nor did he seek any apology from the British. He was hanged when he was merely 23 years of age and hence did not get a chance to play a major role in the freedom struggle of India but there can be no denying that he continues to be among the most inspiring of the freedom fighters that India produced.

Bhagat Singh believed in the objective reality and was concerned about the condition of the masses. He wanted to work for the liberation of millions from the clutches of poverty and exploitation. A lot many people, when they take up a cause, seek the help of the ‘almighty'. Belief in God gives them inner strength to live through the extremely difficult circumstances in order to be able to help the needy. A good example would be that of Mother Teresa. But for Bhagat Singh such faith was not required. He derived his strength from his inner self. He believed in the ideals of Socialism and was convinced that political change could be brought about. With his small but extremely dedicated band of volunteers he took on the might of the British and was crushed. But not his spirit, which continues to be alive in the form of numerous revolutionaries and activists working for social transformation.

As Bhagat Singh did not believe in God, he would not have believed in any symbolism. Hence he would not have felt the need to hail Bharat Mata, an incarnation of the idea of mother nation. As he did not worship any God or Goddess, there was no need for him to feel any reverence for Bharat Mata. It is unlikely that he would have ever raised the ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogan. In fact, his favourite slogan was ‘Inqilab Zindabad'. Does it make him any less patriotic? On the contrary, his life exemplifies that patriotism lies in one's beliefs and actions rather than mere symbolic slogans.

The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is doing a great disservice by promoting the idea that to prove one's loyalty to the nation one has to say ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai'. There are innumerable people who are working with full commitment to serve the society and humanity. The way of expressing their commitment to the nation may be different. For example, a doctor by serving the patients is working for the nation. Does she need to raise ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' slogan to prove her loyalty to the nation?

Owing to its historical origins, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' conjures up an image of the Durga-like Goddess who is worshipped by several sections of Hindus. However, India's reality is far more diverse. Many Indian citizens from religions other than Hinduism would not relate the nation with such a Goddess-like image. Even among Hindus there are several sections, especially the oppressed castes, who do not worship such an image. Some even despise it.

Then there are numerous tribal communities living in and around the vast forests and natural ecosystems all across India who display an amazing richness of cultural variety. These communities have being living here for ages, even before Hinduism took birth on this land. Most of them do not revere human-like Gods or even identify with the idea of a nation that many of us in the mainstream have. They are more likely to revere nature and specific forms of natural resources around them, such as forests, soil, rains, mountains, rivers and seas, amidst which they have been living in a symbiotic relationship.

And, there are non-believers, atheists and agnostics among us, having equal constitutional rights as all others, many of whom may not agree with the concept of ‘Bharat Mata'. With increasing influence of science and rationality in modern times, such communities are growing almost everywhere.

All these sections and communities of people are Indian citizens and have their own ways of relating with and serving the nation. They have different cultural symbols too, which are perfectly meaningful in their respective contexts. Every community has the right to follow its rituals and symbols without imposing them on others.

This is the reason why our founding fathers and mothers—who led India's freedom struggle against the British—laid overarching importance to respecting our society's pluralistic character. They realised that India can thrive only with a robust foundation that preserves this pluralism. All tallest leaders of our freedom movement, who had a pan-India following and who inspired the imagination of millions—Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Ambedkar, Bose, Bhagat Singh, Tilak, Nehru, Maulana Azad, Patel, Tagore, and others—, agreed on certain common core values in spite of differences in ideology and strategy. They were not willing to compro-mise on the principles of pluralism, secularism, justice and democracy. Consequently these core values were enshrined in independent India's Constitution and even in national symbols like the tricolour flag and slogans such as ‘Jai Hind'.

If nationalist passions get linked with religious symbolism such as ‘Bharat Mata', then it will lead to more divisions, strife and even open murders on irrational provocations, just like the gruesome killing of Muslims in Dadri and Jharkhand on the pretext of another symbolism—‘cow protection'. Bhagat Singh had indeed warned the youth against falling prey to such narrow religious-nationalist passions. In an article written in 1924 in Kirti he had lamented that it were the communal leaders and irresponsible local press (newspapers) who together manufactured bigoted slogans and headlines that created an atmosphere in which communal killings and riots were easily fomented.

In fact, rather than revering some symbolic idea of the mother nation it would be more important to serve the destitute women/girls in society and to uphold the dignity of women/girls around us. It is probably people who are not doing enough for society or do not treat women/girls around them as equal citizens who need to publicly display their loyalty to symbolic nationalism by raising a jingoistic slogan.

Sandeep Pandey is a social activist and Vice-President, Socialist Party (India), and Rahul Pandey is an entrepreneur and Visiting Faculty at the IIM, Lucknow.

Something extraordinary and adorable happened to the Hindus, who number 80 per cent in India. Breaking the 400-year-old tradition, widows at Vrindavan, about 110 kilometres from Delhi, celebrated the festival of Holi and danced while throwing colours at one another. Surprisingly, the national media has not considered it newsworthy.

Widows have no status in the Hindu religion. The society looks down upon them if they wear coloured clothes and sport bindis. Although the Rig Veda, older than the Bible, laid down that widows should lead their lives ordinarily, the Brahmins, the priest class, have driven them to a life worse than death.

The liberal Indian Constitution has been of little help against the prejudice and practice going back to hundreds of years. Widows at Vrindavan have dared the Brahmins, who have sheepishly accepted what happened there. And this has come as a shot in the arm for the widows.

They will vigorously fight for equality as they are doing in the case of seeking entry into several temples or at least proximity to the sanctum sanctorum. This development fits into the secular ethos of the country which is increasingly under pressure.

India has come to accept secularism of sorts. It is not ideal. Yet, it does give space to the minorities. Lately, this space is sought to be restricted when the slogan of Bharat Mata ki Jai was raised.

Two happenings which have come to light in the last few days are disconcerting. One, the Legislature in Maharashtra, a fairly progressive State, has suspended an Assembly member for not chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai. The Legislature has not explained why it is necessary to raise the slogan. This is neither a national anthem, Jana Gana Mana..., nor is it a national song like Sare Jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara.

Even if one were to violate the procedure of standing up at the time of rendering of the national anthem, it is at best an expression of irreverence and distasteful. But how does it invite imprisonment or fine? The Indian Constitution is a liberal document and guarantees freedom of speech and expression.

One may not like the Constitution's violation. But there is no law to penalise people in a democratic society. Their opinion is the best custodian, not any penal action. The very spirit of democracy would be lost if people are told what not to say. True, it is their inherent right to support or oppose a proposition. But it cannot be thrust on them. They are their own masters.

Against this background, it is strange that the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, hanged by the British, has gone practically unnoticed. It is probably because he was an atheist who finds little favour with those who want people to wear the badge of religion on their sleeve. They are trying to suppress even the free thinking of people.

These so-called custodians of religion have never considered how to erase the curse of untouchability which is a part and parcel of Hinduism. Even in the 21st century the people, particularly women, practise untouchability. Even though it is banned by the law, the tradition has not diminished, especially in rural India.

The Hindu society should introspect why it is insensitive towards the lower castes. They are treated worse than the cows, which are revered. The Hindus express more sorrow on the killing of a cow than that of a Dalit. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which considers India a Hindu state, should be paying attention to the eradication of discrimination which has dogged the Hindu community for centuries. In contrast, Islam knows no high or low when it comes to eating. They sit together at the same daster khan.

Yet, discrimination is creeping into Islam. The Sayyids consider themselves like the Brahmins at the top of the ladder. This is only an exception, not the rule. The Muslims complain that Hinduism has influenced Islam as practised in India where it has acquired many traits which have cast a shadow on Islam.

In reality, Muslims in most countries consider those in India inferior because of their “contamination” by Hinduism. Emperor Akbar from the Mughal dynasty, which ruled for more than a hundred years, floated a new religion, Din-i-Lahi, which sought to reflect the best of both in Islam and Hinduism. The venture failed to take roots since both communities were too immersed in their centuries-old practices.

Even though Hinduism is essentially a way of living and thinking, it has become a prisoner to dogmas which do not fit into the freedom they are supposed to have. The RSS has been trying its best to make Hinduism rigid, but even after several decades the organisation has failed in its efforts. No doubt, tolerance has lessened the rigidity than what it was before.

Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi writer who has taken refuge in India after the bigoted ousted her from her country, says relentlessly that if Indians had not been tolerant, there would have been riots between Hindus and Muslims all the time. There is something to ponder about in what she says.

However, she ignores the fact that both Hindus and Muslims live like two nations. There is very little social contact between the two. I recall that we, the Hindus and Muslims, lived together in Sialkot city, my home town, and never felt that we were two different people. We visited each other's house and ate together and celebrated Eid, Diwali and Holi.

This atmosphere changed after the demand for Pakistan came to be raised. And today when a line has been drawn on the basis of religion, the distance between the two has increased. Was partition the best solution? This question was posed to Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah when he founded Pakistan. He said he did not know. Only posterity would judge. But one cannot run away from the fact that partition has not brought Hindus and Muslims nearer to one another. Was there another way to bridge the gulf between two communities?

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

by N.V.K. Murthy

The following was written by the author sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to space constraints. It is now being published as its contents have not been fully overtaken by the latest events.

The Government of India in recent days has been making an excellent showing at inter-national meetings. The country's leaders have been making right statements, winning appro-bations all around. These statements talk about adherence to secular ideals, democratic gover-nance and inclusive economic and social progress. But when these statements are judged against events happening within the country, they ring hollow.

What has caused concern among people in India and abroad are the daylight assassinations of liberal intellectuals fighting for freedom of thought and speech. Dr Dabholkar was a leader of Andha Shradha Nirmolan Samithi (Committee for Eradication of Superstition and Blind Faith) and had been carrying on a campaign of rational thinking for many years. Govind Pansare was a Left-wing liberal intellec-tual and was in the thick of fighting for civil liberties. Dr Kalburgi was an eminent intellec-tual and educationist. He was fighting for freedom of thought and expression. All these three were assassinated in broad daylight. The suspects belong to the Rightist Hindu organi-sations close to the ruling party. Then came the lynching of a Muslim man not far from the national Capital for allegedly eating beef, a normal food for a Muslim. He was lynched by a Hindu mob for his act of eating beef when it was banned by the State Government. No government, which claims to be democratic, can lay down what a citizen should think or say or eat. Now comes a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader who has urged volunteers to put together stones for the construction of a Ram Mandir at the Babri Masjid site. The country has still not forgotten the widespread violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid structure some two decades ago. The case is before a court of law. Moderate leaders amongst Hindus and Muslims are trying to find a solution to the problem acceptable to both the communities. When such is the case, the recent Vishwa Hindu Parishad call is nothing but an invitation to trouble.

This writer had earlier pointed out that the landslide victory of the BJP in the last parlia-mentary elections was not to be interpreted as an endorsement by the country of the Hindutva ideology of the RSS core of the BJP, but as a reaction to the misrule and extensive corruption under the previous government. The BJP and RSS have a lot to answer. The country has still not forgotten the conspiracy of Godhra, where a railway carriage of returning volunteers from the Ram Mandir/Babri Masjid site, were alleged to have been burned alive. Later investigations showed that the railway carriage was empty, all the volunteers were detrained at the earlier station, and the carriage was torched deliberately from inside before being abandoned. This so-called torching of a carriage full of volunteers was to justify the genocide of Muslims all over the Gujarat State which followed.

In spite of these events, Indians across the country were excited when the new government assured the people of good, fair and clean governance. The assassinations referred to above shook the public badly. Prime Minister Modi made a bold resolve to change the anti-Gandhi legacy of the RSS. He visited Raj Ghat soon after taking over as the Prime Minister to pay homage to the Father of the Nation. He further went on to initiate the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” (Clean India mission) on Gandhi Jayanti day. These were imaginative and constructive moves. But he has to go a lot further. He has to stop the Right-wing Hindu organisations, like the RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, from organising vigilante groups and taking the law into their own hands. He has to take action which will make minority groups feel secure in India. In other words, PM Modi will have to make sure that the Government of India is really a secular democracy.

There are equally pressing problems, which need to be on the priority list. The problem of climate change is one such. It is good that India is part of the agreement signed at the Paris conference. Here again the immediate action of starting four new coal-based energy projects goes against the Paris agreement. Considering the dire pollution situation in New Delhi and other cities and the recurrent droughts and floods all over the country, there is an urgent need to scale down coal and other fossil based energy units and to build renewable energy units on an emergency scale. Earlier all attempts to put up renewable energy units were discouraged as uneconomical compared to fossil fuel-based units. Now that we have realised the terrible social, health, and other costs that we have to pay for fossil fuel-based energy, renewable energy is the only answer. There are no alternatives. The availability of fresh air and clean water must be the top priority of any sensible government. No special interest should be allowed to interfere with this priority. Fortunately the country has resources and the know-how to provide fresh air and unpolluted drinking water to its citizens. Two names immediately come to mind in this connection —Ratan Tata for renewable energy and Mukesh Ambani for fresh water. The Tatas have been in the power business for many years. They also have the know-how for electrical power production based on solar energy. They should be encouraged and given all the help to take on leadership in this matter. In the past, the oil refinery project of the Ambani group based in Rajkot had helped in desalinating seawater to supply drinking water to drought-affected Rajkot. With the shrinking importance of refining mineral oil for fuel, the Ambanis could be encouraged to convert the Rajkot plant into a water desalination plant.

As far as the problem with Pakistan is concerned, PM Modi has seized an opportune moment to try and solve the long-standing Indo-Pak problem. In earlier days the Govern-ment of Pakistan's encouragement of the Taliban elements to commit terrorist acts against India was the main obstacle. Now the Pakistan Government seems to have realised the Taliban menace is also threatening the stability of its own country. So this is the right moment to offer Pakistan all the help it needs to root out the Taliban menace from Pakistan once and for all for the good of both the nations. Then perhaps India could persuade Pakistan to accept the Line of Control (LoC) as an international border between the nations. This could be followed after a period of five or seven years of friendly relations by some sort of referendum overseen by an agreed-upon team of inter-national observers to find out what the Kashmiris on both sides of the border really want. Meanwhile the Government of Jammu and Kashmir should be allowed the maximum amount of regional autonomy possible under the Constitution so that the people could enjoy the benefits of living in a free and open secular society.

PM Modi has two options. Option number one is to be a loyal RSS member, and against the advice of the sane and secular, to simply follow the RSS mantra of supremacy of Hindus in a Hindu-majority nation, and in good time be remembered only as a prejudiced leader. Option number two is to rise above the narrow confines of loyalty to the RSS ideology, grow up to be a true nationalist and world statesman, and go across the aisle to the Opposition to build a national coalition for establishing a truly secular and open society. Then he is likely to become “a yugapursha”, a historic figure and join the company of personages like Buddha, Asoka, Akbar and Gandhiji. The choice is his.

The author, now retired, was the First Registrar of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Subsequently he functioned for sometime as the Director of the Film and TV Institute of India, Pune. Later he was appointed the Director of the Nehru Centre, Mumbai.

EDITORIAL

As the campaign for the elections to the State Assemblies of Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry hots up with the BJP making a desperate bid for power in Assam banking on the anti-incumbency factor since the incumbent Tarun Gogoi Government there has completed three terms at a stretch, the Narendra Modi dispensation at the Centre—under the supervision of the RSS—has launched a concerted drive against all secular democrats concentrating on a symbolic hyper-nationalistic slogan of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” if only to conceal its sordid history of having opposed the Gandhi-led national movement as well as the freedom struggle alongside a not-so-covert understanding with British imperialism. Unfortunately the principal Opposition party of the country, the Indian National Congress, has, instead of exposing the ruling party's nefarious game on this score, meekly fallen in line, as witnessed in its role alongwith the NCP in colluding with the BJP and Shiv Sena in enforcing the suspension of a Muslim MLA in the Maharashtra Assembly for having refused to chant the aforementioned slogan.

While democracy is under assault from those in power at the Centre the judiciary has, despite some flip-flops (as was noticed in the peculiar judgment delivered at the time of granting interim bail to the JNU Students' Union President detained on the charge of sedition), taken a bold and unambiguous stand on the issue of the Modi administration's dismissal of the Harish Rawat Government in Uttrakhand and imposition of President's Rule there. The State High Court, in its order of March 29, unequivocally pointed out: “The present proclamation is nothing but a colourable exercise of power by the Central Government... Democratically elected Houses should not be demolished in such fashion. Floor test is the only test to prove the majority.” The State was brought under Central Rule on March 27; and the High Court ordered that the floor test be held today, that is, on March 31. However, on March 30, a Division Bench of the High Court stayed the floor test until April 7 and posted the matter for April 6 for a final hearing on the writ petition filed by the ousted CM challenging the imposition of President's Rule in the State.

Meanwhile a new development on the whole episode has come to the fore. That is the stand of the BJP ally, the Shiv Sena, In an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece, Saamna, it was noted on March 30: “The BJP used nine rebel Congress MLAs to bring instability in the Uttarakhand Government... If the government had lost majority, the decision should have been taken in the State Assembly. The Governor had even given time to the government to prove its majority by March 28, but a day before that President's Rule was imposed. What did the BJP gain out of it?”

It further observed: “In a democracy, the voice of the Opposition is of paramount importance. A one-party rule is worse then Emergency or dictatorship. The country will be ruined if the Opposition is eliminated and poison is thrown at allies.”

There is no shadow of doubt that the anti-democratic proclivities of the BJP have soared with the party enjoying a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha on its own following the 2014 parliamentary polls. The party has given sufficient indications of such proclivities on several occasions in the recent past. But as the Shiv Sena's reaction shows, it will not be smooth sailing for the Modi leadership in this regard.

The global scenario has turned complex, what with the terror strikes in Brussels, the tragic killing of several women and children in a Lahore park the other day, US President Obama's landmark visit to Cuba, the historic return to democracy in Myanmar after 54 years with the Aung San Suu Kyi leadership assuming power there and the frightening prospect of someone like Donald Trump winning the US presidential election.

However, it is the domestic scene in India with the BJP on the rampage which acquires greater prominence for us in the present setting. That is precisely why democracy needs to be reinforced in the country in the days ahead. That indeed is the overriding task at this juncture.

March 31 S.C.

COMMUNICATION

At a time when the government is increa-singly marginalising the most important develop-ment issue of land reforms, people's movements and all pro-poor forces and scholars should come together to reassert the continuing importance of land reforms. At one time the importance of land reforms and in particular the importance of providing at least some land for cultivation to the landless rural poor was widely recognised even at the government level. This need has not changed, this importance has not changed; it is only the priorities of the government that have changed as the government has increasingly moved away from the concerns of the poor. It is now for people's movements and independent scholars to keep alive the issue of land reforms.

It should be emphasised with renewed vigour that land reforms most obviously are of crucial importance from the point of view of equality, justice and dignity but in addition also from the point of view of broadbased development of the productive potential of agriculture, land reforms can make an important contribution.

Given this many-sided importance and potential of land reforms it is a great responsibility of people's movements and independent scholars to keep alive the issue of land reforms in India and to revive and strengthen it as much as possible.

Bharat Dogra
C-27, Raksha Kunj, Paschim Vihar, New Delhi-110063 Ph.: 25255303

COMMUNICATION

Sumanta Banerjee's piece, “Recalling Gandhi in Narendra Modi's India”(Mainstream, March 25, 2016), underlines the fact that the dead old man has not, after all, outlived his utility. Even Left-of-the-Left intellectuals find what Gandhi said about violence useful in combating the rising tide of Hindu communal fascism.

Gandhi had repeatedly said that his non-violence was the non-violence of the brave and not of the coward. He made his position clear that he preferred violence to cowardice. His stand on communalism of any brand is also known as is the fact that he fell to a communal fanatic's bullets.

Gandhi was alive when Pakistan attacked Kashmir in October 1947, immediately after independence. Pakistan initially tried to deny the direct involvement of its troops in the attack and sought to pass if off as a raid by armed tribals. But the truth could not be suppressed for long. Brigadier (later Lieutenant-General) L. P. Sen was sent by the Government of India as the commanding officer of the 161 Infantry Brigade of the Indian Army to Kashmir to beat back the invaders and prevent an armed occupation of Kashmir by Pakistan. Sen's book, Slender Was the Thread, is the most authentic and first-hand military account of that war.

The following is an excerpt from his book:

“As I was leaving General Russell's house, I received a message to the effect that Brigadier Thapar would be awaiting me at the southern entrance to South Block of the Secretariat. When I arrived he informed me that Mahatma Gandhi wished to see me and be given an Intelligence briefing. We drove to his residence and I told him everything that was known to us. He listened most intently and when I finished and asked whether he had any questions he would like answered, he replied: ‘No, no questions.' After a few seconds of silence, he continued: ‘Wars are a curse to humanity. They are so utterly senseless. They bring nothing but suffering and destruction.' As a soldier, and one about to be engaged in battle in a matter of hours, I was at a loss to know what to say, and eventually asked him: ‘What do I do in Kashmir?' Mahatma Gandhi smiled and said:

‘You're going in to protect innocent people, and to save them from suffering and their

property from destruction. To achieve that you must naturally make full use of every means at your disposal..' It was the last time that I was to see him alive.”

“Make full use of every means at your disposal”—that was Gandhi's forthright counsel to the Brigadier about to be engaged in battle. What would have been his counsel if asked what should innocent and unarmed men, women and children do when armed fascist goons set upon them and made them shout slogans dictated by them on pain of death? Would he have asked people to shout “Bharat Mata ki Jai” when lathi- or knife-wielding men asked them to do so?

Barun Das Gupta
JC-9, Flat 1A, Salt Lake City, Kolkata — 700106

‘Yahapalana' is a term that has been much in use in Sri Lanka's political discourse ever since the present government came to power early last year. ‘Yahapalana' is a Sinhala word, and means ‘good governance'. The Sirisena Government was voted into office in the January 2015 election on a promise of ‘good governance'. But one year down the road, the term has acquired other shades of meaning that are not always complimentary, and sometimes sarcastic.

Like recently, when Sri Lanka had an island-wide power breakdown lasting over six hours, it was described as ‘Yahapalana shining'. A few days later, as Parliament approved bigger pay packets for its members, sections of the media put it down as ‘Yahapalanaya Bonanzas'. Former President Mahinda Rajapakse then wrote a piece on the foreign debt crisis facing the country (some of which was the product of the profligacy under his own presidency) he called it the work of the ‘Yahapalana government'. ‘Yahapalana' is fast turning into a stock term used to make a point against the very government that introduced it in the political vocabulary in the first place.

The reason that a straight Sinhala word has acquired new inflexions of meaning is to be seen as the common people's way of responding to a situation where the Opposition space has been practically lying unoccupied. With about fifty groups and parties sharing power in a rainbow coalition that now rules Sri Lanka, there hardly is an Opposition left to voice the contrarian viewpoint.

Traditionally, Sri Lanka has had two main parties: the Right-wing United National Party (UNP) and the Left-of-Centre Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)—representing the two poles of the political spectrum. For the rest, an assortment of smaller Left parties along with parties representing Muslims and the Tamils, are there. But they have always been marginal players.

In the years since independence, the UNP and SLFP had taken their role as rivals so seriously that they even took turns at destroying the chances of peace whenever one of them tried to work out any kind of a solution of the ethnic problem with the Tamils. Such obduracy of the two main parties was one reason why the Tamil question had defied resolution for so long.

However, the relative positions of the two parties underwent a radical change with the January 2015 presidential election. For there was no way for them to dislodge an entrenched President Rajapakse except by joining hands. And they did that, and more. Post-victory, the two parties then came together in a power-sharing arrangement and formed the new government with a medley of smaller groups and parties following in tow.

Ever since, the UNP, headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickramsinghe, and bulk of the SLFP, led by President Maithripala Sirisena, have sought to keep their ideological differences and traditional animosities down to run the govern-ment together as a coalition. What keeps them together in this rare instance of ‘cohabitation'—Sri Lankan style—is a single word, Yahapalanaya!

But in recent weeks, the adhesive power of that term has been coming under strain. And the reasons are not far to seek.

To begin with, the present government is expected to deliver on such formidable tasks as no other Sri Lankan Government since indepen-dence has had been called upon to do. It is committed to deliver on constitutional reforms; find a solution to the Tamil grievances in terms of effective devolution of powers; meet international demands for transitional justice to the victims of the war; and, provide ‘good governance' to the people along with a healthy corruption-free economy.

In the immediate term, it is the economy that could prove to be the government's Achilles' heel. Last year, Colombo turned to India and the IMF to manage its cash flow problems. This year, it may have to do it again. On top of that, there are livelihood issues like unemployment and rising prices. The partial withdrawal of subsidy on chemical fertilisers has upset the farming community. In an instance of poor timing, the government raised tax rates and the price of wheat within days of revising the perks of Members of Parliament. That again did not go down well with the people. Now, it has promised to raise minimum wages as also the government salaries—and eventually, shall have to find the resources to meet these commitments.

It is here that Mahinda Rajapakse along with his motley bunch of supporters (rather grandly called the ‘Joint Opposition') senses his oppor-tunity. If he can play on public discontent over the economy, he could make some headway, and possibly manage the consequences of the corruption cases stacked against him and the family. Though it is just a small rump of SLFP members that is supporting the former President, it has still left the parent party with something of a split personality.

Like politicians everywhere Rajapakse told a rally in Colombo on March 17 (his first in many months) that the corruption cases pending against him—and still waiting for answers—were ‘politically motivated'. Further, he challenged the government to let him manage the economy if they were lacking the competence to do it. And finally, he went on to promise restoration of full fertiliser subsidy to farmers as and when he was returned to power.

He is likely to continue playing that tack in the coming months. If he can trump the government on its economic performance, he could manage to get out of the many problems that have come to haunt him from his past as the President.

By the same token, the Sirisena Government's success in its much vaunted plans to deliver a new constitutional framework for the country and a fair deal to the Tamils in the long term would depend on its success in managing the economic issues—ranging from the foreign debt crisis to rising prices— in the short term. Getting that order wrong would mean Sri Lanka missing a long delayed opportunity to redesign its political and social architecture. It is always the economy, stupid!

[An earlier verson of this article appeared at blog.oup.com]

Mohan K. Tikku has been a foreign correspondent based in Colombo. He is also author of Sri Lanka: A Land in Search of Itself. His next book, After the Fall: Sri Lanka in Victory and War, is due for release by Oxford University Press this month.

IMPRESSIONS

Imagine Praveen Togadia becoming the Prime Minister of India. Or Vijay Mallya. That is the kind of scenario that is developing in the US with Donald Trump's apparently unstoppable race to the White House. He is full of ideological hatreds which he publicly proclaims. And he beats Mallya hollow in exhibitionist flamboyance.

Additionally, he has his own special characte-ristics as well that would be an embarrassment for a US President. He seems to cherish looking buffoonish and he can be vulgar in words and actions. He has had university education, though his grammar and syntax point otherwise. An academic research group said recently that his vocabulary was below that of 6-8 graders. But he is unfazed, saying that “I am representing a tremendous many many millions of people”.

(Inadequate command of the mother tongue is no bar to the American presidency as all those who “misunderestimated” George Bush realise. People have assembled books and videos on Bushisms ranging from “you teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test” to “the great thing about books is that sometimes there are fantastic pictures”. This man's murder of the English language is worse than his mass murders in Iraq.)

Clearly the rise of Donald Trump marks an epochal change in American—and therefore world—politics. The two-party system that ruled America all these years is on the brink of collapse. That such an untypical candidate can capture so much popular support has shocked the system and stunned the Republican Party establishment. There have been incidents of violence in political rallies, clashes between Trump supporters and others, major Republican leaders conspiring to derail their challenger and Trump warning the conspirators that there would be rioting if backhand moves were made against him—all unprecedented, and indeed unthinkable developments in US election politics.

The Republican Party's national convention (at which the party nominee for the President is formally selected) is to be held in July. Given Trump's impressive support-base, the Party establishment can stop him only by resorting to stratagems like “contested” convention and “brokered” convention. That would infuriate Trump and lead to unpredictable counter- actions, changing American politics in drastic ways.



Why has the Trump candidacy divided Americans and the Republican Party so deeply? There have been dubious Republican candidates in the past and some had won, like Bush and Richard Nixon. In these cases the candidates had established political roots. Nixon had been Vice-President earlier and Bush belonged to a political family. Donald Trump is a complete outsider. His experience is confined to real estate business and television. The rise of such an outsider is something that the establishment seems unable to stomach.

His stated policy-positions alienate and frighten a great many people beyond party lines. He is against all minorities and Mexicans; he sees them as parasites. He opposes immigrants taking jobs away from Americans. He detests Muslims and says: “The IS is making $ 400 million a year on oil. I‘ve been saying it for years. We need to bomb the oil.” He has

thrown hints that he might even be a White supremacist; he has been supported by the Ku Klux Klan. According to The Guardian of Britain, “President Trump could be as big a threat as jihadi terrorism to global economy”. The Economist sees Trump's rise as a global threat. Many describe him as the most dangerous man in America.

For all that, America and the world have to confront the question: How come such a dangerous man is being supported by so many of his countrymen? This is where we will have to acknowledge the rise of new revolutionary waves among significant sections of Americans. White lower and middleclass segments of the population seem to be protesting at last against the entrenched liberal-rich sections that have controlled things with their big donations and commercial lobbies. There is resentment against the unending flow of immigrants, especially uneducated and unskilled Latinos, who take away jobs while contributing nothing to America. Elements even among the educated class resent ideas like free trade that help countries like China at America's cost. These are complex issues with multiple layers of realities.

But they feed the emotions of a people who feel increasingly that they are more sinned against than sinning. To them, Trump looks attractive with his slogan: Put the interests of America above everything else.

It's a new America. It's a new world. It could be a new war.

From N.C.'s Writings

April 14 this year marks the 125th birth anniversary of Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. On this occasion we are reproducing the following piece by N.C. to offer our sincere homage to that towering personality.

The award of the Bharat Ratna posthumously on B.R. Ambedkar raises mixed feelings. No doubt Ambedkar was one of the stalwarts of modern India; the high water-mark of his career was that he contributed most to the drafting of the Indian Constitution and piloting it through the Constituent Assembly. There is, therefore, a touch of irony in Ambedkar being awarded the Bharat Ratna 30 years after he eminently deserved it when the Constitution came into force in 1950.

Not only that. All these years, there has hardly been any recognition for him or his memory from those enthroned in power. That was largely because Ambedkar never belonged to the exclusive circle of the Congress leadership. Rather, in the thirties, he had to face angry diatribes and vilification at the hands of the Congress leaders, many of whom did not hesitate to malign him as a stooge of the British Raj.

But he was no toady of the Raj. Ambedkar's antipathy towards the Congress leadership arose mainly because of his concern for the millions of untouchables in the country. He discovered that while the poor and the downtrodden responded to Gandhiji's call for satyagraha against the Raj, the Congress bosses treated them shabbily in the social hierarchy. This gap between the profession and practice of the national leaders embittered Ambedkar who throughout his life remained a steadfast friend, philosopher and guide of the millions of untouchable outcasts in our society.

The clash with the Congress leadership came in the early thirties as the talks for constitutional reforms started with the British Government. At that time, Ambedkar challenged the Congress claim to speak on behalf of the untouchables. This was resented by the Congress leaders who, even the best of them, turned hostile to Ambedkar. But Ambedkar stuck to his guns.

Gandhiji understood the significance of the Ambedkar phenomenon, because he saw in it the alienation and isolation of the untouchable community from the mainstream of the freedom struggle represented by the Congress. He paid special attention to the untouchables, whom he called the Harijans to boost their self-respect. He himself underlook the Temple entry movement thereby seeking to break the ban by Hindu orthodoxy upon the untouchables entering the temples to pray.

Although Gandhiji's movement did create a stir among the untouchables, it could not shake Ambedkar's hold upon the depressed class community. He demanded a separate electorate for the untouchables, marked out in a special schedule of the British Government's reforms plan for India. Gandhiji opposed tooth and nail the idea of a separate electorate for the Scheduled Castes, and went on a fast unto death over the issue. Finally, after protracted negotiations, the Congress leaders brought Ambedkar around to a com-promise formula—a joint electorate but reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes.

After this, the Congress attempt was to boost some leader from among the Scheduled Castes who could challenge Ambedkar's hold over the depressed class community. A young Harijan graduate from Bihar, picked up by Rajendra Prasad, was groomed by Gandhiji himself. Thus began the political career of Jagjivan Ram.

But Jagjivan Ram, though influential in the Scheduled Caste community, could hardly dislodge Ambedkar from his standing as the supreme leader of the depressed caste community.

After independence, particularly after the passing of the Constitution which had specifically banned untouchability, Ambedkar had hoped that the era of social inequity would now end. When he found that the upper-caste domination not only continued as before in Hindu society but was reinforced by the higher castes getting affluent and powerful, leaving the untouchables in a state of destitution, Ambedkar in a state of thorough disenchantment left the Hindu fold and embraced Buddhism, as it enjoins social equality. He died embittered as he found that despite all his labours, untouchability persisted in the land of his birth.

It is in this background that one views the award of the Bharat Ratna to the memory of Ambedkar as a cynical gesture on the part of the government. One felt that this award has come more with an eye on the votes of his followers rather than as a genuine acknowledgement of the services of this great son of India to the cause of the uplift of the downtrodden.

(Mainstream, April 21, 1990)

TRIBUTE

The is a tribute to the late Prime Minister of Nepal, Sushil Koirala (August 12, 1939-February 9, 2016), by someone who was a close friend and knew him intimately since his days of exile in Varanasi.

Sushil Koirala's was an extraordinary story where a very transparent, simple, honest to the core and plain person could reach to the position of the Prime Minister as well as an able organiser of the long and tortuous battle against dictatorship and monarchy in Nepal. He learned his ideological lessons from the legendary B.P. Koirala. Like a mesmerised disciple he never deviated from the core ideas of democratic socialism, democratic process in governance within the party and secularism in the Nepalese context which includes equality of all religions and going beyond the caste differentiation. He learned his day-to-day real polity from Girija Prasad Koirala but within that he added a non-compromising stance against corruption, which was an addition more on his part.

He was the natural consensus point within the coalition partners and nation after the death of the charismatic B.P. Koirala who was literally the father of democratic and modern Nepal as well as a towering ideologue and litterateur well adept in the great discourse in social democracy, Marxism and various people-oriented ideologies of the era, within the party and the nation. Girija Prasad Koirala was a pragmatic politician in a hurry though it was at his initiative that the long drawn hatchet between democrats and the Maoists was finally ended. This helped Sushil Koirala to graduate from the tortuous struggle against monarchy and feudalism in social terms to the task of “nation-building”. The mantle for establishing a Constitution-based democratic state fell upon his shoulders. It was no easy task unlike the Constitution-making exercise in the fifties in India.

The Indian Constitution enjoyed some kind of in-built consensus of the freedom struggle. There was near-complete hegemony of the Indian National Congress; the only addition was Ambedkar who contributed by making the Constitution more inclusive. This was a much difficult task than the successive Constituent- Assemblies in Nepal veering around from the extreme Left ideas of people's dictatorship of proletariat to normal parliamentary democracy for years together. The idea of incorporating the various communities in a quasi-Stalinist framework of nationalities was also propounded by the Maoists initially but apparently they retreated from that position resulting in acquiescence to the hegemony of the Kathmandu elites in opposition to the Madhesis. In fact the Maoists in Nepal returned ironically to the ideological stance of the Nepalese Monarchy and feudalism. This is the great negation of Marxism and even of Maoism unheard of in the world though there is a long history of royalist renegade Communists and many so-called Maoists joining the King's court in the heydays of King Mahendra and the Cold War. This was a contradiction in terms but it drew perhaps its legitimacy from the days of the Nixon-Mao bonhomie brokered by Henry Kissinger.

I came in touch with Sushil Koirala right from the late seventies and eighties. He was extremely simple, spartan and a devoted whole-time worker, the kind who makes a party run at the grassroot level. This ordinariness of Sushil made him extraordinary. His work in the terai districts and later on in the upper reaches of Nepal gave him a big access to bond with workers of the party. His transparent honesty in the post-Girija Koirala days made him trustworthy in the Kathmandu middle class and outside the party circle, his doggedness took him to the completion of tasks in spite of cynicism of the coalition leaders as well as within his own party. This may have led to some overlook on his part in the nitty-gritty of Constitution-making but he too was in a hurry as he knew that death was approaching and any moment it could strike. Naturally some disputes of the Constitution-making are left for those in saddle. It seems that the Nepali Congress had started taking initiative in settling the issues particularly concerning the Madhesis during last days of Sushil. Though it still remains in limbo as the Kathmandu elites have to gear themselves to the nation-building task as the Constitution exercises in Nepal are not limited to making only the democratic infrastructure but have the deeper task of cobbling a nation-state after Prithvi Narayan Shah weaved a Nepal to start with.

Cobbling a nation on free will as well as introducing a Constitution in a society long under the hegemony of a non-accountable monarchy as also a weak kneed democracy where elected representatives could be simply dismissed by a stroke of pen or even simpler by mere royal utterance, was no easy task. Nation-building under colonial or monarchial hegemony makes it a simpler task as they do not suffer from any accountability to the people; neither do they draw their sovereignty from the people at large. But Nepal had changed over the years and had become rights conscious and its minorities, disadvantaged sections had become restive.

So it was a complex task at the end of the day. Sushil Koirala could navigate it as he was ready to listen to different interest groups. Perhaps the rest of coalition partners did not have the historical legacy which the Nepali Congress, as the main forum for democracy, had. This explains the oxymoron of a coalition cobbled in which Maoists and Hindu fundamentalists gathered together. The weakness of Nepalese Marxist-Maoist parties is that while they do propose theoretically sound proposals, once they come to the parliamentary arena they suffer from selective amnesia and inability to match theory with contemporary reality and practice. After all, the Maoists had not much of a following in the Terai areas—it was the Nepali Congress which had galvanised both the hills and Terai people in the struggle for democracy; so they had no serious objections and amendments before passing the draft Constitution. Further it is of no surprise to see the monarchist-cum-Hindu fundamentalist in their fold just for assuring the much needed number to form a government

But we cannot underestimate the adventurist moves made by the NDA Government in Delhi, who were perhaps still nurturing a utopian design of bringing back some revised form of Hindu nation supplanting the secular nation of Nepal. The Sangh Parivar nurtures a specific brand of diaspora politics and the Terai-based Madhesis could qualify as one of the diaspora entity having deep links with neighbouring Bihar and UP districts through marriage and kith and kin relationship. Whereas the UPA Government had waged a discrimination against the Maoist Government led by Prachanda a couple of years ago relying on stale data from the Cold War days, similarly the NDA Government relying on its Sangh repertoire nurtured the false hope of reviving the Hindutva regime in Nepal. This was further aggravated by the Kathmandu political class, dominated by Bahuns, with their attitude of exclusion towards the Madhesis. Besides, it must be taken note of that Nepalis have a strong notion of sovereignty vis-a-vis India which neither the Sangh Parivar nor secular governments took note of. This agglomeration on a specific juncture of Nepalese history made things complex. This needed a balming approach, handling the issue with caution and understanding. Sushil was the one who could give it a try.

Sushil also could rise on occasions as a statesman not because of his entitlement to it but because of his plain and simple faith in the people. He made a mark when he managed to bring together a Modi and a Nawaz Sharif estranged at the sidelines of the SAARC meet at Kathmandu. South Asia needed somebody with the transparency, innocence, initiative and persuasive spirit that Sushil Koirala had. It also needed somebody like Sushil Koirala who could passionately plead for democratic socialism at a time when the rest of the South Asian political class had abandoned the very idea of democratic socialism or any kind of socialism.

Prof Dipak Malik is the Director Emeritus, Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi.

by Pradip Kumar Nath and Hemprabha Chauhan

“Kadaleepali farmer's suicide still shrouded in mystery”—drew attention of many and revealed the nexus of agrarian crisis, poor governance, assurance of job and, above all, the media's apathy kowtowing to the crony capitalists' dictates. This is the story of Harihar Budhia. Age-45 years, Village-Kadaleepali, Block- Barpalli, Dist-Bargarh, Odisha. Known as Budhia, he was the adopted son of Bal Mukund Budhia, his father's elder brother. On the morning of Sunday, July 19, 2015 he left his home telling his wife that he was to going to bring mushroom and the people later found him lying in his crop land after drinking pesticide.

Initially admitted to the Barpali hospital, he was later shifted to the VSS Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VSSMSR), Burla and died while undergoing treatment. With three daughters and two-and-a-half acres of non-irrigated land, he had mortgaged one-and-a-half acre of land for performing the marriage ceremony of his elder daughter. He had to maintain his family and survive with cultivation of one acre of land and loan from multiple sources. He had already taken a loan amounting to Rs 1.5 lakhs from three banks. The suicide note, for the first time left by a farmer, revealed many complexities of the agrarian crisis leading to a farmer's utter helplessness that ultimately resulted in ending His life.

With assurance of a government job in the local Post Office for the daughter Sushmita, one Shree Tarini Behera had taken one lakh rupees and had taken both the father and the daughter (Sushmita) to Bhubaneswar five times. Again one Shree Narayan Bhoi had lifted fertiliser worth of Rs 15,000 in his (Harihar's) name and had not paid him back the amount for the last six years. After giving Rs one lakh to Tarini Behera, Sushmita was given a Laptop to work as a data entry operator in Barpali Post Office and the Post Master revealed to her that it was not a government job. A big racket operating behind such kind of assurance of government job has been revealed by the leading vernacular weekly Gana Isthar (dated 24-07-2015) published from Bargarh. Unfortunately the mainstream vernacular Odiya print media didn't come out with this nexus.

Like the story of Budhia, more than 19 deaths have been reported in Bargarh, the greenery of Odisha in the Hirakud Command Area. Farmers' suicide has continued unabated across several districts in the State.Starting with the outright denial of farmers' suicide, the Odisha Government (Ministers as well as MLAs) has gone to the extent of making a mockery of the farmers' plight. Somehow they link it to excessive liquor consumption, family disputes, love affairs, mental aberration and a host of imaginative causes. These are quoted as the cause of suicide and the district administrations' reports are fabricated to corroborate the elected executives' prognostications/assertions.

With ad hoc measures of drought declaration and relief packages of one thousand crore rupees for input subsidy, the government had attempted to take stock of the situation by sending the Ministers to different districts. In the meanwhile the Central Government team in its primary report estimated the kharif crop loss of 45.57 per cent with mention of Balangir as the worst affected and Dhenkenal, the least. The State Government came out with its report on 139 Blocks of 21 districts with severe damage to kharif crop in 5,32, 000 hectares of land. (Sambad, dt 05/11/2015, Farmers' Suicide by Gobind Bhuyan—Edit pg)

With more than a hundred farmers committing suicide till November 2015, more than 70 per cent have been from Western Odisha alone. The scourge of their suicides (Indian Express, 16/11/2015, pg-9 report) has enveloped the entire State, not discriminating between infrastructure-deprived, nature-dependent, Western and interior districts and their slightly better equipped coastal region. (Indian Express, 16/11/2015, Srimoy Kar)

Compared to States like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, there have been fewer reports of farmers' suicide in Odisha because paddy cultivation was supposed to be a safer bet than sugarcane or cotton in terms of investment and loan burden. But the recent deaths of farmers in Odisha show that all is not well in the State's farm sector that is mostly paddy-centric. (HT Priya Ranjan Sahu, October 20, 2015, BBSR Edition)

In contrast to the findings of studies (Reddy, Shroff, Deshpande, Suman Chandra, Nair and Menon, Revathi, S. Mishra) the present suicide in Odisha is directly linked to the tenancy system. Analysing the interlocking relationship between landlord-creditor-employer and his tenant-borrower-employee, Bardhan questions the possibility of the latter's benefit if the inter-locking relation is replaced with functionally specialised relations with separate individuals. In case of the Western Odisha farmers' suicide, this is exactly the case. In the absence of recording of tenancy arrangements, tenants had to develop specialised relations with various types of individuals and institutions. These individuals and institutions have failed them by throwing them into the dark dungeons of death.

Sometime the institutional arrangement is sought to be explained by referring to the power of some dominant individuals or classes or other social groups. (Bardhan, pg. 89) After the economic reforms when the subsistence agriculture has become more and more un-remunerative and non-viable, the crop-sharing arrangement in Western Odisha and more so in the Hirakud Command Area has taken a new dimension. With assured irrigation, almost all tenants are in the fixed rent arrangements and the earlier relationship of landlord-creditor-employer to/and tenant-borrower-employee has been substituted by land owner-rent payer and in the presence of the absentee landowner, the creditor-borrower relationship has almost vanished. Borrowing from the landowner is hardly to be found any more. The functional agent to ensure credit vacillates between the local/village money lender to the formal and informal financial institutions, with a greater reliance/higher tilt towards the former. The SHG movement has not flourished due to several socio-economic and political factors in Western Odisha.

Looking into the status of agriculture in Odisha, R.S. Rao makes a five-class composition on the basis of labour disposition. (Rao, pg 193) Herein he defines a marginal farmer as one who spends more time in other's farm than on his own farm. A smaller farmer is defined as one who is willing to spend his time on other's farm to supplement his income from his own farm. The small and marginal farmer constitutes what can be called the historical materialist category of the poor peasant as both of them are surplus earners for the rich peasant and landlord. The “marginal farmer”, according to Rao, is more distressed compared to the small farmer and stands as a category between the agricultural labourer and small farmer. (Definition—Small and Marginal farmer, page 195)

In capitalist processes as developed in the capitalist society, one naturally expects that the growth of the agricultural labour force will be positively associated with the level of development. (Rao, pg 194) In case of Odisha this doesn't seem to happen. The first explanation given by R.S. Rao on this fact is that land reform measures, which were put in the statute books, created a stir among the landholders, who did not permit the recording of tenancy arrange-ments. As a result, a good number of cultivators, who are tenants, are actually recorded as agricultural labourers in the record books. (p. 195)

The list of Farmers' Suicide, investigated and confirmed by Gana Istahara in Bargarh District, is seen in the following page.

It provides the list of 19 farmers committing suicide in Bargarh since 0I/01/2015 reveals that all of them were marginal farmers and dependent on tenancy with crop-sharing. The institution of share-cropping being resilient in peasant agriculture (Bardhan) across the centuries, proletarianisation has increased with the rise in cost and credit intensity of cultivation and this has intensified after the new economic reform in 1991.

“More than 3600 farmers, including 474 women, have committed suicide in Odisha in the last 15 years between 1999 and 2013, State Agriculture Minister Pradeep Maharathy said in the Assembly on August 21, 2015. However, he asserted that the suicides had nothing to do with crop loss or related to other agricultural issues.” (HT, dt.20/10/2015).

Saroj Mohanty's Assessment of Farmers' Suicide in Western Odisha

With more than 3.5 lakh suicides since 1997, two-thirds of them were from the States of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In these States the relation between cash crop and debt from money lender has been well-established and is known to all. Most of them are cotton, sugarcane or soyabean cultivators. But in Odisha farmers' suicide is linked to failure in paddy cultivation. With detailed case study of 15 famers committing suicide in Western Odisha in 2009, Saroj Mohanty has brought out some common characteristics as follows:

1. All the farmers committing suicide were either small or marginal.

2. All of them were share-croppers either with fixed rent or a variable one.

3. Most of the farmers were from the un-irrigated areas.

4. Most of them had taken loan from private and non- government agencies.

5. None had income from any source other than agriculture.

6. Majority were BPL card holders.

(Source: Saroj Mohanty, “Krushi O Krushak : Sankata O Sambhabana”,Anwesa)

This proves the argument made above that the institutional arrangements developed with much hype during the post-reform era have failed the farmers in Western Odisha. (Krushi O Krushak: Sankata O Sambhabana)

Why Institutions Matter

“Economists like North and Thomas (1973) and Landes (1998) have argued that the rich world is rich today because, over the centuries, it has devised institutions that have enabled people to improve their material conditions of life. On the other hand the people in today's rich country were able to fashion their institutions in ways that enabled those proximate causes of prosperity to explode there. One can safely ask whether it was the institutions or whether it was the enlightened policies of rulers that were responsible for the explosion. But then, policies are not plucked from the air, they emerged from consultations and deliberations within institutions.” (Partha Das Gupta)

The generic issue is: changes need to be brought in by consultations and deliberations among the people (named as human capital pejoratively by economists) who galvanise an institution.

In the light of the above understanding about the role of institutions, it is imperative to critically examine whether the institutions created in Odisha for any specific purpose have enabled people to improve their material conditions of life or it has proved to be another stumbling block in that path.

MSP, Paddy Procurement and the Marginal Farmers

The farmers' suicides in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh speak about the cash crop and high credit intensity followed by huge expenditure incurred in education and health needs of the family members/sector (with high expectation of return from agriculture). But in Odisha's case all the hundred suicides reported so far are of paddy cultivators and 90 per cent of them are tenant farmers. In the absence of any tenancy law or rules, the verbal agreement and beliefs run the entire tenancy show putting the real peasant in jeopardy. Neither does the tenant get any compensation for the crop loss nor any relief. He is not assured of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) without the Farmer's Identity card and he remains at the mercy of the middle man.

With strong reports of distress sale of paddy, it is the non-Odiya rice millers who have really benefited from the irrigation facilities in the Hirakud Command Area known as the rice bowl of Odisha; with nearly 20 per cent of total paddy procurement in the State, Bargarh's farmers suffer from the real vagaries of poor governance with perceived regional disparity. The honey-moon between the procurement agencies (civil supply corporation, FCI and the Revenue Department officials) has put the small and marginal farmers in a precarious position. Time and again the custom milling has been shrouded in mystery. Western Odisha continues to be the green pastures for the coastal employees of the Odisha Government reaping bounties through these corrupt practices with explicit/implicit support of the political party in power.

Revenue Administration—a Scar on Governance: Why the Consolidation Operation Failed

As of today, if a farmer X wants to sell or mortgage his property Y, in reality he does this with property Z, which is in his Records of Rights (RoR). He enjoys the usufructuary rights of Y and he physically transacts the same property for any sale or mortgage by showing this plot of land. He pays the water cess for Z and all government transactions are made for the property Z for which he has the RoR. He does not have any RoR for property Y which he has been enjoying generation after generation. With consolidation operations being completed and people possessing the consolidated patta (RoR) in Bargarh district (like many other districts in Odisha), in reality they make all transactions with the government, banks and private parties with the RoR—recorded—property. Even the crop loss, input subsidy, bank loan and MSP are determined by his RoR and this is not in his usufructuary rights. The imposed distri-buted patta (RoR) has neither been withdrawn nor new settlement operations been commenced in the last two decades. The people have never accepted the consolidation operations imposed by the Odisha Government dominated by people from the Coastal Odisha districts in the Revenue Departments.

Cultural Difference between Western and Coastal Region in Odisha

The computerisation of land records and digitisation of maps, though claimed to have been completed in Odisha, is yet to be linked to the Registration Office for updating the data. The user-friendly and economic way of collecting one's certificates (of all kinds, namely, Caste, Income, Solvency and a host of other miscellaneous certificates) has not fructified (like Karnataka, AP) in Odisha, thereby compelling the poor farmers to encounter a lot of hardships and agony. The vested interests greasing the palms of revenue officials by manual handling of issuance of different certificates (income, caste, solvency and other miscellaneous certificates) do not allow computerisation thereby obstructing trans-parency of dealings, duly supported by the political power. As such Odiyas (specifically the people of the Coastal districts) are ill-famed for being very litigant, with the proverbial “I shall show you the Red building/ I shall show you the Red road“ with the meaning that I shall drag you to the Court of law, that is, the High Court. This phraseology is often used as a common form of abuse or use of words in anger in the Eastern costal districts of Odisha. This is the reason why a Circuit Court has not been allowed to be opened anywhere in Western or Southern Odisha. Having the High Court in Cuttack, there is a systematic hegemonisation of the justice delivery system and the people in remote areas are very often denied justice. More than a decade has elapsed since the closure of all offices in all district headquarters in Western Odisha during the last three days of each month to lodge protests against the government's apathy to open a circuit court anywhere in Western Odisha. Even there is strong resentment about the Chief Minister's letter for inclusion of Sambalpuri/Koshali language in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution (official memorandum given by Chief Minister-D.O No. UM-5/2014-10 dt 01/03/2014 to the Home Minister). A leading linguist from Eastern Odisha, Debiprasanna Pattnayak, reacting to this issue, wrote in The Telegraph daily that he has suffered immense pain when he came to know that the Chief Minister had written a letter to the Home Minister for including Sambalpuri/Koshali in the Eighth Schedule. He was vehemently against the proposal, since separate language identity may inflame the demand for a separate State for Western Odisha.

The language barrier has often created havoc in the life genre of the poor and downtrodden in Western Odisha. The worst victimisation is through information asymmetry knowingly created by the decision-makers at the helm of affairs in the State capital, that is, Bhubaneswar. It is a well-known fact that Western and Southern Odisha is home to nearly 62 Tribal categories and 12 from them belong to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). There are even two to three linguistic categories within one Tribal group. Necessarily language is a big barrier in communication irrespective of the State's imposition of Odiya as the mother tongue for all. The rich and diverse language culture has been a real issue with the monolingual administrative imposition. Odiya never being their mother tongue of the farmers in Western Odisha, they have a tough time to avail any agriculture extension services. The language in vogue in Western Odisha has been Sambalpuri/Koshali since time immemorial. The Krushi Khabar, Mausam Jankari (News on Farming and Meteorological prediction) etc. are broadcast in chaste Odiya language which the farmers hardly understand. The Sankar Kisam Paddy (HYV Paddy) is understood to be “Mahadev Dhan” or the Paddy of/for Lord Shiva or the word Mayee deba is understood to be the month of May. Mayee Deba in chaste Odiya is flattening the mud in the paddy fields. (‘Regional imbalance in Odisha, Media and Government's Role', Vidura, Jan.-March 2011, pp. 42-46, PII)

The agricultural extension service in Odisha is provided by the input seller or supplier. One hardly comes across an agricultural famer who is even a graduate all over the State. The information about seed variety, pesticide, insecticide and other farm inputs are provided by the supplier or seller of the same. In such a scenario, the small and marginal farmers find no solution for any problem within their reach.

Flagship Programme

Even after the ill-famed Rs 750 crores financial embezzlement reports in the MGNREGS in Odisha by the CAG, there is hardly any institutional reform in the implementation of major flagship programmes like MGNREGS, housing schemes (IAY) and others. From the beginning till date the primary focus in the MGNREGS is yet to be a demand-driven one and the requisite institutional framework/mechanisms could not be evolved. To bring home the point the institution of “Mate” as modified by the Odisha Government from time to time can be a good illustrative example. With a Government circular (vide letter No. 4324(30)/PR.Dt 30/01/2008, of PR Department Government of Odisha) the Government of Odisha introduced the concept of Gaon Sathi (the name of which the present writers have found in a book—”Gaon Sathi Experiment in Extension” compiled by the Extension Project of the Allahabd Agriculture Institute, published with the assistance of Ford Foundation in 1956).

Then the Odisha Government went on to engage seven Gram Sanjojaks in each Panchayat (vide letter No. 2439 Dated 29/07/2009 of PR Department). With 14 pages of duties and responsibilities of the Gram Sanjojak, supposed to work as a “work site supervisor” as per the guidelines, almost made mockery of the MGNREGS programme and the unemployed rural youth.

Again it went back to the original structure of Mate superseding all earlier orders (Punar Mushiko Bhava) and the nomenclatures of Gaon Sathi and Gram Sanjojak were abolished (letter No. 24897 dated 05/10/2013 of PR Department).

Even in the 2009 elections the BJD declared during electioneering and tom-tomed their achieve-ment of giving appointments to more than 10,000 Gaon Sathis. With seven Gram Sanjojaks engaged in each Panchayat (with 6227 Panchayats in Odisha), it would have been a milestone in employment creation in rural Odisha. But on what basis? The election campaign speech was a blatant lie and the entire government machinery was engaged for selection of Gram Sanjojaks, making secondary the core objectives of the MGNREGS to guarantee wage employment to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work and this would in turn enhance the livelihood securities in rural areas. This could have also created durable assets ensuring livelihood security. From the beginning (in post-independence Odisha) if one analyses the policy-planning and priorities of the Odisha Government, what is observed is a systematic attempt of neglect of both the primary and secondary sectors even though there is an extraordinary resource base as the State's natural endowment. The State enjoys a far greater comparative advantage in resources like land, water, forest and varieties of mineral resources starting with iron ore, coal, manganese, lime stone, bauxite to rare earth and gem stone.

The progress for development of individual land for the individual beneficiary has been very low. The present exercise of IPPE (Intensive Participatory Planning Exercise) in the MGNREGS which demands a lot of field level exercise by the villagers lacks the requisite participation due to poor capacity building. Even the rights and entitlement-based programmes lack real partici-pation from the people with more bureaucratic red-tapped rules and procedures without any logical and reasonable amenability. The very public notice of conducting a social audit by the BDOs through newspapers (with dates and venue specified) shows how dictatorial the social audit can be and questions are often raised how social “the social audit is”. Why should a government officer dictate the venue, time and date for the conduct of social audit in a Panchayat/Village?

With party based (though not explicitly) three-tier Panchayati Raj Institutions, the same is not leveraged through the right process of gover-nance. With the kind of structure of governance provided by the government from time to time it is hardly conducive for a participatory decision-making exercise through the Gram Sabha. With the changing colours of the Panchayat Secretary, appointment, role and responsibilities assigned to them, they hardly fit into the dynamics of changes in the rural society in Odisha.

Role of Media

Extreme biasedness against the happenings of Western Odisha has been observed by the vernacular print media. It is the concern of a few leading national dailies (The Telegraph, Hindustan Times, Indian Express) and some investigative journals like Down to Earth, Mainstream,EPW that the human dimension of many issues gets some coverage in the national and International media with the right echo in the different spectrum bands. The best case in point was the proportionate coverage of the 12 Gram Sabhas to determine the legitimacy of the Vedanta company in and around Niyamgiri Hills. The actual role of the print media has not been played due to the causal role of its stringers through news collection by mobile phones or secondary sources. None of the reports of suicide deaths brings the complex agrarian distress coupled with social upheavals originating from natural resources grab (Land, Water, Forest, Mining, Wildlife and the Commons) by the multinational corporations with the aid and abetment of the local crony bureaucrats and politicians in power.

Conclusion

The present crisis is going to be aggravated with the mainstream development agenda focused on industrialisation through resource grab. The proof of the same has come through the attempted deliberate dilution of the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) and Consent Clause of the RFCTLARR 2013 Act. After failing to pass the ordinance the Central Government has opened up a new era of competitive federalism in the guise of cooperative federalism. It is the responsibility of the respective State governments how competitively they can sacrifice/sell out the citizens' livelihood bases/resources through the exercise of eminent domain with suitable definition of “Public Purpose”. Herein the role of the civil society, enlightened citizens, media and NGOs will be of paramount importance with regard to how best they can reduce the asymmetry of information on resource usurpation by the State.

Reference

Govinda Bhuyan, 2015, Sambad, Sambalpur, 05/11/2015

Kobad Ghandy (2015), “Farmers' Suicides, Rural Distress and a Dying Nation”, Mainstream, September 5, 2015.

Pranab Bardhan, “The Economist's Approach to Agrarian Structure” in Institutions and Ineqalities: Essays in Honour of Andre Betille (1999), ed. by Ramachandra Guha and Jonathan P. Parry, Oxford University Press.

P.K. Nath and Hemprabha Chauhan (2011), ‘Regional imbalance in Odisha—Media and Government's Role', Vidura, Jan.-March, 2011, Press Institute of India, Chennai.

Prasanna Mishra, (2015), Gana Istahar, Bargarh, 24/10/2015.

Priya Ranjan Sahu (2015), Hindustan Times, Bhubaneswar, 20/10/2015.

Partha Dasgupta (2009), ‘Selected Papers of Partha Dasgupta', Poverty,Population and Natural Rsources, Vol-II, Oxford University Press (Pg. 451).

R.S. Rao, “A growth Profile of Agricultural Sector in Orissa” in the book Towards Understanding Semi Feudal Semi-Colonial Society (1995)—published by Perspectives—Hyderabad (a paper presented to the 18th International Summer Seminar at the University of Economic Science, Bronoleushner, Berlin).

Sreemoy Kar, (2015), Indian Express, Hyderabad, 16/11/2015.

Saroj Mohanty (2010), ‘Krushi O Krushak : Sankata O Sambhabana',Anwesha, Sambalpur.

Pradip Kumar Nath is Adjunct Faculty, Centre for Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (CPME), National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), Rajendranagar, (Hyderabad). He can be contacted at e-mail: aanustoop@gmail.com; Mrs Hemprabha Chauhan is a freelance journalist, NIRDPR, Rajendranagar (Hyderabad). She can be contacted at e-mail: hemprabhachauhan@gmail.com

by Sonu Trivedi

Having undergone transition from authoritarianism to democracy in 2010, Myanmar's ‘disciplined' democracy is on move since the first free and fair democratic elections in 2015 held after a gap of six decades. However, in its current phase of transition, on the one hand it is facing the daunting task of re-building its institutions, while on the other, the forces of the past remain powerful demanding a delicate balancing and thoughtful compromises both from the wielders of past regime and the present leadership.

The New government in Myanmar remains deeply entangled amidst the tussle between the hardliners and soft-liners in the authority. This is visible in both the military as well as the democratic camp. The hardliners in the military are more concerned about securing their position and seats in the parliament and the Cabinet whereas reformists are providing space for democracy to blossom though it is still in its nascent stage. However, what is more alarming is that the reform process in Myanmar is scarred by reformists and the hardliners in the democratic camp as well. The National League for Democracy (NLD) suffers from a lack of professionalism and centralised structure. There has been a strong discontentment amongst its members during the pre-election phase on the issue of selection of candidates and distribution of party tickets; this has further deepened in the post-election scenario owing to the distribution and allocation of ministerial portfolios.

The complicated and delicate relationship between the military and Aung San Suu Kyi has been the bedrock of the current reform process in Myanmar. Any strain in this relationship is going to adversely affect the transition process in the country. The changing political dynamics with the entry of Aung San Suu Kyi and her party in parliament is going to shape the future of political transformation in Myanmar. Her entry in parliament has been a means of legitimising the regime's mandate to govern and enhance its own reform credentials. The military needs her in parliament to bolster its authority in the government. However, Aung San Suu Kyi needs the military perhaps more than anyone else if she is to advance politically and amend the Constitution, given that a quarter of seats are reserved for the military in parliament. Therefore, any effort to amend the Constitution cannot disregard the role and support of the military officers present in parliament.

Amidst the current state of affairs, choosing a ‘proxy' candidate as the President (reasons for which are obvious); creating the post of ‘State Counsellor' and assuming it; and reserving the Cabinet berth of Minister in the President's Office for herself, in addition to the Foreign Ministry explains the appeasement of the military to retain its influence as prescribed and specified within the letters of the Constitution. However, at this juncture, Aung San Suu Kyi also cannot afford a confrontationist strategy if she has to assume a ‘pseudo'- presidential role outside the framework of the Constitution. This compromise between the ‘letter of the law' versus the ‘spirit of the law' echoes a unique ‘love-hate' relationship and a ‘marriage of convenience' by both—the military and the NLD to retain their control over authority in Myanmar respectively.

Demilitarising politics and sending the military ‘back to the barracks' is the foremost challenge for the new government which requires consistent effort and perseverance. Notwithstanding the reform initiatives, the Army still wields enor-mous influence over Myanmar's institutions. The Ministry of Defence, Home and Border Affairs remain under the armed forces [Article 232 (b) (ii) of the 2008 Constitution]. Furthermore, Article 201 related to the formation of a National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) and its role during the Emer-gency is a sign of the military being sacrosanct. Failure of the democratic forces to bring about constitutional reforms and the amendment of the controversial Article 59(f) of the Constitution has ruled out all the possibilities of Aung San Suu Kyi becoming the President, though she is the leader of the largest ruling party in parliament. On top, Article 60 provides for the procedure of electing the President who is chosen from the candidates put forward by each of the two Houses of Parliament, in addition to a third nominee from the military. The winning candidate becomes the President while the succeeding two serve as first Vice-President and second Vice-President respectively. In the current Parliament U Htin Kyaw who won with 360 of the 652 votes cast in the two Houses of Parliament, emerged as the President. He was followed by Myint Swe, who was nominated by the military and received 213 votes. The third place was taken over by an ethnic Chin candidate, Henry Van Thio, nominated by the Upper House, who got 79 votes. In addition, the most infamous Article 74 laying down the procedure for formation of the Union Parliament according to which one-third of the seats would be reserved for the Defence Forces in both the Houses and Article 161 extending this modus operandi to the Regional Parliaments. In view of that, Myanmar's experience reflects its fragile experiment with democracy which still depends upon the relics of the previous regime.

In view of the growing Centre-periphery contestations, the issue of ethnic reconciliation demands high priority of the government, which has signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) as a part of the three-stage process towards peace and ethnic reconciliation. Though the government had signed bilateral ceasefire agreements with 15 armed groups, only eight out of these were party to the NCA. However, some of the volatile groups such as the Kachin Independence Army, the United Wa State Army, and the abrogation of the ceasefire agreement by the Kokang ethnic armed group have challenged the reconciliation process and hope for durable peace in Myanmar. Critics are apprehensive about the peace deal because of the ongoing skirmishes with some of the major armed groups and the deep-seated mistrust that some of these ethnic groups share towards the military. Nevertheless, resolving the ethnic issue will be Myanmar's biggest challenge now. Overcoming the sixty-year-old ethnic conflict will not be easy and the government will have to do a great deal to build the trust necessary to move beyond the ceasefires to resolve the underlying political issues and, last but not the least, ‘post-conflict reconstruction' and ‘peace building' which remain crucial for post-conflict security and stability in Myanmar.

Economic reconstruction and recovery in a country where corruption is endemic is an Achilles' heel. Much of the dominance by the military which remains in Myanmar is also because of its “economic might” and control over resources. Extension of military control over the national economy under Ne Win's Burmese Way of Socialism and antagonism to private capital, liberalisation and xenophobia has led to the stagnation of the economic institutions in Myanmar. Adoption of the nationalistic policies in the modernisation of the country has led to the establishment of a state- led ‘developmental model' and absence of strong corporatist elites emerging separate from the military. Pacifying this growing internal urge for economic recovery in recent years, financial stability and security are going to be the single most significant challenge of change for Myanmar.

The newly elected President U Htin Kyaw must focus on safeguarding the interests of the minorities, women, children and other margina-lised communities, release of political prisoners and Child soldiers and cushion the pressures generated by the anchors of the global political economy. The widening ‘majority-minority' divide has been an unfortunate development in Myanmar. This historic conflict has flared up communal violence in the recent past, thereby complicating the socio-religious fabric and aggravating tensions. On this particular front, the advocate of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, appears to have failed to act, given the possibility of alienating voters during the elections, which otherwise would have been crucial in mainstreaming them. Her critics also appear to be at loggerheads for not having come out openly on this issue of worsening sectarian violence. Thus, consolidating her position amidst the waves of sectarian violence and widening rift between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority is another formidable challenge faced by the new President and Aung San Suu Kyi. Amidst the limited political role she is expected to play, according to the Constitution (theoreti-cally), and the deep skepticism existing towards the political institutions which are still largely dominated by the military, she needs to take calculated steps in this democratic re-engineering and re-structuring.

Sonu Trivedi teaches at Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi.

by Arun Srivastava

A saffron conspiracy has been hatched to divide the country into two segments: the nationals and the anti-nationals. The RSS has been forcibly thrusting its design in the garb of nationalism primarily aimed at silencing the dissenting voices and alternate views. What is worse is that the RSS and BJP have been trying to rewrite the Indian Constitution. Else there was no reason for the BJP to move a resolution at its National Executive meet emphasising that refusing to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai is showing disrespect to the Constitution.

Undeniably the Indian political and demo-cratic system is passing through a period of crisis of survival. What happened in JNU last month is a candid example. The saffron conspiracy was unfolded in JNU at that time. Even before any judicial trial the JNU students were pronounced guilty and accused of sedition. The then Delhi Police Commissioner, Bassi, even surpassed his colonial predecessors in subver-ting the laws and came out with the assertion that he had clinching evidence against JNUSU President Kanhaiya for his being involved in anti-national activities. What an irony the Home Minister of India, Rajnath Singh, was quick to find a link between Kanhaiya and Pakistan- based terrorist Saeed!

Much against the judicial spirit and norms, Bassi held that the onus was on Kanhaiya and other students to prove their innocence that they were not involved in anti-Indian activities. The JNU incident was the mother of all the crisis before the country in recent times. Choosing the Leftist students and their unions has been the master-stroke of the Sangh. Even if a section of the youth was inclined to the BJP, a majority of the students, especially in colleges and universities were against it. Unless these Left forces are completely uprooted and paralysed, the saffronites cannot aspire to gain. More than the defeat of the ABVP in the 2015 JNU Students' Union election, it was the victory of the Leftist student forces that hastened up the RSS attack.

The RSS chose JNU to launch its anti-Left campaign after deep introspection and analysis of the prevailing socio-political situation in the country. Its prime mission has been to indulge in character assassination of the JNU students and malign the image of the institution as the university has been the fountainhead of the Left student movement. If its mission succeeds then in that case none can stop the saffron juggernaut.

Its choosing of nationalism as a weapon to demolish the Leftist forces has been a shrewd move. The RSS knew the issue of nationalism would put the Left and secular forces on the mat. These forces will not adopt an ultra-nationalist plank to defeat the RSS. Naturally the advantage is with the saffronites. The RSS, aptly supported by the Modi Government, precisely by Modi's HRD Minister Smriti Irani, is using the nationalism card to crush constitutional patriotism. Indians are too cagey about nationalism and none would like to be described as anti-national. This is the typical imperialist design to inflict assault on the Left and secular forces. This was the motive that they chose to accuse the JNU students of being anti-national and also charged them with raising pro-Pakistan slogans.

The RSS, ABVP and Modi Government might have perceived that framing the JNU students in false cases would compel the Left students not to indulge in anti-saffron activities. But the later events make it explicit that the saffronites have lost the gamble. Their whipping stick of nationalism has failed to have the desired impact. True enough, it is not the students, rather the BJP and RSS leadership who have lowered the prestige and importance of nationalism. The people have come to realise that following in the footsteps of the Congress the saffron brigade intends to goad and terrorise the dissenting voices. Venkaiah Naidu describing Modi as the God-send leader to salvage the Indian situation reminds one of Devkant Barooah's ‘India is Indira' slogan.

The blueprint for the smear-JNU action- programme was drawn long back. Much before February 9, the RSS mouthpiece, Panchjanya, had carried a story wherein the Sangh floated the idea that the JNU was an anti-national university. The task to confront the Left student forces was entrusted to the ABVP and the strategy chosen was nationalism. It was as a part of this campaign that the ABVP activists came out with allegations that condoms, liquor bottles were found on the JNU campus.

In fact the probe panel set up by the JNU Vice-Chancellor into the February 9 incident has failed to implicate the students in anti-national activity and also to prove that they raised anti- national slogans or eulogised Afzal Guru. The latest information from the probe panel has been quite interesting: ”Some outsiders had raised the slogan.” Obviously the question arises: how to compensate the students who became victim of the RSS propaganda? What punish-ment should be given to the Vice-Chancellor who had called in the police and asked them to arrest the students at the behest of the ABVP and saffron leaders?

The Sangh has been intolerant to diverse views. It wants one ideology and one colour. It hates the culture of pluralism. A plural society does not have space for any divisive ideology and machination. The saffron ideology will cease to exist in a plural society. Their line is to oppose and finish the secular and Marxist ideology and philosophy. It is this strategy which has made them lose their head and take to extremes.

The conspiracy to impose the saffron rule is also manifest in the Sangh design to project chanting of the Bharat Mata ki Jai as the mark of nationalism. What is Indian nationalism? Indian nationalism is based on the anti-colonial struggle and not on Western nationalism. The main thrust has been on sovereignty. True enough, the malicious campaign that we witnessed in recent days is about bullying and intimidation.

The JNU incident has in fact been a rebuff to the Left parties and their leaders for surrendering the initiative to launch popular people's move-ment in the post-reforms period. The students of the JNU, Hyderabad, Aligarh University and even Jadavpur have shown that the situation was objectively ripe for a sustained movement. If they had been politically active the present situation might not have been created. True enough, the recent crisis has heralded the birth of a new movement and icon. Even in Allahabad Richa Singh, the elected President of the Allahabad University Students' Union is capturing the imagination of the youth and students of Uttar Pradesh. These bring out the restlessness prevalent in the Indian campuses.

The vehemence with which RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat came out against Kanhaiya of JNU and other student activists confirms that there was something else, not merely the slogan-shouting, that forced the saffronites to come out in the open. In this backdrop the letter of Venkaiah Naidu is quite significant. He says that a handful of activists with “ultra-left and Maoist” back-grounds are fuelling unrest in selected univer-sities. This is a patently untrue observation as the unions are dominated by students and teachers who believe in the Constitution and a democratic nation. The people and country must put a straight question to the RSS and Modi: why are the saffron brigade, the NDA Govern-ment and the university administration out to discredit the first-rate public education being provided in Central universities? Whose interest are they serving? This also points to a plot wherein the Modi Government intends to hand over these universities to the foreign investors. Significantly in his Budget speech, Arun Jaitley proposed a “higher education finance agency” to mobilise money from the market and corporate sources. True enough, the JNUSU leaders have seen through the design which is why they have been preparing to launch a movement to save JNU. The campaign to denigrate JNU has ominous intentions and designs. The RSS and BJP are aware that in order to have a complete control over the students of India it is imperative that the Left bastion of JNU should be demolished and this can only be done by launching a malicious campaign against it. This will also dissuade the parents from sending their children to JNU.

The report presented by RSS General Secretary Suresh (Bhaiyyaji) Joshi at the national conclave of the Sangh called upon the Centre and the State governments to deal strictly with ‘anti-national' forces on campuses. The report also underlined: “Ensure the sanctity and cultural atmosphere by not allowing our educational institutions to become centres of political activity.” RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat directed the universities to purge all kinds of ‘anti-national' elements.

In sharp contrast to the Sangh's stand and BJP leaders' rhetoric, the patriarch of the BJP, L. K. Advani, had described the controversy on Bharat Mata ki Jai as meaningless. This statement coming from Advani is quite important. At the ground level it does reflect that the BJP is vertically split on this issue. He made it abundantly clear that he does not subscribe to the RSS-Modi line. The way things are taking shape it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Modi-Shah-Bhagwat combine has been creating a Frankenstine.

The Sangh leadership must take a leaf out of the observation of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya before letting loose their goons on the students. Upadhyaya held: “The mainstream of demo-cracy has been tolerance. In its absence, elections, legislature, etc., are lifeless. Tolerance is the basis of Indian culture. It gives us strength to find out what the public at large desires.” He also wrote: “democracy is not merely the rule of the majority”, as in such a system, “at least one segment of the public will be there whose voice is stifled even though it may be right”.

It is most unfortunate that to push their design the RSS and BJP have been making all efforts to get the urban middle class, specially the Hindus, to believe that the JNU students and scholars were actually indulging in an act of sedition by eulogising Afzal Guru on that fateful day.

Incidentally the Left parties have failed to put a joint resistance to the machinations of the RSS. Ironically, they treated the sedition issue more within the electoral framework than looking at it from the political perspective. This is the reason that they have not been able to counter the saffron tactics. Teachers and students rightly feel that the Right-wing forces have “forced and bullied” the Left forces to accept their narrative of nationalism. The Indian Left is suffering from two major malaises: continuing to stick to the old orthodox line and preferring a completely diluted course, resembling revisionism. The Left has not shown collective wisdom on this issue. This is for the first time in independent India that certificates in nationalism are being distributed by the RSS. It is really surprising that the organisation, which did not believe in the tricolour, has turned out to be the strongest votary of nationalism. Their present machination is a concrete step towards Hindu Rashtravad.

The recent direction of the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), which operates under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to force the Urdu authors to declare that the contents of their books—supposed to be published by the NCPUL—are not against the government or the country, is a part of the design of the Sangh. NCPUL Director Irteza Karim says: “If a writer wants financial aid from the government, then of course the content cannot be against (the government). The NCPUL is a government organisation and we are government employees.” This is nothing but throttling the freedom of expression. It is an insult to ask an author to get two witnesses to sign a declaration that will curb their freedom of expression.

Mohan Bhagwat and his ilk do not know how much damage they have caused to education in India and also to the image of the country globally. Their continuous attack on JNU has in fact lowered the standards of education in the country. They may be feeling happy that by their vitriolic campaign they have succeeded in penalising the students like Kanhaiya. But they are not aware of the damage they have inflicted on education.

Modi denies that communal hatred has been on the rise. But the latest report of the gruesome hanging of two cattle traders, namely, Muhammad Mazloom and Azad Khan, in Latehar of Jharkhand is a candid proof of the extent to which the saffronites have vitiated communal harmony. The two were herding buffaloes to a market but were tortured and hanged to death by radical bigots. A police officer has been quoted as saying that “the sight suggested that the two of them were subjected to extreme levels of brutality. It means that the assailants were moved by extreme hatred.”

After its defeat in the Bihar Assembly elections, it has become clear to the BJP that if at all it intends to survive and stage a comeback, it must resort to ultra-nationalism. Even before the February 9 JNU episode the first sign of trouble had surfaced on October 9, 2014 when clashes broke out in the campus between the Left-leaning and Right-wing student bodies over a cartoon published in the Forward Press magazine.

The JNU students have been fighting the saffron onslaught and machinations in their own way. The Modi Government has been finding it a tough proposition to counter them. The saffron conspiracy to implicate them in false police cases, isolate them from the students' community and tarnish their personal image has miserably failed. On the contrary these students have put the saffron brigade in the dock and questioned their political credibility. The worst has been the case with Narendra Modi. Kanhaiya has made him look like a political non-entity.

The vehemence with which the RSS and Modi Government projected the “Bharat Mata ki Jai” slogan and directed the government to crush the people who are not willing to toe their line points to some other machination. It would also be wrong to believe that the RSS was simply targeting the Left or secular voices. The Muslims have obviously been the soft target. An insight into the mechanism of the game makes it explicit that the RSS mission has the support of the Modi Government. The RSS has communalised the society to such an extent that even common Muslims are not spared. The murder of two traders in Jharkhand is a case in point.

Their plan is to present the Muslims in bad light. Incidentally, they have succeeded in their mission too with the Hyderabad seminary issuing a fatwa rejecting the Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan. Mufti Azeemuddin, who heads the Darul Ifta or the fatwa centre of the seminary, holds that the Muslims will definitely say Jai Hind, or Hindustan Zindabad or Long Live India. The present situation is reminiscent of the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition incident. At that time L.K. Advani led the demolition squad. The vehement Muslim reaction at that time is before us. This time the RSS and Modi Government have embarked on the same path. What is the guarantee that the present saffron machination would not give rise to a similar situation?

Bhagwat must realise and understand the nature of the damage he and his outfit have inflicted on the country. They must come out clear before the people, without any pretensions. Their decision to go for an image makeover is a ploy to create confusion in the minds of the common Indian. A change in the colour of cloth does not underline a fundamental change in the thought process of the saffron organisation. It is also not an allegorical change. This is a figurative shift for winning the people's acceptability. This is the most dangerous design of the Sangh. None should nurse the impression that the quaint uniform symbolised the Sangh's change of heart. Behind the façade of rethinking it is getting ready to implement its Hindutva philosophy in a more ruthless manner. The RSS had come to realise that the modern middle class was averse to accepting it as a progressive force. That is why to disarm them the outfit went for an image makeover. It is like the old wine in a new bottle and nothing beyond that.

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

Is there a concerted effort by the Sangh Parivar to infiltrate into the realm of higher education in the name of nationalism, culture and indigenous knowledge? In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, higher education was used by the powerful forces of nationalism in the USSR, Germany, Italy and even in Europe and the USA to shape national identities and serve narrow national interests. As a result higher education produced ideologues for Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Communist Russia and China, and capitalist USA. It was a state- controlled education with clear goals and objec-tives without any autonomy in the educational sphere. Individuals were shaped by the ideology of the state and by being subservient to the designs aimed at promoting the legitimacy of the state.

Is Higher Education Controlled?

With the kind of developments taking place in higher education, one gets the impression that the country is moving in a similar direction today. Is the ruling regime making use of higher education in particular and education in general for vested interests to create ideologues and citizens for a nationalist state? A few examples will suffice. The presence of Baba Ramdev with the members of the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram at the meeting of the Unnat Bharat Yojana anchored by the IIT- Delhi, an institute of national repute, where recommen-dations were made for research on the genetic code of bulls, cows and cow-based agriculture, was hardly an academic exercise. Why did the IIT allow this? The answer is simple. The Institute wants to be a part of the establishment and those in the administration of the institution are not concerned about its academic reputation. Take the other example of the de-recognition of the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle in IIT-Madras. There was absolutely no logic in the de-recognition of the association. Why should discussions and debates be ever banned in educational institutions in a democratic state? These institutions were created for the purpose of making students aware of the national icons who shared an ideology of social transformation. However, when the powers that be decided in Delhi to ban such an organisation, those in the administration obliged. Similar actions have been repeated in other institutions as well. That groups of the affiliates of the Sangh Parivar like the ABVP and others have begun to control the campuses through their illegitimate actions is something that is worrisome.

Appointments

The other way of exercising control is through appointments. In spite of vehement opposition from students of the Institute and the public, Gajendra Chauhan, not known for his academic credentials, recently took over as the Chairman of the Film and Television Institute of Pune. Pro-RSS individuals, such as Anagha Ghaisas, Narendra Pathak, Pranjal Saikia and Rahul Solapurkar, have been appointed to the FTII Society. The credentials of these persons are that they are loyal to the forces of the Sangh Parivar and are willing to further the latter's agenda. There are more and more people of the kind taking on leadership positions in the universities. Chandrakala Padia was appointed as the Chair-person of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in place of Gopalkrishna Gandhi who resigned once Modi took over as the Prime Minister. Girish Chandra Tripathi, a State-level RSS functionary, was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). The only criterion that Y. Sudershan Rao, who was appointed as the Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, had was his proximity to the RSS. He was a Professor of History at the Kakatiya University in Telangana and functioned as the head of the Andhra Pradesh chapter of the Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY), a subsidiary of the RSS. He had supported the caste system in India and stated his vision of re-writing India's history to prove the historicity of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. To make his work smooth in the organisation the others who have been accom-modated in the reconstituted team are mostly office-bearers of the RSS-backed ABISY. Lokesh Chandra at 87, who should have lived a retired life, now heads the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and claims that Modi is a greater leader than Gandhi. That makes him eligible to head the institution. Baldev Sharma, the former editor of the RSS mouthpiece, Panchjanya, was appointed as the Chairman of the National Book Trust in March this year. Vishram Ramchandra Jamdar, a professed RSS swayamsevak, has been appointed as the head of the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur even when he was not among the four shortlisted candidates for the post. Pahlaj Nihalani, the newly appointed Censor Board of Film Certificate (CBFC) Chairman, was the brain behind the BJP's ‘Har har Modi, Ghar ghar Modi' campaign during the last Lok Sabha elections. Many of the recent appointments at Prasar Bharti have been of people affiliated to the Sangh in direct or indirect ways. Perhaps the most crucial of these appointees is A. Surya Prakash as the body's Chairman; he was the Consulting Editor of The Pioneer and a distinguished Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a Delhi-based pro-RSS think-tank, that was earlier headed by the current National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval. These bodies exercise large influence. Now that they are appointed, they will make similar appointments from their fold to these bodies.

Other Means

The other areas of concern are that reputed institutions like the IIMs and similar bodies are inviting Right-wing ideologues to be on the right side of the establishment. These ideologues are influencing trade, business and culture. The proposal to have separate vegetarian canteens in the IIMs, IITs and other major universities was another one of those acts to sharply divide the institutions. Contentious issues like beef and Ram Mandir have begun to create strife in campuses. With the meet in the Delhi University campus on Ram Mandir, the fire of saffronisation has already been lit. With the appointment of more and more party ideologues as Vice-Chancellors and Directors of institutes, aggressive proposals are being made for introducing courses in yoga, Sanskrit and culture. The ICCR is allegedly putting pressure on universities to create chairs in cultural studies to be named after Vivekananda—a figure the RSS has adopted in the pantheon of Hindutva icons—and, even more controversially, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, whose contribution to culture remains unknown

Larger Agenda

There is a larger agenda here. With these ideologues the government in power hopes to bring about more substantive changes in the content of education as envisaged by the RSS. Those uncomfortable to the party in power are either being sacked or made to resign. When the NCERT Director, Parvin Sinclair, refused to toe the line of Smriti Irani, she was ousted over two years before her term could end aborting at the last stage the revision of the National Curriculum Framework 2005 she had initiated to “de-saffronise” education in the country. Nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar resigned from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay's governing body in March, following reports of differences with the HRD Minister. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Chairman of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, decided to resign. Mahesh Rangarajan stepped down as the Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) as he understood that the BJP wanted him to go. Sandeep Pandey, the progressive Professor, was sacked for his Left-leaning views from teaching in the Banares Hindu University. These are some of the examples. While on the one hand members of the BJP or those close to the BJP/RSS have been appointed to important positions, those who oppose the agenda of the Sangh Parivar are either kept out or made to resign by allegations that are simply not true.

Interference into Culture

The BJP and its organisations have publicly stated that they are committed to ‘cleanse' India of the ‘pollution' caused by Western culture by preparing independent roadmaps for the proposed culture ‘cleansing' exercise which will involve curricula, art and cinema, science, technology and libraries. The promise made is to totally revamp all these institutions and academic programmes with a detailed roadmap. Learning of Sanskrit has already acquired importance as a part of making the young feel proud in their ancient heritage. The Haryana Government has already introduced Gita in schools. Lessons from Mahabharata, Ramayana and Gita may soon be taught in schools and colleges as part of the plan to rid the country of “cultural pollution” and inculcate “values” in accordance with the RSS‘ directives. Yoga tsunami is set to swamp the Indian educational institutions. The climax of it all was the recent Science Congress that embarrassed India internationally by allowing the presentation of two papers—one on how Lord Shiva is the greatest environmentalist and another on the physical and spiritual benefits of playing the shankh (conch). And all these policies and programmes have been pushed through the Human Resource Development Ministry headed by a person who does not even have a graduate degree!

At the Osmania University, Hyderabad on December 10, 2015 eight organisers of the controversial ‘beef festival' and ‘pork festival' were detained. A ‘curfew-like' situation prevailed on the campus with heavy police security being deployed to prevent any untoward incident. The BJP MLA, K. Ram Bhupal Rao, had vowed to stop the ‘beef festival' and had announced that he would perform a “Gau Puja” (cow worship) on the day. Food and its choice are fundamental to the rights of citizens. Why should it become an issue in a secular state other than for “cultural nationalism” of the Sangh Parivar? The objective of all these is to condemn the modern and scientific temperament and replace it with primitive thoughts. The RSS and its affiliates are terribly frightened of free minds, rational thought and critical enquiry. To prevent any positive change in society, the RSS with its affiliates is prepared to take the country back in time where everything with modern or Western influence could be banished. The tragedy of all that would be indoctrination of young impressionable minds who should be made to think objectively and critically.

There is a Pattern

There is a clear pattern in all that the Sangh is engaged in to bring about long-term changes in Indian state and society through education. Look at the way the Modi Government has gone about the celebration of Christmas. At first the Central Government declared the day as “Good Governance Day”, a day that was celebrated as a national festival by people of all faiths whether one believed in the tenets of Christianity or not. More than the celebration of Christmas, it was a recognition of the presence of a community of 2.3 per cent people who have been active in the country's educational, service and civil society sectors. The cancellation of the holiday and observance of it as “Good Governance Day” was to undermine the community's contri-bution. To make matters worse through an executive order the state decided to celebrate the birth anniversaries of two Parivar icons on that day, Atal Behari Vajpayee and the even-more sectarian former Hindu Mahasabha leader Madan Mohan Malaviya. All this was done in the name of culture, further reinforcing its narrow view of “Christians as outsiders” and the icons of the Sangh Parivar who have been hostile for Christians and their faith as nationa-lists.

Response

Unfortunately, there has not been a national outcry against the sudden and subtle trans-formation of education to suit the agenda of the party in power. The Opposition is not making any noise. With lack of Opposition in the Lower House and lack of thought in the Rajya Sabha, the BJP has found it easy to impose its core doctrine on the country. The most affected are the colleges and universities. The academia as a whole, with rare exceptions, when asked to bend, is on its knees, trying to curry favour with the existing establishment.

The tragedy of Indian higher education is that a large section of those in the system are there for their livelihoods and employment without any deep commitment to the world of ideas and society. They are ideologically bankrupt and you do not expect them to stand up and resist. That is why instead of an environment of academics, where issues have to be discussed and debated, we have colleges and universities that exist to transmit knowledge for degrees than for life.

Policing in campuses is on the increase. There is the big brother watching with cameras the entire campus life. Not only is the world of ideas controlled, but even human behaviour in campuses remains controlled more and more. There is already unfreedom and insecurity in the system. What is sad, however, is the silence of the political parties and academic activists.

Resist Saffronisation

The RSS agenda or ideology has to be resisted for several reasons. What is basically proposed by the RSS/BJP team is a set of ideas of the Brahmanic religion that does not represent Hinduism at all. Through educational institu-tions the state is attempting to legitimise these ideas by imposing Sanskrit, yoga,Gita and other religious texts. Secular education is now being getting communalised. The whole developmental slogan that was used by Modi to get elected is used to Hinduise society. Instead of helping students to think critically the BJP-led policy provides students with a set of myths, beliefs and superstitions. Educational institutions are not places for indoctrination to internalise myths, beliefs and dogmas but spaces to think, to reason and to analyse.

Any indoctrination or imposition of an ideology from above would hinder the very reason for existence of these institutions: to advance knowledge by original and critical investigation. Transmitting the legacy of the past is important, but that legacy has to be transmitted with more questions than answers so that students and teachers examine that legacy in a spirit of search for truth.

Higher Educational Institutions are for Critical Engagement

In the classical view which is still valid to a large extent, the institution of higher education are ‘communities of scholars and students' engaged in a common task. This engagement needs criticality and research to delve into issues and concerns that matter to society. But politics cannot dictate these. Research is a free choice. Individual scholars and scientists should have the freedom to pursue the truth, and to teach and publish their findings. For research to be termed research it needs to be objective by following rigorous intellectual criteria and subject to what is today called ‘peer review' to prevent political interference. How can people research on cows and cow dung, provide evidence for the presence of atom and nuclear bombs in ancient India since these are political issues? Similarly as long as Ramayana and Mahabharata are not historical texts but religious epics of particular religious groups, it is wrong to impose them on the country.

Partisan politics would destroy higher education. For years colleges and universities enjoyed a measure of autonomy, even when the state paid professors and dictated curricula. That autonomy was a boon. A section of the academicians for years had come to exercise their right to be active citizens and pronounced on political questions, making universities the home of public intellectuals, and a creative and independent cultural force. Science had become more people-oriented addressing the concerns of the people. Institutes of higher education need this autonomy to govern their own affairs and to make decisions on academic matters.

The examples of countries like Germany and Sweden are worth emulating. In spite of the prevalence of laissez-faire capitalism, institutions of higher education in these countries stand outside the system of market relations without being run as commercial organisations. They are fully funded by the state without direct interference with their own autonomy which has helped these countries to protect their liberty and diversity. Without keeping out party politics and economic power of the markets, higher education won't thrive. A knowledge economy depends on the quality and independence of knowledge without any ideological onslaught. What the country badly needs is a higher education system financed by the state without state interference to promote a knowledge society.

Conclusion

This is possible even at the last juncture if politics is supportive. The Centrist and Leftist parties could begin a campaign backed by members of the academia and the public at large. Allowing education to be communalised has serious consequences. It is an anti-national and anti-constitutional project. The country cannot be allowed to drift. According to the Constitution, India is a secular state. There is no place for the teaching of any religious texts in institutions of learning. The imparting of secular, rational and scientific education is a mandate of the secular state. When the ruling party moves away from that mission, it is the bounden duty of the Opposition to take up the issue and mobilise the nation.

Is the Opposition failing the nation? The Opposition's main role is to question the govern-ment of the day and hold them accountable to the public. Any government has to remain answerable to the public at all times, and a good Opposition can put the spotlight on serious issues and have them resolved quickly. The Opposition has also to mobilise support and take sections of the academia into confidence. There is no doubt that the changes that are introduced and the changes that are visualised need debates and discussions and the Opposition parties must protect higher education in the country from the clutches of the communal and fascist forces.

Dr Ambrose Pinto SJ is the Principal, St. Aloysius Degree College, Bangalore.

by K. Narayana

“I feel ashamed of you now, after all these years of admiration. What is your status and what is Kanhaiya's level? Why did you go to the airport to receive him?”—complains a well- wisher of mine.

“A person who had praised deshadrohi Afzal Guru, is getting your support! Shame on you!”— another friend of mine expresses his ire.

“You had followed Kanhaiya to the Central University. Did you ever realise what impression it will create?”— one more Leftist friend enquires.

I concede that I am facing criticism from some quarters like these three typical ones I have listed above. I am not talking about the numerous praises and expressions of support I have received. I will take cognisance of the criticism rather than the words of support. Expressions of support might elate you and help you to move forward, but their role is limited to that. It is only the criticism that helps us to introspect.

Anti-National

The episode of Kanhaiya had emerged with the events that took place at JNU, Delhi between February 9 to 11 this year. Along with Kanhaiya, the Students' Union President of JNU, two other students were also charged under sedition and arrested.

We are all aware of these events in JNU since February 9 that had led to the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar. The seven video tapes, in which he had purportedly shouted anti-India slogans, and which were widely publicised by some TV channels, had been sent to a Lab in Hyderabad for analysis. It was established that at least two videos, widely publicised by some channels, had been doctored. It is these morphed videos that were used as evidence against Kanhaiya, and he was charged on the basis of these videos. It was also widely publicised by some other channels explaining technically how these videos were morphed. Official investigations by various agencies had established that Kanhaiya had neither shouted the anti-India slogans, nor had he any role in it. Legal experts the world over, eminent and veteran journalists and many top politicians had supported the fact that Kanhaiya was innocent and that he had done no wrong. Should Kanhaiya walk on fire to once again prove his innocence? I am sure even that will not satisfy the saffron brigade who are after his blood.

I have full confidence in the fact that this young man, whose age is less than half of my political life, is innocent and if proven otherwise, I declare that I will say goodbye to my political life. I am saying this from the depths of my heart.

Before entering Parliament for the first time, Narendra Modi had kissed the earth. I would like to ask him: will he be prepared to rub his nose in the ground, now that he and his party are sure to be proven wrong? Are they prepared to take up this challenge?

Giving me unsolicited advice, that I have a high position in politics and that I should not stoop down to expressing support to Kanhaiya is a blatant attempt to isolate Kanhaiya and play with his life. Their praise of me is in fact subversion.

Irrespective of her/his age, if anyone comes forward to fight against injustice and for a better India, I will extend my support to that person. Why the hell are you people so scared of him? Is it because the fearless young man is challenging Modi one-to-one? Youth are staying away from politics and even honest and hardworking young cadres are not able to climb up the political ladder. It is only children of the rich and powerful, along with top industrialists who are occupying seats in Parliament and other elected Houses. And politics for them is a part of their business, a tool to promote their interests. And Parliament's purpose is narrowed down to serve the interests of the rich and powerful. More than 80 per cent of the acts proposed to help the downtrodden and poor farmers are languishing and not able to see the light of the day. Women, who comprise 50 per cent of the population, could not get the 33 per cent reservation in Parliament and State legislatures. The relevant Bill is pending forever.

In this context, it is persons such as Lalit Modi and Vijay Mallya, who get all the political support to cheat this country and its people, while no one in power comes out honestly to support a forthright young man like Kanhaiya. I feel proud of this young man and I don't hesitate to extend whatever help he needs. This country needs thousands of Kanhaiyas. False pride should not come in the way of supporting the truth.

Kanhaiya, who was under police custody, was attacked in full public view before TV cameras by BJP goons, wearing black lawyers' coats. Even the legal experts, deputed by the Supreme Court, were not spared. The police and all the official machinery were mute witnesses to this blatant violation of the law of this land. Students are now afraid of going to their class-rooms and an atmosphere of fear has been created. The Hyderabad Central University is a glaring example of this. It has been converted into a concentration camp, with the students deprived of food, water, electricity and communication facilities. The BJP had threatened that they will block Kanhaiya from entering Hyderabad and Vijayawada. The moment he landed in Hyderabad, every movement of his was fraught with danger. He was prevented from meeting Rohith Vemula's mother. Goons on motor bikes tried to pelt stones on the car in which Kanhaiya was travelling. At the closed gates of the University of Hyderabad, the BJP goons had blocked his path and tried to disrupt the meeting he was supposed to address. While he was addressing a meeting at Sundarayya Vijnana Kendram in Hyderabad, it was again the BJP goons who tried to throw chappals, though unsuccessfully, on Kanhaiya in the full presence of elderly citizens and the media.

Though permission was granted by the authorities to hold a meeting at Siddhartha College grounds, Venkaiah Naidu's henchmen had seen to it that the permission was withdrawn. We had to shift the venue to a private function hall. Two hours before Kanhaiya was supposed to arrive, the BJP cadres tried to enter the hall with the intention of creating trouble. They had brought in goons from far-off places to enact this drama. I got a call from Delhi that the BJP was planning to organise an attack on Kanhaiya by some BJP women. By 4.30 pm, these women were already there in the meeting hall and got into an argument with the Red Shirt volunteers. Some BJP goons from other districts, who could not be immediately identified by the Vijayawada local comrades, sat in the front row and they tried to throw chappals at Kanhaiya as he rose to speak. Of course, they did not succeed as the Left cadres were alert. We had put up Kanhaiya at a hotel for the night, and even there, the BJP goons went and threatened the hotel management. This all-powerful government, with stalwarts such as Modi and Venkaiah—seem to be scared of this little boy, Kanhaiya. Why was there so much snooping and subversion on him? Are you scared stiff that if he speaks, you will be exposed? Disrupting the meeting of rival parties does not exactly fit into the democratic culture.

The Constitution has guaranteed the right to assembly and expression of dissenting opinions for all citizens. If you try to snatch it away from us by misuse of power, the anger of the people will explode on your face.

Your blatant attempts at creating a frenzy of politically motivated false nationalism and your projection of ‘Bharat Mata‘ to symbolise the interests of the rich is sure to boomerang on you. This whole subversive activity of bringing in Hindutva fascism is being watched with anger by the people and they will teach you a bitter lesson.

With this subversive plan, these saffron gangs want to thwart the rising tide of opposition against them, by silencing Kanhaiya. At this critical juncture, should we remain mute spectators and allow them to carry on with their nefarious plan? When the police and administration had failed to protect Kanhaiya in the hallowed premises of the court, who will trust this government to protect the life of Kanhaiya? Only the committed Leftist move-ment has to take care of him at this critical juncture.

Should Kanhaiya be left alone to fend for himself? Is it a sin to protect and help him? You are saying that we will get painted in the same colour as Kanhaiya. I say that Kanhaiya is always on our side—he is a committed Leftist cadre. By keeping him away from us, we will be throwing him to the saffrom wolves. Is that what you want, by cautioning me?

When the movement against the BJP misrule is picking up, we should put all our efforts by encouraging the newly emerging united student-youth movement. Any hesitation at this stage will prove suicidal to the Left in this country.

Hyderabad, March 28, 2016

Dr K. Narayana is the National Secretary, Communist Party of India.

TRIBUTE

Prof Randhir Singh, a well-known Marxist activist-intellectual who used to be a teacher at the Department of Political Science in Delhi University, passed away at the age of 94 on January 31, 2016. I had met him for the first time in 1992 when he came to the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He stood out as someone different as a critical scholar thinking of contemporary issues from within the framework of classical Marxism. In March 2010, a friend of mine from Punjab introduced me to him. He was happy to hear that I was a student from the Centre for Political Studies (a Centre named by him) in JNU. He asked me to explain about the current political situation in the country. I feel privileged that he then told me, ‘We are on the same wavelength' especially in response to my argument that ‘politics is not in command with the ongoing Maoist movement in India'. He had also gifted me his books including the one with his autograph, Marxism, Socialism, Indian Politics. When I met him in April 2014, he asked me anxiously, ‘Have you read what I have written on the Soviet Union?'

During my second last visit to him along with Pawan Kumar Patel on November 29, 2014, his voice had weakened into a whisper. He requested us to find a quote from his book, What was Built and What Failed in the Soviet Union. The quote from some French author: ‘Soviet Union does not need to be explained .... The Soviet Union was a dream turned sour. Nevertheless, it was a dream'. We started searching for it, unsuccessfully though. He was so anxious to get that quote and understandably so since he had taken it as his life-mission ‘to keep alive the idea of socialism'. Indeed, this is a great task since we are living in an era when people's movements around the world are at their lowest ebb since the high tide after the Second World War when around one-third of the world was under the rule of revolutionary Communists. His style of writing was quite lucid and understandable. Once when I asked him why he used the word, ‘balanced' instead of ‘dialectical', he said, ‘There was a time when I used to write in such a technical manner but I don't want to do it anymore.'

Although he opposed the militarist deviation of the Maoists, he was an ardent campaigner against the military suppression of the Maoist movement in Chhattisgarh through the ‘Operation Green Hunt'. He said that he read Gautam Navlakha's article [along with Jan Myrdal] on the Maoist movement written after his visit to the struggle area of Bastar. He said: “Gautam Navlakha speaks about democracy at the end of his article. But I am not happy with it.” Democracy was, for Prof Randhir Singh, the one ‘right lesson' and the lack of it in the Soviet Union had led to the debacle of the socialist experiment.

Pawan Patel, who used to be the Convener of the Indo-Nepal Solidarity Forum, explained to him the current political situation since the conclusion of the people's war in Nepal. Prof Randhir Singh listened to these arguments and expressed grief saying that the movement in Nepal had raised much hope.

I asked him why he had not written much on caste issues in India, except one article on reservation in Five Lectures in Marxist Mode. He said that he did not know much about caste. He gave an exquisite smile when I said, ‘It may be because you had not written much on caste that the Brahminical Marxists did not have much of a problem with you; they had given you some space and accommodated you.'

To understand what Prof Randhir Singh stood for, his autobiographical note written in 1988, ‘In Lieu of a Biodata' (re-printed in several of his books) is a must-read. He got into the academic profession in an India still fresh with the sentiments of the anti-colonial movement. Yet as someone who operated in the terrain of classical Marxism dubbed as “Marxist orthodoxy”, he did face difficulties. In his ‘biodata' he says: “It is true that whenever interviewed, the selection committees invariably turned me down.” Yet he was lucky enough to get appointments by invitation, including professorship in 1972. He further says: “I have no string of scholars working under me, no fellowships, no research projects, no study or other academic leaves, no ‘seminaring', national or international, nothing—not even a visit abroad....” Yet his writings are informed by a deep knowledge of classical texts from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and Mao. Giving some cause for self-reflection to successful academicians of our times, he further says: “...[S]cholarly writing is increasingly addressed not to problems or public but to peers and to prestige and preferment in the needlessly bureaucratised academic professions, and given the growing, and often mindless, specialisation in the social sciences (including Political Science) ....” Whereas the distance between words and deeds is very large among India's leading academicians, Randhir Singh stood out as a tall exception, as a man of integrity and high ethical values.

I told him how Pawan Patel and myself were working on a piece on the topic, ‘Brahminical Marxism versus Critical Marxism' (unpublished till date). I told him that we propose to blend the Dalit-Bahujan perspective, the perspective on the rights of women and sexual minorities and the perspective on the rights of frontier peoples into the framework of critical Marxism in the context of India and Nepal, and that it would be a framework of intersectional class politics. We told him that the Dalit-Bahujan perspective could have tremendous mass appeal in India with its distinctive contradictions based on caste and religion and that it would be in keeping with Mao's exhortation, “Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods.” After a pause, he said: “It is a revolutionary perspective” and we were exhilarated by his endorsement. This showed that he was quite open to integrating a Dalit-Bahujan perspective into Marxism although he had not written much on caste issues. He said: “I am close to what you are doing.”

His writings on Gandhi were much more sympathetic than those of many other radical Left writers. He thought that Gandhi had a paternalistic attitude towards the people of India. His sympathetic views on Gandhi may, however, be viewed as part of his lack of understanding of the Brahminical social system in the country understood better by the Ambedkarites. Except during the Brahminical revivalism since the 8th century to the establishment of the Sultanates by the 12th century, the hegemonic cultures in India were Maurya (Buddhist) (5th century BCE-8th century CE), the Sultanates (1206-1526), the Mughals (1526-1757) and the British (1757-1947). Randhir Singh's support to Gandhi was rather uncritical if we consider that it was the nationalist movement led by Gandhi with his concepts of Ramrajya, support for the varnashrama dharma, etc. that gave a new lease of life to the Brahminical forces. The ill-effects of such a Brahminical mobilisation led by the privileged caste Hindus was noticed in the partition of the country and in the ongoing Hindutva movement in case of which it is apparent that it is essentially Brahminical.

There was a discussion between Pawan and myself on whether Bhagat Singh looked better in his shaven looks or with his pagadi on. I argued that he looks better with his pagadi on: India is said to be the most diverse country in the world and even if we have a revolution in India, we need to preserve the diversity which is a source of our strength. Prof. Randhir Singh intervened and said, “It is right.”

Prof Randhir Singh had spent his life espousing ‘the Marxism of Karl Marx'—which is about thinking what Marx would have thought under the given circumstances. His thinking was environmentally sensitive, gender sensitive and sensitive towards the social and cultural diversities in the country. He was someone who began his life as whole-time activist of the undivided Communist Party of India. All critical Marxists, whether Marxists, Leninists or Maoists, had a rallying point in him. However, he did not mince words in critiquing the militarism of the Maoists, and the parliamentary opportunism of the CPI and CPI-M. The Maoists thought him to be too liberal and the Marxists considered him too radical. He believed that in India, the non-parliamentary path should be the primary focus of the struggle for socialism.

His focus was always on the socialist alternative put forth in the Soviet Union. In an earlier visit, when I had asked him, why he had not written much about socialism in China and the Maoist politics, his response was that his primary focus was on teaching and his writings were in response to requests from somebody or the other. Over his childhood “loomed large the heroic figure of Bhagat Singh”, as he says and the Soviet revolution must have been a powerful formative influence over his youth. The revolution in China, significant though, especially for the Third World, must have been only a lesser event during his life-time.

In my meeting with him on April 26, 2014, I told him that it is most likely that Modi would form his government at the Centre after the election. I said, it may be a good thing for India to have a feel of what fascism is going to be like. I quoted Mao that it is not a bad thing to be attacked by your enemy. I drew a parallel with Latin America which went through a long spell of neoliberalism and dictatorships but is now on the democratic path. He said: ‘I agree with you.'

I told him about the India visit (in New Delhi, Thiruvananthapuram, etc.) of Marta Harnecker and Michael Lebowitz. I saw passion when he said: ‘I completely agree with them.' This was understandable since Randhir Singh himself was a proponent of the socialism-oriented path of development here and now rather than in a distant post-revolutionary society.

His daughter, who is a Faculty at the School of Planning and Architecture, said: “Sometimes, he says, I have written enough and there are times when he says, he wants to write on Bhagat Singh and Gandhi. In fact, he had told me over the phone sometime back, ‘I wish, I could write.'”

Prof Randhir Singh was also a good poet in his younger days, that is, until around 1950 after which he stopped writing poetry for which he did not give a reason. I asked his wife if their marriage was a love marriage. She said: ‘Yes, both his father and my father were doctors who were trained in Europe and in Lahore, they had a friendly family relation. The marriage took place in 1952 in India after the partition.' His daughter further confirmed that it was a love marriage and said that Randhir Singh's brother-in-law was also in the Left movement.

We also got his blessings and warm handshakes. Randhir Singh was the second person, after my own mother, from whom I have sought to place his hand on my head for a blessing so that I could have the benefit of his positive energy passing into my brain.

We are fortunate that his thoughts will still remain with us through the magnum opus: Crisis of Socialism — Notes in Defence of a Commitment and the handy volumes published by Aakar Books, Delhi to make it more accessible. These include: The Right Lesson and the Wrong Conclusion and What was Built and What Failed in the Soviet Union. We also have his earlier academic work published in 1967, Reason, Revolution and Political Theory giving a Marxist critique of the political theory of Michael Oakeshott, a conservative thinker. Randhir Singh's words still resound in my ears: ‘... but my mission is to keep alive the idea of socialism', no mean mission in an era when the socialist alternative has receded into the background of history.

The author is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Politics at the Central University of Kerala, Kasaragod. He can be contacted at: gilbertseb@gmail.com

MUSINGS

On Monday, March 28, the Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Historical Studies hosted a day-long convention—Jashn-e-Azaadi: Remem-bering Bipan Chandra... celebrating the people's historian, Bipan Chandra, and celebrating the Indian Freedom Struggle. It was simply heart-warming to see that josh/that surcharged warmth, spread out in and around the venue, JNU's Convention Centre. Discussions, talks, short plays together with lectures on the pluralistic traditions and performance by Madan Gopal Singh and his ‘Chaar Yaar' group. The highlight was to hear Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya. These three student leaders spoke for about ten minutes each and spoke of the ground realities; in fact, Anirban also focused on the ground realities in the Kashmir Valley—thousands of Kashmiris killed or dumped in the missing persons' slot or in those unmarked graves... These young students spoke with a sense of conviction... conviction brimming in their eyes, in their gait, in their body language.

Another aspect which was amply noticeable was that sense of bonding between the faculty with the students. It's rare to see this solidarity, needless to add that it ought to be one of those musts on a campus but a rarity... It was touching to see Prof Mridula Mukherjee, Prof Aditya Mukherjee, Prof Mahalakshmi, Prof Rakesh Batabyal and several other academics being there! Not just for the students but also for all those who are hounded by today's fascist rulers and by lopsided notions of nationalism. To quote these academics, ‘Today, when university campuses, students and intellectuals are constantly facing ideological attacks and a certain definition of “nationalism” is being imposed across the country, we want to articulate our voice in defence of democracy by remembering the famous historian and public intellectual Prof Bipan Chandra. We want to counter-pose the communalism of the Hindu communal forces with the nationalism that we have inherited from the Indian national movement. Our nationalism has been enriched by the ideas and works of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, Dr B.R. Ambedkar and Maulana Azad, and is the foundation of an inclusive, secular and democratic Indian nation. Writing about the national movement, Bipan Chandra said, “A legacy, especially of a prolonged movement, tends to endure for a long time. But no legacy, however strong and sound, can last forever. It tends to erode and become irrelevant unless it is constantly rein-forced and developed and sometimes transcended in a creative manner to suit the changing circumstances.”'

Hounding in the name of ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai...'

With news just coming in (on this Wednesday noon... March 30, when I am writing this column) of at least three if not four madrasa children attacked and thrashed. All this happening on the outskirts of this Capital city, in the Begampur locality. And why were these madrasa children attacked? Because whilst they were walking in a nearby park they were surrounded by goons (quite obviously from the RSS-VHP-BJP brigades) and forced to chant—Bharat Mata ki Jai!

Madrasa children stand out with their white cotton/khadi kurta pyjama attires and skull caps, with that easy targets for the Right-wing brigades. Also, these attackers realize that they have governmental backing so wouldn't have to face the expected aftermath.

But, yes, one does expect Child Rights forums and the Human Rights Commissions to speak up for these hapless children! In fact, all of us have to speak out. Today its these madrasa children, tomorrow it could be me or you or just about anybody trying to put up a stiff resistance.

Coming to this latest tactic—chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai or else you are declared an anti national—is another of those ploys to bring about yet another round of division amongst the masses. Yes, these are terrible times. The Right-wing brigades are using every and all possible tactics to break the very backbone of all those of us putting up a resistance. According to me, all the ‘Right-wingers' are the biggest enemy of this land and should be declared deshdrohis.

Thankfully some amongst us are speaking out... First it was Asaduddin Owaisi who refused to chant this particular slogan and refused to be bullied by the RSS brigades. And now the latest to do so is the well-known Sikh leader, Simranjit Singh Mann, who was formerly in the IPS. Last week he said that Sikhs “cannot” chant the slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai', as “Sikhs don't worship women in any form”. To quote him from a recent news report—“According to the BJP, one who doesn't say ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai' is not a patriot and can be tried for sedition... Sikhs should say ‘Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh'.” Mann also said: “The BJP must know that Sikhs can't say: ‘Vande Matram' ...Also, Hindu religious scriptures like the Geeta should not be imposed on people from other religions as has been done in BJP-ruled States.”

Whilst I am keying in, it's just struck—why can't we chant—‘As—salaam—alaikum to my Hindustan'! Yes, why not! After all, ‘As-salaam-alaikum' means peace be on you! Yes, I want and pray for peace to prevail on this land... peace which is getting shattered by fascist rulers.

Another thought I must offload. Now, that Mehbooba Mufti is all set to join hands with the fascist forces, one can't rule out the possibility of she and her colleagues getting ordered or forced or bullied or blackmailed to chant slogans directed from the RSS-BJP headquarters. Refusal to do so could land her and her colleagues with the expected backlash: anti-national deshdrohi tags and much more thrown at them ...

Naïve or short-sighted for the PDP to be welcoming fascist forces to spread out and establish base in the Valley, ruining it for times to come. Amen!

Till the afternoon of Thursday, March 31, the Hyderabad-based construction firm Iragava-puru Venkata Reddy Construction Ltd., better known by its initials IVRCL, was not a very high-profile company. But the sudden collapse of a huge slab of a flyover the company was building in Burra Bazar, the thickly-congested business district of Kolkata, brought it into the limelight. Many vehicles and pedestrians got trapped under its debris. Till the time of writing, 26 deaths have been confirmed and nearly a hundred injured, some of whom are in a critical condition. The debris has still not been fully cleared but the stench emanating from there suggests more decomposed bodies may have been lying under it.

In election-bound West Bengal, the tragedy is a godsend to the Opposition parties, from the BJP at one end to the Congress and the CPI-M at the other. It has brought fresh grist to the propaganda mill of the Opposition. More than sympathy for the dead and the injured, there is a competition to derive the maximum political mileage out of the tragedy and put the ruling TMC and its leader, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in the dock. In the present circumstances this is perhaps natural.

The criticism against the ruling party became more strident after Sudip Bandyopadhyay, leader of the TMC's parliamentary wing, added to the discomfort of his party by saying that he had found the design of the flyover ‘defective' and had informed the State Government accordingly. However, since much of the construction work had been done by the time, there was little that could be done to stop the construction and change the design. His statement was immediately contradicted by his party colleague Firhad Hakim, the State Urban Development Minister. What is rather intriguing is that not being a civil engineer, how could Bandyopadhyay detect the defect in the design?

Before taking a close look at the credibility and financial health of the IVRCL, certain facts need to be put on record. The Left Front Government gave the contract for the Rs 164 crore flyover project to the IVRCL in 2007, a good four years before it was voted out of power. The TMC Government inherited it. After the tragedy, the reaction of Ashok Bhattacharya, Urban Development Minister of the LF Government, was: “I have no responsibility. The present UD Minister (Firhad Hakim) has to shoulder the responsibility.” PCC chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury went a step ahead and demanded Hakim's ‘immediate arrest' before any inquiry had been ordered.

The spokesman of the company, K. Pandu-ranga Rao, first blamed the Almighty. “It is an act of God”—was his explanation. Faced with severe criticism for his evasive remark, he came out with another preposterous theory. It was a ‘blast' that had caused the collapse, he said, without a shred of evidence. The State Police went into action, raiding the company's offices in Kolkata and Hyderabad and arresting some senior executives and slapping the murder charge on them.

Now about the financial health of the company. A look at the Profit and Loss Account of IVRCL brings out some telltale facts. Its sales turnover has fallen from Rs 5651.45 crores in March 2011 to Rs 3117.42 crores in March 2015. During the same period, its total income fell from Rs. 5709.52 crores to Rs 3.217.75 crores; the operating profit declined from Rs 514.59 crores to —(minus) Rs 29.27 crores; its reported net profit nosedived from Rs 157.9 crores to —(minus) Rs 672.23 crores; and its earning per share (EPS) from Rs 5.91 crores to —(minus) Rs 14.64 crores. (Source: www.moneycontrol.com/financials/ivrcl/profit-loss/IVR)

Due to the mounting losses, the company dismissed 23 per cent of its workforce as a cost-cutting measure in 2015. The previous year, it had offered Rs 4000 crores of assets for sale, hoping that if the sale went off, it would be able to liquidate its debt burden.

Meanwhile, after the Kolkata tragedy, more facts have come to light. The IVRCL was blacklisted by the Jharkhand Government in 2015 for doing work haphazardly. The Jharkhand Government served a notice on the company demanding Rs 750 crores for losses and damages caused. Earlier the company faced a CBI probe into the allegation of its paying a bribe of Rs 22 crores to former Chief Minister Madhu Koda for bagging a contract for rural electrification. However, the probe had to be closed for lack of adequate evidence.

Way back in 2011, the CBI filed a case against the company for irregularities in a tsunami housing project in Puducherry that resulted in a loss of Rs 35 crores to the Puducherry Government and the Union Government.

Both the LF Government, which awarded the Kolkata flyover project to the IVRCL, and the successor Trinamul Government are answer-able to the people—the first for giving the contract in the first place to a tainted and sick company with such a track record and the TMC Government for not terminating the contract, though the work on the project was getting unconscionably delayed. After the accident, a company spokesman admitted that in the nine years from 2007 to 2016, they could complete only 55 per cent of the work or half the job. Another half remains to completed,

Now the blame-game and mutual recrimi-nations have begun, with each side trying to pass the buck on the other, while the bereaved families mourn their dead. An inquiry will of course be conducted and responsibility fixed. Some may be found guilty. But the far bigger question is: will this disaster put an end to the unending series of such disasters once and for all? Will private greed have the better of public safety in future also?

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

The Committee for the Defence and Release of Dr G.N. Saibaba wholeheartedly welcomes the decision of the Supreme Court of India to release Dr G.N. Saibaba on bail forthwith. This is indeed a much-needed and long-awaited relief for Dr Saibaba, who has been languishing in the anda cell of the Nagpur Central Jail since December 2015, when the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court cancelled the bail granted to him by the Division Bench of the Bombay High Court and ordered him to surrender within 24 hours. It was reported by various agencies that Saibaba's health conditions have been deteriorating drastically as the jail authorities refused to offer proper medical care or continue the special facilities that the High Court had ordered considering the precarious health conditions of a wheelchair-bound person with 90 per cent disability.

The Committee notes that the Supreme Court did not mince its words when the Honourable Judge noted that the opposition to the bail by the State was unfair as the Court had categorically announced that Saibaba would be released on bail once the condition set by the Court in its last hearing in the month of March, 2016 that all the material witnesses have to be examined on a day-to-day basis within a month was fulfilled. In today's hearing, the Counsel for the State submitted that eight more formal witnesses have to be examined and that needed Saibaba's custody till that is also over, as they have apprehensions that he would indulge in anti-national activities if he is released. Rejecting all the arguments presented by the Defence Counsel, the Judge asked them why they wanted to torture a person like this. “Do you want a pound of flesh?”—he asked.

The Committee thanks all the lawyers, activists, individuals and organisations that have extended their support so far in the struggle and hopes that they would continue their support till Saibaba gets justice. If the stance taken by the State in the Court proceeding today is any indication, the intimidatory tactics adopted by the State machinery against those who are relentlessly engaged in the struggle for the oppressed and the downtrodden is far from over.

Hany Babu M.T.

April 4, 2016 (For the Committee)