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The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-05-2006
Bodhi, any particular reason why this thread cannot go into "Indian Politics" section and merged with some of the existing threads there?
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-05-2006
Absolutely, it can be moved and merged to other threads, as best thought by forum elders.
Actually I wanted to discuss :
1. History of Pseudo-secularism in India
2. How to "re-convert" the pseudo-seculars back into nationalist fold.
But the discussion is not going very far nor much interest. Also I could not get more thoughts around these.
So administrators, please feel free to move/merge/purge the thread.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 09-09-2006
NATION IN THE MAKING
Limited view
The Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India By Aditya Nigam, Oxford, Rs 650
The Indian educated classes have emphasized, since the Nehru era, that the ideology of the state is both secular and national. The concept of nationalism is much-debated, and often abstruse theoretical categories are brought into the discussion. Benedict Anderson wrote of nations as imagined communities. Partha Chatterjee retorted by arguing, âIf nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose their imagined community from certain modular forms already made available to them by Europe and the Americas, what do they have left to imagine?â
In this book, the author provides a thought-provoking discussion on the origin and development of Indian nationalism and its growth with secular ideas. He explains Chatterjeeâs theory and discusses its limitations. However, without reference to subaltern contestations, Nigam says, the nationalist discourse cannot be appreciated.
Nehru was central to the formation of secular nationalism as the ideology of the post-colonial nation-state. But, Nigam says, this ideological-discursive configuration âby defaultâ¦remained Hindu, born as it was within a Hindu universe.â He could have added that this Hindu universe was seen principally through upper caste eyes, and this was bound to promote compromises with forces averse to progressive changes while continuing to talk about socialism. Nehruâs self-contradictions made him vulnerable to the Hindu right within the Congress.
Nigam dwells at length on various strands of Dalit politics, which according to him, ârepresents a deep resistance to the two great political artifacts of our modernity, secularism and the nation.â However, the question is should the traditional concepts of nationalism and secularism be accepted as they are? The continued dominance of the old elitist view has often made us brand anybody asserting his identity as anti-national. One has to recognize that the process of Indian nationhood-formation is incomplete. Besides, the growth of nationalism is often accompanied by the growth of chauvinism, which teaches the nation to bully weaker states and woo the powerful. When nationalism becomes progressive, it obliterates the idea of the nation itself.
The chapter, âThe impossible nationâ, shows how the dominant discourses on nationalism and secularism have avoided the class question. The review of the critique of the old secular-nationalist view is elegant. The problem with some secularists is that they look at secularism with respect to the state that came into being in the post-Partition period. The outbursts of the Hindu right has shown its limitations, propelling new thinking. âSecularism: the Marxist wayâ fails to note that often, religious preachers have involved themselves in the struggle of the masses. An important example is Reverend Murmu, who died in 1986 trying to protect the rights of Santals. By contrast, the Hindutva cult has often attacked Muslim obscurantism by referring to their radical teachings.
The book, on the whole, is important and interesting. A paperback edition would be most welcome, given the present price.
BHASKAR CHATTERJEE
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 09-09-2006
This thread is different and discusses the debate and two different political philosohy.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>
Political sociology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Political sociology is the study of power and the intersection of personality, society and politics. Political sociology is interdisciplinaryâwhere political science and sociology intersect. There are four main areas of research focus in contemporary political sociology: (1) the social formation of the modern state, (2) "who rules"?--that is, how social inequality between groups (classes, races, genders, etc.) affects politics, (3) how the personality, social movements and trends outside of the formal institutions of political power affect politics, and (4) power in small groups (e.g. families, workplaces).
The field also looks at how major social trends can affect the political process, as well as exploring how various social forces work together to change political policies. Political sociologists apply several theories to substantive issues. Each theory claims to be comprehensive, but actually has a few areas of strength because it was developed to address specific issues and operates at one levels of analysis. Three major theorical frameworks are pluralism, elite or managerial theory and class analysis which overlaps which Marxist analysis. Pluralism sees politics primarily as a contest among competing interest groups.
A leading representative is Robert Dahl.Elite managerial theory is sometimes called a state-centered approach. It explains what the state does by looking at constraints from organizational structure, semiautonomous state managers, and interests that arise from the state as a unique, power concentrating organization. A leading representative is Theda Skocpol. Class analysis emphasizes the political power of wealthy capitalists. It split into two parts: one is the power structure or instrumentalist approach, another is the structuralist approach. The power structure approach focuses on Who Rules?Â
</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The new artificial political sociology is a product of a planned education and media control of the public sphere without the knowledge of the people at large. The indoctrination into the Indian political system by some elite with the influence of foriegn ideas and intellectual class created this debate.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-10-2006
<b>Islamic Orthodoxy and Indian Democracy</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Islamic Orthodoxy and Indian Democracy
TAVLEEN SINGH | Friday, September 08, 2006 11:29:1 IST
<i>...despite the fact that we have had Islamist terrorism before 9/11,
we have responded mostly by defending the Muslim community against any
kind of targeting. All we have achieved is more radicalisation and a
heightened sense of grievance</i>
The Chief Justice of India made an important comment last week that
went unnoticed except by the Indian Express. While announcing his
decision to move the Srinagar sex scandal case to Chandigarh because
no lawyer in the state of Jammu & Kashmir was prepared to defend the
suspects, Justice Y.K. Sabharwal reprimanded the J & K Bar Association
for its decision to deny legal aid to the defendants and for saying
that the sex scandal showed the `entire world the real face of India
in Kashmir.' Justice Sabharwal said, <b>`It is only in India that despite
these comments you are being heard. In no other democracy will it be
heard'.</b>
<b>Taking advantage?</b>
With this comment the Chief Justice becomes the first high official in
India to acknowledge that our home-grown Islamists are <b>taking
advantage of Indian democracy to propagate unacceptably retrograde
views on a wide range of subjects. Views that maybe acceptable in
Saudi Arabia or in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan but should have no
place in a secular country like ours.</b>
Yet, we have Muslim priests routinely telling Muslims which songs they
can sing, what clothes they should wear and even whether a woman
should stay with her husband or not. The atmosphere of Islamist
orthodoxy thus created results in ordinary Indian Muslims identifying
with pan-Islamism to such an extent that thousands took to the streets
of Mumbai to protest against George Bush's visit to India but it was
hard to get even a hundred into the streets to condemn the bombings
that killed nearly 200 people on Mumbai's commuter trains in July.
Since 9/11 the pan-Islamic identity manifests itself mostly as a sense
of persecution and this is beginning to dangerously influence the way
Indian Muslims see themselves and most high officials in our `secular'
government in Delhi have responded by encouraging the sense of
grievance. <b>The Prime Minister did just this last week when he told
Chief Ministers that the terrorist threat was so serious that our
nuclear installations could be targeted but quickly added that Muslims
must not be targeted as a community.</b> Think of the message that goes to
the police? Does it not indicate that the Prime Minister wants them to
continue fighting only a defensive war? This is all they have done so
far and yet there is a deep sense of grievance in the community that
is being fed constantly by sympathy from high officials in Delhi. So
when twelve Muslim businessmen were detained recently by Dutch
authorities for dangerous behaviour on board a Northwest flight the
first reaction of our Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was to charge
the Dutch government with racial profiling. <b>It was only when it was
revealed that the twelve men were carrying sixty mobile phones </b>and using them to call each other in flight that the MEA exercised discretion.
Meanwhile, the <b>media portrayed the twelve businessmen as victims </b>and
interviewed family members who aggressively demanded that the Dutch
government apologise for detaining their relatives. They were only
doing some `masti' said family members on nationwide TV and they would
not have been detained if they were not Muslims. Anybody who has taken
a flight in recent times knows this to be complete nonsense. As a
frequent flier let me say that I have a fit every time a fellow
passenger tries using a mobile phone after the doors are shut.
Coming up as we are to the fifth anniversary of 9/11 next week and in
view of the recently foiled plot to blow up transatlantic airliners
mid-flight, by using mobile phones to detonate liquid explosives, <b>what
basis do the twelve businessmen have for behaving like victims? </b>It is
because of Indian democracy that they have been able to project their
side of the story and it is because of the `secular, liberal' nature
of our media that not one TV reporter asked the detainees why they had
used mobile phones on a flight in defiance of orders from flight
attendants.
<b>Carrying things too far?</b>
We need to ask ourselves if we are not carrying things too far. We
know that the bombers on Mumbai's trains were all Muslim. We know that
they would have taken shelter in one of this city's Muslim areas,
possibly even in mosques, but when the Mumbai police started detaining
Muslims for questioning, we in the media spoke in one voice against
the `targeting of a particular community'. The cry was taken up by
Muslim MPs in Parliament and last week <b>Mumbai's Police Commissioner,
A.N. Roy, wrote a letter virtually apologising for his law enforcement
measures to such patently Islamist organisations as the Raza Academy
and the Dar ul Uloom Mohammadiya.</b> Even if bodies like this are not
directly involved in terrorist acts they are responsible for
propagating the religious orthodoxy that spawns them. Instead of
apologising for his actions the Police Commissioner would have done
better to stand up, as the Chief Justice did, for Indian democracy and
<b>remind Muslims that the reason why they have more rights than they do
anywhere else in the world is because of Indian democracy.</b>
Indian Muslims need to recognise that the world faces a terrorist
problem that is at the moment entirely Islamic in nature. The `jehad'
is being fought against us infidels in the name of Allah, it is funded
by Islamist countries like Iran and Syria, and the soldiers and
suicide bombers of this supposedly `holy war' are all Muslims who
believe they are doing God's work.
This is the reason why it is becoming increasingly hard to travel in
Western countries if you have a Muslim name <b>but in India, despite the
fact that we have had Islamist terrorism before 9/11, we have
responded mostly by defending the Muslim community against any kind of
targeting. All we have achieved is more radicalisation and a
heightened sense of grievance. This is why this column salutes the
Chief Justice for speaking out.</b>
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-12-2006
Indian Christian Priest: RSS neither Nationalist nor Fascist
Surojit Chatterjee
Dec. 19 2003
The Christian Post
The name of the research institution is Sorbonne University, Paris, France. The researcher is Dr. (Father) Vincent Kundukulam of St Joseph Pontifical Seminary, Aluva, Kerala. The thesis for the doctoral research is: Le RSS Et L\'Eglise En Inde (RSS and Church in India).
To Fr. Kundukulam goes the credit for being the first Christian priest to do a doctoral thesis on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, that too in a foreign university. He is also the first clergyman to author a book on the RSS titled RSS: Enthu? Engott? (What is RSS and Where is it headed for).
In fact, a former clergyman, Anthony Elenjimittam, had published a book titled RSS: Bharathiya Samskruthiyude Kavalsena (RSS: Watchdog of Indian Culture) way back in 1951, but he had ceased to be a priest and had taken to social service when the book was published.
What motivated Fr. Kundukulam to conduct a research on the RSS was his conviction that the Catholic church should closely study the philosophy, organisational structure and working of all the socio-politico-cultural movements in the society in which it operates, imbibe the best in them, and invite a dialogue on their negative aspects.
The phenomenal growth of the RSS in post-Independent India, with its tentacles firmly rooted in all walks of life, all nooks and corners of the country, kindled his curiosity. In Madhya Pradesh, he came across a European who had been doing a doctoral thesis on \'Hindu nationalism\' in the Sorbonne University.
\"When I broached the idea of writing a book on my research findings on the RSS, some of my co-religionists cautioned me that the RSS men would beat me up if I wrote something against them. I have in my assessment of the RSS tried to be as objective as possible. It is of immense satisfaction to me that my book is well-received in the church and RSS circles,\" said Fr. Kundukulam in an interview at the Pontifical Seminary.
The conclusion drawn by Fr. Kundukulam is that RSS cannot be considered as a nationalist organisation in the sense in which the term \'nationalism\' is generally interpreted in India. Nationalism represents the collective consciousness of the people transcending all barriers of caste, religion, etc. A nationalist is one who is primarily indebted to the nation. Religion has no place in nationalism. In this sense, Fr. Kundukulam argues, RSS, whose primary loyalty is to the Hindus, can hardly be called a nationalist organisation. In his view, RSS is a multi-faceted organisation which is political, cultural, religious and voluntary in nature and approach.
Different facets gain upperhand at different times depending on social and political exigencies.
At the same time, Fr. Kundukulam argues against branding the RSS ideology as fascism, Nazism, fundamentalism and communalism. He said the terms fascism, Nazism, and fundamentalism are much abused terms in India. They have a distinct connotation in the European context that can hardly apply to the Indian milieu.
The term fundamentalism was first coined inthe context of the emergence of the Protestant movement in the Christian church in America in the twenties.
The ideology of the RSS and the way in which it is interpreted by the Sangh leaders borrowing modern terminology have no camparison to the sense in which the term fundamentalism was used in America. So also, fascism and Nazism do have distinct meanings in the socio-political contexts that prevailed in Italy and Germany which have no bearing in the Indian context.
Fr. Kundukulam felt that communalism is not at all a part of religion. Communalism is nothing but mobilisation of people on communal lines to serve a specific cause. RSS can, therefore, be said to be communal only in a limited sense. BJP, the political arm of the RSS, during its rule at the Centre has not committed any acts that could truly be described as fundamentalist, fascist, or communal. \"In fact, one of the first acts of A B Vajpayee after taking over as Prime Minister last time was to call on Mother Teresa and Delhi Archbishop,\" he said.
Fr. Kundukulam felt that the socio-political milieu of India offers a fertile ground for the RSS to grow.
One admirable aspect of the RSS, Fr Kundukulam says, is its flexibility to move with the times and to adopt the best from other socio-cultural-religious movements. It learnt the rudiments of social work from the missionary organisations of the church and mass mobilisation techniques from the communists.
He admires the RSS for the dedication and discipline of its cadres, the simple life style of its pracharaks, the moral teaching it imparts to the younger generation in its daily sakhas, and the voluntary labour put in by its cadres at critical times such as natural calamities.
Indian society, Fr Kundukulam feels, is in a \"vicious circle\" with the majority Hindu community suffering from a \"psychological inferiority complex\" on account of its failure to have a proportionate say in the governance of the country in spite of its numerical superiority and the minorities always suspicious of the majority community. The growth of minority fundamentalism would only strengthen the RSS.
\"India can prosper only by strengthening the forces of democracy and secularism and ensuring economic justice to the people,\" concludes Fr. Kundukulam who is now busy working on the second edition of his book.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-14-2006
<!--emo&:cool--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' /><!--endemo--> Anti-conversion law Modi-fied
[ 14 Sep, 2006 0105hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
GANDHINAGAR: Shackled for nearly three years on a subject close to the heart of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the state government on Wednesday moved a step ahead in its quest to check religious conversions by attempting to clear some of the legal hurdles coming in the way of the controversial law.
The Cabinet on Wednesday cleared the proposal for an amendment to the Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, which made forced conversion from one religion to another illegal.
The amendment Bill will be placed in the two-day Assembly session, to take place on September 18 and 19. Under fire from human rights groups ever since the Act was passed in the Assembly in March 2003, the government failed to implement the law because of objections raised by the legal department.
Talking to TOI, minister of state for home Amit Shah said, "We now have clarity on what forced conversion means and to whom should it apply."
Under the new provisions, a person need not seek permission to convert in case of conversion from one sect to another of the same religion.
For example, there would be no government intervention in case of conversion from Shia to Sunni or Protestant to Catholic.
More significantly, the same yardstick would apply to conversions between the faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.
"We consider these religions as one whole,"Shah said. Well-placed Sachivalaya sources added that other amendments include defining certain vague terms like allurement. One of the main planks in the original Act, allurement was found to be untenable by the legal department.
"The amendment Bill tries to redefine the term in order to make it legally sound and enforceable, so that it cannot be challenged in higher courts,"informed an official.
Said a senior bureaucrat, "We have also decided to fix the date from which forced conversions will become illegal in Gujarat."
Though passed in 2003, the government could not frame rules required for its implementation. The rules should have been published in the official gazette.
However, this never happened because the state government was unsure of whether or not the Act would withstand legal scrutiny.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-15-2006
Facts & Figures- Exposing the Myth of Islamic Poverty in India
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Excerpts from the memorandum submitted to Justice Sachar Committee on behalf of "Patriots' Forumâ. The facts-and-data packed representation to Justice Sachar rips off the sham-secular and leftist mask / propaganda that Muslims are backward. <b>The truth is that in terms of 3 major human development indices, e.g., infant and child mortality, degree of urbanization and life expectancy at birth Muslims are way ahead of Hindus</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Bharatvarsh - 09-20-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Demolish mosques on Govt land: VHP
IANS
Posted Tuesday , September 19, 2006 at 18:53
Bhopal: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has given an ultimatum till Wednesday evening to the Bhopal district administration to demolish all mosques constructed on government land.
In a memorandum submitted to Bhopal Collector, S K Mishra on Monday, VHP threatened that encroachments on government land in the name of constructing or renovating mosques would not be tolerated any more.
"Several temples have been removed under the present Bharatiya Janata Party rule in the state on the pretext that they were constructed on encroached government land. At the same time, no action is being taken against the mosques built on government land," said VHP secretary A P Singh.
"We will launch an agitation against this partiality of the government borne out of its desire to pose itself `secular'. After the ultimatum ends, the government will be responsible for any action by us," Singh added.
A delegation of VHP activists, which met the collector, also handed over a list of mosques constructed on government land.
"Nearly 13 temples have been demolished in the state capital alone in the name of carrying out drive against illegal structures. But not a single illegal structure constructed by other religious communities were razed," said Vishal Purohit, VHP district convener.
Meanwhile, the collector directed the sub-divisional magistrate to probe into the matter and submit a report to him.
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/demolish-mosqu...hp/21953-3.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 09-25-2006
<b>Hindus Under Siege: The Way Out released</b>
The eternal values of Hinduism will withstand the challenges of today
ÂK.S. Sudarshan
By Pramod Kumar
Organiser
October 1, 2006
âMuslims want to convert the whole world into Islam and the Christians want to
see the whole world as the follower of Christ. Why do they not think that only
one God has made all of us? This is the reason the Hindu way of life says all
are ours and only one God exists among all.â
"An invisible and silent attack is being waged against Hindu society to weaken
it from inside just in the same way as termites make a tree shallow. We need to
identify those attacks and defeat them unitedly,â said RSS Sarsangha-chalak Shri
K.S. Sudarshan.
He was releasing a book Hindus Under Siege: The Way Out,
authored by former Union Minister and Janata Party President Dr Subramanian
Swamy at India International Centre Auditorium in New Delhi on September 18.
Kanchi Shankara-charya Swami Jayendra Saraswati was also present on the
occasion.
The book has been published by Har Ananad Publication. Former Union Minister Dr
Murli Manohar Joshi, Shri Arun Shourie, former Governor of Sikkim Shri
Kidarnath Sahani, Justice (retd.) Dr Rama Jois, Former Union Minister Smt
Maneka Gandhi and hundreds of other distinguished people were present on the
occasion.
Describing religious conversion as the real threat in India, Shri Sudarshan
appealed to the participants to raise their voice against it. He said since the
Mughal and British era the country has gone into a comma and it has lost its
objective and identity. âIt is the duty of every countrymen to recognise
himself and should know how glorious their past had been. We have a great
wealth of knowledge, which must be passed on to the new generation,â he added.
Talking about the concerns raised by Dr Swamy in his book the Sarsanghachalak
said, the Sangh work began in 1925 for this purpose only and today it has
become a big tree with work in almost every walk of life. Stressing the need to
intensify the work, he called upon the intellectual and distinguished people of
the society to extend a helping hand for this work. âWhatever atmosphere is
seen in the country is an indication of change. A big change is going to take
place by the year 2011 when Bharat will dominate the whole world. But the
anti-India forces have accelerated their attack. We also have to counter them,â
he said.
The caste system, he said, prevented the disintegration of the society during
the Mughal and British periods. He said under this system the profession and
role of everybody was safe and predetermined and nobody feared of insecurity.
He said despite repeated attacks on India by Muslims for 570 years and then
their rule for 500 years they could hardly convert 12 per cent Hindus into
Islam and most of those who were converted belong to upper castes. He said what
the Prophet had said in the 7th century cannot be implemented in toto now.
âTherefore, it is for the Muslims to decide what they should follow and what
they should leave out from those teachings,â he added.
Talking about diversity in the country, he said even after all types of
diversity, there is unity in our country. âMuslims want to convert the whole
world into Islam and the Christians want to see the whole world as the follower
of Christ. Why do they not think that only one God has made all of us? This is
the reason the Hindu way of life says all are ours and only one God exists
among all,â he added.
Speaking on the occasion, Kanchi Shankara-charya His Holiness Swami Jayendra
Saraswati said the political parties should adopt the agenda unveiled by Dr
Subramanain Swamy. He said the book illustrates the challenges posed to the
Hindu society. The best way out is Hindu consolidation and untied action in
defence of Hinduism. He praised the Sangh and its associated organisations for
the work they are doing for unity and consolidation of Hindus. He said the
Hindu culture is eternal and it would not be ruined just by conversion of
several people. He said though India is known for welcoming guests, it also
knows how to show the door to the guests who cross their limit. He called upon
the people not to just protect the dharma but also eliminate adharma. He said
if Hinduism remains protected the whole world would stay in peace.
Introducing the book, Dr Swamy said Hindus are under siege because they are
being targeted in four different waysÂclandestine defamation of Hindu icons and
symbols, demographic restructuring of Indian society, terrorist activities
directed against the Hindu community and systematic and continuing distortion
of Indiaâs history. He said if Hindus want to find a way out, <b>they must develop
a Hindu mindset. It is not enough to be individually good pious Hindu. He stated
that in addition to observing Hindu festivals, going to temples regularly or
doing pujas at home everyday, the Hindus need a collective mindset </b>and
corporate <b>identity</b>. This is what Acharya Chanakya had centuries ago termed as the concept of Chakravati.
<b>He prescribed five fundamentals for defining this
concept in the modern context. First, an Indianâs national identity is
Hindustani. Second, every Hindustani must commit either to learn or ensuring
the future generations compulsorily learn Sanskrit. Third, Hindustanâs
democracy should be secular but that which is enlightened. Fourth, all citizens
of the country must strive to make India a global economic power. And fifth,
Hindustan should integrate. </b>
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 10-08-2006
The Intellectual Scene in Post-Independence India
By Rajesh Kumar 19/06/2003 At 00:00
The Intellectual Scene in Post-Independence India A critical review of strengths and weaknesses --- Sri S.Gurumurthy (Text of an after-dinner talk delivered at IIT-Madras on )
The Intellectual Scene in Post-Independence India
A critical review of strengths and weaknesses
Sri S.Gurumurthy
(Text of an after-dinner talk delivered at IIT-Madras on )
â¦Defeat and anger go together. Abuse and defeat go together. So, it is in this norm and with this understanding of what an intellectual debate means, I would like to place before you some of my thoughts today. Some of may find it provocative. I am confident that the audience is competent enough to absorb this and think rather than get into the mood which all of us have got used to in the last 30-40 years  abuse.
Background: India before Independence
Let us see the pre-independence background, the intellectual content of India. See the kind of personalities who led the Indian mind  Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhiji, Tilak- giants in their own way. Most of them were involved in politics, active politics, day to day politics, handling men, walking on the road, addressing meetings, solving problems between their followers. And, meeting the challenges posed by the enemy, the conspiracies hatched against them. They were handling everything, yet, they were maintaining an intellectual supremacy, and a record and an originality which history has recorded.
Let us look at the academic side. Whether it is a P.C.Ray who wrote on Indian Chemistry in 1905 or Sir C.V.Raman who wrote about mridangam, tabala, and violin, and saw the Physics in it (this was in 1913); whether it was R.C.Majumdar or Radhakumud Mukherjee who saw greatness in the Indian Civilization; trying to bring up points, instances, historical evidence to mirror the greatness of India, to the defeated Indian race, they were all building the Indian mind brick by brick
Sri Aurobindo spoke of Sanatana Dharma as the Nationalism of India. He didnââ¬â¢t rank it as a philosophy. He brought it down to the level of emotional consciousness. Swami Vivekananda spoke of spiritual nationalism; it was the same Swami who spoke of Universal brotherhood. For them philosophy was not removed from the ground reality. The nation was at the core of their philosophy. Swami Vivekananda was called the ââ¬Ëpatriot monkââ¬â¢. Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Rama Rajya. Bankim Chandra wrote Bande Maataram. The
song, the slogans in it, the mantra in it made hundreds of people kiss the gallows smilingly and many others went to jail. It transformed the life of the people; this was the intellectual scene, this was the content. This is what powered the intellectual as well as the mass movement in India. This was the core of India, the soul of the Indian freedom movement.
The symptoms: India immediately after Independence
Imagine what happened in 1947 and after, India was able to intellectually lead not only Indians but also the whole world because of the
intellectual assertion that the freedom movement brought about. Let us look at post Independence India. The persons who led post-Independence India were also trained in the same freedom movement. They went to jail, but they were not rooted in the intellectual content of the Freedom movement!
The first Prime Minister of India, he was in jail for 7 years. He was a great intellectual himself, purely in the sense of his capacity to reason,
understand, read, and expound a thought. He told Galbrieth once, "I would be regarded as the last English Prime Minister of India. See the intellectual capability of the man, the enormously competent mind.
But intellectualism doesnââ¬â¢t exist in a vacuum. It has to be rooted in something concrete. Vivekanandaââ¬â¢s universal brotherhood was rooted in Indiaââ¬â¢s greatness as a civilization, which proclaimed it. The concept of â ËVasudaiva Kutumbakamâ ⢠cannot exist without a living form, a population which believes in it and believes in itself. You need to have a society, which believes in it.
That is why India could invite the Jews who were butchered, raped, all over the world. In 107 out of 108 countries, this race was butchered. At least they had the courtesy and the gratitude to publish a book, the Israeli govt. published a book that out of 108 countries that we sought refuge, the only civilization, the only country, the only people, the only ideology that gave us refuge was the Indian civilization. They published a book, which most Indians are unaware of.
And we invited the Muslims. The refugee Muslims first landed in Kutch. And they are called the Kutchy Memons even today but not the Memons who bomb Bombay. But the Memons who lived with us.
In the year 1917, many of you might be aware, a case went to the Preview Council, equivalent to the Supreme Court now. The Kutchy Memons went and told the Preview Council that we are Muslims in name, but we follow only the Hindu law. Please donââ¬â¢t impose the Shariyat on us. The Preview Council ruled that they are Muslims but the only sacred book they have is called ââ¬ËDasaavathaaraââ¬â¢,
it is not Koran. In fact they knew no language other than the Kutchy language.
And in the ââ¬ËDasaavathaaraââ¬â¢, nine were common between Hindus and Kutchy Memons. We call the tenth avathaara ââ¬ËKalkiââ¬â¢ and they call him ââ¬ËAliââ¬â¢. The Preview Council ruled that the Shariyat law is not applicable to them.
The All India Muslim League took up the case, went to the British and told them that this finding is dangerous to Islam and requested them
to pass a law which will overrule this judgement; the British Govt. passed the law in 1923, called the ââ¬ËThe Kutchy Memons Actââ¬â¢ which declared, " If a Kutchy Memon wants to follow the Shariyat, allow him to do so". Please understand. It doesnââ¬â¢t mean a Muslim must follow the Shariyat. Between 1923-1937, before the All India Shariyat(AIS) Act was passed, not a single Kutchy Memon filed an affidavit with the plea that he wants to follow the Shariyat. That was the integration prevalent in India.
In 1937, when the AIS Act was passed, the preamble to the act mentioned that this was being passed by a demand made by the AIML leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Today, the Shariyat has become a part of Muslim consciousness.
The purpose behind making you aware of this background is that 99% of the people who speak about the constitutional rights of the minorities or the distinctiveness of Muslim life are unaware of the ground level facts. Till the year 1980, in Kuch Bihar district, the Shariyat law was not applicable. In 32 instances between 1923 and 1947 by legislation, the Shariyat law was not applicable to the Muslims. This is the extent of the intellectual gap in India.
Secularism: A Reversal and perversion of the Indian mind
And now, coming to what the position is today. Everything that drove the freedom movement- everything that constituted the soul of the
Freedom movement, whether it is the Raamaraajya of Gandhiji or Sanaatana Dharma as Nationalism of Sri Aurobindo or the spiritual patriotism of Vivekananda or the soul stirring Vande Maataram song, came to be regarded not only as unsecular but as sectarian, communal and even as something harmful to the country.
Thus, there was a reversal, a perversion of the Indian mind. How did it occur? Today, the intellectualism of India means to denigrate
India. There are mobile citizens and there are non-citizens deriding India, go to the Indian Airlines counter, you will find people deriding
India. Go to the post office, they will deride India. Go to the railway station, they will deride India. It is the English educated Indiansââ¬â¢
privilege to deride India.
When I was talking to an audience of Postal employees in Madras, in the GPO (a majority of them who heard me were women). I told them the basic facts about the Post Office. I said it is one of the most efficient postal systems in the world, one of the cheapest in the world, one of the most delivery perfect postal systems in the world. For one rupee, you are able to transport information from one end of the country to the other.
And you have a postman, no where in the world this happens  the postman goes to the illiterate mother and reads out the letter, he is asked to sit there and shares a cup of coffee and comes away. M.O.s are delivered to the last paisa. It is an amazing system, one of the largest postal systems linking one of the most populous nations, one of the most complicated nations with so many languages.
Somebody writes the address in Tamil and it gets delivered in Patna! It gets delivered to the Jawaan at warfront! When I completed my speech many of the women were wiping their tears. I asked why are you crying, I have only praised you. They said, "Sir, this is the first time weââ¬â¢ve been praised, otherwise weââ¬â¢ve only been abused!"
You know how many people the Railway transports in India? A million people which is equivalent to the population of Australia! And we have only abuses for them!
Have we any ideas of what this country is? The best in India have compared our country with Singapore, HongKong, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. You can walk across many of these countries in one night (laughs)! The best politicians, intellectuals, sociologists in India have
compared us with them, because, we have never understood what we are and unless you do that, you can never relate us with others.
Demonising India: Projecting a negative image
This enormous intellectual failure, to the extent of being intellectually bankrupt, did not occur over night, it was no accident. There is a
history behind this enormous erosion. And I told you about these mobile citizens, what they have done to us. Every country has problems. There is no country without any problem. Are you aware of what is one of the most pressing problems in America today? It is incurable according to the American sociologists; even American economists have begun to agree with them. American politicians are shaken, one third of the pregnant women are school going children. And mothers mix the anti-pregnancy pill in the food without her knowledge everyday.
But this is not the image of America. The image of America is a technologically advanced country etc. etc. Ours is the only country where the mobile citizens of India have transformed the problems of India into the image of India-its identity.
Go to any country and the same negative stereotype is echoed that India is suffering from poverty and malnutrition. India has no drinking
water. Indian women are all burnt. If they are married, they are burnt, if they are widows, they are burnt. See the image that has been built
about this country. Who did this? The English educated Indian.
And one Kaluraam Meena (have you ever heard of him? Asks the audience to raise their hands if they have), only a small fraction of this large audience has heard of him. When Clinton came to India, he went to a village called Nayla where the villagers interacted with him. And one of the Panchayat board members asked him, "Sir, I am told that in the West, all of you believe that this country is a rotten country, a backward country, a poor, hungry country. Do you also think like that?"
Clinton was shaken, because he might have thought that this person might be approaching him for some favour. This is the image of India. I will relate my experience when I went to the Carter Centre in 1993. They were talking about dispute resolution and all that. I went there to meet somebody, if not Carter, somebody else at least. His Deputy, a lady, was very hesitant to receive me. "Mr.Gurumurthy", she said, "Mr. Carter is not around, anyway, I can spare seven-eight minutes for you." I said three or four minutes of your time would do. Even before I could start, she said, "Mr.Gurumurthy, we donââ¬â¢t have funds, we will not be able to help" (laughter from the audience). I replied, "Let us assume you have a hundred billion dollars, how much will you give me? One billion? One million?" She kept quiet, "I
donââ¬â¢t need your money. I came here to discuss whether community living is an answer to disputes. I have come to discuss this because you have suggested electoral means to resolve problems in communities which have no damn idea of what an election is; whether community living is an answer because you donââ¬â¢t what that means. She sat and discussed this with me for two hours. This is the image we have projected that anybody, who comes from India, comes to beg. Ordinary Indians did not create this impression; educated
Indians created it. This is the work of civil servants, NGOs. Christian missionaries during the freedom movement created this. Indians are
filthy, rotten, dirty and unhealthy, advertising abroad these are the people who need to be saved. We have to Christianise them, enlighten them, and give us money. I can understand that because it is their business. But what did we do after 1947?
We repeated the same mistakes. We projected India as a country of unending problems. As I said, every country has problems. Only in India, problems become identities. How many dowry deaths take place in India in a year? Yet, India is projected as a country burning its own daughter-in-laws. And we also talk about it. Every damn newspaper will be writing about it. We believe in self-deprecation. And this goes on in the guise of intellectualism in India. And one woman, she attempted to take a film of the widows. I wrote an article, asking her to go to Lijjat Paapad. A widow brought me up. Millions of widows have worked to bring up their children. It is a nation, which believes in Tapasya. You may not believe in it but you are an exception. Compare Deepa Mehtaââ¬â¢s attitude with Sarada Maaââ¬â¢s who was the wife, who became a widow after Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsaââ¬â¢s passing away. She went to the very same place where Deepa Mehta went and saw the widows She said, "These widows are so pure, they are an illustration and an example to me." Deepa Mehta saw them as prostitutes. The widows have already been hurt once. Why are you sprinkling salt on their wounds?
I am very sorry to speak about this, but I have to, this audience is enlightened enough to understand me. Indian women are sexually
unsatisfied and so they are becoming lesbians? This is one bloody story against us, about us. This is the image of Indian men and women, and this film is in English. Catherine Mayo wrote a book and Mahatma Gandhi said about it, " I have no time to read this filth. But I am under a compulsion, under pressure because this has been published abroad. The image of India has been rubbished and I have to counter it. With this introduction, he wrote about the book and said that this woman is a gutter inspector (laughs). The intellectualism in India is gutter inspection- people are of this kind etc. Understand the level of erosion.
Indian Politics: Weaknesses and Pitfalls
Let us look at the post independence scenario from the macro level. We installed a system of governance and it postulated all the important goals for the Indian society and polity, which was gulped by the Indian academia, by the Indian intellectuals. We will have a classless society through socialism. We will have a casteless society through equality. We will have a faithless society through secularism. We will have a modern society devoid of tradition.
Instead of politics restructuring caste, caste has restructured politics today. Political parties are talking only in terms of castes. Has
any Indian intellectual come to terms with caste? You must understand caste if you want to handle the Indian society.
You cannot say that I want to have a very different kind of society. You have to handle the Indian sentiment, the Indian tradition, Indian
beliefs. You canââ¬â¢t clone a society of your choice in India. Social engineering has failed everywhere; the masters of social engineering
have given up  the communists- whether it is sociologists or economists you have to accept a society as it is. You can only increase the
momentum of evolution in the society; you canââ¬â¢t forcibly bring about a revolution today. But, Indian leaders and intellectuals, till today,
keep abusing caste. They donââ¬â¢t know how to handle caste. Let me narrate to you how a community in Karaikudi handled this issue. The Chettiyar community assembled Âtop businessmen, professionals from all over the world  for 3 days to discuss their culinary act, how to construct houses, what languages they use, what old adages and stories their grand parents used to tell, what clothes they used to wear; not one word of politics, mind you. This was not even published in the newspapers. Intellectuals were not even aware of it. So, caste is a very important instrument in India, you may not like it. Unfortunately, every intellectual leads a caste life inside, but outside he is casteless!
He is cloning an approach outside. There is no intellectual honesty at all.
And what happened in the case of secularism? In India, any one who is not a Hindu is per se secular. In the year 1957, just 10 years had
passed after the Muslim League demanded and got the country partitioned, the leader who voted for the resolution for the partition of India was Quazi Millath Ismail, (who was leading the same Muslim League on the Indian side), the Congress certified that the Muslim League in Kerala is secular and hence it can associate with them. The Muslim League outside Kerala is communal with the
same President!
Three hundred and fifty crores are spent today for the Haj pilgrims out of the funds of secular India every year. No one can raise an objection. At least I can understand why politicians donââ¬â¢t want to do that because they want the Muslim votes. But, what about the intelligentsia. What about newspaper editors and journalists? And academicians? None of them speak out. The reason is that we have produced a state dependent intellectualism in India. We donââ¬â¢t produce Nakkeerans anymore, our intellectualism is a derivative of the State and the State is a derivative of the polity. And in turn the polity is a derivative of the mind of Macaulay and Marx.
The Indian education system: A Legacy of Macaulay
This Macaulayian system of education is a poison injected into our system. At least I had the opportunity of schooling in Tamil and hence could withstand the corruption that this English education brings with it. This corruption begins the moment the child steps out of the house. He is told to converse in English at home. This did not happen even in pre-Independence India, even when Macaulay wrote that notorious note sitting in Ooty. How many of you know Macaulayââ¬â¢s formulation? Just those two or three sentences at least which form the crux  " We require an education system in India which will produce a class of interpreters, who will be Indian in colour and Englishmen in taste, opinions and morals."
This is the education system, which we have been continuing with, which was earlier conceived to produce clerks for the British empire. If you have to differ from an English educated person you have to differ only through the English language. If you have to abuse somebody, even that has to be done in English! If you abuse the Anglicised Indian, he will not find fault with the blame but with the grammar in your language! This is the extent to which a foreign language has possessed us. But, we must master English, that is needed, but why do we have to become slaves of the English language? We must use that language as a tool, but why do we consider it as a status symbol? This is the influence of Macaulay. If you want to understand the Macaulay/Marxist mix in India, you have to go a little back to see how Marxism grew out of the Christian civilisation. I recommend that you read the Nov 27, 1999 edition of the Newsweek, which describes how the Christian idea of the end of time called the ââ¬Ëapocalypseââ¬â¢, influenced the entire history, art, music, prognosis, sociology, economics, and the entire attitude of the Christian civilisation towards the non-Christian civilisations. A Christian scholar who describes how Communism grew out of Christianity has written it. In 1624, Anna Baptists, a group of Christians who believed in the basic tenets of
Christianity seized power in a particular place, banned private property and use of any book other than the Bible. When Marxism came up later through the exposition of Das Capital, the Marxists began expounding their doctrine as an extension of Christianity. The thesis, antithesis and synthesis of making Christianity acceptable to the age of enlightenment was the Hegelian way demanded rationalisation of Christianity in the days of the Protestant movement. Hegel began with a disagreement, then started interacting with Christianity and ultimately ended up accepting Christianity. You can see the same phenomenon with Marxist postulates- ââ¬Ëcapitalism is my enemy,
we have to deal with capitalismââ¬â¢ and finally we have to find a synthesis with capitalismââ¬â¢.
Marx on India
In fact in the year 1857, Marx wrote about India, " India was a prosperous civilisation. It had a very high standard of living. Their productivity was higher. India was an economic giant." It was so. If you look at the statistics in 1820, Indiaââ¬â¢s share of world production was 19%, and Englandââ¬â¢s share was 9%, please note that Britain was deep into the industrial revolution at that time. 18% of the world trade was in Indian hands at that time whereas 8% was the figure for Britain and 1% for US. When 80% of the American
population was engaged in agriculture, India had 60% of the population engaged in non-agricultural occupations. This is supposed to be an index of development. All these statistics can be found in Paul S. Kennedyââ¬â¢s ââ¬ËRise and fall of great powers".
So, Marx says, "This was a great civilisation which had produced prosperous communities." A prosperity which went deep into the villages. In the early stages, when the East India Company came and went to Murshidabad, an unknown name today in Bengal, a district level town, the Britishers were awe struck with its prosperity and wrote that it was more prosperous than London. This is no more disputed anyway, even by Indian intellectuals. Marx acknowledges the fact that this was a prosperous country and also had equality but unfortunately, he says for 2000 years the society did not change nor did it allow any revolutionary forces to enter! In his worldview human beings cannot progress without a revolution!
In the two articles on British rule in India and the East India Company- history and results written by Marx, quoted in the New York daily,
Karl Marx does grant though somewhat in a grudging manner that ââ¬Ëmaterially, India was fairly industrious and prosperous even before the onset of the British rule. He said that India was an exporting country till 1830.and started importing because it had opened its trade to the British. Many of you may not be aware that the kings in India had no right to over the lands, which came under the jurisdiction of any
panchayat. Whether it was Emperor Ashoka or Bhagavan Sri Ramachandra, the rule was the same. It was changed only during the British rule under the Ryotwari system, even the Mughals could not change it.
It was also found that family communities were based on domestic industry, with the peculiar combination of hand-spinning, hand-weaving, agriculture etc. which gave them a supporting power. The misery inflicted by the British on Hindusthan is of an entirely different kind and infinitely more intense than what it had to suffer before  civil wars, invasions, revolutions, conquests, famines  all these did not go deeper than the surface. But, England broke the entire framework of Hindusthan, the symptoms of reconstitution are yet to emerge clearly. This loss of the Old World without the emergence of a new order imparts a particular melancholy to the present misery of Hindus and Hindusthan. Marx goes on to say that the British interference destroyed the union between agriculture and the manufacturing industry. Suddenly he remarks that the English interference dissolved this semi barbarian, semi-civilised community.
He concedes that they were prosperous, that they organised their affairs well, they have a measure of independence, they have a democracy at the lowest level, all this has been conceded. Then, how does he classify us as ââ¬Ësemi-barbarian and semi-civilised communitiesââ¬â¢? He notes that Indiaââ¬â¢s social condition remained unaltered since remote antiquity. This is important, for him revolution is the core, the soul and centre of the society. This society never had a revolution; hence it cannot be modern! There is an underlying assumption, which considers revolution as a pre-requisite for being modern.
Hence, he feels that the destruction wrought by the British is the inevitable revolution needed for the development of the Indian society.
England had vested interests, violent interests in bringing about this ââ¬Ërevolutionââ¬â¢. But, the question in focus is whether mankind can fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state? Whatever might have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about a revolution, "whatever bitterness the spectacle of crumbling of an ancient world may evoke, from the point of history, we have to exclaim, "should this torture torment us? Since it brings us great pleasure, were not the rule of Taimur, souls delivered without measure?" It is a creative destruction in the cause of revolution according to him. If you see Indian communism which was expounded by a man called Rajane Palme Dutt. Has anyone heard of his name? (two persons from the audience raised their
hands). Two. He was born of a white woman and an Indian father in England. He was in charge of Indian communism for 25 years. He never came to India though. In his book, "India Today", he laid down the framework, the policy for Indian communists, what must be done, what is the kind of revolution needed in India, the development model etc. In those days, even good photographs of India were not available, yet this man spoke about India sitting in London. He came to India for the first time in 1946, ten years after he wrote this book and realised that he had to revise it. He stayed for 30 days! A visitor to India was the father of Indian Communism! And from that day till date, the Indian Communist has never been with India. Not only that, they took over the Indian mind in the post-independence
period. It is these Marxist/Macaulayist intellectuals who will certify whether somebody is modern or traditional, backward or secular or
communal, progressive or regressive. They were running an Open Air University issuing certificates every day through the press. They
have branded me as a communal man.
Labels: Tools for stultifying important debates
Labels substituted debate in India. Simply a label- communal, that is enough. Four or five editorials will appear preaching that Gurumurthy
is communal and the matter must end there. No one would even discuss what communalism is! Religious fundamentalism, RSS/Bajrang Dal fundamentalism! Anyone, who exposes the Hindu cause I India is a fundamentalist! We have seen this term being used so casually and superfluously and incessantly by politicians and newspapers. Has anyone bothered to understand the meaning of religious fundamentalism going beyond these slogans?
Secularism is an intra-Christian phenomenon. It has no application outside Christianity at all. Secularism resolved the fight between two
powerful persons, the King and the Archbishop who were loyal to the same faith, to the same prophet, to the same book and to the same Church. It is not a multireligious virtue.
A multireligious idea, a multireligious living, a multireligious culture, a multireligious fabric or a multi religious structure was unknown
outside India. There was usually only one faith and no place for any other, not even for a variation of the same faith.
Fifty six thousand Bahais were butchered in one hour in Tehran! They believed in the same Koran, in the same Muhammad, the only difference was that they said that Muhammad might come in another form again. That was their only fault and they were all butchered.
But we have no such problem. We can play with God, we can abuse God, and we can beat God! If I say that monotheistic religions have had a violent history, and the reply will be "you are communal." But this is exactly the same conclusion that a study in Chicago revealed,
probably, the only study on fundamentalism conducted by anybody so far. This fundamentalism project brought out five volumes each volume about eight hundred to nine hundred pages. The conclusion they have reached is that, "Fundamentalism is a virtue of Abrahamic
religions. It is not applicable to eastern faiths at all.
What about the Indian intellectuals? Day in and day out, they keep abusing us as fundamentalists, communalists, that we are anti-secular and it is being gulped down by everyone including those from the IITs and IIMs, lawyers and police officials, journalists and politicians. Look at this intellectual bankruptcy.
An inner revolution: The much needed change
We need a mental revolution, an inner revolution; we need to get rooted in our own soul. There is a missing element in India today and it is this. That element has to be restored otherwise Indian intellectualism will only be a carbon copy of Western intellectualism. We are borrowing not only their language and idiom but we trying to copy the very soul of the West.
So, all that we need to do is (it is impossible to share the entire depth of the subject in one eveningââ¬â¢s lecture programme. I have only tried out point out in an incoherent way, how a completely fresh mindset has to be evolved. And unless it evolves, the Indian mind, which leads India, will be in a perpetual state of confusion, ordinary people are perfectly all right.
Consider for example how thirty years before there was a question whether Tamil Nadu will be a part of India or not. The Dravidian parties have taken over the mind of Tamil Nadu. It had virtually ceased to be a part of India. And their attack was aimed at Hinduism, the moment you attack Hinduism you attack India. This is a fact. Neither politicians nor intellectuals nor academicians realised this. But, the ordinary people did. Just three religious movements- the Ayyappa movement, the Kavadi movement and the Melmaruvatthur Adi Para Sakti movement- have finsihed the Dravidian ideology to a very great extent. It is only the outer shell of Dravidianism that remains today. Tamil Nadu has been brought back successfully by Ayyappa, Muruga and Para Sakti, not by the Congress or the BJP or any other political party.
How many people have intellectually assessed the depth and the reach, the deep influence of religion over the people? A paradigm shift in a
study of India would be an intellectual approach to this subject. Or consider for example its influence on economics. Many of you by now would have studied economics in some detail. Take a look at the society in India and compare the figures for public expenditure for private purposes, which is called the social security system in the West. 30% of the GDP in America is spent for social security, 48% in England, 49% in France, 56% in Germany and 67% in Sweden. This private expenditure is nothing but what you and I do by taking care of parents, our wives and children, brothers and sisters and grandparents, widowed sisters and distant relatives. This expenditure is met by the society in India.
And there is no law in India that people should do this. We consider it as our dharma. A person went to a court and demanded a divorce from his father and mother. The American court granted it saying that the only relationship that exists between two persons of America is their citizenship. The law in America recognises no other relationshipâ¦In the year 1978, an interesting incident occurred in Manhattan. There was a power failure for six hours. Manhattan is in the heart of New York where you find the UN building, the World Trade Centre and the head quarters of many multi-national companies. One third of the worldââ¬â¢s health is concentrated in Manhattan. Within six hours, hundreds of people were killed, robbed and assaulted. We donââ¬â¢t need electricity to behave in a civilised manner. How
many intellectuals in India have ever articulated from such a sympathetic approach? We have only bastardised the image of this country. We must be ashamed of this.
Conclusion
I shall conclude my speech with this example. When Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry in search of a new light he used to get five rupees from a friend and four persons used to live on this. A cup of tea was one of the luxuries they used to have everyday in the morning, on the Pondicherry beach. Sri Aurobindo used to always look at a mystic called Kullachamy (Subramanya Bharati has written a poem about him). He used to behave like a madman, wandering here and there, throwing stonesâ¦One, day he came near Sri Aurobindo, lifted his cup of tea and emptied it in front of him. Then he showed the empty cup to him, placed it on the table and went away. Sri Aurobindoââ¬â¢s friends were angry and wanted to chase him, Sri Aurobindo stopped them and said, " This is the kind of instruction I had been expecting from him. He wants me to empty my mind and start thinking afresh."
That is my appeal to you.
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 10-08-2006
<b>Insight into Minoritism</b> - By Muzaffer Hussain
Book review by M. V. Kamath
In almost all countries in the world, a certain
segment -ethnic, religious linguistic or ideological
would be in the majority and some others would be in a
minority. That is inevitable. A multi-cultural
national like the United States has its majority and
minorities as well, but one seldom talks about them.
The biggest minority would be the Blacks, but whoever
would think of providing reservation for them in the
Senate or Congress or in government service?
Indeed in older textbooks on political science there
would hardly be any reference to majoritarianism and
minoritarianism. These are recently-coined words. <b>But
India is different. Here we constantly talk of
minorities as if they are a plague and we even have a
Minority Commission! It is a carry over from British
colonialism. </b>Nobody in India talked of a majority or a
minority in the days of Tipu Sultan or during hayed of
Mogul rule. Hindus were even then in a majority but
they were often treated as if they were non-existent.
Hindus were made aware of their majority status during
the time of the British, as were Muslims of their
minority place in society.
That may have been a display - and a distorted one at
that - of British sense of Justice, but the
consequences were severe, resulting, for one thing, in
partition of the country. Reference has been made to
this in Muzaffer Hussain's well-argued book Insight
into Minoritism, which goes into the subject in
different contexts and in some detail. Minorities have
been dealt with very poorly in Pakistan and
Bangladesh, India's immediate neighbours. Hussain
draws pointed attention to that.
Says Hussain: <b>"There is a sizeable population of
Hindus in the Gulf countries but those countries are
not ready to give any facility to them in the name of
minority or Human Rights. The Hindus are not allowed
there to cremate their kith and kin as per their
belief. They can't construct places for worship nor
can they celebrate their festivals at public places.</b>
During the Ramzan, non-Muslims can't eat anything at
daytime in public places. The Muslims expect to get
everything as minorities in the countries of Hindus,
Buddhists and Christians but in Islamic countries the
minorities don't have such privilege.."
We have to blame history for that. In India,
minorities like Jews, Parsis and Christians have full
freedom. No Christian missionary dare try in an
Islamic country, but in India every citizen,
especially if he is a tribal or one from the lower
caste, is fair game to Christian missionaries. In
India propagation of religion is not a crime. The
freedom given is often interpreted to mean that one
can resort to conversion, which is frequently resorted
to in tribal areas. It started under the British when
missionaries flooded the northeast and converted large
number of tribals to Christianity. Unconsciously this
has caused problems for free India.
Hussain damns minoritism as a "menace" which it has
indeed become. Hussain maintains that Christians and
Muslims in India can't be dubbed as minorities because
they are very much Indian. As he puts it: When all are
born and brought up in the Indian context, the
question of 'alien' and 'indigenous' people don't
arise". Hussain's argument is that all over the world,
a minority status is granted only to those classes,
which have migrated from abroad. So he says: "Hence it
is not proper to designate Muslims and Christians (of
India) as aliens since they, too are very much
Indian".
All are one in this country where there is one
citizenship for all and everyone is a part of this
nation. The word 'minority' Hussain asserts, weakens
the unity of the country and draws a dividing line
between individuals" . How right he is. Hussain is
critical of Muslims in India who, he says, haven't
accepted democracy. Inevitably the Islamic world has
been gripped by fanaticism and narrow thinking. The
point indeed was well made by Justice Chandrashekhar
Dharmadhikari in his preface. Writes Mr Dharmadhikari:
"India as a nation has suffered continuous tussles
between the religious and orthodox religious
fanaticism even after the creation of Pakistan. How
many Muslim mohallas or Madarassas hoist the national
flag and sing the national anthem collectively on the
occasion of Independence Day!"
How many indeed. The former Justice adds: "To accept
special rights for any community along with the
provisions of equal human rights are mutually
contradictory principles. This creates a controversy
and the majority class begins to feel unprotected and
adopts a defensive mechanism". Hussain in his treatise
goes into this subject in a special and separate
chapter entitled "How to tackle minoritism", He notes
that there are three distinct approaches in handling
minoritism". In the Arab world minorities like
Christians and Hindus have no political or religious
rights. The second category belongs to western
countries where religion is recognized but the country
comes first. Religion has no role in framing laws and
rule. National interest alone is taken into account.
In the US, 18 per cent of the people are blacks but
they are not given any minority status. Britain and
France solved the problem by enforcing a uniform civil
code. What should India do in the circumstances?
<b>Hussain has his answer ready. He says: A uniform civil
code is the only answer."</b> He points out that the
Fundamental Rights as enumerated in the Constitution
ensure religious freedom for all. As Hussain sees it,
minorities will continue to exist in one from or
another anywhere in the world. That is only but
natural. The term 'Minority' Hussain concedes, is not
in itself bad, but problems arise when it is used by
vested interests, As he sees it, minoritism is a
'deception' practiced on human civilization of which
one should be aware of. And majority communalism is a
myth.
In a democracy, Hussain insists, it is essential to
respect the opinion of the majority in day-today life.
There haven't been many treatises on this subject and
Muzaffer Hussain's attempt, almost the first of its
kind, is highly praiseworthy. He has no hesitation in
asking inconvenient questions. For example he asks:
"How can Muslims who form between 15 to 20 per cent of
India's population consider themselves a minority?"
Not many have dared to raise this question. Hussain
has. All praise to him. This is a book that our
policy-makers and politicians would do well to read.
It may not necessarily have all the right answers, but
it certainly raises all the right questions. And isn't
that what a good study should be all about?
<i>-- Book review by M. V. Kamath, Free Press Journal,155pp,
Delhi: India First Foundation, Price Rs.250 </i>
http://members. tripod.com/ indowave/ MINORITISM. html
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 10-08-2006
<!--emo&:devil--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/devilsmiley.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='devilsmiley.gif' /><!--endemo--> Crores in its coffer, RVP is a political party and a detective agency too
Santwana Bhattacharya Posted online: Sunday, October 08, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print Email597 registered parties havenât contested elections, EC suspects tax evasion, money-laundering racketNEW DELHI, OCTOBER 7:The search for the national headquarters of the Rashtriya Vikas Party will take you to the office of SPIS Limited, a detective agency in Faridabad, just outside Delhi.
Related Stories Harish Dogra back, given show-cause notice
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Voting Lines Now Open
The address isnât wrong. The RVP, one of the âpolitical partiesâ under EC scanner for suspicious money transfer, doubles up as a professional detective agency.
The Election Commission found âsuspiciousâ movement of funds into the account of the RVP and another Delhi-based outfit, Parmartha Party, and alerted the government. All donations to political parties are exempt from tax under the Income Tax and Representation of the People Act.
The RVP account shows a series of transfers â88 contributions of which 86 are from individuals varying from Rs 30,000 to Rs 10 lakh (in cash) and one company donation of Rs 40 lakh (in cash). The records became even more curious by 2005 â 270 contributions mostly from individuals amounting to lakhs of rupees and one private firm contributing Rs 2 crore in three installments.
M P Sharma, an ex-serviceman who runs the detective agency and the political party, insists that his is a genuine outfit with national ambitions. Sharma, who took early retirement from the Indian Air Force, says his party is the political arm of the Hindu Rashtriya Sangh.
He is not worried about the probe into the donations. He says: âWe need a minimum Rs 200 crore and weâll raise it and more. It is needed to remove the present political system.â
The other Delhi party that the EC found engaging in suspicious money transfers, Parmartha Party, has already moved out of its registered office, F-27, Kamala Nagar. Records of contributions received by the party showed that one private firm contributed Rs 90 lakh to it in 2003-04 and Rs 25 lakh in 2004-05. Inquiries reveal it shut shop one year and a half ago and thereâs no trace of its office-bearers. The RVP and Parmartha are just two of the 597 political outfits that got themselves registered with the Election Commission as âunrecognized political partiesââ but did not contest any elections.
Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami wrote on July 31 to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the suspicious âdonationsâ made to little-known unrecognized political parties and wanted them âexaminedâ by the Finance Ministry and CBDT. The Prime Minister has forwarded the letter to the finance ministry.
Earlier, the Election Commission on March 3 sent a detailed note on its finding to the Law Ministry suggesting amendment to the Representation of the People Act to plug the loophole in the law that allows tax exemption to any political outfit registered with the EC and the donor.
The EC has no provision with which it can either withdraw/ cancel registration of a political party even if it has become inactive or defunct or are found to be indulging in serious financial irregularities.
In the note to the ministry, the EC mentioned the RVP and Parmartha_ âthe cases mentioned above seem to indicate incidents of misuse of the provisions of law by way of Tax evasion.ââ
The Commission suggested that when âconcessions are provided to political parties under the law in terms of exemption from income tax, there should be sufficient safeguards to prevent misuse.â
The Law Ministry has not got back to the EC yet. Refusing to comment on the ECâs letter, Secretary, Legislative Department, K.N, Chaturvedi said more time was needed (to look into it).
editor@expressindia.com
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 10-09-2006
Hindutva-Media Dialogue Kicks off
9/28/2006 10:42:48 AM http://samvada.org/
Bangalore, 24-9-2006: The best of the brains from both the sides were indeed there at a dialogue organized by Vishwa Samvada Kendra to facilitate a smooth dialogue between Hindutva and Media.
While Hindutva ideologue S Gurumurthy explained that there was a communication gap that needed to bridged, Media baron Shantha Kumar claimed that the media was by and large neutral. However, he said that convergence was in the best interest of the society and humanity at large.
About the event: The Key note address was delivered by S Gurumurthy while S Shantha Kumar delivered the inaugural address. The next session saw Udaya TV anchor Deepak Thimmaiah and Prof. Varadesh Hirigange explaining the media version against Hindutva. The third session of the day had senior journalists A Suryaprakash and Tarun Vijay explaining the Hindutva version against the media. Chandan Mitra (Editor of the Pioneer and Rajyasabha Member) delivered the valedictory address summing up the Media-Hindutva dialogue.
What the Speakers said:
S Gurumurthy gave a strong case on why both media and Hindutva have to do a serious introspection for the disconnect that has set in. He criticized the media for the trivialization of serious issues. He also accused the Hindutva camp for not being strategic enough and focused in presenting their point of view. However, he went on to say that the mental disconnect was because of mental blocks on the part of both sides. The Media is still stuck in outdated ideas like Secularism and dialectic materialism. He said both the concepts are irrelevant from the Indian angle. He also accused the media of selective amnesia, in that certain genocides like the Bangla were ignored, while small cases of violences were magnified. He asked the Hindutva camp to emulate Kautilya and Bhishma. Be strategic and learn to control your emotions was his key words to the Hindutva camp.
Shantha Kumar â the proprietor/editor of Deccan Herald and Prajavani â said he was pleasantly surprised for being invited to a talk by the Hindutva camp. However, he maintained that the media was by and large neutral and there was very little truth in the charges that the media was unfair to hindutva forces. His contention was that media was critical of not just hindutva, but it was equally critical about corruption, Congress misrule and any other issues. However, he said that the power of the media has also increased multifold in the recent year and added that the dialogue was welcome if it was really intended to remove any cases of disconnect. He said that any attempts to resolve problems through dialogues was always welcome.
In the second session, Varadesh Hirigange and Deepak Thimmaiah gave out the media version of Hindutva, while Tarun Vijay and A Suryaprakash gave out the Hindutva version against the media.
Summing up the Hindutva Media dynamics
Shri Chandan Mitra summed up the Hindutva Media dynamics in his own inimitable style. He said that the left liberal journalists had created an atmosphere where nationalism and Hindutva were dirty words. He also said that all the journalists had the fear of being branded as pro-hindutva. The fear of losing jobs or being branded is at the center of this relationship. Mutual suspicion is the name of this relationship, he said. He hoped that further dialogues would bridge the disconnect between the powerful forces which cannot be ignored anymore.
There were question and answer sessions after each talk.
It is very good to see that such a seminar has happened. I hope this bridges the gap of media and Hindutva organizations. In my opinion, RSS has to be more professional in presenting themselves. For example, when Ujjain case happened, I searched for the actual facts, or at least press release from ABVP, in all pro-Hindu sites. ABVP, it self did not had the press release in its websites. BJP did not had. This being the case, how can one expect people to know the actual facts. Sangh parivar also has to respond to the news papers on the biased stories that they present. They should create more and more NGOs like communists have. More and more websites has to be there. Media friendliness should be there. I agree that there shakhas may not get any help out of it. But....if sangh gives corrects its image with active participation in media, definitely number of pro-sangh people will increase, which in turn helps in strengthening the sevice projects run by sangh and other things. Other wise, like today, Hindus themselves do not understand what RSS is doing and why they should support it. Good that RSS has realized the importance of media. Better late than never. More of these seminars should happen, so that media understands what is Hindutva and sangh parivar.
A great beginning to bridge gaps between hindutva and our media. I feel during six years rule of BJP-NDA, they failed miserably to work on this area. Result, most mainstream media work against Hindu interests, and promote openly christianism and Islam. When hindus get attacked, these medias try to white-wash the issue and fabricate stories to blame hindus. No other country in the world such situation where majority people treated with contempt. It is our fault. We buy and read the same newspaper, which hate us, bash us. Why not we be aggressive and boycott their papar. Its time for creating Hindu-oriented media and journalists. The Pioneer, under Shri Chandan Mitra is an example. Most educated youths now reads The Pionner. But its not enough. Regional level english papers are quite balanced like The Assam Tribune, The Sentinel, The Statesman, The Tribune, etc. Mainstream english media is rabid anti-hindu, and pro-christian, pro-muslim. But at the end, they sale their papers to hindus and earn money from them. It means we pay to these media to we hindus. We must work to change the attitude of mainstream media.
There are many reasons why Indian media, in general behave as anti-hindu or project hindu way of life and hindu customs in poor light.
Firstly, a wrong impression has been created, since 1947, by vested anti-hindu interests that it is retrograde or shameful to claim to be a hindu!
Further, Pandit Nehru who openly proclaimed that " I am a hindu by accident" sowed the seed of hindu-hatred and hindu bashing and he and his dynasty groomed a flock of pseudo-secular, anti-hindu intellectuals and academia and nutured them with all sorts of incentives and gifts!
This anti-hindu attitude was perpetrated in national text books since 1947 and thus propagated this anti-hindu feeling and shame in sucessive generations of youth and the public.
The media barons and their selected adminsitrators did evey thing possible to project hinduism in bad light whenever possible and minimised the large-scale gigantic onslaughts of other interantional religions and their agents on the all-bearing tolearnt and passive hindus.
Thus while Narendra Modi was protrayed as a hitler by main-stream indian media for past so many months, they have been silent on the genocide of thousands and thousands of hindus at the hands of jehadi terrorists and their masters, in Kashmir and Pakistan and the genocide of hindus that have gone almost unnoticed by the media at the hands of christian terrorists!
What Narendra Modi did was to save his state and majority hindus, from a macabre series of terror and deadly strikes by jehadi elements, both dometsic and imported variety!
It is a pity that indian media portrays hindu faith and way of life,proclaiming welfare for all irrespective of faith, as a fanatic faith while giving good certificate to tow major interantional semitic religions as islam and christianity which preach hatred and terror in the label of exclusivity of heaven and salvation for their own misguided souls and death and hell for the other infidels or kafirs!If hindus, who have a tradition of protecting all persecuted faiths or refugees for thousands of years, believe that they are up against very powerful national and international giants and that their very existence is at stake,they cannot be faulted at all!This is a period in history where if they stand united and fight against their powerful enemies inside their own majority hindustan, they may end up as dinosuars of history!
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 10-09-2006
October 15, 2006
Page: 13/34
Home > 2006 Issues > October 15, 2006
The Moving Finger Writes
Tipu Sultan: Coming to terms with the past
By M.V. Kamath
Our secularists must realise that when they try to defend the indefensible, they only raise the angst of long-suffering Hindu population with memories of a thousand years of harsh Muslim rule.
Tipu detested the Nairs of Kerala and especially their practice of polyandry. The Nairs refused to be brow beaten by Tipu whereupon he embarked on a jehad, and as, Fernades writes âseveral thousand of captured Nairs were circumcised and admitted to Islamâ. Admitted indeed!
Early in 1990, the BJP, it will be remembered, sought a court injunction to prevent the screening in India of a television serial entitled The Sword of Tipu Sultan based on a novel first published in the mid-seventies authored by Bhagwan S.Gidwani. A case was made out that Tipu was not secular as was generally believed and doesnât deserve to be an icon.
Once again Tipu is in the news with Karnatakaâs Minister of Higher Education, D.H.Shankaramurthy questioning Tipuâs Kannada credentials, considering that he used Persian, and not Kannada as the language of administration. Once again a fierce controversy has been raised. And liberal, secular Hindu intellectual has demanded the dismissal of Shankaramurthy, with the leader of the Janata Dal(Secular) H.D.Deva Gowda screaming that he will not allow the secularism of the JD(S) Karnataka government being polluted. One doesnât know whether to laugh or cry. The deep tragedy is not the secular standing of a Tipu Sultan, an Aurangzeb or Ghazni Mohammad but the refusal of both Hindus and Muslims to come to terms with Indiaâs past.
Let us face it: for almost a millennium, give or take a couple of hundred years India has been ruled in different parts of the country, but in one continuous stream, by Islamic conquerors and their successors, which has caused a deep psychological scab in the Hindu psyche that starts bleeding at the slightest provocation. Our liberal secularists have always failed to understand that. Primarily they refuse to face up to the past, which only worsens matters.
To seem to be secular, the Hindu liberal needs to stand by Muslim kings and nawabs like Romilla Thapar being apologetic about the destruction of Somnath Temple by Ghazni Mohammad. It is a mind-set that is hard to understand. In the North, especially, Rajput rulers would give their daughters in marriage to the Mughal rulers to buy security, which was clever, but demeaning as a tactic.
Indeed, in Tipuâs large zenana were, in addition to purchased slaves from such places as Istambul and Georgia, two sisters of the Raja of Coorg and a niece of none other than Purnaiya, who was Tipuâs Diwan. It is a little known fact. But par for the course. We are talking of feudal times. Like many rulers, Hindu or Muslim, Tipu had his faults which are invariably glossed over by our secularists. Tipu was enigmatic, to say the least. A Karnataka MLC, Prof. B.K.Chandrashekar is reported to have said that Shankaramurthy need to know history. Indeed everyone should, including Chandrashekar himself. One can recommend to him two excellent books, one written by Praxy Fernandes, a South Kanara Roman Catholic (and a former IAS officer, 1947 cadre) entitled The Tigers of Mysore and another written by an Australian scholar, Kate Brittlebank, entitled Tipu Sultanâs Search For Legitimacy, with the sub-title Islam and Kingship In A Hindu Domain. Both are brilliantly researched and are as objective as one can expect. Both give high marks to Tipu for his religious tolerance, for his respect for all religions, for his reverence to the head of the Shringeri Mutt, recounting how Tipu sent a silver palanquin and a pair of silver chauris to the Sarada Temple. This must be compared to reports in the Mysore Archaeological Survey quoted by Brittlebank that at least three Hindu temples within his realm had been destroyed by Tipu: The Harihareshwar Temple at Harihar which was âapparently plundered and part of it converted into a mosqueâ, the Varahswami Temple in Seringapatam and the Odakaraya Temple in Hospet âsaid to have been destroyedâ.
Does that mean that Tipu was a Muslim fanatic? Hardly. Praxy Fernandes mentions Christians who were close to Tipu, like Father Joachim Miranda, who was a personal friend of Hyder Ali. Father Francis Xavier, a parish priest, a mysterious Kanara Roman Catholic who apparently became the chief of Tipuâs royal household and a Salvador Pinto who was employed as Tipuâs personal munshi and who was reported to have wielded a great influence on the Sultan. But none of them could prevent Tipu from uprooting between 60,000 to 100,000 Catholics from Kanara for their alleged support to the British, and dragging them to Seringapatam, to be imprisoned in dungeons. Hundreds are reported to have died en route.
The trouble is that Tipu, like any coin, was two-faced. One face, defended strongly by the secularists, was that of a benevolent ruler who, in the language currently in use, was a model of sarva dharma samabhav. The other, uglier face, is that of a tyrant who could treat his enemies ruthlessly by âwhipping, the cutting off of limbs, ears and nose, as well as castration, forcible circumcision and hangingâ. That is feudal rule.
There was much that was detestable about Tipu. According to Brittlebank âin the Sultanâs own dominions, his confidential servant, Raja Khan, had free access into the private apartment of any of his subjects, and could carry away any of the women, without them daring to make any opposition.â Just as detestable was Tipuâs mode of giving gifts to his subordinates such as âwidows or cast-off wives and concubinesâ as if they were commodities and not human beings. Not a pleasant thought our liberals no doubt will say that Tipu was only helping helpless women. Tipu detested the Nairs of Kerala and especially their practice of polyandry. The Nairs refused to be brow beaten by Tipu whereupon he embarked on a jehad, and as, Fernades writes âseveral thousand of captured Nairs were circumcised and admitted to Islamâ. Admitted indeed!
Fernandes writes, tongue firmly in check that the âmartyrdom of Nairs was not intended to be a religious persecution but a political punishment and a drive towards social reform! Ha, ha! Social reform? A man who keeps a zenana? Who gave the right to Tipu to reform Nair ethos? Like the Nairs, the Coorgis were also punished, about 70,000 of them converted to Islam. One can only say anything about Tipu and still be correct.
The truth is that Tipu was a feudal figure whose word was law. And he had many faces, kind, tolerant, benign, patriotic, examples of which are abundantly described by Fernandes and Brittlebank but there was another Tipu who not only blatantly chose Persian as the state language, but chose to figure Caliphs, saints and Imams on his coinage, as did the British in a following era who enforced English.
One supposes that Tipu can be forgiven. Tipu was a parvenu ruler of a predominantly Hindu kingdom. He appointed Hindus to high positions just as the British did when they took over India, but for that reason, should we forget Jallianwala Bagh? His army was predominantly Muslim. Of course, he fought the British, but who wouldnât when oneâs rule is in danger? His only other option was to succumb to the British like so many princes did elsewhere in India to their shame. He declined to submit for which all credit to him. But criticising him is not being anti-Muslim as our secularists make out. He had his shortcomings, many of them too glaring to be ignored. The point is that both Hindus and Muslims have to come to terms with their past, seeing history in the context of time.
<span style='color:blue'>
And our secularists must realise that when they try to defend the indefensible, they only raise the angst of long-suffering Hindu population with memories of a thousand years of harsh Muslim rule.</span>
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 10-12-2006
Calling pinkos...... <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Bride Bazaar</b>
Hyderabad, Oct. 11:Â Police who raided the office of a qazi who married off Hyderabadi girls to foreign nationals were shocked to discover that the cityâs âbride bazaarâ had been catering to clients from across the world including the United States, Somalia and Ethiopia. This is in addition to grooms who constantly sneak in from Yemen, Oman, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Police raided the office of qazi Waheed Qureshi on Wednesday <b>after he reportedly married off two young women in the city to a pair of Omani twins, hiding the fact that they were epilepsy patients. </b>Qureshi was among three qazis and two brokers arrested on Tuesday night.
The two women, Sameena Begum, 23, and Nazia Begum, 20, are reportedly leading miserable lives at Alkhaboora of Sohar Town in Oman and have informed their parents that they were being physically tortured by their husbands. It was discovered that Qureshi himself had performed eight marriages in the past two years for grooms from a variety of the countries.â<b>Earlier they used to conduct these marriages over phone, said a police officer. âNow they are giving power of attorney through a representative and conducting the marriage in the presence of photographsâ Qureshi is now in the custody of Santoshnagar police. </b>
Police also discovered that Qureshiâs authority to continue as qazi was put on hold in August but many marriages were performed prior to that. Qureshi was an accused in a similar case in 2005 at Kalapattar police station where he authorised the marriage of an Oman national to two girls together. <b>The seized documents from his house revealed that grooms from Yemen, Sudan, United States, Ethiopia and Somalia had married several women from the city in the last two years. </b>
Police swung into action after the parents of Sameena and Nazia informed them that they got desperate calls from their daughters who are virtually imprisoned in their husbandsâ houses in Oman. The girls were married to the Omani twins on July 18 this year. The grooms claimed to be government officials but were epilepsy patients living on meagre social security.
Apart from Qureshi alias Sajid, 43, a qazi staying in Old Santoshnagar Colony, Syed Shanawaz, 50, a marriage broker of Riyasatnagar, his sister Mumtaz Begum, 40, Mohammed Zaheeruddin, 50, a chief qazi of Nacharam and M.A. Rasheed, 33, a nayab qazi of Nallagutta were arrested. Police also registered cases against the Omani grooms identified as Yousuf Bin Salim Thani Al Busadi who married Nazia and Mohammed Bin Salim Al Busadi who married Sameena. The marriage was performed in the absence of the grooms. Only their photographs were present.
Nazia left for Oman on September 27. âA day later she called up and said that her husband was a mad man,â said her mother. âHe is torturing my daughter.â Police said the Indian Embassy in Oman has been informed of the plight of the girls.
âOur priority is to bring them back to India,â said inspector Sai Krishna.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 10-18-2006
Lecture in NCAER's Golden Jubilee Seminar Series,
New Delhi, 24 April 1998.
CULTURE, DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT
by
Deepak Lal
James S.Coleman Professor of International Development Studies,
University of California at Los Angeles
and
Emeritus Professor of Political Economy,
University College, London
Address:
till Sept. 30th:
2 Erskine Hill,
London NW11 6HB, U.K.
Tel/Fax: 0181-458 3713
From 1 Oct.:
8369 Bunche Hall,
UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave.,
Los Angeles CA 90024.
Tel: 310-825-4521
Fax: 310-825-9528
email: dlal@ucla.edu
April 1998
CULTURE, DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT
by
Deepak Lal
INTRODUCTION
In this 50th year after Indian Independence, the arrival of a government led by the cultural nationalist's of the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), after another in a series of elections since the mid 1980's which have delivered hung parliaments, the issues encompassed by the three triads of my title have come to the fore in public debates. Is democracy capable of delivering development? Are the fears of the cultural nationalists that the modernization that the globalisation of the economy portends will also lead to Westernisation and the undermining of a cherished Hindu way of life, valid? These are the central questions I want to answer in this lecture. These were also the questions I dealt with in somewhat different contexts in my two most recent books , so that rather than dazzle you with lots of references I will leave those of a scholarly bent of mind to consult these books for the evidence for many of the assertions I will be making in this lecture.
1. THE HISTORIAN CONTEXT
But I want to begin by putting these debates in a historical context. Despite nationalist and Marxist hagiography, as I argued in an earlier book , modernity ,- by which I mean the promotion of modern intensive growth- began with the British Raj in the 19th century. Intensive growth which entails a sustained rise in per capita income is to be contrasted with extensive growth which has occurred worldwide for millennia with output growing sufficiently to keep pace with the rise in human population which has been a feature of human history since we came down from the trees. Intensive growth, moreover, is of two types. The first is Smithian growth, which occurs even in agrarian economies whose productivity is ultimately bounded by the fixed factor of production-land. In the past Smithian growth was largely due to the extension of the market often under the force of imperial arms, as under the Pax Mauryas and Pax Guptas in India, the Pax Graeco/Roman of the ancient Mediterranean world, the Pax Abbasid of the Arabs, the Pax Sung of the Chinese, the Pax Tokugawa in Japan and the Pax Britannica worldwide in the 19th century. By contrast the second type of intensive growth -Promethean- is a European miracle, and depends upon utilising the relatively unbounded energy provided by the natural capital represented by fossil fuels to convert land bound agrarian economies into mineral energy based 'industrial' economies. In an important sense the process of economic development consists essentially of this transformation, and this began with the growth of modern Indian industry -often based on Indian capital and imported know how- from the mid 19th century during the classical laissez faire and free trade era of the British Raj.
This nascent process of modernization was aided and abetted by two important institutional reforms which have cast a long shadow on independent India. The first was the introduction of a legal system based on the Common Law, as well as the gradual extension of representative institutions first at local and then at provincial levels. The second was the creation of a native class of English speaking 'creoles' through the implementation of Macaulay's famous Minute on Education. The future of both the nationalist struggle and post Independence India has largely been determined by the attitudes of and divisions amongst these Macaulay's children through their use or misuse of the legal and political institutions they inherited from the Raj to which they took like fish to water. As Anil Seal the Cambridge historian of the nationalist movement has put it as regards the representative institutions created by the British :" Associations, like cricket, were British innovations and, like cricket, became an Indian craze" Why India should have taken so easily to these foreign Western implants when they were rejected in so many other ex-British colonies, is a question I will come to eventually, but before that I need to outline the dilemma that the two wings of Macaulay's children faced from the outset and which continues to haunt them and India to this day. This is the question of reconciling tradition with modernity. To deal with this I need to provide an account of the role of culture in development.
2. CULTURE AND SOCIAL EQUILIBRIA
Culture remains a murky concept. I have found a definition adopted by ecologists particularly useful. They emphasize that, unlike other animals, the human one is unique because its intelligence gives it the ability to change its environment by learning. It does not have to mutate into a new species to adapt to the changed environment. It learns new ways of surviving in the new environment and then fixes them by social custom. These social customs form the culture of the relevant group, which are transmitted to new members of the group (mainly children) who do not then have to invent these 'new' ways de novo for themselves.
This definition of culture fits in well with the economists notion of equilibrium. Frank Hahn describes an equilibrium state as one where self-seeking agents learn nothing new so that their behavior is routinized. It represents an adaptation by agents to the economic environment in which the economy "generates messages which do not cause agents to change the theories which they hold or the policies which they pursue." This routinized behavior is clearly close to the ecologists notion of social custom which fixes a particular human niche. On this view, the equilibrium will be disturbed if the environ-ment changes, and so, in the subsequent process of adjustment, the human agents will have to abandon their past theories, which would now be systematically falsified. To survive, they must learn to adapt to their new environment through a process of trial and error. There will then be a new social equilibrium, which relates to a state of society and economy in which "agents have adapted themselves to their economic environment and where their expectations in the widest sense are in the proper meaning not falsified".
This equilibrium need not be unique nor optimal, given the environmental parameters. But once a particular socio-economic order is established, and proves to be an adequate adaptation to the new environment, it is likely to be stable, as there is no reason for the human agents to alter it in any fundamental manner, unless and until the environmental parameters are altered. Nor is this social order likely to be the result of a deliberate rationalist plan. We have known since Adam Smith that an unplanned but coherent and seemingly planned social system can emerge from the indep-end-ent actions of many individuals pursuing their different ends and in which the final outcomes can be very different from those intended.
It is useful to distinguish between two major sorts of beliefs relating to different aspects of the environment. These relate to what in my recent Ohlin lectures I labelled the material and cosmological beliefs of a particular culture. The former relate to ways of making a living and concerns beliefs about the material world, in particular about the economy. The latter are related to understanding the world around us and mankind's place in it which determine how people view their lives-its purpose, meaning and relationship to others. There is considerable cross-cultural evidence that material beliefs are more malleable than cosmological ones. Material beliefs can alter rapidly with changes in the material environment. There is greater hysterisis in cosmological beliefs, on how, in Plato's words, "one should live". Moreover the cross-cultural evidence shows that rather than the environment it is the language group which influences these world-views.
This distinction between material and cosmological beliefs is important for economic performance because it translates into two distinct types of "transactions costs" which are of importance in explaining not only 'market' but also 'government or bureaucratic failure'. Broadly speaking transactions costs can be distinguished usefully as those costs associated with the efficiency of exchange, and those which are associated with policing opportunistic behavior by economic agents. The former relate to the costs of finding potential trading partners and determining their supply- demand offers, the latter to enforcing the execution of promises and agreements. These two aspects of transactions need to be kept distinct. The economic historian Douglass North and the industrial organization and institutionalist theorist Oliver Williamson have both evoked the notion of transactions costs and used them to explain various institutional arrangements relevant for economic performance. They are primarily concerned with the cost of opportunistic behavior, which arises for North, with the more anonymous non-repeated transactions accompanying the widening of the market, and for Williamson, from the asymmetries in information facing principals and agents, where crucial characteristics of the agent relevant for measuring performance can be concealed from the principal. Both these are cases where it is the policing aspects of transactions costs which are at issue, not those concerning exchange.
To see the relevance of the distinction in beliefs and that in transactions costs for economic performance and in explaining the source and outcomes of the dilemmas of Macaulay's children, it will be useful to briefly delineate how broadly speaking material and cosmological beliefs have altered since the Stone Age in Eurasia.
3. CHANGING MATERIAL AND COSMOLOGICAL BELIEFS
1. On Human Nature:
Evolutionary anthropologists and psychologists maintain that human nature was set during the period of evolution ending with the Stone Age. Since then there has not been sufficient time for any further evolution. This human nature appears darker than Rousseau's and brighter than Hobbes' characterizations of it. It is closer to Hume's view that " there is some benevolence, however small...some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent." For even in the hunter gatherer Stone age environment the supremely egotistical human animal would have found some form of what evolutionary biologists term "reciprocal altruism" useful. Co-operation with one's fellows in various hunter- gatherer tasks yields benefits for the selfish human which can be further increased if he can cheat and be a free rider. In the repeated interactions between the selfish humans comprising the tribe, such cheating could be mitigated by playing the game of "tit for tat". Evolutionary biologists claim that the resulting "reciprocal altruism" would be part of our basic Stone Age human nature.
2. Archaeologists have also established that the instinct to "truck and barter", the trading instinct based on what Sir John Hicks used to call the "economic principle" - "people would act economically; when an opportunity of an advantage was presented to them they would take it" - is also of Stone Age vintage. It is also part of our basic human nature. Agrarian Civilizations:
With the rise of settled agriculture and the civilizations that evolved around them, however, and the stratification this involved between three classes of men - those wielding the sword, the pen and the plough- most of the stone age basic instincts which comprise our human nature would be dysfunctional. Thus with the multiplication of interactions between human beings in agrarian civilizations many of the transactions would have been with anonymous strangers who one might never see again. The "reciprocal altruism" of the Stone Age which depended upon a repetition of transactions would not be sufficient to curtail opportunistic behavior.
Putting it differently, the 'tit for tat' strategy for the repeated Prisoners Dilemma (PD) game amongst a band of hunter-gatherers in the Stone Age would not suffice with the increased number of one-shot PD games that will arise with settled agriculture and its widening of the market. To prevent the resulting dissipation of the mutual gains from co-operation, agrarian civilizations internalized restraints on such 'anti-social' action through moral codes which were part of their 'religion'. But these 'religions' were more ways of life as they did not necessarily depend upon a belief in God.
The universal moral emotions of shame and guilt are the means by which these 'moral codes' embodied in cultural traditions are internalized in the socialization process during infancy. Shame was the major instrument of this internalization in the great agrarian civilizations. Their resulting cosmological beliefs can be described as being 'communalist'.
3. The basic human instinct to trade would also be disruptive for settled agriculture. For traders are motivated by instrumental rationality which maximizes economic advantage. This would threaten the communal bonds that all agrarian civilizations have tried to foster. Not surprisingly most of them have looked upon merchants and markets as a necessary evil, and sought to suppress them and the market which is their institutional embodiment. The material beliefs of the agrarian civilizations were thus not conducive to modern economic growth. The Rise of the West:
The rise of the West was mediated by the Catholic Church in the 6th-11th centuries, through its promotion of individualism, first in family affairs and later in material relationships which included the introduction of all the legal and institutional requirements of a market economy as a result of Gregory the Great's Papal revolution in the 11th century. These twin Papal revolutions arose because of the unintended consequences of the Church's search for bequests- a trait that goes back to its earliest days. From its inception it had grown as a temporal power through gifts and donations -particularly from rich widows. So much so that, in July 370 the Emperor Valentinian had addressed a ruling to the Pope that male clerics and unmarried ascetics should not hang around the houses of women and widows and try to worm themselves and their churches into their bequests at the expense of the women's families and blood relations. The Church was thus from its beginnings in the race for inheritances. The early Church's extolling of virginity and preventing second marriages helped it in creating more single women who would leave bequests to the Church.
This process of inhibiting a family from retaining its property and promoting its alienation accelerated with the answers that Pope Gregory I gave to some questions that the first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, had sent in 597 AD concerning his new charges. Four of these nine questions concerned sex and marriage. Gregory's answers overturned the traditional Mediterranean and Middle Eastern patterns of legal and customary practices in the domestic domain. The traditional system was concerned with the provision of an heir to inherit family property, and allowed marriage to close kin, marriages to close affines or widows of close kin, the transfer of children by adoption , and finally concubinage, which is a form of secondary union. Gregory amazingly banned all four practices. Thus for instance there was no adoption of children allowed in England till the 19th century. There was no basis for these injunctions in Scripture, Roman law or the existing customs in the areas that were Christianised.
This Papal family revolution made the Church unbelievably rich. Demographers have estimated that the net effect of the prohibitions on traditional methods to deal with childlessness was to leave 40 per cent of families with no immediate male heirs. The Church became the chief beneficiary of the resulting bequests. Its accumulation was phenomenal. Thus for instance in France one third of productive land was in ecclesiastical hands by the end of the 7th century!
But this accumulation also drew predators from within and without to deprive the Church of its acquired property. It was to deal with this denudation that Pope Gregory VII instigated his Papal revolution in 1075, by putting the power of God - through the spiritual weapon of excommunication-above that of Caesar's. With the Church then coming into the world, the new Church-state also created all the administrative and legal infrastructure which we associate with a modern polity, and which provided the essential institutional infrastructure for the Western dynamic that in time led to Promethean growth. Thus Pope Gregory the Great's Papal revolution lifted the lid on the basic human instinct to 'truck and barter', and in time to a change in the traditional Eurasian pattern of material beliefs with their suspicion of markets and merchants. This in time led to modern economic growth.
But it also led to a change in the traditional Eurasian family patterns which were based on various forms of 'joint families' and family values, which essentially removed the lid on the other opportunistic basic instincts which the shame based moral codes of Eurasia had placed. To counter the potential threat this posed to its way of making a living- settled agriculture- the Church created a fierce guilt culture in which Original Sin was paramount, and morality was underwritten by the belief in the Christian God.
In this context it is worth noting the important difference between the cosmological beliefs of what became the Christian West and the other ancient agrarian civilizations of Eurasia. Christianity has a number of distinctive features which it shares with its Semitic cousin Islam, but not entirely with its parent Judaism, and which are not to be found in any of the other great Eurasian religions. The most important is its universality. Neither the Jews, nor the Hindu or Sinic civilizations had religions claiming to be universal. You could not choose to be a Hindu, Chines or Jew, you were born as one. This also meant that unlike Christianity and Islam these religions did not proselytise. Third, only the Semitic religions being monotheistic have also been egalitarian. Nearly all the other Eurasian religions believed in some form of hierarchical social order. By contrast alone among the Eurasian civilizations the Semitic ones (though least so the Jewish) emphasized the equality of men's souls in the eyes of their monotheistic Deities. Dumont has rightly characterized the resulting profound divide between the societies of Homo Aequalis which believe all men are born equal (as the philosophes, and the American constitution proclaim) and those of Homo Hierarchicus which believe no such thing.
The classic statement of this Christian cosmology was St. Augustine's "City of God". His narrative of a Garden of Eden, a Fall leading to Original Sin and a Day of Judgment with Heaven for the Elect and Hell for the Damned has subsequently had a tenacious hold on Western minds. Thus the philosophes of the Enlightenment displaced the Garden of Eden by Classical Greece and Rome, and God became an abstract cause- the Divine Watchmaker. The Christian centuries were the Fall. The Enlightened were the Elect and the Christian Paradise was replaced by Posterity. This seemed to salvage the traditional morality in a world ruled by the Divine Watchmaker. But once Darwin had shown him to be blind, as Nietzsche proclaimed from the housetops at the end of the 19th century, God was dead, and the moral foundations of the West were thereafter in ruins. But the death of the Christian God did not end secular variations on the theme of Augustine's Heavenly City. Marxism, Freudianism and the recent bizarre Eco-fundamentalism are secular mutations of Augustine. But none of them have succeeded in providing a moral anchor to the West. Such an anchor is of importance to the economy because the 'policing' type of transactions costs associated with running an economy are increased in its absence.
There is also the growing collapse of the Western family. It was presaged by the overthrowing of the traditional family patterns of Eurasian civilizations by Gregory I's individualist family revolution. This would have destroyed the Western family much earlier were it not for the subsequent fierce guilt culture the Church promoted in the Middle Ages, which kept the traditional morality in place. But with the exorcising of both guilt and shame as illegitimate moral emotions in the West, there are fewer moral bulwarks left to shore up the family.
Another consequence of Gregory I's family revolution was that the social safety nets provided by the family in most Eurasian societies were from an early date partly provided by the State in the West. This nationalization of welfare accelerated in this century, leading to vast transfer states. The accompanying erosion of traditional morality in the West is manifest in various social pathologies- such as widespread family breakdown, high levels of illegitimacy and divorce, proliferation of single parent families, soaring crime rates and the perpetuation of an urban underclass.
It is these accompanying social effects of modernization in the West, concerning equality and the family which disturb so many of Macaulay's children, who have had two distinctive responses to modernization. NEHRU VS GANDHI
4.
The two wings of Macaulay's children can broadly be classified as socialist and traditionalist, and can be identified with their towering nationalist leaders- Nehru and Gandhi. In their own ways both sought to reconcile India's ancient cultural traits with modernity.
Nehru while embracing modernization found a particular thread in Western cosmologist- Marxism- which had become dominant from the late 19th century, useful in reconciling tradition with modernity. In its economic ideas, from the days of Dadabhai Naoroji through Gokhale to Nehru the modernizing element of this new English-speaking caste chose to adopt only the radical and not the classical liberal elements in English economic thought. This is partly understandable as a natural revolt by nationalists against the dominant economic ideology of the metropole at the time- which in mid to late 19th century Britain was the classical liberalism of "laissez-faire". But there was more to their embrace of the collectivist and anti-market strand of Western economic thought. As their chief spokesman Nehru, memorably put it in his Autobiography, " right through history the old Indian ideal did not glorify political and military triumph, and it looked down upon money and the professional money-making class..Today (the old culture) is fighting..against a new and all-powerful opposition- the bania (Vaishya) civilization of the capitalist West. But the West also brings an antidote- the principle of socialism, of co-operation and service to the community for the common good. This is not so unlike the old Brahmin ideal of service, but it means the brahmanization- not in the religious sense of course- of all classes and groups and the abolition of class distinctions". A more succinct expression of the ancient Hindu caste prejudice against commerce and merchants- the lifeblood of a market economy- would be hard to find. This socialism espoused by the English-speaking caste seemed to combine tradition with modernity, whilst allowing this caste to behave as the Brahmins of old. But its stewardship of the economy has been a disaster.
Most poignantly, except for those agile enough to become 'rent-seekers', these economic policies have above all damaged the prospects of their progeny. In India, during the years of the Nehruvian dynasty the English-speaking caste sought to place many of its progeny abroad, thereby demonstrating by its private actions the bankruptcy of its public policies. Even the recent partial liberalization has markedly changed the perceptions of the young of this class about the possibility of a fruitful life in India. In the long run this is the greatest prize that liberalization offers, as on it will depend not only the health of the economy but also of the polity.
But there was a second solution to the conundrum faced by the early nationalists of reconciling tradition with modernity. Vivekanand, Tilak but above all Gandhi were as much Macaulay's children as the radical modernizers. Gandhi -as he outlined in Hind Swaraj- eschewed modernization and sought to preserve the ancient Hindu equilibrium. He was implacably opposed to western education, industrialization and all those 'modern' forces which could undermine this equilibrium. Above all, even though he was unequivocally against untouchability, he nevertheless upheld the caste system and its central feature of endogamy- a fact that at least Mayawati and her Bahagun Samaj Party (BSP) have noted. He wished to see a revival of the ancient and largely self-sufficient village communities which were an essential part of the Hindu equilibrium.
His ideas still continue to resonate, as witness some of the professed economic beliefs of the BJP and the extraordinary speech by the ex PM Narasimha Rao in the special Lok Sabha session. But this is a means to perpetuate poverty. The modernizers were right to believe that the only way to ultimately eliminate India's age old structural poverty was to convert an agrarian economy condemned to diminishing returns because of its dependence on a fixed factor- land- into a mineral based energy using economy through industrialization. The problem was with the means they adopted.
If both the socialist and the traditionalist panaceas of Macaulay's children have failed India, perhaps the time has come to free ourselves of them and their influence? This is what seems to implied by Mulayam Singh Yadav's recently stated desire to eliminate the role and influence of English in our national life.
5. MODERNIZATION AND WESTERNISATION
Assessing the role of English in national life leads directly to the issue of whether modernization requires westernisation. There are three important points to be made. First, as is apparent from the surge in learning English as the second language of choice worldwide- from culturally nationalist France to China- it is now the world 'lingua franca' in large part because it is now the international language of science and commerce. These are the instruments of the modernity on which future prosperity is increasingly seen to depend in a globalised economy. India has a head start in this respect given its colonial educational heritage. It would be senseless to give this up.
Second, as the experience of the Austro-Hungarian empire, as well as the continuing resistance of many non-Hindi speaking states in India attests, in multilingual states, if the language of any group is adopted as the official language that immediately puts its speakers at an advantage, and will be fiercely resisted by other groups. To allay these discords, like the Austro-Hungarians many ex-colonial nationalist states have kept the old Imperial 'lingua franca' as the official language. The same pragmatic consideration continues to apply to India, and seeking to eliminate the colonial 'lingua franca' is likely as in Austro-Hungary to lead to the vernacular nationalism which will destroy the Union.
The third point is more complex. It concerns Macaulay's children. As we noted, the cross-cultural evidence shows that rather than the environment it is the language group which determines cosmological beliefs. Therein lies the rub for Macaulay's children. For the full-fledged members of this caste, for whom English has become their first language, their cosmological beliefs are likely to conform more closely to those
of their linguistic cousins in the West than their vernacular countrymen. They are Westernised in a way that those for whom English is a second or third language are not.
But if modernization requires a knowledge of English for instrumental reasons, does that mean that Westernisation will follow willy nilly? There has been an influential body of thought in development studies which has claimed this necessary connection. But this is to assume that material beliefs determine cosmological beliefs. Even though in the rise of the West the two were conjoined, there is little reason to believe this is the case as the important case of a modernised but non-Westernised Japan has shown.
Unfortunately in India there continues to be great confusion amongst the intelligentsia on this point which is reflected in the two diametrically opposed panaceas that its Macaulay's children have prescribed for its ills. The roots of this confusion go back to the early days of the nationalist struggle. All the early leaders of the movement were Macaulay's children, and their nationalism echoed the creole nationalism that overthrew colonial rule in the America's - both in the North and the South. The major complaint of the 'creoles' against the 'penisulares' was that even though in every respect- language, descent, customs, manners and even religion- they were indistinguishable they had an inferior status because of the accident of their birth.
In India, Macaulay's children too had an inferior status, despite being English in every respect except "in blood and colour." Like the American creole elites they first sought to remove these restrictions on their advancement, eg. by agitating for the ICS exams to be held in India, and when these fell on deaf years, they sought to exclude their peninsulares from their colony with the cry of full Independence. There was however a division we noted between the modernising and traditionalist elements in this English speaking caste. Both groups implicitly believed that modernization and Westernisation were linked. But whereas the Nehruvians - who despite lip service to marrying Indian with Western culture-accepted the implication and sought to implement a particular secular Western set of cosmological beliefs, the Gandhians (whose cultural successors include the various Hindu nationalist groups) have sought to resist modernization for fear it would lead to Westernisation.
But there was another choice which was to modernise without Westernising- a process in which the role of English would be instrumental. For the myriad district and lower level service functionaries whose first language remained their vernacular the English they spoke as a second or third language already fulfilled this role. They were not infected by Western cosmologist like the English speaking caste. Even though not Westernised they could have been modernisers. It was fateful that, during the nationalist movement, it was Gandhi-that other Macaulay's child- who mobilised them politically. For unlike the modernisers, Gandhi was above all concerned with maintaining a refurbished Hindu equilibrium. But by equating modernization with Westernisation he created a backlash not only against the cosmological views of the West but also its material beliefs. Many of the views of both the Hindu nationalists and many in the Janta Dal also reflect this confusion.
The field was then left clear for the modernisers cum Westernisers, symbolised most powerfully in the iconic figure of Jawaharlal Nehru. It is instructive to see why it is the Western cosmology they imbibed- Marxism- which has had such inimical effects on the material prospects of Indians.
To put this in context a useful distinction made by the English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott needs to be kept in mind. He distinguishes between two major strands of Western thought on the State: the State viewed as a civil association, or alternatively as an enterprise association. The former view goes back to ancient Greece, with the State seen as the custodian of laws which do not seek to impose any preferred pattern of ends (including abstractions such as the general (social) welfare, or fundamental rights), but which merely facilitates individuals to pursue their own ends. This view has been challenged by the rival conception of the State as an enterprise association --a view which has its roots in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The State is now seen as the manager of an enterprise seeking to use the law for its own substantive purposes, and in particular for the legislation of morality. The classical liberalism of Smith and Hume entails the former, whilst the major secular embodiment of society viewed as an enterprise association is socialism, with its moral aim of using the State to equalize people. Equally, the other major ideological challenge to classical liberalism in this century, Fascism (national socialism), also viewed the State as an enterprise association. Both involved collectivist moralities as a reaction to the morality of individualism.
Till the rise of centralised nation states in Renaissance Europe, few states had the administrative means to be 'enterprising'.Once the administrative revolution of the 16th century expanded the tax base and the span of control of the government over its subjects lives three types of 'enterprises' have been pursued by states. A religious version as epitomized by Calvinist Geneva and in our own times by Khomeni's Iran. A productivist version consisting of 'nation-building' and a distibutionist version promoting some form of egalitarianism. Each of these 'enterprises' conjures up some notion of perfection, believed to be "the common good".
Socialism and the various variants of Marxism have their cosmological parentage in the Christian cosmology. As in
Augustine's "City of God", Marxism, looks to the past and the future. There is a Garden of Eden- before 'property' relations corrupted 'natural man'. Then the Fall as 'commodification' leads to class societies and the impersonal conflict of material forces leading to the Day of Judgment with the Revolution and the millennial Paradise of Communism. This mutation in Western cosmology also leads to Oakeshott's distibutivist "enterprise" view of the State . But it should be noted that whilst recently this 'enterprise' view based on the Juadeo-Christian cosmology has dominated Western political thought there is the older Greek current which looks to the State as a 'civil' association which was associated with the Scottish Enlightenment, and which has greater relevance for India than the Judaeo Christian version which has so poisoned the minds of Macaulay's children.
Finally, as Japan has shown, the Rest do not have to make the Faustian compact of the West where the instrumental rationality promoted by its individualism led to the Industrial Revolution but in the process destroyed its soul. Japan has been able to alter its material beliefs by adopting the institutions of the market, and transforming its ancient hierarchical social structures by basing them on acquired rather than ascribed status through the fierce meritocratic competition based on educational attainment. It has also not had to give up its traditional forms of family nor its other cosmological beliefs based on shame. The same opportunity is open to India to adopt the West's material but eschew its cosmological beliefs.
6. THE FAMILY
The ultimate fear of the cultural nationalists is that modernization will undermine traditional mores concerning marriage and the family. The resistance to the purported cultural pollution coming over the satellite channels, and the shenanigans concerning the Miss World contest reflect this fear. But is it justified?
Since Marx and Engels there has been the view that with modernization the traditional extended family identified with pre-industrial societies is doomed. Modern families will become more and more like Western families: with love marriages, nuclear families and a cold hearted attitude to the old. There are others who maintain that as the Western style of family seems to go back at least to the Middle Ages in Northern Europe, this modern family pattern was not merely the consequence but the cause of the Western industrial revolution. Research by the Cambridge anthropologist Jack Goody casts serious doubts on both these positions.
First, as the historical evidence shows that the Western family revolution predated the Industrial revolution, clearly the latter could not have caused the former. Second, as Goody shows at length, the purported advantages of the Western system, leading to a greater control of fertility, were to be found in many other Eurasian family systems which, however, did not deliver industrial revolutions.
But that the Western Christian world particularly in its North Western outpost deviated from what had been the traditional family pattern in Eurasia from about the late 6th century seems undeniable. The major difference was that in the West the Church came to support the independence of the young: in choosing marriage partners, in setting up their households and entering into contractual rather than affective relationships with the old. They promoted love marriages rather than the arranged marriages common in Eurasia. Friar Lawrence in "Romeo and Juliet" egging on the young lovers against their families wishes is emblematic of this trend. But why did the Church promote love marriages?
It has been thought that romantic love far from being a universal emotion was a Western social construct of the age of chivalry in the Middle Ages. Recent anthropological and psychological research however confirms that this is erroneous- romantic love is a universal emotion. Moreover it has a biological basis. Neuro-psychologists have shown that it is associated with increased levels of phenylethylamine an amphetamine-related compound. Interestingly the same distinct biochemicals are also to be found in other animal species such as birds which also evince this emotion. However, it appears that this emotion is ephemeral. After a period of attachment the brain's receptor sites for the essential neuro-chemicals become desensitized or overloaded and the infatuation ends, setting up both the body and brain for separation- divorce. This period of infatuation has been shown to last for about 3 years. A cross-cultural; study of divorce patterns in 62 societies between 1947-1989 found that divorces tend to occur around the fourth year of marriage!
A universal emotion with a biological basis calls for an explanation. Socio-biologists maintain that in the primordial environment it was vital for males and females to be attracted to each other to have sex and reproduce and also for the males to be attached enough to the females to look after their young until they were old enough to move into a peer group and be looked after by the hunting -gathering band. The traditional period between successive human births is four years- which is also the modal period for those marriages which end in divorce today . Darwin strikes again! The biochemistry of love it seems evolved as an 'inclusive fitness' strategy of our species.
The capacity to love maybe universal but its public expression is culturally controlled. For as everyone's personal experience will confirm it is an explosive emotion. Given its relatively rapid decay, with settled agriculture the evolved instinct for mates to stay together for about four years and then move on to new partners to conceive and rear new young would have been dysfunctional. Settled agriculture requires settled households. If households are in permanent flux there could not be settled households on particular parcels of lands. Not surprisingly most agrarian civilizations sought to curb the explosive primordial emotion which would have destroyed their way of making a living. They have used cultural constraints to curb this dangerous hominid tendency by relying on arranged marriages, infant betrothal and the like, restricting romantic passion to relationships outside marriage. The West stands alone in using this dangerous biological universal as the bastion of its marriages as reflected in the popular song "love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage".
The reason for this Western exceptionalism goes back to the earliest period of the Christian Church, as we have seen. But the Church also had to find a way to prevent the social chaos which would have ensued if the romantic passion its greed had unleashed as the basis for marriage had been allowed to run its course in what remained a settled agrarian civilisation. First it separated love and sex, and then created a fierce guilt culture based on Original Sin. Its pervasive teaching against sex and the associated guilt it engendered provided the necessary antidote to the 'animal passions' that would otherwise have been unleashed by the Church's self-interested overthrowing of the traditional Eurasian system of marriage. But once the Christian God died with the Scientific and Darwinian revolutions, these restraints built on Original Sin were finally removed. The family as most civilizations have known it became sick in the West, as the Western humanoids reverted to the 'family' practices of their hunter-gatherer ancestors.
Within Western cosmologist there was, however, another way to deal with the death of the Christian God, rather than rely on these continuing secular variations on Augustine's "City" to provide the moral cement of its society. These were the views associated with the Scottish Enlightenment- in particular of its most eminent sages: David Hume and Adam Smith.
Hume, unlike the philosophes, saw clearly that Reason could not provide an adequate grounding for morality. As Nietzsche was to later say so trenchantly about utilitarianism any such attempt would be unsuccessful because :"moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it". Kant's attempt to ground a rational morality on his principle of universalisability- harking back to the Biblical injunction "therefore all things whatsoever ye do would that men should do to you, do even so to them"- founders on Hegel's two objections: it is merely a principle of logical consistency without any specific moral content, and worse it is as a result powerless to prevent any immoral conduct that takes our fancy. The subsequent ink spilt by Western moral philosophers has merely clothed their particular prejudices in rational form.
By contrast Hume clearly saw the role of morality in maintaining the social cement of society and that it depended on a society's traditions and forms of socialization. Neither God nor Reason needs to be evoked (or can be) to justify these conditioned and necessary habits. This is very much the view about ethics taken by the older non-Semitic Eurasian civilizations whose socialization processes are based on shame.
However, as this account shows, there is no reason whatsoever for the rest of the world to follow this peculiar and particular Western trajectory. It is not modernization but the unintended consequences of Pope Gregory I's family revolution which have led to the death in the West of the Eurasian family values the Rest rightly continues to cherish. The Rest do not have to embrace this cosmology. Moreover, even Macaulay's children can heal their fractured souls by embracing the Scottish sages: Hume's morality based on tradition and Smith's material beliefs based on the market. This classical liberalism provides a means of modernizing without succumbing to the moral emptiness of the current Western cosmology.
7. DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT
This leads on to the final question I would like to address in this lecture: is there any necessary link between democracy and development?
A number of cross-sectional statistical studies claim to have found such a relationship. But the statistical proxies used for the political variables in these studies do not inspire much confidence, which are further plagued by the econometric problem of identification. In our recent book Myint and I found no relationship between the form of government and economic performance during the 30 year economic histories of the 25 developing countries that we studied. Rather than the polity the initial resource endowment, in particular the availability or lack of natural resources was a major determinant of policies which impinged on the efficiency of investment and thereby the rate of growth. This was basically due to the inevitable politicisation of the rents that natural resources yield, with concomitant damage to growth performance. By contrast resource poor countries, irrespective of the nature of their government, were forced to develop their only resource- their human subjects. Thus the economic performance of resource poor countries like the Far Eastern Gang of Four tended to be much better on average than that of those with abundant natural resources like Brazil and Mexico. Countries like India and China whose factor endowments fall in between these extremes swerved between following the policies of their resource abundant and resource poor cousins, with a resultant indifferent intermediate economic performance. The difference in performance was further explained by the other major determinant of growth- the volume of investment. Thus whilst the efficiency of investment in India and China during both their dirigiste and more economically liberal periods was about the same, China's investment rate has been about twice India's resulting in its growth rate also being twice as high.
If differences in the polity cannot explain differences in economic performance, is there any reason to prefer one type of polity over another- in particular democracy over some authoritarian alternative? As usual de Tocqueville is both succinct and prescient. In his Ancien Regime he wrote:
" It is true that in the long run liberty always leads those who know how to keep it to comfort, well- being, often to riches: but there are times when it impedes the attainment of such goods; and other times when despotism alone can momentarily guarantee their enjoyment. Men who take up liberty for its material rewards, then, have never kept it for long...what in all times has attracted some men to liberty has been itself alone, its own particular charm, independent of the benefits it brings; the pleasure of being able to speak, act, and breathe without constraint, under no other rule but that of God and law. Who seeks in liberty something other than itself is born to be a slave".
Democracy, therefore, is to be preferred as a form of government not because of its instrumental value in promoting prosperity- at times it may well not- but because it promotes the different but equally valuable end of liberty. However, as the experience of many countries- not only in the Third world - attests, democracy is a frail flower, and India is unique in having successfully nurtured it in such a vast, diverse and poor country. The assault on it during the Emergency merely succeeded in showing how deeply rooted it had become in the Indian soil.
This success needs an explanation. It is to be found in the political habits of different cultures which have been formed as much by the geography of the territory where the relevant culture was formed than any ideology. Thus, China in its origins in the relatively compact Yellow river valley, constantly threatened by the nomadic barbarians from the steppes to its north, developed a tightly controlled bureaucratic authoritarianism as its distinctive polity which has continued for millennia to our day. By contrast Hindu civilisation developed in the vast Indo-Gangetic plain, protected to a greater extent by the Himalayas from the predation of barbarians to the North. As I argued in The Hindu Equilibrium, this geographical feature (together with the need to tie down the then scarce labour to land) accounts for the traditional Indian polity which was notable for its endemic political instability amongst numerous feuding monarchies, and its distinctive social system embodied in the institution of caste. The latter by making war the trade of professionals saved the mass of the population from being inducted into the deadly disputes of its changing rulers. Whilst the tradition of paying a certain customary share of the village output as revenue to the current overlord, meant that any victor had little incentive to disturb the daily business of its newly acquired subjects. The democratic practices gradually introduced by the British have fit these ancient habits like a glove. The ballot box has replaced the battlefield for the hurly-burly of continuing 'aristocratic' conflict, whilst the populace accepts with a weary resignation that its rulers will through various forms of 'rent-seeking' take a certain share of output to feather their own nests.
There is no intrinsic reason why this particular form of polity should be inimical to development, as long as the rulers adhere to the principles of good government so lucidly set out by the sages of the Scottish Enlightenment- Smith and Hume. A good government on this classical liberal view looks upon the State as a civil association, which promotes opulence through promoting natural liberty by establishing laws of justice which guarantee free exchange and peaceful competition. It should not seek to promote some enterprise of its own or seek to legislate a particular morality. The reason for India's relative economic failure lies not in its polity but in the Nehruvian era's embracing of the view of the State as an enterprise association- promoting the enterprise of Fabian socialism.
This seems to be changing, but there still does not appear to be a firm enough understanding, particularly amongst the intelligentsia, of promoting the view of the State as a civil not enterprise association amongst our rulers. One important way to achieve this would be to adopt in the sphere of economic policy what seems to have been attained in defense and foreign policy- a cross party consensus which allows continuity in policy. As the example of numerous liberalising developing countries has shown, for successful development, a team of technocrats broadly committed to an open market economy needs to be given its head, for at least a decade and protected from political cross-winds. India has such a team in place, the only remaining question mark is whether it will be allowed to complete the reform process above the political hurly-burly. If it is, there is no reason why India should not be able to combine prosperity with liberty without losing its soul.
http://sabhlokcity.com/debate/Notes/note1.html
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - Guest - 10-25-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Outrage in Hardwar </b>
Pioneer.com
<i>By hosting iftar at Har-ki-Pauri in Hardwar, Mulayam Singh Yadav has poured scorn on Hindu sentiments, says Prafull Goradia </i>
It is easy to ascribe Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's iftar at Har-ki-Pauri on October 14 as a vote-catching stunt. There is, however, more to it for the simple reason that he is often described as a protecter of the Muslims and has been complimented by being called "maulana".
He is so well entrenched with his vote-bank that there was no need for him to take the anti-Hindu step of violating the British Act of 1940 whereby Muslims and masjids are forbidden in Hardwar. Especially, breaking a law, which should invite criminal punishment. There must be something compulsive rather than calculative about his bizarre humiliation of the Hindus. Surely, <b>Mr Yadav knows that no non-Muslim can put his foot on the soil of either Mecca or Medina</b>.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>There is a segment of Hindu leaders who derive satisfaction out of self-flagellation; get pleasure out of pain. Or else, how could one explain the surrender historically to 'dhimmitude' or protected non-citizenship whose outstanding feature was the payment of jizya. </span>
The other humiliations included not holding any religious ceremonies in public nor proselytising or preventing any kin from embracing Islam. Not ride on saddle nor wear swords nor construct buildings higher than those of Muslims. Nor attempt to resemble Muslims in any way; to make sure that Christians wore blue and Jews yellow signs on their attire to signify their dhimmitude. These were some of the terms of the contract signed in 720 AD between Caliph Omar II and the local Christian and Jewish leaders who represented the minorities.
During the Mughal period, Hindus were estimated to be about 90 per cent of the population and, by no means, in a minority. Yet they submitted themselves to a dhimmi status in different parts of the country beginning with Mohammed bin Qasim who conquered Sindh in 712 AD.
There is no historical record of a public murmur not to speak of a protest or rebellion against jizya. When the reputedly liberal Akbar ascended the throne at Agra in 1556 AD, he imposed jizya. For reasons of political expediency, a few years later, he abolished jizya but reimposed the poll tax in 1575 to placate the orthodox sections of his court. The Hindu leaders did not say anything one way or the other.
<b>The reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan were jizya free whereas Aurangzeb brought the tax back with a vengeance. Remarkably again, he got away with its reimposition without a Hindu protest. Mirza Raja Jaisingh and other Hindu generals at his court continued to fight for him loyally.</b>
Just as the Arabs conquered Sindh in 712, the Moors a year earlier overran Spain. The conquerors had their say and way for the best part of eight centuries. Yet, the Christians did not give up and, after a struggle, threw out the Moors.
The Jews suffered the Holocaust whereby six million of them were exterminated by the Nazis. Yet, they rose again in the shape of Israel to dominate their region of the Arab peninsula.
On the other hand, Hindu civilisation is yet to get its act back and come into its own. It is not for the lack of opportunity. By their two-century-long presence in India, the British did provide a level playing field between the Hindus and the Muslims.
<b>The Partition certainly offered in Hindustan an exclusive opportunity for Hindu rule to flourish. Yet today, the Muslims call the tune rather than the Hindus playing their own piano</b>.
Does this unusual phenomenon mean that the Hindu civilisation, over the medieval centuries, underwent a metamorphosis whereby it abdicated its desire to rule and preferred to be subservient? Were the Hindus affected by a kind of virus, which introduced in some of them, especially their leaders, a mentality reminiscent of slavishness?
There is a popular joke about crabs in a basket which do not allow one another to crawl upwards to freedom. They pull one another down continually. There are people in our country whose busiest preoccupation is to pull others down rather than trying to move up themselves. To curse one's own country and community is another way of gratifying a slavish frustrated ego.
<b>Even Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a casualty. During 1921 at Malabar, the Moplahs raped; butchered and converted thousands of Hindus, which horrified number of leaders</b>, including Annie Besant, the Irish woman who later, became president of the Congress. <b>Gandhi praised the Moplahs for being "among the bravest in the land. They are god-fearing". Soon thereafter, he wrote, "Our Moplah brothers have gone mad... They have committed a sin against the Khilafat and against our own country."</b>
The iftar hosted by Mr Yadav at Hardwar is one more in a long series of masochistic actions by members of the Indian leadership. Instead of inflicting pain upon them personally, the leaders inflict humiliation upon their community. It was an Austrian named <span style='color:red'>Sacher Masoch after whom this disorder is known for; he researched on the subject.</span>
<b>He called it a satisfaction he gained by being beaten and subjugated. As another psychologist put it, the term masochism is frequently used in a looser social context in which masochism is defined as the behaviour of one who seeks and enjoys situations of humiliation or abuse. The question before us as a nation is what should be done with psychologically imbalanced leaders? </b>
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The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 11-05-2006
http://www.geocities.com/indianfascism/index.html
The Great Indian Political Debate - 2 - acharya - 11-05-2006
Real Secularism v/s Real Communalism
Secularism v/s Communalism
People in India have been successfully foxed by the ideology and wrong propaganda over the years of Indian Politicians as to who is the right candidate for owning the secular flag in India. This propaganda has been so successfully implemented by some national and regional parties that today even the intellectual class in India has been hypnotised by its impact. I consider Indians to be hard-core moderates and as such they fail to understand the real agenda behind it which is to divide and rule. This is the only best thing Congress has learnt from Britishâs. Most of the regional parties are now trying to imitate the formula.
So called secular parties in today's political arena like Congress, RJD, Left, LJP etc. have brainwashed the Indian society at large with this propaganda and that too successfully. This has reached to the extent that even if Congress gives 5% job reservations for Muslims in Andra Pradesh, or 50% reservations for Muslims in AMU, or talk of new reservations for Muslims in IIT's/ IIM's, or people like Ram Vilas Paswan openly crying throughout the Bihar elections for a Muslim Candidate as a Chief Minister (Just imagine any other party doing it for a majority candidate), or Congress's famous Shah Bano case, turning a blind eye on religious conversions in tribal areas and socially & economically backward areas. Just imagine any party doing these on behalf of majority community, immediately; it will be branded as a communal party. Leave the illiterates, how many of intellectuals will believe Arun Jaitly's comments "Hindutva was nowhere projected as governance was the issue here" which I believe is a fact as Bihar's main issue this time was 'development'.
Any siding with BJP is trademarked as communal. Impact is of such an extent that even parties trying to rally with BJP in various elections and governance try and suppress the ideology of BJP with a big noise. Best example would be the statement made by a JD(U) leader, confidently riding on the winning wave, "its alliance with BJP in Bihar was that of âfriendshipâ and not âengagementâ and the future of the relationship would depend on the saffron party's âattitudeâ", or TDP, JD(U), DMK, Trinalmul Congress's continuously throwing tantrums at BJP if it even thinks of its agenda. Most surprisingly, even BJP President Mr. L. K. Advani has been influenced by this notion and is willing to change the basic ideology of BJP (example being his remarks on Jinnah). Thus BJP itself has, to some extent, fallen in this trap and many moderate leaders now want to woo the minority community.
If BJP talks to scrap article 370 or to bring in uniform civil code, it does not mean this will favour the majority community but instead everybody will come at par. Hindus/ Sikhs/ Jains/ Buddhists/ Christians are nothing to gain from it. If Muslims talk of the Ram Temple then what is wrong in that. I think any sensible guy can understand that in spite of more than 3 lac temples being demolished by Muslims in all parts of India, they in turn are asking for only 3. And these 3 places are all like Mecca to Muslims. Imagine the congeniality, which would result in the minds if Muslims themselves return these sites. But the problem is that because of communal brand of BJP, if it even mentions little of it, other political parties make much more out of it, which eventually drills down to the people in general. People should understand that if this temple issue is not resolved it would remain as a cancer just like Kashmir. And people have to realize that this is not communal by any means.
All credit goes to the backwardness prevailing in Muslim community who can hardly understand such myopic luring by specific political parties AND non-unity in majority community due to various caste equations. Politicians very well know that a Hindu will vote as a Yadav, Brahmin, Kurmi, SC, ST but never as a Hindu.
Suggestion â
a) India is a booming economy and such all such issues are to be resolved fast and political parties work on it in right perspective instead of falsely harping on secular/ communal agenda.
b) All current so-called secular parties should try and rise above pseudo-secularism.
c) BJP and like-minded parties should carry on their current agenda but keep in mind to explain in detail the correct perspective to the impacted community.
d) People should throw away their myopic lenses and look far ahead for actual development, which brings out a strong and secular India.
e) For this education is a must but clear and real message is of utmost importance. No one should feel that his or her community is getting impacted as real problem starts from here.
f) Understand who are the real secularists and vote accordingly.