Awaam India

Dying Alone in a Crowded Nation

2026-08-24T16:29:25.192+00:00

By Sana Hashmi

In the early hours of an August morning, Shivcharan Ram Ratan Gupta died in an old-age home in Sonipat, Haryana, India. His three daughters — in Nepal, Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai — could not reach him in time, and could not attend his cremation. They watched it instead on video call, and paid for it with a bank transfer. The story went viral within days, and was read, almost instinctively, as a morality tale about ungrateful children. This article argues that the more useful reading is a structural one: Gupta's death is a single, well-documented data point inside a national pattern of population ageing, migration, economic precarity and legal underenforcement — one that will keep producing scenes like his, in one form or another, for a long time to come.

A Death That Went Viral, and Why

Elder neglect is not a new subject in Indian public life. Op-eds are written about it, helplines exist for it, and an entire law has stood on the books since 2007 to prevent it. And yet individual cases rarely hold public attention for more than a single news cycle — until, occasionally, one does. The death of Shivcharan Gupta in a Sonipat old-age home in August 2026 was one of those cases: a former textile trader, cremated by care-home staff and neighbours he was not related to, while his three daughters joined the rites from three different states over video call and sent money for the ceremony by phone.

What made the story resonate was not its novelty. It was its familiarity. Readers did not need to be told that this happens; many suspected, correctly, that it happens often. This article treats the Sonipat case as an entry point rather than an endpoint — a way into the demographic, economic and legal literature that explains why a scene like this was almost predictable, and why the public conversation that followed it, focused heavily on the daughters' individual failings, largely missed the more uncomfortable structural story underneath.

What Happened in Sonipat

Gupta, whose age was reported inconsistently as 74 or 78, had moved into a facility run by the Samaj Kalyan Shiksha Samiti roughly eighteen months earlier, together with his wife Meena. The couple had no sons; they had spent their working years raising and educating three daughters — the eldest now a teacher in Nepal, a second living in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, and the youngest in Mumbai. Meena died first, leaving Shivcharan alone at the home.

About twenty days before his death, staff at the facility told the daughters that their father's health was deteriorating and urged them to visit. According to the home's administrator, Gupta had kept up regular phone contact with his daughters in earlier years, but the calls had grown sparser as his condition worsened. He died at around 3:30 a.m.; staff again contacted the daughters, this time offering to preserve his body if they needed time to travel. All three said they could not come, citing lack of time.

With no relative present, staff and local residents performed the last rites themselves. The daughters joined by video call from Nepal, Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai. The eldest, Anita, transferred Rs 5,100 online and asked that the rites be conducted with dignity. Afterward, the sisters asked the home to immerse their father's ashes in the Ganga on their behalf, and to send them video of the ceremony.

One Case, a National Pattern

Set against the wider evidence on ageing, migration and elder abuse in India, almost every element of the Sonipat case — the geographic scatter of the children, the old-age home, the underused legal remedy, the video-call substitute for physical presence — turns out to be common rather than exceptional.

A Nation Ageing Faster Than It Can Care For

India's population aged 60 and above has grown from roughly 104 million at the 2011 Census to an estimated 153 million today, and is projected to exceed 320 million by 2050, when close to one in five Indians will be a senior citizen. That growth has coincided with rising internal and international migration for work and marriage, so that adult children increasingly live in different cities, states or countries from their ageing parents — precisely the configuration in the Gupta family, split across Nepal, Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai. Old-age homes have multiplied in response, absorbing elderly residents who no longer live with family, whether by circumstance or estrangement.

Neglect, Measured

Elder neglect in India is not merely anecdotal; it has been tracked, imperfectly but consistently, for years. A 2024 HelpAge India study of 5,169 elderly respondents found that 7% reported some form of abuse, with 42% identifying sons as the primary abuser and 28% identifying daughters — a reminder that neglect is not confined to one gender of child, which is relevant given how much public commentary on the Sonipat case focused specifically on the daughters. Earlier HelpAge India tracking recorded reported abuse rising from about 25% in 2018 to 47% in a 2022 update, with abandonment becoming a more visible category over time. A separate 22-city HelpAge India survey found that nearly 60% of senior citizens believed elder abuse was widespread, and 10% said they had personally experienced it. Across multiple studies of old-age-home residents specifically, neglect — rather than physical violence — is consistently the most common form of mistreatment, alongside financial and emotional abuse.

The Cost of Growing Old Poor

An estimated 40% of India's elderly live below the poverty line, often without independent income, which leaves them structurally dependent on family and acutely vulnerable when that support is withdrawn. Financially secure seniors who can afford private senior-living arrangements are comparatively insulated from this risk; poorer and lower-middle-class elderly people are far more likely to end up in charity-run old-age homes, like the one in Sonipat, or to face outright abandonment, since India still has limited public infrastructure built specifically for this population.

A Law That Exists on Paper

India is not without a legal remedy. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007, obliges adult children — and certain other relatives who inherit a senior's property — to provide maintenance, meaning food, clothing, housing and medical care, to parents who cannot support themselves. Parents can approach a state-level Maintenance Tribunal for an order, and wilful abandonment can attract a fine or up to three months' imprisonment. The obligation is explicitly gender-neutral: sons and daughters carry it equally, and the law even allows a senior citizen to revoke a property transfer made to a child who later fails to provide care.

Despite this, applications and public awareness of the Act remain limited, and case backlogs are common, even as the Ministry of Social Justice has recorded a steady year-on-year rise in maintenance claims filed by parents against their own children. In 2021 the government launched Elderline, a national helpline for counselling and intervention, partly in response to how chronically underreported elder abuse has historically been. Legal commentators note that enforcement remains weak and maintenance awards are widely seen as inadequate — so that a law which is gender-neutral in text does little, in practice, to counter the informal social expectations that continue to assign caregiving unevenly within Indian families.

The Funeral on a Screen

The daughters' use of a video call to “attend” cremation rites — a ritual that traditionally requires physical presence in Hindu practice — echoes a pattern that became far more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel restrictions forced many families into remote participation in funerals. What began as a pandemic-era necessity appears to have persisted afterward as a more general workaround for physical absence, regardless of the underlying reason for that absence. In that light, the Gupta daughters' video-call cremation looks less like an isolated act of neglect and more like the routinisation of a coping mechanism that Indian families now reach for whenever presence is not possible — for reasons ranging from disease control to distance to cost.

The Blame Game: Gender, Migration and the Limits of Public Judgment

Much of the social-media reaction to Gupta's death was framed pointedly around gender: a father with no sons, “abandoned” by his daughters. That framing sits uneasily against the data in the previous section, since at least one national survey finds sons cited as primary abusers more often than daughters. It also glosses over a more structural driver that recent research increasingly foregrounds: migration itself, independent of the migrating child's sex.

Studies of out-migration-prone regions in India find that when sons relocate for work, caregiving responsibility frequently shifts onto daughters or daughters-in-law who remain nearby, even though sons continue to be culturally regarded as the primary caregivers. Comparable findings from Kerala's emigrant households show that daughters took on a larger share of parent-care specifically because their brothers had emigrated — evidence that physical proximity, not gender per se, is often the operative variable. Read this way, the Gupta case is not a story about daughters failing a son's duty; it is a story about a household with no locally positioned adult child of either sex, which is a different and arguably more urgent problem, since it cannot be solved simply by redistributing expectations between siblings.

There is a further complication. HelpAge India's national surveys have repeatedly found that a majority of elders who experience abuse do not disclose it, most often to protect family reputation and keep domestic problems private. That means the abuse statistics cited above — including the finding that sons are named as primary abusers somewhat more often than daughters — likely undercount true prevalence across the board, and any comparison between “sons” and “daughters” as abuser categories should be read as directional, not definitive.

Discussion: What Sonipat Really Tells Us

Taken individually, none of the elements of the Sonipat case is remarkable. An elderly parent in a care home; children living in other states or countries; a health decline communicated by phone; a funeral organised by staff; a last-minute financial transfer; grief experienced through a screen. It is the accumulation of these ordinary elements in one clearly reported, named case that makes it useful as a research object — because each element can be checked against a body of independent evidence, and in every instance, it checks out as typical rather than aberrant.

This matters for how the case should be interpreted. Public commentary tends to default to individual moral explanation: three daughters who did not make time for their dying father. The evidence assembled here does not exonerate individual choices, but it does relocate the central question. The more analytically honest version of the Sonipat story is not “why did these three women fail their father,” but “what set of demographic, economic and legal conditions makes an outcome like this statistically unsurprising for a very large number of Indian families, of any composition of sons and daughters, going forward.” Population ageing is accelerating faster than caregiving infrastructure; poverty removes the option of private eldercare for a large share of seniors; a gender-neutral law is inconsistently enforced and poorly used; and migration, for work or marriage, increasingly means that no child at all is within physical reach when a parent's health turns critical. Video-call attendance at a funeral is, in this framing, less a symptom of family breakdown than a technological patch over a structural gap that neither the market nor the state has fully closed.

Conclusion

Shivcharan Gupta's death is a small, specific window onto a much larger national pattern: a population ageing faster than its social and legal infrastructure can accommodate; documented, and likely undercounted, neglect implicating sons and daughters alike; economic precarity that leaves poorer seniors most exposed; and a legal framework whose gender-neutral text has not translated into gender-neutral public interpretation. The intensity of the reaction to his death — and the specific way that reaction settled on the absence of his daughters — says as much about persistent cultural expectations of caregiving as it does about the particulars of one family.

Read against the wider evidence, the case argues less for individual moral judgment of the three daughters involved, and more for sustained attention to the structural conditions — migration, cost, legal enforcement and institutional capacity — that increasingly determine whether any Indian family, regardless of how many children it has or what sex they are, can be physically present for its elders at the end of life.

Dr. Sana Hashmi is Assistant Professor at Al-Barkaat College of Graduate Studies, Aligarh. Views expressed by the author are personal.

पुस्तक समीक्षा: मज़बूती का नाम महात्मा गांधी

2026-05-25T12:37:37.797+00:00

पुस्तक विवरण:

मज़बूती का नाम महात्मा गांधी
पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल
राजकमल पेपरबैक्स, रुपये 299/-, 196 पेज

नवेद अशरफ़ी

‘मज़बूती’ या ‘मज़बूत’ शब्द उर्दू ज़बान से लिया गया है। जानकार कहते हैं कि उर्दू में यह शब्द अरबी भाषा से आया है और इसका मूल ‘ज़ब्त’ है। ज़ब्त यानि धीरज, सहनशीलता, बर्दाश्त या संयम। प्रोफ़ेसर पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल की नई किताब ‘मज़बूती का नाम महात्मा गांधी’ गांधी जी के व्यक्तित्व के इसी बिन्दु पर केंद्रित है। लेखक अपनी इस रचना में गांधी जी को तपस्वी के रूप में देखते हैं और उनके व्यक्तित्व की अविरल धारा को दो किनारों ‘करुणा’ और ‘संयम’ के बीच बहता हुआ पाते हैं, वह संयम और करुणा में भी ‘संयम’ को वरीयता देते हैं क्योंकि वह मानते हैं कि ‘बिना संयम के सच्ची करुणा संभव नहीं है’। (पृष्ठ 46)

अक्सर किताबों में गांधी जी का सम्बन्ध दो शब्दों से स्थापित किया जाता है: सत्य और अहिंसा। प्रोफ़ेसर अग्रवाल अपनी पुस्तक में इस बात पर विस्तृत चर्चा करते हैं कि गांधी जी के लिए ‘सत्य’ के क्या मायने हैं और ‘ईश्वर सत्य है’ से आरम्भ होने वाली यात्रा कब ‘सत्य ही ईश्वर है’ की मंज़िल पर पहुँच जाती है। जबकि गांधी जी के लिए ‘अहिंसा’ शब्द का सीधा सम्बन्ध ‘संयम’ से है। बक़ौल लेखक, ‘मनुष्य जो कुछ है, उससे आगे कुछ होना चाहता है. मनुष्य केवल प्रकृति नहीं है, बल्कि संस्कृति भी है. हिंसा एक प्राकृतिक तथ्य है लेकिन अहिंसा एक सांस्कृतिक मूल्य होना चाहिए’। अर्थात अहिंसा का वृक्ष संयम के अंकुर से जन्म लेता है। नेशनल फ़्यूल रिसर्च इंस्टिट्यूट, धनबाद के उद्घाटन के समय 22 अप्रैल 1950 को पण्डित जवाहरलाल नेहरु ने भी यही बात संस्कृति के प्रसंग में कही थी, ‘मन और आत्मा का विस्तार ही संस्कृति है’।

लगभग 26 पेजों की भूमिका के अतिरिक्त यह पुस्तक 6 भागों में विभक्त है। लेखक ने भूमिका में ही गांधी जी का परिचय ‘तपस्वी’ के रूप में कराया है। गांधी जी ऐसे तपस्वी थे जो कह पाते थे कि मेरी तपस्या तो वहाँ है, जहां मनुष्य की पीड़ा है, इसलिए मैं हिमालय जाकर क्या करूंगा! दिलचस्प बात यह है कि लेखक ने ‘तपस्वी’ शब्द का इस्तेमाल अंतिम अध्याय के शीर्षक में स्पष्ट रूप से किया है। दरमियानी अध्यायों में सत्य, ईश्वर, आस्था, नैतिकता, निरीश्वरवरवाद, हिन्दू, हिन्दुत्व, सनातन, तर्क, विवेक, चिंतन, कर्म, आधुनिकता, सार्वभौम मानवमूल्य इत्यादि पर केंद्रित विमर्श के ज़रिए गांधी जी की ‘तपस्या’ को समझने और परिभाषित करने का सफल प्रयास किया गया है।

किताब का पहला अध्याय ‘मज़बूती का नाम महात्मा गांधी’ दरअसल लेखक का वह लोकप्रिय व्याख्यान है जो उन्होंने 2 अक्टूबर 2005 को गांधी शांति प्रतिष्ठान में दिया था। व्याख्यान की लोकप्रियता का कारण इसके शीर्षक में लेखक द्वारा ‘मज़बूती’ शब्द का चयन करना था, क्यूंकी कदाचित इस व्याख्यान से पूर्व भारतीय जनमानस ‘मजबूरी’ को ही गांधी जी का दूसरा नाम मानता आया था। 2005 से अब तक यह व्याख्यान विभिन्न वेबपोर्टलों अथवा सोशल मीडिया में बहुत पढ़ा गया है। यह पुस्तक उसी व्याख्यान का विस्तृत संस्करण है।

मौजूद दौर में हिंसा का अभूतपूर्व साधारणीकरण और विकेन्द्रीकरण लेखक के लिए चिंता का विषय है। हिंसा मनुष्य को कमज़ोर बनाती है जबकि अहिंसा उसको धीरज और संयम प्रदान करती है, उसको मज़बूत बनती है। गांधी जी इसीलिए मज़बूत हैं क्योंकि वह अहिंसा के तपस्वी हैं। गांधी जी जिस अहिंसा की बात करते हैं वह उनके निजी नवाचार और अन्वेषण पर आधारित है और प्रोफ़ेसर अग्रवाल के शब्दों में कहें तो गांधीजी का यह कहना कि सत्य और अहिंसा शाश्वत हैं, बिल्कुल सही है; लेकिन गांधीजी की अहिंसा, परम्परा से चली आ रही अहिंसा का विस्तार नहीं है, वो उनकी मौलिक जीवनदृष्टि है। गांधी जी की अहिंसा ने अंग्रेज़ी हुकूमत की हिंसात्मक ‘सजेस्टिव पावर’ अर्थात उसके इक़बाल को चकनाचूर कर दिया था। इसीकारण गांधी जी की अहिंसा प्रासंगिक है और आज भी गांधी जी मज़बूत दिखाई देते हैं।

दूसरे अध्याय में गांधी जी के हवाले से आस्था और विवेक पर सार्थक बहस की गई है। जब विदेश से आए हुए एक पादरी बेसिल मैथ्यूस गांधी जी की आध्यात्मिक साधना में सहायक धर्म ग्रंथों के बारे में पूछते हैं तो गांधी जी गीता, कुरान, बाइबिल का नाम लेते हैं और स्पष्ट करते हैं कि वह इन ग्रंथों के पास ‘आलोचनात्मक मानस’ के साथ नहीं जाते लेकिन यह ज़रूरी नहीं कि वह इन ग्रंथों की हर बात पर राज़ी हो जाएं! ऐसा क्यूँ? आपकी कसौटी क्या है? पादरी ने पूछा। गांधी जी ने कहा, ‘मैं गीता समेत हर धर्म ग्रंथ को अपने विवेक की कसौटी पर आँकता हूँ’।

गांधी जी ईश्वर के अस्तित्व को तर्क से परे मानते थे लेकिन इस के अतिरिक्त हर धार्मिक अनुभव को परखने के लिए वह तीसरी छननी की वकालत करते हैं जो अपने ‘विवेक की कसौटी’ होती है। (जबकि पहली व दूसरी छननी क्रमश: अवतार या पैग़म्बरों की वाणी और विद्वानों की व्याख्या की होती है।) गांधी जी के यहाँ ‘तीसरी छननी’ की बाध्यता दूसरों पर नहीं है। अपने निजी अन्वेषणों मे यक़ीन रखने वाले गांधी जी ने यह छननी अपने लिए ही चुनी थी। दूसरी महत्वपूर्ण बात यह है कि गांधी जी के लिए धर्म नैतिकता को मापने का पैमाना नहीं था। धर्म के झण्डाबरदार बहुत से लोग निजी एवं सामाजिक जीवन में नैतिकता से कोसों दूर होते हैं। ऐसी स्थिति में अमुक व्यक्ति का आचरण, उसकी नैतिकता इस बात की द्योतक होगी कि उसने धर्म के मर्म को कितना आत्मसात किया है। इस अध्याय में गीता के कर्म सिद्धांत, मध्यमार्ग तथा सार्वभौम मानव मूल्यों के ज़रिए नैतिकता और आस्था पर विचारोत्तेजक टिप्पणियाँ की गई हैं, विशेषकर, अहमदिया और नबुव्वत वाले मसले पर संगसारी को लेकर गांधी जी के विचार और लेखक की टिप्पणियाँ पठनीय हैं।

किताब का तीसरा अध्याय ईश्वरविश्वास, निरीश्वरवाद, आस्था और सत्य की परिभाषाओं पर केंद्रित है। लेखक के सुझाए ये दोनों शब्द (ईश्वरविश्वास, निरीश्वरवाद) बहुप्रचालित शब्द ‘आस्तिक’ और ‘नास्तिक’ की जगह प्रयोग किए गए हैं। गांधी जी की अविचल आस्था का ज़िक्र करते लेखक कहते हैं कि तर्क और अनुभव की पूर्ण उपेक्षा कर आस्था का राग अलापना ठीक नहीं है। तर्क आधारित आस्था मनुष्य को हर घड़ी बेहतर बनने की प्रेरणा देती है क्यूंकी उसको यह भ्रम नहीं होता कि वह ही सर्वश्रेष्ठ है और उसके समक्ष सब तुच्छ हैं! यह तर्क आधारित आस्था ही इंसान को हर प्रकार की कूपमंडूकता से दूर रखती है। लेखक के अनुसार कूपमंडूकता की यह प्रवृति, विशेषकर, एकेश्वरवादी धर्मावलंबियों मे अधिक प्रबल होती है क्यूंकी उनके यहाँ शुभ और अशुभ का इकट्ठा रहना मुमकिन ही नहीं है। जबकि गांधी जी अशुभ के बग़ैर शुभ का अस्तित्व ही नहीं मानते हैं। गांधी जी का ईश्वर में विश्वास ‘आस्था की छलांग’ के रूप में फलीभूत होता है; वह ईश्वर को मानव तर्क से परे मानते हैं और उनके नज़दीक यह आस्था की सीमा नहीं है बल्कि ‘तर्क की सीमा’ है।

गांधी जी विवेक की छलनी से ही ‘ईश्वर सत्य है’ के बोध को ‘सत्य ही ईश्वर है’ के उत्कर्ष तक ले जाते हैं। यह तर्कशील आस्था के ज़रिए ही सम्भव हो पाता है क्यूंकी तर्क के मंच पर ही द्विपक्षीय वार्ता से इतर तीसरे विकल्प की संभावना तलाश करना सुगम हो सकता है और लेखक ने इस बात को गांधी-गोरा संवाद से स्थापित किया है। गोरा (गोपराज रामचन्द्र राव) एक तेलुगु भाषी निरीश्वरवादी थे जो गांधी जी के संरचनात्मक कार्यक्रम से प्रभावित थे और इस दिशा में लंबे समय से ज़मीनी काम कर रहे थे। उनकी प्रबल इच्छा थी कि वह ईश्वर के अस्तित्व पर गांधी जी से सार्थक विमर्श करें, लेकिन गांधी जी ने व्यस्तताओं के कारण इसका कभी समय नहीं दिया। जब विमर्श की घड़ी आई तो गोरा ने कहा मेरे संरचनात्मक कार्यों का आधार तो निरीश्वरवाद ही है क्यूंकी इससे मैं किसी के बीच भेदभाव करने के खतरों से दूर हो जाता हूँ। इस पर गांधी जी ने कहा, ‘क्या ज़रूरत है ईश्वर के अस्तित्व को नकारने की?... मैं यह नहीं कहता कि मेरा ईश्वरवाद सही है और तुम्हारा निरीश्वरवाद ग़लत। हम दोनों सत्य के खोजी हैं। हो सकता है भविष्य में तुम मेरे रास्ते पर चलने लगो या मुझे तुम्हारी शैली पसंद आ जाए; या फिर हम कोई तीसरा मार्ग ही खोज लें”। सत्य (अर्थात ईश्वर) के अस्तित्व पर गांधी जी का यह कर्मोन्मुख संवाद उनकी विशालता को दर्शाता है जिसकी प्रतिध्वनि गांधी जी के देहांत के बरसों बाद भी उनके शिष्य पण्डित नेहरु की जिह्वा पर होती है:

“सत्य पर किसी का एकाधिकार नहीं है। सत्य इतना विशाल, व्यापक और अथाह है कि उसको किसी किताब, धर्म, अथवा मस्तिष्क तक सीमित नहीं किया जा सकता है”। (भारतीय विज्ञान कांग्रेस, 14 जनवरी 1957, कलकत्ता)

अब सवाल उठता है कि मौजूदा समय में प्रोफ़ेसर पुरुषोत्तम अग्रवाल की यह पुस्तक कितनी प्रासंगिक है और इसे क्यूँ पढ़ा जाना चाहिए। जवाब किताब के अंतिम हिस्से में हैं जहां हमें सावरकर और गांधी में एक को चुनना है। सावरकर के यहाँ राष्ट्र का सिद्धांत यूरोपीय परंपरा से प्रेरित है, वहाँ एक धर्म, एक संस्कृति, एक भाषा, एक नस्ल का बोलबाला है। उनके यहाँ बलात्कार जैसे जघन्य अपराध को भी राजनीतिक उपकरण माना जाता है। हमें गांधी या सावरकर में किस को चुनना है, यह लेखक की इस टिप्पणी से स्पष्ट हो जाता है:

“गांधी जी द्वारा प्रेरित ‘मानवनिष्ठ भारतीयता’ में नैतिक आयाम अनिवार्यत: निहित है।… सावरकर का राष्ट्रवाद एकेश्वरवादी संस्कार में पनपी एकता के नाम पर जीवन की विविधता को बलपूर्वक नकारने वाली यूरोपीय राष्ट्रभावन से प्रेरित था। गांधी जी सारी दुनिया की हवा के लिए खिड़कियां खुली रखते हुए अपनी ज़मीन पर पैर जमाए हुए थे। सावरकर अपनी ज़मीन की पहचान ही नहीं कर पाए”।

गांधी जी का दर्शन और उनकी ‘मानवनिष्ठ भारतीयता’ दरअसल ऋगवेद के ‘"आ नो भद्राः क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वतः" के आदर्श का ही विस्तार है। देखिए, हम इस आदर्श को और कितना विस्तार दे पाते हैं, गांधी जी की तपस्या को कितना समझ पाते हैं, और धर्म, जाति, रंग, भाषा, लिंग इत्यादि के चश्मों से हटकर प्राणी मात्र की पीड़ा को हम कितना समझ पाते हैं, यह तो समय के गर्भ में ही है।

डॉ० नवेद अशरफ़ी मौलाना आज़ाद नेशनल उर्दू यूनिवर्सिटी, हैदराबाद, तेलंगाना में असिस्टेंट प्रोफ़ेसर (पब्लिक ऐड्मिनिस्ट्रैशन) हैं।

She Turns Twenty-Five: Devbhoomi’s Growing Pains

2026-05-18T16:40:52.882+00:00

By Bhawesh Pant

A tremor jolts her awake. As she watches closely, the mountains in the distance seem to move; a part of the slope breaks away and crashes into the Dhauliganga River flowing below. She freezes. It reminds her of August 5, 2025 when a cloudburst in Dharali triggered flash floods that took the lives of many she knew; some still remain missing.

Such tragedies have become almost ordinary for her. When she recalls 2023, she remembers that around a hundred people lost their lives in landslides, with nearly 1,800 such incidents reported that year. Even now, she wakes up suddenly at night, haunted by memories of 2013, when the floods in Kedarnath washed away nearly 6,000 people from her own land. Studies, such as ISRO’s Landslide Atlas 2023, show that many districts of Uttarakhand fall within the highest landslide-density zones. Reading such reports only heightens her anxiety.

Her sleep is disturbed by the daily sound of explosives tearing the mountains apart. To meet the electricity demands of surrounding states, twelve hydel projects have been sanctioned. To facilitate pilgrimages, the Char Dham highway project has undertaken unprecedented construction across the fragile Himalayan terrain. Without adequate environmental assessment and context-sensitive planning, these infrastructural expansions have weakened the Himalaya and frightened her further, as she watches her trembling mountains crumble before her eyes.

Gradually, her friends started leaving one by one. Those who once attended school with her, ate kaafal berries and shaped ghughutiya sweets, were compelled to leave their villages for Haldwani, Dehradun, Lucknow or cities across northern India. She was left alone. The neighbouring village where her school was situated is now completely deserted. The media refers to such places as ‘ghost villages.’ Across Uttarakhand, over 1,700 villages have become silent, abandoned settlements. Locks hanging from doors and unkempt verandahs mourn their own desolation. Official estimates suggest that over 70,000 hectares of agricultural land have become barren, although independent assessments place the number closer to 100,000 hectares.

Government records show that 1,671 schools have closed down, and more than 3,000 have fewer than ten students; they are on the verge of closure. Poor roads, hilly terrain, and the shortage of health professionals make rural healthcare nearly impossible. Her grandmother, too, died without treatment; the nearest facility that could have saved her was 180 kilometres away, and the connecting road had been washed away by the monsoon rains.

Such daily exclusions push people into Mahindra Maxx jeeps, Alto cars, and UTC buses, each journey a gamble with destiny.

Not long ago, a tailor she knew, Master Sahab, ran a well-known tailoring shop in the local bazaar. For decades, he had also stitched Ramlila costumes for the village performers—a craft he took quiet pride in. During the recently held Uttarakhand Panchayat elections, a group of men shouting anti-Muslim slurs outside his shop forced him to lock it up for several days. When Master Sahab returned, he found that his customer base had visibly reduced, and the atmosphere around the market was slightly tense. The longstanding insider–outsider discourse that once divided pahadi and plainsfolk now takes the form of Hindu–Muslim hostility. Whether it is a Ram Navami procession or a political rally, when she hears anti-Muslim slogans, her body shudders.

She often thinks about her rajya’s condition. Was this the destiny envisioned by those who fought for decades and gave their lives for the creation of a new state? Mining has hollowed her mountains, majoritarianism has poisoned the air of coexistence, addiction has consumed her known ones, and migration has left her villages orphaned. Hope for rejuvenation, meanwhile, feels increasingly distant.

All she carries are a few gentle wishes: that her friends return; that when her mother falls ill, she will not have to travel hundreds of kilometres for medical help; that when the monsoon comes, she can enjoy the greening hills instead of reading death tolls in the local newspaper. She longs for the loud waves of majoritarianism to subside, and for the calm breeze of harmony to return to her hills.

Ah! I almost forgot to tell you her name.

The name of that twenty-five-year-old soul is Devbhoomi.

Bhawesh Pant is a research scholar at the TISS, Mumbai. Email: bhaweshpant09@gmail.com

World Needs Global Leaders, Not Global Powers

2026-04-30T05:36:00.004+00:00

by Dr. Mohd Shahwaiz and Dr. Shayenaz

The world is in a state of despair as the end of conflict, and the possibility of peace between the US and Iran is seemingly ‘uncertain’ in the near future. On 28 February 2026, the US-Israel air strike on Iran killed prominent government officials, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Since then, more than 1500 civilians have been killed in Iran so far. The missiles reportedly caused grave destruction and the massacre of 167 minor girls’ students of an elementary school in Minab, Southern Iran. UNESCO outlined that it is “a grave violation of humanitarian laws and attack against educational institutions endanger students and teachers, undermining the ‘right to education’.”

The effects of war have also engulfed the entire world, in one way or other way, disproportionately as it has endangered millions of lives worldwide by triggering a severe food crisis due to disruption in the energy supply chain after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran.

According to the World Food Programme, about 45 million people could face an acute hunger crisis, and hundreds of millions could be further dragged into the same crisis if war continues. However, the uncertainty of peace, in this regard, is dominating over the feasibility of conflict resolution.

The reason behind this is that the world is dominated by a global power and global leadership is severely lacking.

One of the most notable experts on leadership, John C. Maxwell, emphasizes that leadership is built on adherence to principles and laws rather than talent of dominance and power. He firmly believes that “leaders become great not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others”. However, the world is more characterized by global powers in which power is being used to fuel fear, hegemonize, and disempower others. In addition, such powers have been cherished, glorified, and justified in international politics.

The state with aspiration and assertion of power with wrath is considered as the raison d'état, or in common parlance, a rational act of the state to survive in the international anarchy. Interestingly, rationalizing the urge for power as the need for survival in international politics is greatly contributed to by those who made ‘anarchy’ the fashion in world politics.

This is because the game of war is more suitable for their personal interests than to advocate for world peace. For example, why Ukraine needs to wage war against Russia for the liberation, or why Israel needs to terminate the people of Palestine to justify its occupation and ensure its security, or why the USA needs to kill Iran’s Supreme leader to establish peace and deliver justice to the Iranian people, as proclaimed by the USA.

The celebration of peace cannot be possible and desirable on the corpses of the people. Similarly, the liberation and emancipation of people or a country should not be justifiable at the expense of captivity, subjugation, and remorse of the other. This world is not the ground of zero-sum politics where the situation is always dichotomous, but for a convergence and win-win situation for all.

Therefore, Alexander Wendt rightly outlines “anarchy is what state makes of it,” and the world needs to emancipate itself first from such an illusory world of pessimism, and this could only be possible by the global leaders.

Power creates binaries, contestation, and juxtaposition in politics. Whereas the leadership realizes responsibility over egoism, prioritizes peace over conflict, and emphasizes the principles of justice over complaint for the social construction of international politics as “struggle for power and peace”.

Global leaders fill the vacuum with optimism, peace, and integrate the world. For instance, Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned the idea of the “United Nations” and kindled the ray of hope of peace even in the darkest times during the ongoing Second World War. Winston Churchill, who came forward and dared to secure his people, also proposed the idea of the “United States of Europe,” which has played a crucial role in uniting Europe under the umbrella of the European Union.

In addition, if we turn to the Global South, personalities like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi established exemplary leadership in terms of fighting against racism and imperialism with peaceful and non-violent mechanisms, respectively.

However, the world has witnessed that power is often used to defy laws, threaten peace, and impose one’s will upon others. As Michael Hardt and Antonio Negro observed that the existing world order “functions through crisis and even feeds on it,” and crises are instrumentalized to strengthen control and unleash power.

More unfortunate, in addition, is that such traits of pseudo leadership and maneuver of power are worshipped, celebrated, glorified, and admired to establish peace in the world. Therefore, peace is always at the verge of being at stake because it rests on power, and power is uncertain, so is peace.

The war between the US and Iran is the result of that kind of power admiration in the game of world politics. Threatening nuclear dismantlement and behavioral transformation under the ultimatum of 15-points drafted and imposed by Washington upon Iran for mercy and truce was the expression of more power, arrogance, and an instrument of “maximalist pressure” than admirable traits of global leadership and adherence to international law.

On the other hand, Iran’s reaction to the US ultimatum was the demand of reparation and affirming sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz’ led to further escalation of the rift and perpetuated war between these two nations. Mediation was also tried and initiated, reportedly from other countries, like Pakistan, but it remained unfruitful.

The persistence of war is filled with egoism and narcissism, even at the expense of endangering millions of lives affected by this conflict, and keeping aside the responsibility of world peace. The existing situation between the US & Iran, though with a temporary ceasefire, is still antagonistic.

The US is obstinate in establishing victory and reassuring its global hegemony and status as a world superpower. Iran, on the other side, has converted this war into a matter of survival and vengeful obsession, in the short run, but also seeking opportunities to emerge itself as a regional power in the long run.

Apart from it, Israel perceives Iran relentlessly as a ‘threat to world peace’, though it is baseless and vague, and intoxicated with the idea of eliminating Iran, no matter the grave violation of international law and human rights.

Russia and China, as global powers, dared to criticize the US-Israel preemptive attack on Iran, but let the war continue and failed to play the role of responsible leaders to uphold world peace. Nation-States acted according to their national interest and showed their ‘neutrality’.

Paulo Freire has viewed in his landmark work “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” that “washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” However, this new trend of states’ neutrality in the midst of war showed their commitment to global powers rather than to the moral norms of righteousness and justice.

Whether the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas War, or the US-Iran war, their occurrence might be unfortunate, but their perpetuation was due to the existence of global powers. It has been unveiled that the current world order exists in an ‘illusion of peace’ and with a dearth of global leadership.

Therefore, the world is in a crisis of global peace due to the crisis of global leadership. So, if the world aspires to global peace, then it first aspires to produce and promote global leaders.

The article was published by Counter Currents.

Dr. Mohd Shahwaiz is Assistant Professor (Political Science & International Relations) at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Integral University, Lucknow. He can be reached at mdshahwaiz2012@gmail.com.

Dr. Shayenaz is Assistant Professor (Political Science) at the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Integral University, Lucknow. She can be reached at shayenazkhan786@gmail.com.

Concerning health, well-being and longevity

2025-07-14T07:44:00.003+00:00

By Roquiyya Fatima

The proverb ‘Health is Wealth’ clearly defines the value of health. In the present-day lifestyle, it has become a challenge to eat and live healthily. The trend of eating fast food or junk food has become common. It has impacted the health of an individual at a very early age. The illness that we used to hear among the elderly population are now very common among youth at a very young age. It is, therefore, mandatory to have an awareness of the various health disorders.

Unfortunately, we lack knowledge of basic health and medicine. The records of India show how many people suffer from several health issues because of carelessness and ignorance. The urban lifestyle has created a challenge for people to lead a healthy lifestyle. The purpose of writing this is to collect information about the various health issues with symptoms, and remedies of some major health problems.

Heart Attack

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are related to heart and blood vessels. They are among the common causes of death globally. The sedentary lifestyle, stress, and several other factors have made it possible to suffer from such a disease at a very young age. According to the World Health Organization, it was estimated that 17.9 million lives are lost due to CVDs, and more than four out of five CVD deaths are due to heart attacks and strokes, and one-third of these deaths occur prematurely in people under 70 years of age. Following may the causes of heart attack:

Atherosclerosis: It means the hardening of the arteries. An abnormal thickening of the walls of the arteries is due to cholesterol on the arterial inner wall, or in other words, the buildup of fatty deposits in the coronary arteries.

Coronary Heart Disease: It is a condition in which the blood vessels supplying the heart become narrowed or blocked due to fatty deposits. This restricts the blood flow to the heart muscles and leads to serious chest pain.

Angina Pectoris: It is more a symptom than a cause of heart attack. It is a chest pain that occurs when the heart muscle doesn’t get enough oxygen-rich blood. It is a symptom of coronary heart disease. There is tightness, pressure, heaviness, or burning pain felt behind the breastbone that also spread to the shoulders, left arms, neck, jaw, or back.

Heart Attack: It is complete blockage of the heart, or when the blood flow to the heart is blocked. It is also called myocardial infarction or MI.

Symptoms of Heart Attack

Symptoms of heart attack may include:

Chest pain
Pain in the left arm, neck, Jaw, back, or stomach.
Shortness of breath
Sweating
Nausea (i.e. an urge to vomit) or vomiting
Dizziness
Extreme fatigue
Heart palpitations

According to Dr. Issac Pessah, University of California, co-authored research showing chemicals in lipstick can hit your heart. A chemical commonly used in lipsticks, hand washes, and other personal care products may cause heart problems and muscle impairment. The triclosan, a synthetic antibacterial and antifungal agent used in many household products, can hinder the process by which muscles, including the heart, receive signals from the brain.

There is a difference between heart attack and cardiac arrest. One needn't be confused with the other.

Kidney Stones

Kidney stones are hard mineral salt deposits that form inside the kidneys. Approximately 12% of India's population is estimated to be affected by kidney stones, according to a report from MASSH Hospital.

A study has provided evidence to explain why some people are more prone to developing Kidney stones than others. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that, other than diet and not drinking enough water, genes are to be blamed as well. A common genetic variation in a gene called Claudin-14 has recently been linked to a substantially increased risk of roughly 65% of getting kidney stones.

Symptoms of Kidney Stones

Severe back pain
Pain during urination
Blood in urine (Hematuria)
Frequent urge to urinate
Foul-smelling urine
Nausea and Vomiting
Fever

Treatment

Small stones can pass on their own by drinking plenty of fluids.
Pain relievers like Paracetamol, Tramadol and Acelofenac strictly under urologist's supervision.
Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy (ESWL)- It uses sound waves to break stone into smaller pieces.
Ureteroscopy- a thin scope is inserted via the urethra to remove or break up the stone using a laser.
Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy (PCNL) – surgical removal by small incision in the back.
Open Surgery
Not but not the least, avoiding self medication or taking over the counter drugs.

Diabetes

Diabetes is a disorder of insufficient production of or reduced sensitivity to insulin. Insulin is a protein pancreatic hormone secreted by the beta cells of the Islets of Langerhans that is essential, especially for the metabolism of carbohydrates and the regulation of glucose levels in the blood, and that when insufficiently produced results in diabetes mellitus. Insulin is necessary to metabolize glucose. In Diabetes, blood sugar levels increase, and excessive sugar is excreted in the urine.

Symptoms

Increased urine output
Thirst
Extreme hunger
Blurred vision
Weight loss
Weakness
Neuropathy (A nerve problem that causes pain, numbness, tingling, swelling, or muscle weakness in different parts of the body, including the feet)
Excessive Sweating

TYPE 1 or Insulin-Dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM), and an immune disease in which no insulin is produced. Autoimmune disease- any disease caused by an immune response against antigens in the tissues of one’s own body.

The immune system has two ways to prevent such a response; destruction of lymphocytes in the thymus before and it must be treated by insulin injections

TYPE 2 or Non-insulin- dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), in which tissues do not respond to insulin, is linked to hereditary and obesity and may be controlled by diet; it accounts for 90% of all cases, many of which go undiagnosed for years, untreated diabetes leads to accumulation of ketones in the blood, followed by acidosis (high blood acid content) with nausea, vomiting and then coma.

Complications, including heart disease, diabetic retinopathy (a leading cause of blindness), kidney disease, and nerve disorders, especially in the legs and feet, account for most deaths.

Note: Ketone is used in the manufacture of paints, textiles, etc. It accumulates in the blood and urine in abnormal amounts, usually because of starvation or a metabolic disease such as Diabetes Mellitus.

Diabetes Insipidus

It causes excessive thrust and excess production of very dilute urine due to a lack of the hormone Vasopressin, which regulates kidneys’ water conservation and urine production.

Diabetes Mellitus

High Levels of Sugar in the blood

Treatment for Type-I Daibetes

Daily insulin injections
Blood Sugar Monitoring
Healthy Diet
Regular exercise

Treatment for Type-I Daibetes

Careful attention to content and timing of meals, with periodic checking of blood sugar, may manage diabetes
Regular exercise
Oral Medications (e.g., Metformin)

Metformin, an anti-diabetic drug, may slow aging, from the University of Belgium- the drug causes an increase in the number of toxic oxygen molecules released in the cell, and this, surprisingly, increases cell robustness and longevity in the long term. The drug causes a slight increase in the number of harmful oxygen molecules. This makes cells stronger and expands their healthy lifespan.

Arthiritis

Arthiritis simply means inflammation of joints. Basically, a joint is where one bone moves on another bone. Ligaments hold the two bones together. The ligaments (elastic band) keep the bones in place, or muscles relax or contract to make the joint move.

Cartilage covers the bone surface to stop the two bones from rubbing directly against each other. The covering of cartilage allows the joints to work smoothly and painlessly. A capsule surrounds the joint. The space within the joint cavity has synovial fluid (SF). It nourishes the joint and the cartilage. The SF is produced by the synovial membrane, which lines the joint cavity. It could be that the cartilage is wearing away, a lack of fluid, autoimmunity (your body attacking itself), infection, or a combination of other factors.

Some of the types of Arthritis

Osteoarthritis

The cartilage loses its elasticity. As the cartilage becomes damaged, tendons and ligaments become stretched, causes pain. Eventually the bone may rub each other causes pain.

Symptoms

Pain in joint
Joint will stiff, especially in the morning.
Tenderness, when pressure is applied to the joint.
Joint loses its flexibility
Swelling of the joint
Hard lumps, bone spurs, may appear around the joint

Rheumatoid Arthritis

The synovial membrane is attacked, resulting in swelling and pain. It is common in women aged between 40 to 60.

Symptoms

Joints are painful, stiff, swollen, inflamed
Fingers, arms, legs and writs are commonly affected
Joint is tender when touched
Symptoms are worst in the morning and stiffness last for 30 minutes.
Hand may be red or puffy
Bumps of tissues under the skin of the arms
Tiredness and weight loss
Spreads from the smaller joints in your hands, wrists, ankles, feet to your elbow, knees, hips, neck, shoulder and jaw.

Septic Arthritis/ Infectious Arthritis

It is due to infection of the synovial fluid, basically due to bacteria, viruses, and fungi. They spread through the bloodstream from infected tissues.

Symptoms

Fever
Joint inflammation and swelling
Sharp pain
One joint is affected mainly
Pain in mostly Knee, shoulder, elbow, wrist and finger.

Treatment

Medications- Ibrufen and Acetaminophen (for pain reliving) under medical supervision.
Physical Therapy
Lifestyle changes
Hot and cold therapy
Surgery
Stem cell therapy/Gene therapy

Drug prescribed for Rheumatoid Arthritis consist of two fused components:

1) A component of the drug is the body’s immune messenger Interleukin 4 (IL-4). Zurich researcher has coupled an antibody to IL-4 that, based on the key-lock principle, binds to a form of a protein that is found only in inflamed tissue in certain disease. As a result of the combination with the antibody IL-4 reaches the site of the disease when the fusion molecule is injected into the body. It allows us to concentrate the active substance at the site of the disease. The concentration in the rest of the body is minimal, which reduces side effects.

2) Researchers studied the fusion molecule combined with dexamethasone, a cortisone-like anti-inflammatory drug already used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

When used separately, the new fusion molecules and dexamethasone managed only to slow the progression of the disease in the affected animals.

Roquiyya Fatima is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

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Social Life in Pompeii

2025-06-19T04:53:00.001+00:00

This is the third part of three-part series on Pompeii. Read first part here and second part here.

By Roquiyya Fatima

The unfortunate destruction of the Roman city, also helped to perfectly preserve it, and hence it was surprising to note how the place was once so lavish and developed. There were marketplaces, Amphitheatres, pubs, temples, brothels etc.

The society was patriarchal. Men and women were not allowed to sit together in public gatherings. There were both male and female prostitutes. So, the people were actively indulging in fornication and aberrancy. There were brothels in large numbers with erotic images on the walls. It was completely legal profession and even taxed, a little resemblance to the Kautilyan depiction of Mauryan India. Sexuality was flaunted openly not only in the streets but also in the houses of common people.

There were dress codes for the prostitutes, most of them being slaves from Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Asia, and even had their names registered with age, place of birth, etc, and were also paid. There were about 41 brothels in the whole area, and Lupanar was believed to be the largest in the city and one of the oldest in the world, and these were not separated from public places.

The graffiti shows the existence of homosexuality or bi-sexuality and orgy. The images of phalluses, even at the entrance gate of various houses, were seen as good luck. The lewd images were seen even on potteries. Men even had concubines or slave girls, and they had to be loyal to their masters and were forced to follow their orders.

People were not allowed to marry outside their status, marriages were held to get the reputation, property, and to establish strong political relations. Wives were seen as procreators only.

Pompeii was seen as a holiday resort for the Roman elites. The presence of bars or pubs found during the excavation and dice confirms that gambling used to take place. The wine pots were large in number, and even the trade of wine was prevalent. This reveals that people were heavily indulged in gambling and drinking. As it shows that the Roman society lived a luxurious life.

Slavery

The slaves were large in number as even the corpse’s shows the belt around the waist and the name of their masters engraved in it. They were even exploited and their residences were different from the elite people as the small rooms and narrow passages as it showed the new world contrasting from the luxurious city.

There was hierarchical division even at the public places like seen in the Amphitheatre that people were allowed to sit according to their status as masters and slaves were not allowed to sit together.

Food

The people used to eat rich food like, sunbird, sea urchin, pigs, eggs, fish sauce (Garum), lentils etc. that even the poor were had healthy diet. These all were found in the recent study from the drains and waste materials of the city. There were grand and lavished dining and drinking room.

The study also revealed the strong teeth and masculine body that defines the healthy lifestyle of the ancient people.

Trade

The trade declined because of the earth quake which occurred before the eruption but there were still 600 different businesses during the final days.

Laundry

Laundry of Stephanus was a largest among all 18 discovered laundries intended to clean people’s clothes for money. The name of the laundry was discovered from graffiti and frescos outside the building. It was excavated in 1912.As for the cleaning purpose urine was used as a cleaner of the linens. Slaves used their feet in serving the purpose of washing the clothes.

Urine when come in contact with water it converts into Ammonia which is basic in nature and hence neutralizes the acidic dirt. The remains of the large clothes press were found in the east wall of the lobby. On the west side, an office for checking, delivering, receiving clothes were found.

Religion

Romans believed in various Gods and Goddesses. The Chief deity was the Jupiter. He was the king of gods in Roman mythology (The Greek name Zeus). Before the capturing of Pompeii by Romans, Apollo was the central deity. Worshipping of an Egyptian Goddesses Isis (Mother goddesses) was also seen.

They had polytheistic religion and believed that the more gods their Empire had to protect it, the stronger it would be. There were evidences of various temples found during the digging. The three of the important deities were Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. The oldest building in the city was the temple of Apollo.

Bacchus- God of wine was also worshipped as Pompeii had a Vineyard and leading wine-producing area. Various offerings and sacrifices of animals were done in the name of different gods and goddesses.

Roquiyya Fatima is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

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Architecture of Pompeii

2025-06-16T05:54:00.005+00:00

This is the second part of a three-part series on Pompeii. Read first part here and third part here.

By Roquiyya Fatima

The architecture of Pompeii is a blend of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman architecture. Roman in turn influenced by the Etruscans. They have shaped the Roman architecture.

The excavation of Pompeii depicts the lifestyle, architecture, and art of that era. Frescos were popular in Pompeian art. It is present both outside and inside the buildings. But mostly common outside, as the Romans were fond of outdoor living that many other types of artworks are found at the exterior portions.

The places for entertainment were also common, which reveals the lavish lifestyle of the Romans. The multi-storied buildings with richly decorated walls and marble floors were quite evident. The houses were rectangular and without windows.

The rich had magnificent villas called Dumas (Russians probably picked up the name for their parliament from them). The entrance gateway led to the atrium (central hall without a roof), which was surrounded by different rooms and devoid of windows, and the drain pool was situated at the center of the atrium. Due to the Greek influence, the quantity of rooms increased, and even the gardens got the addition of a porch surrounded by Corinthian columns. The Dumas were richly decorated. There were dining rooms and living rooms, all richly adorned. For example, the house of Julia Felix, who was a rich Roman lady, had a private bath in her villa.

Corinthian Column

The houses of the middle and poor classes were much simpler in plan and design. Even the common houses show a rich lifestyle. Now let us know the architecture of the public buildings.

Religious: Temple of Apollo, Temple of Jupiter. Temple of Isis, etc.
Economic: Covered market, Main forum etc.
Administrative: Basilica, Municipal offices etc.
Entertainment- Amphitheatres, Theatres etc.

Temple of Jupiter

The Temple of Jupiter (Greek name: Zeus) was a main deity of the Romans is an example of Etruscan architecture, was built in 509 B.C, located on the North side of the Forum. It has a rectangular structure with a high podium, which is characteristic of the Etruscan style, about 13 feet tall, serving as the foundation for the temple. A single staircase, again, shows the Tuscany style, which aimed to focus on the façade or the front of the temple, which leads to the deep porch.

The Cella was divided into three parts called tripartite Cella, which is again different from Greek architecture, and contains two rows of columns and side aisles. The temple contains 3 deities- Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. The materials used in the building are wood for the columns, again different from the Greeks as who used marble and stones, mud and brick for the podium, and terracotta for the decoration. The pediment was simple as truly defining the Etruscan style. The top was decorated by statues. The building technique used for the podium is the ashlar masonry. The temple also got the back wall which is a vivid depiction of Etruscan style. Today, the building is in shambles.

Before the Romans conquered Pompeii, Apollo was the central deity. However, after their rule was establishment, Jupiter replaced Apollo as the chief diety. Jupiter was believed to be the king of all gods.

Basilica

It would be of great interest to note that the canon prepared by Hungarian father and son duo used in the siege of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet ii was also named Basilica.

It dates back to between B.C- 78 B.C, and stood on the western side of the forum as a civil and political building. It is the first Basilica in the whole Roman Empire, and even the churches were also built in the same style for many years. Example: Old Saint Peter’s Basilica is a church in Rome, built in the same design and also found in Byzantine architecture. This led to the development of Christian architecture. Today, the structure is in the ruined state that most of the columns had broken and lost the roof.

It is rectangular in shape with columns inside (Peristyle). The main entrance is from the forum and an unroofed vestibule with five doorways. The building had three naves. This building resembles quite well with the Forum but the difference arises that it has got the large, double pitched titled roof unlike forum which is open above. The hall inside has got double Story with 28 fluted Ionic columns in the first story and Corinthian columns which is of smaller size in the second. It was built in the Greek style of both Ionic and Corinthian columns. Side walls are covered with frescoes. The tribunal is at the back of the basilica. The statue of Emperor Augustus was placed in front of the tribunal. He was the first Emperor of the Roman Empire. The Clerestory was lacking in this architecture. Later, it was introduced in the Roman architecture.

Amphitheatres

It is situated in the Southeastern corner of the city. The first preserved stone amphitheatre was constructed in 70 B.C. It even survived after the eruption. It is very simple in design, and the arena was excavated 6m below the ground level with earth from the excavations heaped up into the embankments that served as a seating area for the people.

People were seated according to their status, which accommodates around 2000 people. The Colosseum of Rome is based on this structure. The access steps are from the outside staircase. The outer walls are covered with graffiti. Masses gather around to see the gladiator battles.

Roads

Roads in Pompeii were highly developed. The stones between the roads act as a barrier or a speed breaker, and also a pathway to cross the road during the rainfall.

Conclusion

Pompeii was highly developed in its architecture, and the influences from various regions have revolutionized it. Like the Greeks, Etruscans, and even Italians were rich in building materials and good, hard stone, etc. The temple of the goddess Isis in Pompeii is an example of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman architecture. Several buildings were rebuilt or repaired due to the earthquake that occurred in 62 A.D. This has also changed the original designs of some structures. Most of them are in ruined condition. Still, it defines the architecture of that age. The graffiti has played an important role in acquiring a plethora of information regarding the architects, people, etc.

The Pompeii has wiped out the map of the world for thousands of years, but still, it is a living example of Roman life, that how they used to live, the houses, food, society, religion, etc. The perished land is holding a lot of secrets that helped Archaeologists and Historians to know about the great Roman society and its architecture.

Roquiyya Fatima is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

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Pompeii: The Lost City

2025-06-12T07:33:00.011+00:00

This is the first part of a three-part series on Pompeii. Read second part here and third part here.

By Roquiyya Fatima

Pompeii, located at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, is an archaeological site near the coast of the Bay of Naples. On 24 Aug 79 A.D, the morning started like an ordinary day. As it was, the ancient Roman city was well organized and had a network of major roads. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius devastated the whole town and left the city submerged under 4-6 m of ash. The blast brought pumice, ashes, other rocks, and hot volcanic gases that could be seen from hundreds of miles around. After that, the rain came, which sealed the entire surface with dust. The pyroclastic flows destroyed the whole town, lasting almost 18-24 hours.

The molten lava soared to a terribly high temperature around 800 degrees Celsius. The people were not prepared and had no left alternative except the choice of either hiding in their cellar or face the destruction. There were shrieks of women; children were crying, people reaching out for their family members. To worsen the matters further, the gases made the whole atmosphere gloomy consequently, detering everyone's vision. They were able to recognise each other through their voices only. Many of the babies never woke up. The whole city turned into a horrible scene that no one could have imagined even in their wildest dreams. In an unfortunate coincidence, all this happened the very next day after the festival of the Roman god of fire, VULCANALIA.

The writer Pliny, the Younger had watched the eruption from across the bay. It was his letter that gave the profound voice to the havock of that horrible day. He compared this “cloud of unusual size and appearance “to a pine tree that “rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches”, today, this type of volcano is known as a “Plinean eruption”. It was 100-1000 times stronger than the nuclear bomb dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Hence, the whole city was lost for more than a thousand years. It was only in the year 1748, that the excavation of the town took place, and people were shocked to see the town with a treasury and lying bodies beneath the ashes. Pompeii’s twin sister, Herculaneum also suffered to meet the same fate. The total death toll remains unknown even to this day.

How the people of Pompeii died?

Pliny, the Younger, who was the only eye-witness, survived with his mother writing letters to a historian named Tacitus in which he narrated the deadliest day in the history of Pompeii. He described the eruption to have started around noon.

Some earthquakes occurred before the massive destruction, as the excavation describes the repairmen of several buildings. The tremor was an indication, but the Romans did not pay heed to the alarming condition. According to Volcanology, the magma causes both volcanic eruptions as well as earthquakes. When the excavation started, the whole town was found covered with in blanket of pumice. The bodies were lying as if narrating a gory tale of the last moments before their death. It looked as if they were suffering from asphyxiation.

Thousands of bodies were exhumed and studied, the technologies having made it much easier for Archaeologists to find the age, sex, and causes behind the death of the bodies. There were pregnant women, corpses of children with their mother; some were lying on their bed, even the bodies of animals, and also the food materials that got preserved as egg shells, a loaf of bread, etc.

The 3-D MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) was done by Prof. Francesco Silvano Sasso, Radiologist, University of Naples. discovered that the bodies were exposed to dusty air as the left Maxillary sinus tube of the bodies had white particle materials.

Geological data shows it ejected around 10,000 tons of materials every second, that rocks were thrown up to 40 k.m in the sky and returned down to the city in the form of rain. The volcanic rocks were broken into small particles and dropped from the sky, and people even covered their heads with pillows to avoid injury.

Prof. Ernesto De Carolis, Archaeologist, said that the people were carrying the keys of their houses as well as various precious stones, amulets, jewellery, and rings on their fingers. This revealed that it was not the sudden movement from their houses. There was a degree of hesitation, as earlier, they had planned to stay in their homes, but the velocity of rocks that penetrated even the insides of their homes had compelled them to move out.

Volcanologist Claudio Scarpati and colleagues Giuseppe Luongo and Annamaria Perrotta of the University of Naples Federico 2, examined the house of Lullius Polybius, where 13 skeletons were found and sent for mitochondrial DNA testing, which revealed six individuals belonged to the same family, including a pregnant woman.

Molecular Biologist, Marilena Cipollaro, of the Second University of Naples studied the same 13 skeletons through the DNA testing.

Prof. Antanino Cascino of the Second University of Naples said that a few bodies have their mouths wide open due to the lack of oxygen.

But the question arises as to what was the cause of this mass death?

Neel V.Patel of Popular Science explains,

“The cause of death may have been something else entirely, and the observed high temperature effects on the blood and tissue may have been produced by post-mortem pyroclastic flows.”

They travel faster than lava.

Gizmodo’s Dvorsky reports that many of the ash-corpses in Pompeii are curled into what archaeologists call the “pugilist” position, because the heat caused their muscle fibres to contract.

Volcanologist Giuseppe Mastro Lorenzo, Rome, said that the temperature was enough to kill 100 people at a time

The temperature was so high that it even killed the bacteria of the soils around the lying corpses, only it found in the cavities of bones of the bodies.

The first pyroclastic surge devastated the roof top and it was the fourth surge that actually buried the town.

The heat was so intense that it led to the Cadaveric spasm, which eventually resulted in the vaporization of the body fluids, which caused the sudden death of the masses without suffocation. In this way, about 62% of the population suffered postmortem spasm due to the pyroclastic surge.

This caused the sudden death, which clearly described their emotions before their last breath.

Some people died due to suffocation and by ash falls, but the majority had escaped and met with the most deadly attack.

The archaeological excavation found certain diseases, like congenital syphilis, in the twins.

The excavation shows the different ancestries, such as that of Africans, as the Roman era was at the peak of slavery.

There was the identification of soldiers through the marks on the skull.

Conclusion

The Roman town, which was once so lavish, had perished and lost even its existence on the map for about two thousand years. It was the the development of modern technologies that had revealed its existence.

Roquiyya Fatima is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh

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Production Technology of the Classical Antiquity

2025-05-29T20:51:00.008+00:00

By Bhavuk

Technology is one of the most crucial determinants of human progress and this fact was adequately taken account of by Karl Marx. While studying the material conditions of human societies dividing it into two components i.e. base and superstructure was one reason for it, a larger but oft missed idiosyncrasy of Marx was his focus upon the technology as it was a crucial factor in determining both the social surplus as well as the relation of production.

Technological advances made in various fields was a long and continuous process which helped in the aggregate of surplus as well as laid down a primitive stage of division of labour. We find this advance to be highly beneficial in so long as it reduced the human labour and allowed him to work longer and more efficiently, functioning more as a facilitator rather than bearing the full brunt of production himself.

We would survey the evolution of agricultural technology which started with a primitive hoe and then gradually moved towards plough which was later equipped with iron ploughshare. The harnessing of animals was the next important step in the field of technology because it not only reduced human labour but also enhanced agricultural produce. In order to store this surplus what was needed was the various vases and pots which were elegantly made through the advancement in pottery. Pottery is unique in its bifunctional nature as it represents in one sense the advancement of technology simultaneously acting as a preserver of technology accessible to us through the depictions on them.

We can also use the carvings, paintings, depictions as well as literary texts of the time. There have been full fledged texts devoted to technology like that of Vitruvius which help us gain crucial knowledge of technology of that time. The use of epics like Odyssey and Iliad may not lead us to trace a correct political history but they are surely helpful in reconstructing the technology of that time. Since the mode of production dominant in our time of study was the slave mode of production which hinged on the principle of abundant labour, we find a considerable amount of repulsion to technology, a fact adequately underscored by Perry Anderson in his book Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism.

Despite this there were few notable advances which deserve our attention. Some of them directly affected the production while others may have helped it indirectly or might have facilitated a better use of production. The first great advancement was made in the field of agriculture with a dual transition- first from the primitive hoe to the wooden plough with a ploughshare and then from the light plough to the heavy plough which helped optimize the use of the rich but heavy soil which the Greeks encountered as they kept conquering more and more territories. The harnessing of animals represented the next stage in this advancement with animal power emerging as a potent force reducing human labour as well as increasing the surplus. While in the dry areas it would suffice to have a light plough which could turn over the soil, in the areas with heavy soil not just the heavy plough but the irrigation too was an essential requirement (both for the dry as well as wet areas). This was done through an improvement in the water lifting devices which also made people more aware about the use of water power as a potent energy to help in other works as well.

All this was supplemented by improvement in transportation both water as well as land transport. It increased the surplus but with such increment the profits did not accrue to the producers more and more being appropriated by those who owned the means of production which meant the elite and the rich. Thus, instead of reducing the glaring inequalities of the ancient society, technological advances perpetuated the inequalities by furthering the ends of the slave mode of production.

Agricultural Technology

Agriculture started in our area of study at Jericho and then gradually started flourishing at other places including Fayum depression and the Mediterranean. Starting from a hoe and using one's own labour as animal domestication had not started yet what could be cultivated was one crop a year with not many options available. It was the long bronze age with changed the scenario as not only new methods and techniques arrived which included ploughs instead of hoes and pottery which could now be made by removing the water of concentration from the clay by passing it through fire.

As plough began being used around 3000 BC, first entirely wooden, we find written and inscribed documents attesting the use of plough in Egypt and Mesopotamia to this time. Evidence from China for the plough can be found around 1400 BC and a little later pictures of plough carved on the rocks of Sweden are also found. It changed the face of agriculture by freeing the farmer of his constraint of being confined to a plot instead he could now take to the tillage of fields which meant agriculture proper per se. Having tamed cattle to provide meat and then milk, it was realised that the heavy burden of toil could be shifted to the shoulder of the oxen.

This process included a yoke and harness by means of which the beast's tractive power could be imparted to it. As the broad shoulders of the ox could manage it, the ox did not suffer the fate of the horse and other animals at this stage. Neither its movement nor its respiration was affected by the yoke. If we look at the other civilizations then it was the Indian peasant who stood at the maximum advantage with the hump of the zebu bull which we had started domesticating through castration, one of the first experiments in bioengineering as well, as its hump gave better traction avoiding the problem of slippage so common to the Mediterranean agriculture.

Gordon Childe has spoken of harnessing ox power in such high regards that he wrote- "the ox was the first step to the steam engine and petrol motor." The ox power proved extremely useful in transportation as well since the sledges could be easily and effectively pulled by ox. This is also the time corresponding to which cart ruts have been found at pre-Harappan levels in India as well making the carts an innovation of the time.

It was with the coming of iron that the scenario changed as iron tools opened up virgin land for cultivation and armed fresh war-bands for conquest. Improved methods of mining and smelting, allowing the exploitation of even deep ores in the Austrian Alps and perhaps on other minefields, superior processes of casting and hammering and a reorganization of the metal trade to ensure the scrupulous collection and use of scrap had materially cheapened bronze. With iron, it could be further cheapened as iron also helped in tools making. The marked change identified by Gordon Childe has been- "mixed farming based on plough agriculture began to replace the regime of pastoralism combined with scratch agriculture (hoe)." The conical or triangular share of the scratch plough doesn't turn over the soil and leaves a wedge of undisturbed earth between each furrow because of which cross ploughing was necessary and therefore in areas where it was practiced we find squarish fields. This type of plough doesn't suit the wet and heavy soil of Northern Europe for which a heavy plough driven by ox was needed.

Pliny in the first century A.D. writes of such a heavy plough being employed in the Po valley (at the foothills of the Alps mountain)- 'deep cultivation with a heavy plough drawn by eight oxen and equipped with mould-board and coulter to turn over the soil instead of just scratching the soil as the Mediterranean and Celtic ploughs did.' The heavy plough handled the clouds with such violence that no need for cross ploughing was left. This saved peasant's labour and a larger area could be cultivated and with a change in the shape of the field from squarish to long and narrow, particular strips were formed which had immense drainage advantages. It was only through the heavy plough that a dense and highly rich alluvial bottom could be worked and taken advantage of.

We can turn to Hesiod's Work and Days and Attic black figure vases to know about the plough in detail. According to these sources the light plough was symmetrical and left a scratch on the soil and it could even be referred to as an ard which partly destroyed the weeds and partly air the topsoil. According to Hesiod, the ard had a beam (gye) which is a curved wood connecting the sole (elyma) with a draw bar (histboe) on to which the draught animals are hitched with a yoke (zygon). A stilt, equipped with a handlebar (echetle) may be attached to the sole and in front the sole may be equipped with a ploughshare made of bronze or iron.

Ploughing is frequently used in similes like the challenge offered by Odysseus to Eurymachus shows that steering a straight course for furrow is equally difficult. Most famous portrayal of ploughing comes from the shield of Achilles. Ploughing can also be attested to from a terracotta statuette found from Boetia (now Louvre). Vase painting of ploughing by Nikosthenes shows the ploughman standing behind the cart holding a long stick(goad?) with which he steers the oxen. Hesiod gives us three ploughing seasons- one in spring, one in summers and finally one in autumn, however a biennial system was the usual norm of the day which is attested to by the verb neao used specifically for the ploughing of a fallow field.

Iron impacted the world in a big way and its most direct effect could be seen in the field of agriculture for which we can again find a parallel from India of the contemporary times because with the coming of iron, forest clearance on a massive took place and the scene of agriculture shifted from the Indus basin to the Gangetic plains. Consequently we find the growth of Mahajanapads as well which signifies the second urbanization in India.

We shall now turn to other implements as well for which the words Skaptein and Oryttein occur meaning digging but we do not find any Greek term for spade is not found. Hoe is known as makele, makella and dikella. The dikella is usually a two-pronged hoe. Theophrastus maintains that dikella is better than the ard in breaking up the weeds from the fallow field. Carefully looking at the vase paintings from a palaistra we observe pickaxe and Schiering assumes that it may have been used to smooth out the field if the side of it is used for levelling. Light hoe has been called Skalis by Xenophon. Sowing was largely by hand which meant a sack with a strap going around the chest of the peasant was present and the well known yet primitive method of broadcasting the seeds was followed but the seeds could always be put down by means of a small hoe. Hesiod uses the terms drepanon, drepane or are for the harvesting sickle. Homer says it is used for haymaking with epitheton eukampes (well or beautifully bent). The large hay-scythe is an invention of later times. The most authentic portrayal of harvesting of grain is found in the description of the shield of Achilles, where not only the mowers but also the binders of the sheave are mentioned. Sickles are found in a collection in Perachora where Dunbabin feels that like spits (okelai),they may have been used as a medium of exchange in pre-monetary economy. Ample evidence is found from Rheneia tomb, Corinth and Olynthos where sometimes sickles and sometimes a pruning knife or gardener's knife is found. A curved knife is known from a series of Spartan victory inscriptions from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia.

Threshing floor(aloe) has been frequently mentioned since Homer's time. They are circular and usually have a hole in the centre into which is fixed a pole which can be turned. Rotary mills from Taxila from the first century AD show a similar working principle, the only difference being its half rotary motion since we find two peg holes which are not vertically fixed. In India it was from Himachal Pradesh that we first encountered this principle being put to use in an oil press (tailotpidayantra) through animal power. Coming back to Ancient Greece, the draught animals were hitched to the pole so that they keep the right distance. Threshing Sledge is not mentioned in classical period. Ancient Threshing floors have been found in situ near the 'Princess Tower' at Sounion in Attica. The archaeologists found a terraced and carefully paved circular platform nearly twenty metres in diameter encircled at the east by a low rim of stones, at the west by a careful cutting in the native rock. The circular platform is certainly an ancient threshing floor. Homer has dealt with the threshing of pulses in his text. The process of threshing was intricately connected with the cult of Demeter. Hesiod mentions mortar (olmos) and pestle (hyperon) made of wood and a wagon manufactured by the farmer himself. Tools made from wickerwork and clay included baskets designed to collect grapes and olives and large storage vessels for the preservation of grains and olives. Hammer, axe and other hand tools for felling trees have also been discovered.

Grafting was quite widespread and required sharp grafting knives and corresponding whetstones. This also meant that Parthenocarpy was known to the Antiquity world. The satyrs often crudely depicted on vases are treading the grapes and we find references from Odyssey also mentioning treading grapes. Description of the Shield of Achilles in Iliad refers to collection of grapes in large wickerwork baskets. Grapes were collected in large baskets and carried to a wooden pressing board (lenos). Pressing board had a spout and was placed on four supporting legs sloping slightly forward. Grapes were placed in an open basket or a closed wickerwork sack with a handle added to it and this was worked alternately with feets and knees so that the juice seeped onto the board and flowed downwards into a container (bypoknian). A vat was dug into the ground to collect the must which ferments in large storage vessels called pitboi and after fermentation it is transferred to the commonly used wine jars, ampborai.

This process was found to be associated with Anthesteria festival in Athens in the so-called pitboigia when for the first time the new wine was tasted. We also have the Olive crusher called trapetum in Latin. It consists of a large saucer( mortarium) with a cylinder (miliarium) in its midst to which two millstones(orbes) could be fastened. Similarly for the querns, pushing the rubber up and down a saddle had become worn out and rotary mills driven by donkeys had begun to be used around 100 BC. Such mills found in Italy and Spain were concomitant with the Roman expansion in Western Mediterranean. Oil-pressing, Olive-pressing and wine making have been dealt with not just because we find technology in these spheres but also because these very products have been the speciality of the Mediterranean region adding to its social surplus and consequently to its wealth. Thus they formed a significant part of the produce. In the later times when various branches of agriculture were identified and their variations studied, the Mediterranean was found to be ideally suited to Viticulture, which is a distinctive feature of the Mediterranean even today.

Construction Technology

We shall now focus on building methods which are also of pivotal importance as they include not only the palaces and Colosseum but also such basic structures like granaries intricately connected with agriculture and agricultural production thus contributing their share to the process of production. A Corinthian pinax from the seventh century BC depicts a scene of mining. In most European countries in funerary commemoration of a deceased craftsman or his patron, images were made and attempts to find a specialized guild in those images were made. The tomb of Hathery in Rome in late first century AD depicts a building crane carved in the left side of a marble that offers as a central focus the image of a monumental tomb whose construction probably necessitated the use of a heavy lifting device.

We can find the description of such a device by Vitruvius who authored the book 'The Arch'. He describes:

[T]wo timbers are provided strong enough for the weight of the load's weight and they are fastened together at the upper end by a bolt and the bottom is spread apart. The top is fastened with a block called rechamus and two sheaves are enclosed turning on axles. Traction rope is carried over the sheave at the top and socket pieces are nailed to the hinder faces of the squared timber. One end of the rope is fastened to the windlass and the windlass is turned round by working the handspikes, the rope winds round the windlass, gets taut and thus it raises load to the proper height. Such machinery with three sheaves is called trispast.

Another example is also of an image from Hathery where two workers are perched on the jib of a crane where an inverted wicker basket to protect the tip of a jib could be seen. Those two are putting a rope across a pole. The tomb depiction displays braided ropes, heavy pulley system, great planked wheel turned by shifting bodies of labourers (probably five in number), ropes around the edge of the wheel intended to be used for braking or applying extra force. It also reveals some wooden free nails to pull the rig together. Screw was used in a water lifting device made of wood which gave a lift of from six-twelve feet and was generally driven by human motive power- a man working a treadmill. Greater lifts were subsequently effected by buckets attached to an endless chain on a rotating drum, referred to in an Egyptian papyri of second century BC. A parallel could be drawn not in terms of finding an exact replica but in the principle of human power being used to draw water through buckets(pots in this case) from India where the Chullavagganikaya (350 BC) mentions a similar device named Chakkavattaka. The absence of pindrum gearing should be taken special note of. Water mill was thus an important innovation of the Ancient world as it represented the first applied use of inorganic power in economic production. We have been given a complete description of the water screw by Vitruvius who also mentions the working of water wheels and water mills. Regarding the water wheels he wrote:

Wheels are also constructed in rivers. Round their faces floatboards are fixed, which, on being struck by the current of the river, make the wheel turn as they move, and thus, by raising the water in the boxes and bringing it to the top, they accomplish the necessary work through being turned by the mere impulse of the river, without any treading on the part of workmen.

On similar lines he has described the water mill:

Water mills are turned on the same principle. Everything is the same in them, except that a drum with teeth is fixed into one end of the axle. It is set vertically on its edge, and turns in the same plane with the wheel. Next to this larger drum there is a smaller one, also with teeth, but set horizontally, and this is attached (to the millstone). Thus the teeth of the drum which is fixed to the axle make the teeth of the horizontal drum move, and cause the mill to turn. A hopper, hanging over this contrivance, supplies the mill with corn, and meal is produced by the same revolution.

We thus have new innovation in the field of water devices which would surely have been of great significance for irrigation purposes which would have increased both the surplus as well as the amount of trade with this surplus. We can make an estimate of how helpful this would've been by seeing the face of agriculture change in Punjab post canal work providing for irrigation, however, its destructive effects are also established facts of history.

The water mill first seen at the turn of first century AD around Palestine could've immensely helped reduce human labour but we do not find a large scale adoption of this technology vis a vis the reaping machine also found in Gaul around the same time. While it may seem surprising to us that despite the knowledge and occurence of these devices they were not adopted on a large scale, it feels natural when viewed in synchronisation of the then existing mode of production which was the slave mode of production. The entire slave mode of production pivoted around the abundance of labour which was provided by the numerous slaves. This fact has been adequately brought forth by Perry Anderson in his book Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism. It is this very limitation which did not see a great deal of inventions and innovations flourishing in the Antiquity period of Greece.

However there were some advances in technology and those shall be appreciated. A brief list of technological advances shall be mentioned here. Rigging and steering gear were improved and lighthouses were ably crafted. Of particular note is the lighthouse under Alexander by the Pharos of Alexandria where a tower of over 480 feet high was erected, in the lantern of which burned a fire of resinous wood. Romans contributed hydraulic cement, cofferdam and pile driving in deep water. Transportation improved too, especially road transport which can be attested by two statements one by Cato and the other by Ptolemy. Cato bought an oil press at Pompeii for 384 sesterces but to transport it over a distance of seventy miles it costed him 280 sesterces. Later on Ptolemy remarked that 'the roads radiating from Rome had been so graded that a wagon could take the load of a barge'. Ktesibios who lived at Alexandria in the third century invented a perfectly good pump equipped with valves and cylinders and pistons embodying the same pneumatic principles as old fashioned hand pumps.

During the time ranging from 150 BC to 50 AD improvements in wine and oil presses used on Roman latifundia took place with change in the shape of the millstones and their cores by which presses became more efficient and manageable. However as expected the Empire did not take much note of it to have disseminated it to other areas. A fourth century Latin author, Palladius, gives a brief description of a device used on latifundia of northern districts which was an ox-powered mechanical reaper. The initial use of mangonel has also been ascribed to Alexander during his seige of a series of forts on the North Western fringes of India.

All these technologies definitely helped reduce human labour and increase the social surplus. It was this increase in surplus which acted as the base for the superstructures of the Ancient Greeks as also the Roman Empire. It gave the base for the sprawling cities and the luxuries enjoyed by these cities with all these necessities being accrued from the rural base. Those who toiled and effected the surplus were however mostly the "have nots" of the society since the means of production were in the hands of the rich and elite. Both Perry Anderson as well as Lynn White Jr. have been correct in pointing out that for a long time iron remained an expensive metal which couldn't be bought at will by the peasants and so they had to rely either on the landlords or on the rich who employed them.

Similar is the case with other inventions namely the colossal oil and olive presses since such cumbersome machinery was absolutely out of reach for the toiling many of the ancient society. It is also the prevalent system or method of production which mattered which unfortunately for the common folks of the time was slave mode of production in which labour was abundant and those who provided this labour could be bought and sold not just like a commodity but sometimes like chattels. It is in this perspective that the technological advances of that age are to be studied and when we do so we find why there was a deterrence to technology and innovation in that time and how even if machines were discovered or innovated there was a refrain to their use in order to perpetuate slavery and with it the slave mode of production.

Bibliography

1-Childe, Gordon V; What Happened in History, Aakar Books,2016
2- Anderson, Perry; Passages From Antiquity to Feudalism, Verso, 1966
3- White, Lynn Jr; Medieval Technology and Social Change, Oxford University Press, 1974
4- Vitruvius; The Ten Books on Architecture, English Translation by Morris Hicky Morgan, Harvard University Press,1914
5- Isager,Seigne and Skydsgaard, Eric Jens; Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction, Routledge Press, 1992

Bhavuk is Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh.

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Growing Old in Silence: The Lives of Elderly Women in Anantnag

2025-05-19T20:23:00.035+00:00

Bisma Shabir

In the beautiful yet troubled landscape of Anantnag, elderly women remain some of the least seen and heard members of society. These women, who spent their lives raising families, looking after others, and managing homes, now face their later years with very little support, recognition, or comfort.

As they grow older, their world often becomes smaller. Their names disappear from discussions on development, their needs are rarely taken seriously, and their lives quietly move to the margins. But their stories—often shared in soft voices and half-finished sentences, tell us a lot about what it means to grow old as a woman in this region.

A Life of Care, without Care in Return

Most elderly women in Anantnag continue to work at home even in their old age. They cook, clean, and take care of grandchildren—not always because they want to, but because they feel expected to. Many women believe they must remain “useful” to the family, even if they are unwell or physically weak.

The problem is not just the work, but the lack of help or understanding they receive in return. These women are seen as givers, not as people who also need care. As a result, many of them suffer in silence, both physically and emotionally.

Whether a woman is married, widowed, or never married makes a big difference in how she experiences old age. For widows, the loss of a spouse is not just emotional but deeply structural. Many find themselves financially dependent on sons or other male relatives, their autonomy eroded further by the absence of property or income. Women who never married face a different kind of challenge. They usually live with siblings or extended family and are often treated kindly. But they, too, feel left out during family gatherings, and many worry they are a burden.

Education, Health and Property

Most elderly women in this region never went to school. In their time, girls were rarely allowed to study, especially in rural areas. This lack of education still affects their lives. Many can’t read medicine labels, understand government schemes, or make decisions on their own. But a few women who did receive an education, like retired teachers or those who learned a skill, are managing better. They have pensions or small incomes, they feel more confident, and they can take care of themselves to some extent. Their stories show how even a little education can make a big difference in old age.

Where women live also shapes their experience of ageing. In villages, basic services like healthcare and transport are often far away. Many elderly women rely on family members to take them to the doctor or the market. Yet village life also brings strong community ties, neighbours check in on each other, and social bonds are more personal. In towns, women live closer to hospitals and shops but often feel lonelier. Nuclear families and busy lives leave little room for the elderly. The quiet isolation in a house full of people is something many elderly women described.

Very few elderly women in Anantnag own property or land. Traditionally, sons inherit property, not daughters. Without a house or land in their name, older women depend on others, mostly sons, for money, care, and decisions. Some women who own property or receive a pension from earlier jobs feel more secure. They can hire help if needed and don’t feel completely dependent. But most are not so fortunate. And when relationships inside the house turn bitter, especially with daughters-in-law, this dependency becomes a source of pain.

Trauma and Solace

Living in Kashmir also means living through years of unrest and violence. Many elderly women have lost children to conflict. Some have experienced raids, migration, or long-term fear. These experiences don’t just go away. Women shared stories of sleepless nights, flashbacks, and deep sadness. Most have never spoken to a counsellor or therapist, and mental health support is rare. Instead, they turn to religion. Prayer, fasting, and spiritual routines give them peace. For some, it is the only way they manage the pain.

Families are still the main source of care for elderly women. But not all families offer the same kind of love or support. Some women are cared for well by their sons and daughters-in-law. Others are neglected or made to feel unwanted. Most women said they would never go to an old-age home, even if they were unhappy at home. It is seen as shameful or disrespectful to leave the family in old age. The idea of moving out is still very hard to accept, both socially and emotionally.

Despite all these challenges, many elderly women continue to find strength in everyday life. Some still do embroidery, run small home businesses, or help on the farm. Others grow vegetables, attend weddings, or share stories with grandchildren. These acts, though small, give them a sense of purpose. For many, it is the only way to feel useful, connected, and seen.

The lives of elderly women in Anantnag reflect a mix of love and neglect, tradition and change, silence and strength. They are central to homes and families, yet often forgotten in planning, policy, and public conversations.

What they want is simple: to live with dignity, to feel heard, and to receive the care they have spent their lives giving to others. Ageing should not feel like fading away. It should be a time of respect, rest, and recognition. For that to happen, families, communities, and institutions must do better. We must listen more, support more, and value the elderly not just as people who once gave, but as people who still deserve.

Bisma Shabir is a sociologist specializing in gerontology and qualitative research. She recently submitted her Ph.D. at Aligarh Muslim University, focusing on the socio-economic and health experiences of elderly women in Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir. Views expressed are personal.
Image: freepik.com

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India and Pakistan have agreed a precarious peace – but will it last?

2025-05-17T10:22:00.004+00:00

By Alex Waterman and M. Sudhir Selvaraj

India and Pakistan stepped back from the brink of catastrophe on May 10 after a US-brokered ceasefire brought rapidly escalating hostilities between the two countries to an end. But tensions are still running high.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said on May 12 that India has only “paused” its military action against Pakistan and would “retaliate on its own terms” to any attacks.

The latest episode in the long-running conflict between these nuclear powers was triggered on April 22. Militants from a group known as the Resistance Front, which India says is a proxy for the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, killed 26 tourists in the picturesque resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. India alleges Pakistan’s involvement, which it denies.

The fact that India and Pakistan were able to agree to a ceasefire as escalations spiralled is reason for optimism. It shows that internal calculations and international pressure can pull the two parties back from the brink. However, the ceasefire represents an incredibly precarious peace. Can it be sustained?

Recent experience shows that sustained ceasefires are possible between the two states. In February 2021, India and Pakistan’s militaries signed a ceasefire to end four months of cross-border skirmishes. The agreement was a reaffirmation of an original ceasefire understanding from 2003.

Only two violations were recorded across the line of control separating Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir for the rest of the year, dropping to one in 2022. This compared to 4,645 such incidents in 2020.

The reduction led to optimism that armed rebellion in Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim in full, was in persistent decline. In March 2025, just one month before the deadly Pahalgam attack, security sources in India estimated that there were only 77 active militants operating on the Indian side of the border.

The drop in violence was a result of combined international and domestic pressure on Pakistan. The Financial Action Task Force, an organisation that monitors countries’ efforts to tackle terrorist financing and recommends financial sanctions against non-compliant states, added Pakistan to its “grey list” in 2018.

This listing forced Pakistan to introduce a string of policy measures to curb terrorism financing. Pakistan was removed from the list in 2022 due to significant improvements in its counter-terrorism framework.

But, as the Kashmir conundrum is at the heart of Pakistani national identity, it has often been employed as a political strategy to shore up domestic support. And in recent years, as Pakistan’s powerful army has grappled with overlapping economic and political crises, this strategy has been rolled out again.

The popularity of Pakistan’s army, for example, diminished significantly following the arrest of Pakistan’s leader, Imran Khan, in 2023. This has prompted army chief Asim Munir to use tensions with India to deflect attention.

Munir has called Kashmir “our jugular vein”, and has promised not to “leave our Kashmiri brothers in their historical struggle”. These comments followed an increase in the number and frequency of insurgent attempts to cross the border into India after India’s May 2024 general elections were held peacefully in Kashmir, a rare occurrence since the separatist insurgency began in 1987.

These cross-border operations are allegedly carried out by Pakistan’s so-called Border Action Teams, comprised of Pakistani special forces and militants from insurgent groups. Pakistan has never acknowledged the existence of such teams.

By April 1, tit-for-tat firing across the line of control had also already surpassed the total number of incidents in 2023 and 2024 combined.

Fragile peace

The latest ceasefire was agreed in the context of hostilities escalating beyond previous levels. Military strikes were launched outside Kashmir itself at military bases deep in Pakistani territory and in north-western India.

Certain actions by Islamabad were also widely interpreted as attempts to signal the country’s nuclear capabilities. These included the decision to convene the National Command Authority, the body responsible for control and use of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

The move may not have been a genuine alert. But the possible willingness to resort to nuclear threats is particularly concerning as, unlike India, Pakistan does not have a “no-first use” nuclear weapons policy.

India, as an aspiring political and economic power, has clear interests in preserving the ceasefire. New Delhi wants to project itself as rational and responsible, worthy of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

At the same time, some of the decisions taken by India after the Pahalgam attack may compel further support for the insurgency in Kashmir. This brings with it the risk of further escalation between India and Pakistan in the future.

India has suspended the Indus Water Treaty, which governs the use of water from the Indus River. Pakistan lies downstream from India and is heavily dependent on the river for irrigation and public consumption.

Intervention from global powers such as the US may again be able to prevent future hostility from spiralling out of control. However, substantive talks are unlikely.

The US, which is in advanced negotiations with New Delhi over reducing tariffs on Indian imports, has offered to act as a mediator. This has been welcomed by Pakistan. But India maintains that, on the question of Kashmir, it would prefer bilateral talks rather than involving a third party.

While the Trump administration initially signalled a hands-off approach to relations between India and Pakistan, deeming it “none of our business”, it is now clear how rapidly matters can escalate between them.

The US and other interested parties like China will probably continue in their efforts to regulate and manage the conflict, openly or covertly, even if deeper resolution appears unlikely.

Alex Waterman, Lecturer in Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford and M. Sudhir Selvaraj, Assistant Professor, Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: Through the Prism of Western Philosophical Traditions

2024-10-17T09:28:00.008+00:00

Mohammad Aftab Alam

Undoubtedly, there has been a consistent focus on the towering historical figure of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his experiment, the Aligarh Movement, which blossomed into Aligarh Muslim University. However, since the 200th birth anniversary of Sir Syed in 2017, followed by the 100-year celebration of his experiment, Aligarh Muslim University, as a direct descendant of Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in 2020, there has been a surge in interest in this area. This has led to the development of an amorphous body of work termed "Sir Syed Studies," which includes serious academic endeavors, such as the edited volume The Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan by Yasmin Saikia and M. Raisur Rahman (2019), Shafey Kidwai's Sir Syed Ahmad Khan: Reason, Religion and Nation (2020) and the recently acclaimed Between Nation and 'Community': Muslim Universities and Indian Politics after Partition by Laurence Gautier (2024). Additionally, coffee table books featuring snapshots of the university’s history and monuments, monographs on Sir Syed's social, religious, educational, and political ideas, and hagiographical sketches on his life and mission have emerged.

This emerging field of "Sir Syed Studies" has almost assumed the potential of developing into a distinct discipline, refining methodological tools and examining the phenomenon through multiple perspectives. One such methodological tool employed here can be loosely described as historical analogy, in which two different historical phases and personalities are compared by highlighting similar attributes, either through reason, common sense, or convenience.

Sir Syed's life, in the context of a critical historical juncture, can be compared to three different phases and thinkers of the Western Philosophical Tradition. Beginning with classical ancient Greek philosophy, Sir Syed reflects a Platonic persona, especially in his conception of a unified form of knowledge. During the classical phase, knowledge was seen as a unified whole, and there were no such divisions as we have today. Plato’s Republic: Concerning Justice contains ideas on polity, statecraft, psychology, social stratification, ethics, and education. Similarly, Sir Syed’s contributions to theology, archaeology, jurisprudence, politics, and education establish parallels with the holistic conception of knowledge ingrained in classical Greek philosophy and the teachings of Plato.

Secondly, Sir Syed’s vision parallels that of the Italian philosopher Machiavelli, sharing at least two similar attributes, though they existed in entirely different historical contexts. In the periodization of Western Philosophy, Machiavelli represents a point where the medieval period was transitioning towards the modern. The Renaissance was reaching its pinnacle, dismantling the vestiges of medieval polity, economy, and philosophy. Similarly, though in a different time frame, Sir Syed witnessed and responded to the demise of the remnants of medieval India and the onset of modern polity, economy, and society under British colonial power.

Another attribute that Sir Syed shares with Machiavelli is found in their writings, particularly comparing Machiavelli’s The Prince with Sir Syed’s The Causes of the Indian Mutiny. Machiavelli wrote The Prince as advice to Lorenzo de' Medici, the new ruler who had assumed power after deposing the previous regime, in which Machiavelli had held a position of authority. With this objective in mind, The Prince became a masterpiece on statecraft. Similarly, Sir Syed wrote The Causes of the Indian Mutiny to soothe the temper of the British colonial power, whose wrath and devastation upon Indian Muslims in the aftermath of the failed 1857 revolt are well documented in historical writings. Like Machiavelli, Sir Syed provided suggestions to the new ruler on how to avoid similar revolts in the future and solidify their political power. One crucial suggestion Sir Syed made in The Causes of the Indian Mutiny was the inclusion of Indian elements in the administration of Indian affairs. This led to the formulation of the Indian Councils Acts of 1861 and 1892 during his lifetime, which made provisions for the inclusion of Indians in governance. Another suggestion involved the reorganization of the military, which resulted in the exclusion of upper-caste recruits, particularly from the Awadh region, and the creation of regiments based on multiple identities to prevent the emergence of a united all-India national consciousness among military personnel.

The Causes of the Indian Mutiny, like Machiavelli’s The Prince, played an instrumental role in winning favor with the new regime and in the reorientation of statecraft policies. In the Indian context, it was due to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s efforts that, within two decades, the same colonial power, instead of further persecuting Muslims, extended support to his endeavor to establish a modern educational institution for Muslims in India. In 1857, the last pensioned Mughal ruler was exiled to Burma, and Muslims faced extermination on an unprecedented scale. However, within 20 years, in 1877, the British Governor-General, Lord Lytton, was inaugurating and laying the foundation stone of the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh, the precursor to present-day Aligarh Muslim University, a brainchild of Sir Syed and a product of the Aligarh Movement.

Thirdly, in a manner similar to the modern phase of Western Philosophy, Sir Syed aligns with Hegel’s conception of the "World-Historical Individual." In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837) , the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel argued that world-historical individuals are those whose actions and ideas have universal significance. These individuals embody the will of the world spirit and are devoted to a single purpose, even if it means disregarding other interests. With some adjustment to the historical context, Sir Syed can easily be identified as a world-historical individual, as his vision and mission responded to the universal phenomenon of colonialism, which was part of the broader development of capitalism. As Hegel envisioned, Sir Syed was able to sense the direction of historical change and align himself accordingly. He was devoted to the single cause of uplifting the Muslim community from medieval slumber. Disregarding immediate benefits and interests, he worked tirelessly to provide—not impose—modern scientific education to Muslims in India, helping them keep pace with the times.

Mohammad Aftab Alam is Professor of Political Science at AMU, Aligarh

Bharat: why the recent push to change India’s name has a hidden agenda

2023-09-19T18:24:00.005+00:00

Nitasha Kaul

The invitations to a state dinner to mark India’s hosting of this year’s G20 came not, as you’d expect, from the office of the president of India, but from the “president of Bharat”. This has prompted speculation from observers both at home and abroad about whether this signifies an official government intention to rename the country.

You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.

Some have suggested that the ruling BJP (Bharatiya Janata arty) is rattled, and is responding to the adoption of the acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) by a group of more than two dozen opposition political parties ahead of the general elections in 2024.

There are numerous debates taking place online – both humorous and serious – about whether this name change ought to go ahead.

There’s a growing push among BJP MPs to adopt the name change, since “India” – the conventional English rendering of the country’s name – to some at least, symbolises “colonial slavery”. There have been previous petitions seeking such a name change, but these were dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2016, and again in 2020.

Just days before the G20 invitation went out, Mohan Bhagwat, head of the nationwide right-wing paramilitary organisation RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) – the ideological parent of the BJP – called explicitly for the use of “Bharat” rather than India, saying: “We don’t have to think about whether anyone outside will understand this or not. If they want to, they will, but that is not our problem … The world need us today, we don’t need the world.”

Constitutional change

The recent flurry of speculation reopens old debates that were discussed and resolved in the Constituent Assembly in September 1949. Article 1 of the constitution, which deals with the name and territory of the Union, refers to the country as “India, that is Bharat”. In other words, the two names for the country have since always been understood as being synonymous. So the proposed change would mean altering the constitution to remove the reference to “India”.

Adding to the mix is the fact that a special session of the Indian parliament has been called for September 18-22, thus fuelling speculations that this in on the order of business.

But it’s unlikely that the path to the name change will be a formal one in the first instance. Like many significant changes that accommodate long-held demands of the Hindu nationalist right-wing in India, any name change will probably need to follow a process of societal normalisation.

For example, take the decision in April 2023 to remove from school textbooks references to the (Muslim) Mughals who ruled over the subcontinent between the 16th and 19th centuries. The push for this began to gain momentum in 2016 with the informal #DeleteMughalsFromHistory hashtag in 2016.

So the G20 dinner invite is merely an opening gambit in a longer play.

Rise of the Hindu right

Part of the rationale offered by supporters of the name change is that Bharat is an indigenous term that goes back in history and was prominent in the anti-colonial struggles – for example, the slogan “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (Hail to mother Bharat). But there are other more important political ideological factors that must not be missed.

As the backbone of the right-wing in the country, the RSS (founded in 1925) has always carried a vision for India as a Hindu nation that extends far beyond electoral politics. In this transformation of Indian society and polity, the idea of “othering” non-Hindus has been crucial, and at various times has targeted Muslims, Christians, non-Brahmins, secularists, atheists, dissenters and so on.

So the proposed change of name from India to Bharat is not an anti-colonial move. Rather it is the creation of a binary designation whereby those who continue to espouse an “Indian” identity will, over time, become politically labelled as an “other” to the true and authentic “Bharatiya” (resident of Bharat) who is the “ideal” Hindu or Hindu-ised citizen.

In my 2017 analysis of the rise of the right in India, I outlined the strategic ways in which the right relies upon contradictory leveraging of various dualities. One that I identified was India versus Bharat.

The Hindutva, or political Hindu right-wing vision of India cherished by the RSS and BJP, is one where Bharat stands not just for a country that is India, but also connotes an idyll of pure Hindutva morality.

The right is seeking to create a new wedge between those who live in India and those who live in Bharat. Much like the divide between Remainers and Leavers in the UK is a legacy of Brexit, this kind of divisive politics has long-term consequences as the meanings attached to specific terms are altered.

The entities Bharat and India are constructed for particular political purposes. The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said in 2013: “Rapes do not happen in Bharat, they happen in India.”

But facts matter little in the face of politically charged ideologues. Contemporary India is marked by a politics of distraction, where the recovering of some idyllic past is used by the right to obscure from view the failures of the present when it comes to equal rights and freedoms for citizens, competitive politics and the rule of law.

For citizens in need of life and livelihood security, a renamed Bharat is a hollow promise trading on manipulated narratives of past glory.

Nitasha Kaul, Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD), Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

जस्टिस लोढ़ा से लेकर जस्टिस रमना तक: मोदी युग के मुख्य न्यायाधीश

2022-09-24T07:40:00.034+00:00

'दि हिन्दू 'अख़बार में मोदी सरकार के आठ वर्षों के आठ मुख्य न्यायाधीशों पर एक लंबा लेख छपा था।अंग्रेज़ी में होने के कारण हिन्दी के पाठकों तक यह लेख नहीं पहुँच सका। हमारे एक मित्र ने इसका अनुवाद कर दिया है। लेख लंबा है लेकिन पढ़ना चाहिए। कहीं त्रुटि नज़र आए तो ज़रूर बताएँ। संशोधन कर दिया जाएगा। अनुवादक अपना नाम नहीं देना चाहते हैं। उनके इस प्रयास के लिए आभार। -रवीश कुमार

ए पी शाह

अपने सबसे अहम रूप में,भारतीय सर्वोच्च न्यायालय भारत के संविधान का संरक्षक है। इस भूमिका में, इसकी प्राथमिक जिम्मेदारी यह सुनिश्चित करना है कि नागरिकों को संविधान के तहत जिन मौलिक अधिकारों की गारंटी दी गई है वह राज्य द्वारा कमजोर, नष्ट या अन्यथा बाधित न किए जाएं। भले ही अपने अस्तित्व का आरंभ इसने एक अप्रतिरोधी अदालत के रूप में किया हो, लेकिन दशकों में, यह दुनिया में अपने समरूपों में सबसे शक्तिशाली अदालत बन गया है ऐसा मैं मानता हूं।

यह श्रेष्ठ स्थिति कम से कम तीन रूपों में प्रकट होती है। सबसे पहले, केशवानंद भारती मामले में अपने फैसले के माध्यम से, न्यायालय ने संवैधानिक संशोधनों के मामले में न्यायिक समीक्षा की शक्ति ग्रहण की। दूसरे, कई फैसलों के माध्यम से, इसने अपने और उच्च न्यायालयों में न्यायिक नियुक्तियों की शक्ति ग्रहण की। और तीसरे, इसने नागरिकों को अद्वितीय और व्यापक सुरक्षा की गारंटी देकर और जनहित याचिका के माध्यम से अदालतों का दरवाजा खटखटाने का अधिकार सुनिश्चित करके संविधान के अनुच्छेद 21 के तहत जीवन और स्वतंत्रता के मौलिक अधिकार का विस्तार किया।

इसके शीर्ष पर भारत के मुख्य न्यायाधीश या सीजेआई बैठते हैं। सीजेआई पदभार से संबंधित कर्तव्य और जिम्मेदारियां देश में किसी भी अन्य भूमिका से विलग हैं। कम से कम सैद्धांतिक रूप से, सीजेआई को असामान्य रूप से उच्च स्तर की न्यायिक और प्रशासनिक प्रतिभा का प्रदर्शन करना चाहिए। पदभार से जुड़ी जिम्मेदारियों के प्रतिदर्श में उच्च न्यायपालिका में नियुक्ति के लिए न्यायधीशों का चयन करना, सामान्य न्यायिक कर्तव्यों का पालन करने के अलावा विभिन्न प्रकार के मामलों पर निर्णय लेने के लिए पीठों की संख्या और संरचना तय करना शामिल है। जैसा कि जॉर्ज एच गडबोइस कहते हैं, मुख्य न्यायाधीश को 'एक सक्षम प्रशासक, लोगों की पहचान और व्यक्तित्वों की समझ की क्षमता युक्त प्रभावशाली व्यक्तित्व संपन्न' होना चाहिए।

लेकिन, परिस्थितिवश, और कुछ हद तक वांछित रूप से भी, भारतीय न्यायपालिका में वरिष्ठता के आधार पर भारत के मुख्य न्यायाधीश की नियुक्ति की परंपरा का विकास हुआ। नतीजतन, मुख्य न्यायाधीश नियुक्त होने वाला व्यक्ति वांछित गुणों को प्रदर्शित करने के कारण नियुक्त नहीं होता, बल्कि अपने दायित्व निर्वहन के क्रम में ही इन कौशलों को विकसित करने के लिए मजबूर हो जाता है, और कुछ ने वैसा पूरे विश्वास के साथ किया भी, यथा, न्यायमूर्ति सुब्बा राव, न्यायमूर्ति वेंकटचलैया और न्यायमूर्ति जेएस वर्मा। हालांकि, वरिष्ठता की परंपरा का एक दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण नतीजा यह है कि मुख्य न्यायाधीशों का कार्यकाल अल्पकालीन हो जाता है। 75 वर्षों में ही, भारतीय सुप्रीम कोर्ट में 49 मुख्य न्यायाधीश हो चुके हैं। 1980 के दशक में जस्टिस वाईवी चंद्रचूड़ का कार्यकाल सात साल से अधिक का रहा जो असाधारण रूप से लंबा था, जबकि दूसरी ओर, जस्टिस के एन सिंह का कार्यकाल केवल 17 दिनों के लिए रहा ।

तीन अवधियाँ

मुख्य न्यायाधीशों की यह बड़ी संख्या पदभार के विकास और कार्यपालिका के साथ न्यायपालिका के संबंधों का अध्ययन करने के लिए एक दिलचस्प डेटा सेट प्रदान करती है, जिसे मोटे तौर पर निम्नलिखित युगों में वर्गीकृत किया जा सकता है। 1950 से 1971 तक, मुख्य न्यायाधीश के पास न्यायिक नियुक्तियों पर वीटो लगाने की सीमा तक पूर्ण अधिकार था, और मुख्य न्यायाधीश की सिफारिश का हमेशा पालन किया जाता था।

1971 और 1993 के बीच, मजबूत एकल पार्टी सरकारों ने केंद्र पर कब्जा कर लिया, और कार्यपालिका ने अदालत पैकिंग के स्पष्ट प्रयास में सुप्रीम कोर्ट में 'प्रतिबद्ध न्यायाधीशों' की नियुक्ति पर जोर दिया। कई अधिक्रमण हुए, कार्यपालिका ने मुख्य न्यायाधीशों की नियुक्ति में विशेषाधिकार का प्रयोग किया, और वरिष्ठता की परंपरा का खुले तौर पर उल्लंघन किया गया। एक चौंकाने वाला झटका 1981 में पहले जजों के मामले (एसपी गुप्ता) के फैसले के साथ आया, जहां यह माना गया कि भारत के मुख्य न्यायाधीश की राय सरकार के लिए बाध्यकारी नहीं होगी।

1993 में दूसरे न्यायाधीश के मामले के साथ, और उसके आसपास जब न्यायमूर्ति एम.एन. वेंकटचलैया ने सीजेआई के रूप में पदभार संभाला, प्रवृत्ति पलट गई और न्यायपालिका ने व्यावहारिक रूप से कार्यपालिका से नियुक्तियों की शक्ति वापस ले ली। न्यायिक प्रधानता और कॉलेजियम का निर्माण इसी अवधि में हुआ, और हांलाकि कॉलेजियम ने मनमानेपन और अलोकतांत्रिक होने के लिए काफी कुख्याति हासिल की है, तथापि यह आज भी विद्यमान है।

जब हम भारतीय सर्वोच्च न्यायालय और सीजेआई के पदभार के क्रमिक विकास की जांच करते हैं, तो यह न्यायपालिका और कार्यपालिका के बीच सत्ता के निरंतर हस्तांतरण और पुनर्संतुलन का एक उत्कृष्ट उदाहरण है"

जब हम भारतीय सुप्रीम कोर्ट और सीजेआई के पद के क्रम विकास की जांच करते हैं, तो यह न्यायपालिका और कार्यपालिका के बीच सत्ता के निरंतर हस्तांतरण और पुनर्संतुलन का एक उत्कृष्ट उदाहरण है। जब कार्यपालिका शक्तिशाली थी, आमतौर पर एक पार्टी के बहुमत के माध्यम से, जैसा कि इंदिरा गांधी और राजीव गांधी के नेतृत्व वाली सरकारों में था, न्यायपालिका व्यावहारिक रूप से कार्यपालिका के नियंत्रण के आगे झुक गई। हालांकि, जब अपेक्षाकृत कमजोर गठबंधन सरकारें चुनी गईं, तो न्यायपालिका ने अपनी शक्तियां वापस बहाल कर लीं।

यह पुनर्संतुलन अब फिर से चल रहा है। 2014 के बाद से, नरेंद्र मोदी के नेतृत्व वाली भाजपा सरकार के तहत कार्यकारिणी एक बार फिर एकल पार्टी बहुमत की है। नतीजतन, न्यायपालिका की शक्तियां पहले की तुलना में कमजोर हैं, और कार्यपालिका फिर से नियंत्रण में है। हम लोकतांत्रिक संस्थाओं के धीमे विनाश, जांच एजेंसियों के दुरुपयोग, सांप्रदायिक ध्रुवीकरण, और नागरिकों को उपलब्ध संवैधानिक सुरक्षा में धीरे-धीरे कटौती के माध्यम से कार्यपालिका की निरंकुश प्रवृत्तियों में वृद्धि देख रहे हैं, जिनसे निपटने में एक कमजोर न्यायपालिका या तो असमर्थ है या इससे निपटने की अनिच्छुक है।

2014 से 2022 तक, मोदी सरकार के आठ साल तक, आठ व्यक्ति सीजेआई के पद पर आसीन रहे हैं; 41 वें मुख्य न्यायाधीश के रूप में न्यायमूर्ति आरएम लोढ़ा से लेकर 48 वें मुख्य न्यायाधीश के रूप में न्यायमूर्ति एन वी रमना तक । यह लेख यह जांचने का प्रयास करता है कि उनके कार्यकाल ने न्यायालय और सीजेआई के पदभार के क्रमिक विकास में कैसा योगदान दिया है।

मोदी युग के सीजेआई

2014 में मोदी सरकार के पहली बार सत्ता में आने से ठीक पहले, सीजेआई जस्टिस पी. सदाशिवम थे, जिन्होंने दुर्भाग्य से पद छोड़ने के लगभग तुरंत बाद केरल के राज्यपाल पद को स्वीकार करने का फैसला किया। यह असामान्य और यकीनन अनियमित नियुक्ति उचित कूलिंग पीरियड के बिना की गई थी, और भाजपा सरकार की अपनी नीति के खिलाफ भी थी क्योंकि अरुण जेटली ने खुले तौर पर घोषणा की थी कि सेवानिवृत्ति पर न्यायाधीशों को नौकरी देने से सरकारों को अदालतों को प्रभावित करने में मदद मिलेगी। इसने भविष्य के न्यायाधीशों के लिए एक खतरनाक मिसाल कायम की, जिसका प्रभाव आज भी देखने को मिलता है।

जिसे कार्यकारिणी द्वारा चुनौती के रूप में देखा जा सकता है वह न्यायमूर्ति सदाशिवम के उत्तराधिकारी न्यायमूर्ति आर.एम. लोढ़ा को,साहसिक और अपरंपरागत निर्णय लेने से रोक नहीं पाई ।विशेष रूप से, उन्होंने सुप्रीम कोर्ट में बार से बेंच में सीधी नियुक्तियों की निष्क्रिय प्रवृत्ति को पुनर्जीवित किया, एक ऐसी प्रथा जिसे संविधान के तहत अनुमति तो दी गई थी, लेकिन शायद ही जिसका कभी प्रयास किया गया था। उनकी सिफारिशें ज्यादातर सफल रहीं, लेकिन एक प्रसिद्ध विफलता भी रही, गोपाल सुब्रमण्यम की नियुक्ति की सिफारिश जिसे सरकार ने अस्वीकार कर दिया । न्यायपालिका के साथ यह मोदी सरकार का पहला टकराव हो सकता था, और न्यायमूर्ति लोढ़ा ने बाद में भी कहा कि वह श्री सुब्रमण्यम की नियुक्ति को आगे बढ़ाने के लिए तैयार थे, लेकिन वकील ने खुद अपनी उम्मीदवारी वापस ले ली, जिस कारण टकराव दरकिनार हो गया। भारतीय क्रिकेट कंट्रोल बोर्ड में सुधारों पर अपनी रिपोर्ट के लिए जस्टिस लोढ़ा घर-घर जाने गए। विडंबना यह है कि उनकी रिपोर्ट को बाद में उसी न्यायालय ने पूरी तरह से कमजोर कर दिया जिसने प्रथमत: सुधारों की सिफारिश करने के लिए समिति नियुक्त की थी।

सीजेआई के रूप में जस्टिस लोढ़ा का अनुसरण करने वाले जस्टिस एचएल दत्तू के नेतृत्व में कार्यपालिका और न्यायपालिका के बीच पहला बड़ा टकराव हुआ। राष्ट्रीय न्यायिक नियुक्ति आयोग (एनजेएसी) अधिनियम की वैधता से संबंधित चौथे न्यायाधीश के मामले को पांच न्यायाधीशों की पीठ के पास भेजा गया था और इस पर तीखी बहस हुई । न्यायपालिका अपनी जमीन पर अड़ी रही और अंततः विजयी हुई, और एनजेएसी अधिनियम, जो कि निस्संदेह एक दोषपूर्ण कानून था उसे रद्द कर दिया गया। हांलाकि कॉलेजियम न्यायिक नियुक्ति की एक मनमानी, गोपनीय और अलोकतांत्रिक प्रक्रिया है, और इसके संचालन में संचार और पारदर्शिता महज वांछनीय नहीं है तथापि प्रस्तावित एनजेएसी का डिजाइन इसका उचित समाधान नहीं था। हालांकि, सुप्रीम कोर्ट एनजेएसी अधिनियम में खामियों को ठीक कर सकता था, शायद इसकी कमियों को दूर करने के लिए प्रावधानों को खारिज़ (रीड डाउन) कर, लेकिन ऐसा नहीं करने का विकल्प उसने चुना।

एनजेएसी के फैसले के बाद भी मामले सुलझ नहीं पाए और उच्च न्यायपालिका में नियुक्तियों के लिए प्रक्रिया ज्ञापन कार्यपालिका और न्यायपालिका के बीच विवाद का केंद्र बिंदु बन गया । तनाव तब भी जारी रहा जब न्यायमूर्ति टीएस ठाकुर ने सीजेआई के रूप में पदभार संभाला। वह मोदी युग के आखिरी सीजेआई थे, जिन्होंने न्यायिक प्रशासन और नियुक्तियों के मामलों में थोड़े मज़बूत मेरुदंड होने का प्रदर्शन किया । अत्यधिक बोझ से दबी भारतीय न्यायपालिका की दुर्दशा को पुरजोर रूप से उजागर करने और इस क्रम में एक बार प्रधानमंत्री की उपस्थिति में आंसू बहाने के अलावा, न्यायमूर्ति ठाकुर ने रिक्तियों को भरने के तंत्र पर कड़ी मेहनत की और इस संबंध में एक महत्वपूर्ण फैसला भी लिया । उन्होंने राष्ट्रीय न्यायिक डेटा ग्रिड का प्रवर्तन किया, जो आज न्यायिक प्रणाली के सभी स्तरों को जोड़ता है और वादियों को प्रचुर जानकारी उपलब्ध कराता है।

लेकिन उनके सुधार प्रयासों ने एक विवादास्पद मोड़ ले लिया जब उन्होंने उच्च न्यायालयों में न्यायाधीशों के लगभग 20 के स्थानान्तरण का प्रयास किया। इतने बड़े पैमाने पर तबादलों का प्रयास करने वाले वह पहले न्यायाधीश नहीं थे; न्यायमूर्ति वेंकटचलैया और न्यायमूर्ति एस.एच. कपाड़िया ने भी यह कोशिश की थी, लेकिन तबादलों के लिए उनकी प्रेरणा हमेशा स्पष्ट नहीं थी, और उनके प्रयोग यकीनन विफल रहे क्योंकि कई स्थानांतरित न्यायाधीशों को प्रत्यावर्तित किया गया। कानूनी विशेषज्ञों और यहां तक कि पूर्व न्यायाधीशों ने भी खेद व्यक्त किया कि इस तरह के स्थानांतरण न्यायाधीशों के साथ सिविल सेवकों की तरह व्यवहार करने के समान है, और न्यायपालिका की स्वतंत्रता और समग्र अखंडता के लिए एक गंभीर खतरा है। न्यायमूर्ति ठाकुर के कुछ स्थानांतरण आदेश स्पष्ट रूप से अच्छे नहीं थे, और जल्द ही पलट दिए गए ।

दुर्भाग्य से, स्थानांतरण आज तक जारी हैं, कई मनमाने और अनुचित हैं, और किसी प्रलेखित नीति का पालन नहीं कर रहे हैं। विवादों पर कटाक्ष करने के बावजूद न्यायमूर्ति ठाकुर सरकार के सामने खड़े होने वाले अंतिम प्रधान न्यायाधीश भी रहे। यहां तक सुप्रीम कोर्ट कार्यपालिका का सामना करते हुए अपनी बात पर कायम रहा था। इसके बाद हालात पूरी तरह से बदल गए।

सिख समुदाय से भारत के पहले सीजेआई जस्टिस जे एस खेहर का कार्यकाल आठ महीने से भी कम का था, जिसमें वह निजता के अधिकार और ट्रिपल तलाक फैसलों सहित कई ऐतिहासिक फैसलों में पक्षकार थे। न्यायमूर्ति खेहर के कार्यकाल ने सुप्रीम कोर्ट में रोस्टर के प्रबंधन में पारदर्शिता और निष्पक्षता की कमी पर बहस को भी पुनर्जीवित किया; एक ऐसा मुद्दा जो इसके बाद कई सीजेआई के कार्यकाल तक बदस्तूर बना रहा ।

अरुणाचल प्रदेश के एक पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री, कलिखो पुल द्वारा एक सुसाइड नोट में कुछ अप्रमाणित आरोप, जो स्वयं न्यायमूर्ति खेहर सहित कई न्यायाधीशों के खिलाफ थे, अदालत के ध्यान में आए। आरोपों की सत्यता पर ध्यान दिए बिना, न्यायमूर्ति खेहर ने जिस प्रक्रिया का पालन किया, उसकी ना तो कोई मिसाल थी और ना ही वह औचित्यपूर्ण थी । सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने वीरस्वामी मामले में अपने ही फैसले में कहा था कि उच्च न्यायपालिका में किसी के खिलाफ आपराधिक कार्यवाही केवल सीजेआई के परामर्श से शुरू की जा सकती है। इसके अलावा, अगर सीजेआई के खिलाफ सीधे आरोप लगाए गए, तो सुप्रीम कोर्ट के अन्य न्यायाधीशों से अनुमति लेनी पड़ सकती है। श्री पुल की पत्नी ने न्यायमूर्ति खेहर को पत्र लिखकर नोट में उल्लिखित न्यायाधीशों के खिलाफ प्राथमिकी दर्ज करने की अनुमति मांगी। खुद का नाम होने के बावजूद, सीजेआई ने अपने हिसाब से, हितों के टकराव की सभी चिंताओं की धज्जियां उड़ाते हुए, पत्र को एक रिट याचिका (एक प्रशासनिक प्रश्न को न्यायिक में परिवर्तित करना) के रूप में सूचीबद्ध करने का विकल्प चुना। गंभीर रूप से, इसने नैसर्गिक न्याय के बुनियादी सिद्धांतों की पूर्ण अवहेलना को प्रदर्शित किया, और दूसरों के अनुसरण के लिए एक गलत उदाहरण स्थापित किया।

न्यायमूर्ति खेहर के कार्यकाल के दौरान एक अन्य विवादास्पद घटनाक्रम उच्च न्यायालय के न्यायाधीश न्यायमूर्ति सीएस कर्णन को अदालत की अवमानना के लिए दोषी ठहराया जाना और बाद में कारावास देना था। न्यायालय की अनुशासनात्मक शक्तियों और अवमानना क्षेत्राधिकार के दुरुपयोग की भर्त्सना करने के अतिरिक्त, कई लोगों ने उच्च न्यायपालिका के एक सदस्य को हटाने के लिए संसद के किसी अधिनियम में अनन्य विशेषाधिकार की अनदेखी करने की वजह से इस निर्णय को असंवैधानिक माना। न्यायिक नियुक्तियों की मूल समस्या को नजरअंदाज कर दिया गया, साथ ही इस सवाल को भी नजरअंदाज कर दिया गया कि कुछ न्यायाधीश पर्याप्त जांच के बिना उच्च न्यायपालिका में कैसे पहुँच जाते हैं।

अगले सीजेआई न्यायमूर्ति दीपक मिश्रा थे, जिनके कार्यकाल को उनके चार साथी न्यायाधीशों द्वारा आयोजित अभूतपूर्व प्रेस कॉन्फ्रेंस के लिए याद किया जाता है, जिसमें सीजेआई के आंतरिक प्रशासनिक निर्णयों की निंदा की गई, विशेष रूप से मामलों के आवंटन में बेंच स्ट्रेंथ और बेंच संरचना के अदालती परंपराओं का पालन नहीं किए जाने का और इसका कि सीजेआई ने बिना किसी तर्कसंगत आधार के चुनिंदा मामलों को अधिमान्य पीठों को सौंप दिया था। ट्रिगर था बृजगोपाल हरकिशन लोया का मामला, उनकी मृत्यु के ईर्द-गिर्द षड्यंत्र के सिद्धांत, और मामले को रोस्टर और परंपरा के विपरीत किसी निश्चित बेंच को आवंटित करने का निर्णय।

मास्टर ऑफ रोस्टर और हितों के टकराव का मुद्दा भी सामने आया। न्यायमूर्ति मिश्रा की अध्यक्षता वाली पीठ एक प्रतिबंधित मेडिकल कॉलेज में दाखिले के ईर्द-गिर्द रिश्वत खोरी से संबंधित एक संदिग्ध सीबीआई मामले की सुनवाई कर रही थी, जिसमें उच्च न्यायालय और उच्चतम न्यायालय के मौजूदा न्यायाधीशों को रिश्वत देने के प्रयासों के आरोप भी शामिल थे। अलग-अलग याचिकाओं में इस मामले में अदालत द्वारा विनियमित जांच की मांग की गई थी, जिसमें हितों के टकराव के कारणों से इस मामले को सीजेआई की पीठ के अलावा किसी अन्य पीठ के समक्ष सूचीबद्ध करने का अनुरोध किया गया था। मामले को खुद सुनने की बजाय अलग हो जाने के, जैसा कि औचित्य और सामान्य समझ की मांग होती, न्यायमूर्ति मिश्रा ने इन याचिकाओं पर खुद सुनवाई करने का विकल्प चुना, यहां तक कि खुद सीजेआई की शक्तियों के दायरे पर भी फैसला सुनाया। आखिरकार, बहुत सारे ट्विस्ट और टर्न के बाद, याचिकाओं को भारी जुर्माने के साथ खारिज कर दिया गया, लेकिन इससे न्यायपालिका के भीतर हितों के टकराव के बारे में बहस केवल अधिक तेज ही हुई ।

वह पहले सीजेआई भी थे, जिनके खिलाफ महाभियोग प्रस्ताव लाया गया था, हालांकि अंततः इसे राज्यसभा द्वारा रद्द कर दिया गया। इन विवादों के बावजूद, न्यायमूर्ति मिश्रा सीजेआई के रूप में अधिकतम संवैधानिक पीठों की स्थापना करने में कामयाब रहे और अधिनिर्णय और निपटान के बीच संतुलन प्राप्त करने के लिए उन्होंने लगातार प्रयास किया।

अगले सीजेआई, जस्टिस रंजन गोगोई का भी कार्यकाल विवादास्पद रहा । वह पहले प्रेस कॉन्फ्रेंस करने वालों में से एक थे, और उन्होंने "शोर करने वाले न्यायाधीशों" को सिस्टम पर अधिक सवाल उठाने के लिए प्रोत्साहित किया था। हालांकि, हितों के टकराव की पूर्ण अवहेलना ने उनके कार्यकाल में सबसे प्रमुख मोड़ ले लिया, जब जस्टिस गोगोई सुप्रीम कोर्ट के एक कर्मचारी द्वारा खुद के खिलाफ की गई यौन उत्पीड़न की शिकायत की सुनवाई (हालांकि उन्होंने आदेश पर हस्ताक्षर नहीं किए) में बैठ गए। इस शिकायत से निपटने में नैसर्गिक न्याय के सभी सिद्धांतों को तोड़ा गया। सीजेआई द्वारा स्वयं आरोपों की जांच के लिए एक समिति गठित करने के अलावा, सीजेआई को दोषमुक्त करने वाली समिति की रिपोर्ट भी शिकायतकर्ता को नहीं बताई गई, आम जनता को बताने की बात तो छोड़िए ही। उनकी शिकायत अनुचित बर्खास्तगी और उत्पीड़न के बारे में भी थी, जिसे लगता है कि समिति द्वारा संबोधित नहीं किया गया । बहुत बाद में, उन्हें अगले सीजेआई बोबडे के अधीन सेवा में बहाल कर दिया गया।

न्यायमूर्ति गोगोई गोपनीयता से भी ग्रस्त थे, और नियमित रूप से जानकारियों को 'सीलबंद लिफाफे' में अदालत को प्रस्तुत करने के लिए कहा जाने लगा (यह तब से बंद कर दिया गया है जब न्यायमूर्ति डी वाई चंद्रचूड़ ने इस प्रथा की निंदा की।) इसका असम के राष्ट्रीय नागरिक रजिस्टर (NRC), राफेल विवाद, चुनावी बांड जारी करना, इत्यादि जैसे मामलों में उपयोग किया गया । एनआरसी मामले में, जिस तरह से न्यायपालिका ने कार्यपालिका की भूमिका अख्तियार कर ली, लाखों लोगों के नागरिकता के अधिकार को धुंध में रख छोड़ा, टिप्पणीकारों ने इसे 'कार्यकारी अदालत' के उदय के रूप में व्याख्यायित किया । अनुच्छेद 370 के निरस्तीकरण के मद्देनजर जम्मू और कश्मीर से दायर बंदी प्रत्यक्षीकरण याचिकाओं के प्रति उनके रवैये ने एक प्रख्यात वकील को यह कहने के लिए प्रेरित किया कि "गोगोई कोर्ट ने लापरवाह गति से, सदियों पुराने स्थापित बंदी प्रत्यक्षीकरण कानून पर रथ दौड़ा दिया है ।" उनके कार्यकाल में, जिसे कुछ कानूनी विशेषज्ञ 'न्यायिक बहाने' के रूप में वर्णित करते हैं, वह भी बढ़ गया; सुप्रीम कोर्ट कुछ मामलों को जो विशेष रूप से देश के लिए अत्यंत महत्वपूर्ण थे, जैसे कि चुनावी बांड मामला, नागरिकता संशोधन अधिनियम का मामला, अनुच्छेद 370 का निरस्तीकरण, आदि, पूरी तरह से सुनने से बचने लगा, या ऐसे मामलों पर बिना कोई परिणामी आदेश पारित किए उन पर बैठा रहा ।

न्यायमूर्ति गोगोई ने सेवानिवृत्ति के तुरंत बाद संसद सदस्य (राज्यसभा) के रूप में नियुक्ति को भी स्वीकार कर लिया, और सेवानिवृत्ति के बाद न्यायमूर्ति सदाशिवम की नियुक्ति के समय न्यायपालिका के मामलों में बढ़ते कार्यपालिका और विधायी हस्तक्षेप के संबंध में व्यक्त की गई आशंकाएं फिर से सतह पर आ गईं । न्यायपालिका में कार्यपालिका के प्रति श्रद्धा का भाव पहले से ही बढ़ रहा था । इसी बीच एक परेशान करने वाली बात यह भी हुई कि लगभग इसी समय, न्यायमूर्ति अरुण मिश्रा और न्यायमूर्ति एमआर शाह द्वारा सार्वजनिक रूप से प्रधान मंत्री की प्रशंसा करने के साथ सुप्रीम कोर्ट के न्यायाधीशों में चाटुकारिता की प्रवृत्ति भी शुरू हो गई । जस्टिस गोगोई की बेंच ने लंबे समय से चले आ रहे अयोध्या विवाद को समाप्त कर दिया, लेकिन ज्ञानवापी और इसके अनंतर शायद काशी और मथुरा के साथ सांप्रदायिक संघर्ष का अंत होता दिख नहीं रहा है।

न्यायमूर्ति गोगोई के बाद न्यायमूर्ति शरद ए बोबडे प्रधान न्यायाधीश के रूप में आए, जिनका मोदी युग में सबसे लंबा कार्यकाल रहा; एक साल और पांच महीने से थोड़े अधिक समय तक का। इस दौरान न्यायपालिका को प्रौद्योगिकी के साहसपूर्वक प्रयोग करने का अवसर मिला, लेकिन इस दौरान न्यायपालिका की सरकार के प्रति अधीनता की भावना और भी बढ़ी। जस्टिस गोगोई के नेतृत्व में शुरू हुई न्यायिक बहाने की प्रथा उनके कार्यकाल में भी जारी रही। इस अवधि में अदालत द्वारा कुछ मामलों को अधिमान्यता दिए जाने की भी घटनाएं सामने आईं, जैसे कि, पत्रकार सिद्दीकी कप्पन बनाम अर्नब गोस्वामी की जमानत के मामलों में ।

सीजेआई बोबडे की पीठ ने एक अभूतपूर्व आदेश में विवादास्पद कृषि कानूनों पर भी रोक लगा दी, और इस मुद्दे की जांच के लिए एक समिति नियुक्त की, जिसमें ऐसे व्यक्ति शामिल थे जिन्होंने पहले से ही सार्वजनिक रूप से कानूनों का समर्थन किया था। न्यायमूर्ति बोबडे को अदालत का दरवाजा खटखटाने के साधन के रूप में अनुच्छेद 32 के तहत याचिकाओं के दायर किए जाने के प्रति नाराज़गी व्यक्त करने के साथ-साथ उच्च न्यायालयों से कोविड मामलों पर निर्णय लेने का अधिकार छीनने का प्रयास करने के लिए भी याद किया जाएगा। महामारी के दौरान भारत में प्रवासी मजदूरों की दुर्दशा एक त्रासदी थी और इस स्थिति के प्रति सुप्रीम कोर्ट का रवैया ज़मीनी हकीकत से दूर उन शीश महलों में रहने को दर्शाता है जो उसने अपने लिए बना रखे थे।

इन विवादास्पद फैसलों के बावजूद, न्यायमूर्ति बोबडे ने न्यायिक लंबित मामलों के निपटान हेतु तदर्थ न्यायाधीशों की नियुक्ति पर दिशानिर्देश जारी करके न्यायिक सुधार का प्रयास किया। उल्लेखनीय यह भी है कि उनके कार्यकाल में सुप्रीम कोर्ट में एक भी नियुक्ति नहीं की गई। न्यायमूर्ति बोबडे उच्च न्यायालय के सम्मानित वरिष्ठ मुख्य न्यायमूर्ति अकील कुरैशी को न्यायाधीश के रूप में सिफारिश करने के अनिच्छुक थे, जिन्होंने संयोग से सरकार के एक उच्च पदाधिकारी के खिलाफ आदेश भी जारी किया था। दूसरी ओर जस्टिस नरीमन उनके नाम की सिफारिश करने पर अड़े रहे। इससे कॉलेजियम के भीतर गतिरोध पैदा हो गया, और यह कॉलेजियम की तथाकथित स्वतंत्रता के बारे में बहुत कुछ कहता है।

इस अवधि में अपना कार्यकाल पूरा करने वाले नवीनतम मुख्य न्यायाधीश न्यायमूर्ति एन. वी. रमना हैं। जस्टिस रमना आधुनिक युग में सुप्रीम कोर्ट के सबसे सार्वजनिक रूप से दिखाई देने वाला चेहरा रहे हैं। भाषण देने और देश भर में बड़े पैमाने पर जनता के साथ जुड़ने के अलावा, न्यायमूर्ति रमना ने सुप्रीम कोर्ट के पुराने गौरव को भी कुछ बहाल किया है। संस्था एक बार फिर 'सेंटिनल ऑन द क्वि विवे' अर्थात सतर्क संरक्षक प्रतीत होने लगी है। कुछ जमानत आदेशों और स्थगनों (जैसे, राजद्रोह), और पेगासस जांच आदेश की वजह से न्यायपालिका में जनता का विश्वास भी बढ़ा है।

अस्तु, उनके कार्यकाल में उनके सहयोगी न्यायाधीशों के कुछ फैसलों ने नागरिक स्वतंत्रता को गंभीर रूप से कमजोर भी किया है। धन शोधन रोकथाम अधिनियम पर निर्णय, जो गैरकानूनी गतिविधि (रोकथाम) अधिनियम (वटाली मामले) में न्यायालय के पहले के फैसले की तर्ज़ पर था, का प्रभाव लोगों को लगभग अनिश्चित काल के लिए हिरासत में रखने का हुआ, जिसकी तुलना एकमात्र एडीएम जबलपुर मामले से की जा सकती है । तीस्ता सीतलवाड़/जकिया जाफरी और हिमांशु कुमार मामले भी उन्हीं की निगाहों के तले हुए, जिनसे ऐसा प्रतीत होता है कि सुप्रीम कोर्ट उन याचिकाकर्ताओं को अपराधी की श्रेणी में डाल रहा है जिन्होंने नागरिक स्वतंत्रता के मामलों पर अदालत का दरवाजा खटखटाने की हिम्मत की ।

यह ध्यान देने योग्य है कि न्यायमूर्ति रमना ने उच्चतम न्यायालय में सभी पदों को भी भर दिया और प्रणाली में विविधता को प्रतिनिधित्व देने के लिए प्रत्यक्ष कदम उठाते हुए कई महिला न्यायाधीशों की नियुक्ति सहित उच्च न्यायपालिका में काफी बड़ी संख्या में नियुक्तियां कीं। दुर्भाग्य से, न्यायिक बहाने की प्रथा न्यायमूर्ति रमना के कार्यकाल में जारी रही, और ना किसी संवैधानिक पीठ का गठन किया गया, और न ही महत्वपूर्ण मामलों को उठाया गया।

भविष्य

सुप्रीम कोर्ट की अध्यक्षता आज भारत के 49वें मुख्य न्यायाधीश न्यायमूर्ति यू यू ललित कर रहे हैं, जिनका कार्यकाल तीन महीने से भी कम का होगा। यद्यपि उनके कार्यकाल पर कोई ठोस टिप्पणी करना जल्दबाजी होगी, लेकिन जिस कम समय के लिए वह पद पर हैं, न्यायमूर्ति ललित पहले ही दिखा चुके हैं कि मामलों को दाखिल करने और सूचीबद्ध करने की प्रक्रियाओं में सुधार के माध्यम से रजिस्ट्री में सुधार किया जा सकता है। उन्होंने बेंचों के गठन और कुछ प्रारंभिक फैसलों, जो उन्होंने दिए हैं, के माध्यम से पहल की है,यथा, कप्पन और सीतलवाड़ मामलों में, उन व्यक्तियों को जमानत देना जिनके संबंध में मूल अभियोग स्वयं आधारहीन था। ये सभी घटनाक्रम न्यायपालिका के प्रति आस्थावान बनाते हैं और उम्मीद है कि सुप्रीम कोर्ट जैसी कभी परिकल्पना की गई थी संविधान का सच्चा अभिरक्षक और मौलिक अधिकारों का संरक्षक होने की अपेक्षित भूमिका की कसौटी पर खरा उतरेगा।

"आने वाले दशकों में, सुप्रीम कोर्ट को कई मोर्चों, विशेषकर कार्यपालिका से चुनौतियों का सामना करना पड़ता रहेगा"

आने वाले दशकों में सुप्रीम कोर्ट को कई मोर्चों पर, खासकर कार्यपालिका से चुनौतियों का सामना करते रहना पड़ेगा। इस पर भारतीय न्यायपालिका, विशेष रूप से निचली अदालतों, जो हाल के दिनों में कई मामलों में लड़खड़ाती नजर आ रही हैं, को मजबूत करने की नई जिम्मेदारियां भी होंगी। अवर न्यायाधीशों द्वारा समर्थित एक गतिशील और विचारशील नेतृत्व को यह सुनिश्चित करने में सक्षम होना होगा कि सम्यक रूप से इन चुनौतियों का सामना किया जाए और जिम्मेदारियों को पूरा किया जाए। भारत का सर्वोच्च न्यायालय, साथ ही सीजेआई के पदभार का भी क्रमिक विकास होता रहेगा किंतु उम्मीद है कि यह केवल सही दिशा में होगा ।

अजित प्रकाश शाह दिल्ली उच्च न्यायालय के पूर्व मुख्य न्यायाधीश और भारत के विधि आयोग के पूर्व अध्यक्ष हैं।

Youth and Nation-Building

2022-08-31T20:53:00.009+00:00

Mohammad Sajjad

On April 10, 2017, I was supposed to be at Muzaffarpur, for a seminar on the Centenary Celebrations of Champaran Satyagrah; as well as at a college of B N Mandal University, Madhepura, to speak on "Youth and Nation-Building". I could not make it to either. The organizers of the later event asked me to send a brief text, which they have printed. Here goes the text:

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven”.

William Wordsworth

In entire human history, youth have always been a crucial demographic segment and change-agents for progress and development. Their contribution in nation-building therefore is indispensable. They are not only the leaders of tomorrow but also shapers of present.

At the moment, India is said to have got highest proportion of youth in its total population. This demographic reality makes it all the more necessary to assess their role in the society. Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of the Infosys, India’s biggest IT firm, in his wonderful book, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century (2010), called it “demographic dividend” for new India.

The foundation of a nation, its economy, its ethical and cultural aspects, all depend upon how well the youth is educated, in real sense of the term, and not only in terms of obtaining the piece of paper called degrees and certificates. Moreover, regardless of the disciplines of studies a young mind prefers to specialise in, he or she must also develop a taste of reading and appreciating creative literature in prose and poetry as well as philosophy. Without such readings, it is difficult to protect and promote culture and heritage, constructive values and emotional assets. Thus, merely obtaining degrees in medicine, technology, higher sciences, etc., won’t do. A passion for reading literature is as much necessary for the science graduates as for those studying humanities and liberal arts. The writer, Tabish Khair says that primary reason for the growth of hate-filled fundamentalisms is due to the fact that there is a total refusal to engage with texts and stories in a contemplative, critical and historical manner.

Once this conception of education is accepted, the youth would automatically turn into greatest asset of the nation-building process. Such inquisitive minds would be passionate, strong-willed and motivated, besides being motivator. They have to understand and comprehend the politics, the government, its policy priorities and failures, etc. The local cultures, traditions, the need for social harmony, environmental protection, equitable economic development, reaching all segments of the society, and all these issues need a probing and critical look by the youth.

Allama Iqbal, in his famous poem, “Khitaab Ba Jawaanaan-e-Islam” (Address to the Muslim Youth), in his Baang-e-Dara, said it more clearly. The poet did not mean it for Muslims only. Universality of the appeal is certainly there, which is quite relevant for all, across religions and regions.

Kabhi ae naujawaan Muslim tadabbur bhi kiya tu ne
Woh kya gardoon ttha tu jis ka hai ek toota hua tara
GaNwaa di ham ne jo aslaaf se meeraas payee tthi
Suraiya se zamiN par aasmaaN ne ham ko de maara
Hukumat ka to kya rona ke woh ek aarzi sha'y tthi
NahiN duniya ke aain-e-musallam se koyee chaarah
Magar woh ilm ke moti, kitaabein apney aaba ki
Jo dekhein un ko Europe meiN to dil hota hai Seepara

In the above cited poem, the key word is tadabbur (ponder). The youth have to ponder over the issues of pressing concerns today.

The youth need to speak out against the evils of poverty, unemployment, proper health care, equality of opportunities, special protections to those segments who have been left out because of historically ingrained systems and practices of discriminations and subjugations.

The history of the anti-colonial struggle in India suggests that the movement gained strength and momentum after the 1920s only when the youth joined in. From the Swadeshi Movement of 1905-08, the students jumped into it and by the 1920s-30s, the likes of Bhagat Singh, Ashfaqullah, Rajguru, and Sukhdev not only made the supreme sacrifice of their lives but also envisioned a free India which will be socialist, secular and democratic republic. They studied, struggled, spoke out, and wrote. They wrote against the ideologies which discriminated and subjugated the people on the basis of caste, religion, region, language, and every such marks of identity. They celebrated plurality and harmonious co-existence of humanity. They abhorred exploitative and iniquitous socio-economic order. This is how they built the foundations of new India.

At the moment, global capitalist imperialism is deepening the economic divide. This growing inequality is creating social tensions, hatred and violence. Sadly, a very large proportion of the youth are increasingly becoming less critical and less informed in their understanding about the issues of the day. They consume the plethora of information without subjecting these to critical scrutiny and rationality, and without identifying the multi-layered complexities involved in the issues served to them by the self-serving ruling elites. The young minds are becoming victims of motivated propaganda circulated by the powers-that-be. “Unthinking” young minds are dangerous liabilities. Such unthinking young minds would be very detrimental to the national progress. Vigilant minds are most necessary requirement. As the saying goes, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. This was the daily punch-line of the prestigious English daily of Patna, “ The Searchlight ”, which closed down in 1986.

A powerful writer of our times, Pankaj Mishra, calls our age as an “age of anger”. Today’s youth lack patience. They are in hurry. They are dying to get rich quick. In this greed, they have become erratically angry, impatient, intolerant, and irrational too. These human beings have been turned into mechanical mindless puppets. Excessive consumerism and hedonism stimulate greed. Such greed and avarice combined with mental and physical laziness are creating huge problems in the society. Such tendencies discourage the youth from becoming a seeker of truth. This age is therefore condemned as an era of “post-truth”, where truth is destroyed and falsehood is paraded as truth. We therefore look at poor and the oppressed as if their poverty and oppression is a making of their own, not because of the cunning, smart oppressors. We blame the victims. We find ways of blaming the raped women, rather than the rapists. We therefore shed away our responsibilities to fight for justice. All this is happening by design, at the behest of the ruling elites across the globe. These dangerous power-players are uncomfortable with thinking and critical minds. They just don’t need thinking citizens.

We need to see through such dangerous games of power-play all around us. They are required to become conscientious and caring for the poor, for deprived, for elderly people, for all the weaker sections.

Let me become self-critical about my own community of teachers. Unfortunately, neither the politics of the teachers’ associations in the universities, nor the student unions are alive to such issues at the moment. The teaching, research, and therefore the politics of the campuses too, have largely looked away from the pressing problems of the immediate surroundings. There were, and are, caste-based oppressions, communal ideologies leading to recurrent violence and perpetual hatred, there are huge gaps in economic status, massive exploitation of forests and displacements of the tribal populations by the corporate, just in the name of development, there are atrocities against Dalits and women, at times sanctioned by certain motivated misreading of the religious texts. Ever growing rural distress, about which Phanishwar Nath Renu wrote a lot, no longer shakes us. There are growing crimes and corruption in society and in the structures of governance, not to say of the inter-regional and intra-regional imbalances. For instance, Bihar, for its politically perpetuated backwardness in economy, has been termed by the living socialist thinker, Sachidanand Sinha, as India’s internal colony. The campuses have not spoken out as loudly against all these evils as they should have. They have not carried out adequate quantum of researches along those lines. Our universities are not producing enough number of public intellectuals. We need intellectuals who can speak truth to power, without fear. We don’t need perverted knowledge-sellers who happily sit at the feet of the sultan. We don’t need a journalism which wags tails behind the establishment. Our democracy needs brave practitioners of anti-establishment politics. These days, we are failing on these counts each moment.

As a result of all such professional failures of the campuses, the youth in our times don’t have role models to look up to, anymore. In this vacuum, the gangsters, the criminals, and the religious extremists have become their role models. This is a very sorry state of affairs. The humanity is exposed to unprecedented dangers.

These contrasts and ugly scenarios have been there around us since long. In the 1920s the youth had Bhagat Singh as their role model, in the 1940s, they had Jawaharlal Nehru, in the 1960s and 70s they had Jaya Prakash Narayan (1902-79) and Ram Manohar Lohia (1910-67), besides some of the self-less Left progressives. They had authority of knowledge and conviction of truth. They spoke like prophets, and therefore they were appreciated and admired even by their sharpest critics. This was reflected in our popular Hindi cinema as well. The movie-watchers loved the characters of angry young men fighting for justice.

In the subsequent decades, cynicism set in and the gangsters began to emerge as role models. Even in the movies, at times, we now applaud the villains and their power to prevail upon the good. Quite saddening, indeed!

Once again going back to Nandan Nilekani’s observation in his book, Imagining India,

“the opportunity of the global economy has highlighted our internal differences---between the educated elites and the illiterate, the public and private sectors, between the well and the poorly governed, and between those who have access and those who have not”.

This is better put by Ghalib (1797-1869):

Har qadam duri-e-manzil hai numayaaN mujh se
Meri raftaar se bhaagey hai bayabaaN mujh se

Yet, we must not lose hope. Youth must remain incorrigibly optimist. If our nation has to become a global player, our youth, and their moulders, the teachers, have to come alive to these uncomfortable contrasts and evils.

If we educate, organise and agitate on all such issues, there is no reason why we would lag behind, and why we shall not move ahead in the world. For this, we rest our hope in the educated and thinking youth.

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Indian National Movement and its Legacy

2022-08-23T13:56:00.008+00:00

This is the text of a lecture delivered by Prof. Mohammad Sajjad of CAS Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University as a part of 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' celebrations. The lecture was delivered at the Faculty of Arts, AMU on August 11, 2022.

Respected Dean, Faculty of Arts, Prof. Imtiaz Hasnain, teachers, colleagues, and dear students!

A very good afternoon.

In this gathering of knowledgeable people, someone assigned to speak with lots of constraints, is bound to be nervous. For someone like me, who has his own handicaps in oratory, adds to his constraints, limitations as well as challenges while choosing to speak on such occasions.

We have gathered here to celebrate 75 years of our independence, which also coincides with 80 years of the Quit India Movement. Both, the state, as well as society, or societies, have their multi-layered stakes in preserving and circulating group-memories, and also in the acts of remembering and memorialising events, processes, history-makers, etc.

We, as a university community of knowledge-seekers and disseminators, have our own roles and responsibilities in these acts of remembering, memorialising.

Forgetfulness and remembrances have their own dynamics.

In a gathering like this, where students and teachers of various disciplines have gathered, one is confused as to how to go about the issue which is, arguably speaking, simultaneously superficial and a subject of common sense, as well as full of challenges in terms of contested interpretations.

qissa-e-sāzish-e-aġhyār kahūñ yā na kahūñ

shikva-e-yār-e-tarah-dār karūñ yā na karūñ

Just for the sake of convenience of sharing the observations and views, one of the ways is to look back upon some of the tallest dramatis personane of the struggle during its popular phase, or the retreating phase of colonialism. Such a route would invite us to look upon Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Azad, Bose, etc.

The story of the national movement is basically a story of social change through democratic means as a prolonged process. This combined extra-legal means of struggle with readiness to negotiate with the state. This is the world’s biggest mass struggle for their socio-economic emancipation, and an exercise in preventing the degeneration of politics into a counter-revolution and authoritarianism.

There is a third kind of challenge too before this inept speaker. India comprises of various kinds of primordial and class identities. All these identities engaged with the colonial state and with anti-colonial struggles, keeping their own sectional interests in mind, whereas, nationalism, in its essence, is about people in pursuit of forming solidarities above and beyond such divisive sectionalism. More importantly, nationalism in a colonial society is basically anti-colonialism.

Given these sets of dilemma, may I kindly be permitted to share some questions for a collective introspection? This is an urge to re-think some of the issues about which there are complacent assumptions at academic as well as popular level that the issues need not be re-thought.

By now, it is no longer debatable that India’s freedom movement was one of the greatest mass movements the humanity has thus far known. What kind of India was to be made, after gaining independence, had been visualised during this anti-colonial struggle, which had its own vicissitudes.

I hope, none of us would have disagreement on admitting a fact that at this point of time, all is not well with us, on economic front, on the indices of specifics such as: rich-poor gap in economy and education, inter-community relations, and in terms of socially realistic representations in the structures and processes of power. By saying so, we don’t deny the big accomplishments that we have thus far made as a nation in the last many decades since independence. We are also not oblivious of the fact that we have been able to accomplish all these precisely because of the experiences we gained during the protracted mass movements not only before independence but also after that.

It would therefore be in the fitness of the things that we must keep looking into our own histories, with a mix of legitimate pride as well as with a gaze of objective self-criticism and sincere stock-taking.

Before I jump over to the late 19th century and to the popular phase of our anti-colonial nationalism, let us recall and reclaim the legacy of our reformists. (Revivalists had their own implications, which I would like to avoid discussing here).

One of the greatest problems of the colonised society like us, as diagnosed by our reformists, was that there was something which had held us back and which led to our colonial subjugation. Culturally, we had worked towards subjugating and excluding our own people through the practices like untouchability, female infanticide and foeticide, Sati, child marriage, and many other discriminations against women, castes, tribes, communities, etc. All such practices had been legitimised through particular interpretations of religion and scriptures. These were sought to be challenged by the people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Jyotiba Phule and scores of other such reformists. They undertook this task premised on values such as rationalism, humanism, universalism, etc. For this, they had to democratise the scriptural knowledge. This was the way the priestly or clergy’s monopoly of scriptural knowledge had to be challenged. One of such ways was to render such scriptural contents into vernaculars and in people’s languages. People had to reclaim their own rights to interpret their religion.

For a variety of reasons, certain groups or communities or components of the Indian populace, failed to undertake such reformist tasks, or, at least, delayed or deferred in undertaking such tasks. This delay, which also had to do with delay in formation of modern educated middle class, has had its own implications during the ongoing journey of Indian nationalism.

Notwithstanding these inadequacies and limitations, the reformist movements did help create certain proportion of middle class which harboured enough cultural self-confidence to challenge, confront and negotiate with the colonial state. Partha Chatterjee called this phase of nationalism as Moment of Departure. He found such articulations in literary outputs of Bankim Chandra Chatterji. One may attempt at finding such features in the writings of other Indian languages too. Hali, Shibli, and other associates of the Aligarh Movement also contributed to this, through their persuasive and unconventional writings. Hali’s long Urdu poem, ‘Qaum Ka Mutawassit Tabqa’ (1891), i.e., the middle class, would be of particular interest. Moin Ahsan Jazbi’s booklet (1956), ‘Hali Ka Siyasi Sha’oor’, is an important and interesting read, in this context.

The colonial state was forced to create institutions of governance, and with the growing strength of the freedom movement, Indianization (in terms of man power) of all such institutions, including the civil and police services, kept growing. By the 1940s, this process of Indianization, combined with the changed nature of imperial controls (as a consequence of the Second World War) the British had no way other than quitting India. They however did it by dividing it too, so that the imperial control of the Anglo-American power could continue to perpetuate without having formal political control on us. This continues to play out upon our collective lives ever since then. Most of our biggest problems are the legacies of the colonial subjugation and the manner in which the British had quit India with a blood wrenched partition.

Convenience and comfort of the colonial state was to encourage, exacerbate and accentuate the pre-existing social or primordial differences and contradictions through enumeration technologies such as census. Beginning from the municipal institutions, the identity-based differences were exacerbated more aggressively from the 1920s onwards, when legislative institutions expanded accommodating more and more Indians.

The Congress and other anti-colonial forces of India (there were pro-colonial forces as well: the collaborators and compradors) remained face to face with this difficult and challenging task of uniting the diverse people by pulling them above their primordial identities.

Before we put greater focus on the popular phase of nationalism and its tallest leaders, let us not forget the colonial roles in exacerbating and perpetuating divisiveness. Through, history textbooks the two biggest religious communities were pitted against each other. Before such a colonial power-play in the 19th century, India’s Hindus and Muslims didn’t look upon each other as their perennial adversaries.

B D Chattopadhyay’s book, ‘Representing the Other’, based on Sanskrit sources during 8th to 14th centuries, amply demonstrate that there did not exist political animosity against or ‘Otherization’ of Muslims. They were referred to with their ethnic/racial identities: Tajik, Turk, etc. traders belonging to the faiths such as Jains, Muslims, Brahmans, Vaishyas, all donated for each other’s prayer houses.

Neither Dahir was personifying all Hindus of India, nor was Muhammad Qasim personifying all Muslims of subsequent generations. Neither Prithviraj Chauhan was representing all Rajputs or all Hindus nor was Ghori representing the Muslims of the subcontinent (Cynthia Talbot’s book is an interesting read). The territorial and political defeats and victories were not attributed to the respective religious communities. Shivaji and Aurangzeb (James Laine’s two books) or Rana Pratap and Akbar, Tipu Sultan vs the restored Wodeyars, for that matter, were not looked upon as representatives of the two religious communities. These kinds of fissiparous history-writing and massive popularization of such divisive notions are phenomena of 19th century colonial state. State power and state-backed power in popularising such notions among the societies of illiterates is a subject of enquiry for specialised academic disciplines. Social and political anthropologies of manufacturing and spreading rumours and falsehood are becoming popular as well as challenging branch of academic discipline. One may recall contemporary experience of what is now popularly referred as WhatsApp “Universities”.

One of the biggest impediments before the Indian nationalism was communalism, i.e., Hindu-Muslim strife. There continues to be academic-intellectual confusion pertaining to this issue. Its best definition however was given by our very own K M Ashraf (1903-1962). He defined it as ‘Mazhab ki siyasi dukaandaari’; political trade in the name of religion.

My own understanding on the issue, by now, is something Bipan Chandra has developed via Nehru’s Discovery of India (1946) and W C Smith’s Modern Islam Islam in India: A Social Analysis (the revised edition of 1946). Briefly put, communalism is a product of colonial modernity. This view disagrees with CA Bayly’s thesis that there is a pre-history of communalism in India before its colonization by the British.

This view also asserts that, with the support of the colonial state, the Muslim communal separatist force was stronger during late-colonial era than the other divisive forces. While saying so, this view does not disregard the fact that certain majoritarian forces were made to grow leaps and bounds after 1938. Further, this view is absolutely unambiguous on this: nationalism has to be inclusive; any exclusionary idea or conception of nationhood cannot and must not be regarded as nationalism. This view therefore does not prefix nationalism with ascriptive-identitarian markers.

Coming back to the biggest challenge of communalism!

There were caste associations, for recognition by the state and for entitlement to state resources and institutions. So were the Muslims. Though, a part of the articulate segment of Muslim elites preferred to be recognised as, and staked their claims of entitlements, referring themselves as ex-ruling class, for preferential treatment, rather than a numerical minority. This will have serious implications not only in colonial period but also subsequent to independence. While saying so, my reference is not confined only to what was exchanged between our founder Sir Syed and the Congress leader Badruddin Tyabji. I will come back again to this issue, in a moment.

The dominant anti-colonial forces believed that economic nationalism was the antidote for any identitarian thing which was to be paraded as ‘nationalism’. In the 19th century therefore Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahadev Govind Ranade and Romesh Chandra Dutt put forward the Drain theory. Critique of railway economy, agrarian and irrigation issues, particularly a huge neglect of agricultural and industrial development by the colonial regime, remained a central question of our nationalism. They articulated a scientific economic critique of colonialism: plunder, taxation, employment to Englishmen, free and uneqal trade, investment of British capital, etc.

This became clearer after 1918; cadres of the national movement at the lowest level were educated about this and were trained to resist it through political action and mobilization.

By the turn of the 20th century, peasant movements, working class movements, women, linguistic groups and the oppressed castes came forward to widen the social and regional base of the movement. This ever-increasing amplification of the national movement went on to decide the shares of those classes and groups in the evolving structures and processes of power.

The nationalist leaders destroyed the myth that the British ruled India for the benefit of Indians: mai baap

No mass movement can sustain without ideology. Nationalist leaders provided this movement with ideology—Ideology of anti-colonial nationalism, with core components of Civil libertarian, secular, republican, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and press.

The partition of Bengal in 1905, not for the sake of administrative convenience but for perpetuating religious divide was the turning point. Resistance to this anticipated Gandhian ways of mobilizing masses, while shaking the financial and ideological foundations of the Raj. It became popularly known as the Swadeshi Movement. This also manifested India’s intellectual capacities of anti-colonial mobilizations. From education to economy, culture to politics, workable as well as non-workable blue-prints of nationalist alternatives began to emerge among the contesting constituents of evolving Indian nation.

The 1920s was unprecedented in many ways. Asians were overcoming their race-based inferiority complex vis a vis the European West, the working class was gaining greater confidence after the Soviet Revolution, progressing from the Moderates to the Extremists, the violent revolutionaries, through their individual heroic action, within and beyond the Congress, were contributing towards reducing the fear of the Raj among the Indian masses. They too provided socialist orientation to the evolving Indian nation.

Through the Separate Electorates of 1909, nationalism was facing a great impediment, this was sought to be dealt with through the Lucknow Pact of 1916. But that turned out to be a very short-lived unity that too only from above.

Meanwhile, the peasant and working class movements were building up in certain parts, while integrating themselves with the ongoing national movement. Gandhi’s intervention in Bihar’s Champaran and Gujarat’s Kheda and Ahmedabad Mills, brought in a new radicalism in and massification of, the national movement. Now the subject people were rapidly moving towards becoming citizens. Nehru was already roaming among the stirred peasantry particularly of Awadh, eastern UP and Bihar. Emergence of the saint-politician Gandhi had become a sort of historical necessity, argues Sumit Sarkar’s textbook (1983). Gandhiji was preceded by certain peasant leaders cum saints such as Baba Ramchandra and Swami Vidyanand.

Meanwhile, something happened which still waits to be properly evaluated by many of us, not only at the academic level but also at the popular level.

Gandhiji and Muslim leaders used the symbol of Khilafat. Why a foreign issue and that too a religious one, came to be employed to mobilize people? Was it a worthy institution even in Turkey? What kind of degenerations had already set in this institution? Even the Turkinsh youth were disillusioned with the institution of Khilafat? Why did the Muslim leaders remain or keep Muslims ignorant about many such issues pertaining to the Khilafat? There are many such questions. It also created apprehensions among a considerable section of Hindus that the Pan-Islamic tendency of India’s Muslims would practically make Hindus into a politically subjugated minority. Lala Lajpat Rai had already been grappling with such issues. He had earlier written some open letters to Sir Syed raising certain concerns about Hindu-Muslim relations.

Now, Lala Lajpat Rai (1865-1928) raised this issue with Malaviya (1861-1946) and CR Das (1870-1925). Intizar Husain’s Urdu biography, ‘Ajmal-e-Azam’ (1999), of Hakim Ajmal Khan (1868-1927), has hinted at such apprehensions of Hindus. Such dimensions of the issue need to be re-explored by scholars, rather than being dismissive about it.

Thus, on one hand the remarkable display of Hindu-Muslim unity alarmed the colonial masters, on the other, the use of the Khilafat symbol, alarmed a section of Hindus. This, needless to repeat, had massive implications for the entire subcontinent, in next few decades.

The Non Cooperation Movement, as it turned violent at Chauri Chaura, was suddenly put under suspension in February 1922. Subsequently, massive communal violence ensued across north India; Swami Shradhanand was killed (December 1926) by a fanatic Muslim, Abdul Rashid, though this conflict began from the Malabar coast in deep south. Left-leaning historians (particularly K N Panikkar) have traced agrarian discontent of the Moplah peasants against selected oppressive landlords happening to be Brahmins. That however continues to be referred to as Muslim communal aggression against Hindus. Ambedkar’s book (1946), ‘Pakistan or Partition of India’, and scores of other leaders never got themselves convinced of this agrarian factor behind the Malabar issue.

The 1930s is of particular significance in terms of the enduring legacy that the national movement bequeaths us. I am referring to the Karachi Resolution of the Congress, 1931. Crucial issues such as Fundamental rights, economic programmes, socialist economy, etc., state owned public sector industries, were assertively envisaged in the Karachi Resolution.

Subsequently, the Congress acquired more radical and emancipatory character through its Faizpur Agrarian Programme of 1936. Socialist and Leftist progressive contents started becoming stronger in the ideas of the national movement for the blue-print of future independent India. During this decade, Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose emerged as most popular leader among the youth. By now, the national movement gained tremendous confidence to articulate economic policies, education policies, foreign policies, and the roles India would play worldwide against colonialism and racism.

The Wardha Scheme of Education (1938), conceived and worked out by Gandhiji and Zakir Husain continues to be inalienable part of our subsequent nationalist education policies. I would urge the enlightened audience here to revisit the 200 odd pages draft of Zakir Husain. One would find out many things of the document retained even by the latest draft of the official educational policy. This could be an important reference point for both the admirers and critics of the latest education policy of the government.

So far as the radicalization of peasantry is concerned, the life-story of Navrang Rai alias Swami Sahajanand Saraswati is an interesting read, particularly because he began as a narrow, caste-based reformist and ended up as a tallest radical peasant leader.

At this point, once again, we need to remind ourselves that with this manner of radicalization of the national movement through organised and assertive peasants, working classes, youth, women, tribes, etc., the colonial power-play was towards creating identity-based communal polarization. This became an immediate necessity of the colonial regime once the Congress formed ministries in various provinces in 1937.

From 1938 onwards the majoritarian and minority communal-separatist forces started growing leaps and bounds. Their militias started mushrooming across the nooks and crannies of the subcontinent.

This is how we entered into the decisive 1940s. The two communal forces got open and secret support from the colonial state; the two competing communal forces collaborated with each other by forming coalition ministries in at least two provinces, not to say of such alliances of crassest opportunism in certain municipal bodies, even in the 1930s.

Subhash Bose was quite clear about the communal threat even though the means he chose to employ in order to fight the colonial forces remains a question of concern. In a desperate bid to get rid of British subjugation, Bose had no reservations about aligning with the totalitarian regimes of Europe. Nonetheless, his INA did insist on Ittefaq, Ittehad and Itimaad. Genuinely inclusive nationalism was non-negotiable in his conception of nationhood, sincerely employed within his INA, which also had a women regiment.

At this point, a reference to Jinnah’s politics becomes inevitable. We all know that Jinnah had left politics and settled in UK. All of a sudden, in 1934, he came back to India. We are yet to know as to who prevailed upon Jinnah to rejoin politics. Arguably, we don’t have much even to conjecture and surmise sufficiently in this regard, though, an intelligent guess can possibly be made, based upon how things unfolded subsequently.

I would submit before this enlightened audience to recall what David Gilmartin says in this regard. He says that what Jinnah wanted at this stage was to make the Muslim League an equal partner- a third party- in any negotiation for the future constitution of India. Recall the Muslims, for preferential treatment, being referred more as ex-ruling class, and hardly as numerical minority. Protective discrimination is provided to the historically oppressed. Such Muslim leaders chose to ignore that articulating their demand in this language of ex-ruling class would forfeit the claim of protective discrimination.

How did Jinnah do and achieve the status of “sole spokesman” of Muslims?

Here I would like the audience to pay a cool and careful attention. Jinnah did this through the passage of the Shariat Application Act in 1937, with spirited advocacy by Jinnah in the Central Legislative Assembly. This provided him with a symbolic ideological basis for Muslim solidarity on a national scale, transcending all debates pertaining to the stratifications existing within the Muslims. Politics of Separate homeland and intransigence on gender and caste equity should be noted here.

Not for the last time, this play of the Muslim Personal Law would vitiate the Indian politics. Please do recall the Shah Bano episode 1986. Its heartrending fallout, not only for the hapless individual citizen called Shah Bano, but also for the Muslims as a group, and for the Indian nation, its secularism and its goals of social and gender justice, etc., is something which hardly requires any elaboration in this gathering of wise men and women. Caste and gender justice is yet to be taken up with any degree of sincerity by the votaries of Personal Law.

Let me also put it unambiguously, that we as a university community of AMU have either failed to make an adequate intervention into, or, have maintained a criminal silence on, or, sadly enough, have aligned with those reactionary forces.

Anyway, at this critical juncture of history, we need to look back upon the Pakistan Project of Jinnah, with two kinds of questions:

1. Was it a project of minority rights? Did this project of Jinnah remain a minority rights issue after 1941, or, he turned it into a question of ex-ruling class to be treated as a nation? If yes, then, what did it give to its own minorities after becoming a sovereign or republic, even at theoretical/constitutional level? Why did it become an Islamic republic, rather than a republic for equality of citizenship?

Or,

2. Was it a project for a separate homeland for Muslims? If it was so, then, the question arises as to what did Muslim leadership do towards securing robust Minority Rights discourses for the India of post 1947?

I am reminded of Gyan Prakash’s recent book, ‘Emergency Chronicles’. He says that India’s Muslims and other minorities suffer from a substantive problem that there haven’t ever been mass struggles for the minority rights in India. In other words, in the name of minority rights only regressive and patriarchal values have been safeguarded.

This is not to say that Jinnah was the only articulate voice among Muslim leadership. Maulana Sajjad (1880-1940) was someone who advocated the idea of confining religious rituals and processions within private space. Tufail Ahmad Manglori (1868-1946; book, ‘Musalmanon Ka Raushan Mustaqbil’), the ace wicket-keeper of the Aligarh College cricket team; Maulana Hifzur Rahman Seohharvi (1901-1962; ‘Tehreek-e-Pakistan Par Ek Nazar’), etc., were some of the significant leaders who chastised Jinnah and his idea of separate homeland. Madani’s ‘Muttahidah Qaumiyat’ (1938) is quite well known conception, hence, hardly much necessary to point it out, here among this enlightened audience. [My book, ‘Muslim Politics in Bihar’ devotes a chapter on Muslim Resistance to the Two Nation Theory].

A comparative study of Iqbal’s presidential address to the Muslim League in Allahabad in 1930 and Maulana Azad’s presidential address of the Congress at Ramgarh (Jharkhand) in 1940 would be a helpful exercise for those who remain confused between the politics of separatism and politics of minority rights.

The colonial regime however threw its weight behind Jinnah. Thus the voices of the nationalist Muslims, of their writings, their call for mobilizations, all fell on deaf ears. Jinnah outsmarted all these persuasive and enlightened Muslim luminaries. After all Jinnah had strong backing of state power. Jinnah cunningly and mischievously converted the minority rights discourse into separatism. Having converted a minority into a nation, Jinnah and his colonial benefactors inflicted most fatal injuries to the noble cause of minority rights, in our subcontinent. The sub-continental majoritarianism (to use Papiya Ghosh’s expression) of today has much to do with the nexus of the colonial masters with communal forces.

Those of us who have too many grievances against the Congress-led national movement and its tall leaders, by now, with the advantage of contemporary experiences, we need to introspect that identity-politics of various hues and shades had collaborated with the colonial regimes. Even the CPI had fallen prey to this extremely misleading discourse, in the name of right to ‘self-determination’. Unfortunately, except, K M Ashraf, to the best of my limited knowledge, none of the CPI people have subsequently confessed this fault as candidly as they should.

As against it, the inclusive and pluralist nationalism confronted the colonial regime.

The Constituent Assembly Debates and its final outcome in the form of our Constitution, is basically an outcome of the anti-colonial mass-based freedom struggle.

Here, Ambedkar becomes a necessary reference, more particularly, his three books: Annihilation of Caste (1936), States and Minorities (1947), and Pakistan or Partition of India (1946), among others. These works provide window to look into what democracy, social justice, minorty rights, liberalism and constitutionalism meant to Ambedkar.

In Ambedkar's reading of democracy is not just about form but about value, approach and attitude which should be guided by the trinity of fraternity, dignity, and equality. “One man, one vote, one value” is how Ambedkar conceptualised Democracy. Tryrany of majority is not democracy, and Ambedkar was always against this contrived and perverted reading of democracy. Ambedkar alarmed that if social and economic democracy is not realised, it will be at the peril of political democracy. For Ambedkar, citizen was the focal point of the Constitution. Contemporary politics, in the name of Ambedkar, needs to be reminded of this crucial aspect.

The Justice Party (with its rise and fall in the 1920s), Periyar and then Ambedkar are three important milestones in the evolution of Dalit politics during the national movement. Just before the Quit India Movement, the Dalits too had announced to stay away from the QIM. But the Dalit “separatism” couldn’t have sustained. Unlike the Muslim elites, Dalits didn’t have landlords and businessmen to fund their pursuit. The pro-Congress Dalit leaders could keep majority of Dalits with the Congress in the 1946 elections.

While acknowledging Ambedkar’s contribution, we should not forget the fact that it was only because of Gandhiji and Nehru that Ambedkar was entrusted with important responsibility of not only drafting the Constitution but also to let his ideas and vision acquire space within the Constitution.

In short, class-based approach of the national movement, and its emphasis on individual citizenship, failed to satisfy the identitarian and separatist forces.

There were some limitations of the National Movement:

1. The INM failed to undertake “cultural revolution” with regard to social position of women, and lower castes. Strong anti-caste ideology was not formed and propagated;

2. There was a strategic and tactical failure in defeating communalism with nationalism. Possibly because of that, even after independence, from late 1950s onwards, Nehru led India became sort of complacent about the communal problem and Nehru failed to devise institutions or organizational and administrative means to deal with it.

The question of landholding pattern and tribal empowerment remained grossly unaccomplished not only during the colonial era but also after independence, in greater parts of India. Such legacies of colonialism were foreseen even by the Internationalist and Universalist Rabindrnath Tagore, in his last public speech which was delivered in Shantiniketan in April 1941.

For these to accomplish, armed and unarmed struggles of the landless Dalit peasants and tribes emerged after independence. Their dispossession and displacement in the name of Development/ Vikas continues to happen. Many would say: Vikas is new Communalism.

Engaging with such debates, we as an academic community have to keep thinking how to realise the unfulfilled socio-economic goals of the freedom movement. Does it need repetition that we can achieve it not through identity-politics but by weaving a people’s solidarity through economic nationalism?

Sumit Sarkar concludes his textbook (1983) with a quotation from William Morris’ novel (1888), A Dream of John Ball. This is on the great Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in England:

‘…pondered how men fight and lose battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name’.

Faiz versified this very feeling:

Chaley chalo ki woh manzil abhi nahin aayee

Thank You,

Mohammad Sajjad

AMU, Aligarh

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Sociology of Shaheen Bagh (Book Excerpts)

2022-05-13T15:16:00.007+00:00

By Ziya Us Salam & Uzma Ausaf

When the anti-CAA protests hit Shaheen Bagh, it took most by surprise. Most residents of Delhi did not have an idea about the place. Many went to Google Maps to find its location. Aviral Anand summed up the larger society’s ignorance in Sabrang India thus:

As I get off the metro at the Jasola Vihar-Shaheen Bagh station, I am uncertain how to get to the Shaheen Bagh camp. I think there might be some signs from the metro station itself since the encampment had suddenly shot in the news. But none seemed apparent. So I look hopefully for a metro exit towards Shaheen Bagh, and sure enough, Gate number 3 leads in that direction. A further sign, ‘Follow foot overbridge to Shaheen Bagh,’ directs me thenceward. But from that distance I cannot spot any encampment. I am a little apprehensive.

Anand had to ask more than a couple of persons on the road to reach Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of anti-CAA protests!

Those who knew the place well, they too were taken by surprise that Shaheen Bagh women had decided to leave the confines of their home to not only step out on the road to protest, but to actually sit at a public square, raise slogans against the new law, speak for the Constitution of the land even as they risked life and limb for it. The image of Shaheen Bagh women in the mind of the common man was one of a conservative section where women’s domestic responsibilities overshadowed any other potential they have may in their inner reservoirs. They were supposed to be those anonymous souls who would spend their life in the seclusion of home in the name of dignity. It was an erroneous belief, as was to be proved.

It was not entirely surprising to see the guts and gumption of the students of Jamia Millia Islamia; youth has its compulsion, students their fearlessness. A photograph of some Jamia girls looking the policemen in the eye, even as they covered a man to protect him from the blows of the policemen, left many in awe of the youngsters. It is, however, the determination and fortitude exhibited by women of Shaheen Bagh, located barely a couple of kilometres from the border of Noida in Uttar Pradesh, that not only pleasantly surprised the residents of Delhi, but gave a fillip to the campaign against CAA like none other. It was an entirely unexpected though absolutely welcome comfort for the people out on the streets of India against the discriminatory law.

It set our political scientists and sociologists thinking too. Seasoned sociologist Prof. Avijit Pathak of JNU visited the place as much to raise his voice alongside the protestors as to find out for himself about the ‘phenomenon’ that Shaheen Bagh had become within a couple of weeks of the women hitting the road. He came back to narrate, ‘I read about Shaheen Bagh; I saw videos; heard commentaries; and students and friends talked about it. But then, I visited the site, saw the phenomenon, felt it, and possibly experienced the ecstasy of the confluence of human souls for a higher cause. For me, the experience was amazing.’ So amazing that he discovered ‘the power of human possibilities. If inspired and motivated, each of us, irrespective of the socio-economic background, can do wonders.’ And Shaheen Bagh women, supposedly from the conservative section of an otherwise conservative minority, did exactly that!

Not too different was the understanding of Prof. Mohammed Talib, who once stayed barely a couple of kilometres from Shaheen Bagh when he taught sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia. Now teaching at Oxford, he related,

‘Shaheen Bagh has emerged as a powerful symbol from the wide urban sprawl centred around Okhla and Jamia Millia Islamia. Why Shaheen Bagh is a symbol of protest and hope? This is to be seen in the backdrop of the wider context of Muslim urban living where responsible people in the government holding negative prejudices addressed the area and its people in personal terms, largely with negative connotations. Shaheen Bagh addressed in terms of imagined traits of a community, with distinct dress and food habits. Shaheen Bagh was partly born in the way it was defined by dominant Hindutva sentiment looking for its ideological fodder against a community in a given area.’

But when the women sat on a long protest, it demolished many a stereotype about the area. Shaheen Bagh soon became what Prof. Talib called ‘a platform rather than a de-limited area which articulated disgust people expressed against the wanton manner in which most innocentsection of the population, its youth and students were targeted violently without accountability or legal restraint.’ And Shaheen Bagh, not entirely affluent—the colony has stretches of lofty houses with fancy gates, guards, and so on, just as it has stretches with the dwellings of the poor—found it within itself to organise the protest. It had little to do with its history, much to do with its sociology, the inter-personal relations of its residents. The colony had come up on tracts of agricultural land a little more than thirty years ago. Its founder was Ansarullah, who came to Delhi as a young man from Rampur in pursuit of higher education at Jamia. Later, he got into real estate. Along with his family, Ansarullah bought eighty bighas of land in Jasola village. He happened to be a lover of the works of illustrious Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal.In one of his nazms in 1935, ‘Sitaron se aage jahan aur bhi hain’, Iqbal said, ‘Tu shaheen hai, parwaz hai kaam tera, tere samne aasman aur bhi hain’. Shaheen, or falcon, was a symbol of freedom for Iqbal. It struck a chord with Ansarullah. And thus, the colony came to be called Shaheen Bagh; though for easier familiarity, it was also called Abul Fazal Enclave-II. Abul Fazal Enclave is literally next door. Incidentally, Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaffrelot analysed the foundation of the colony in Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation, where Gayer wrote in an essay:

AFE (Abul Fazl Enclave) is well defined, bounded as it is by the old Agra Canal (presently a nallah) in the west, by the west bank of the Yamuna in the east and by two roads (that from the junction of Okhla Head in the north and that from Kalindi Kunj to Sarita Vihar in the south). The population of this locality is almost exclusively Muslim, with the exception of a small Hindu-dominated pocket known as Nai Basti (new settlement), at the northwest extremity of the neighbourhood, of which AFE was originally an extension. This locality is divided into two parts: Abul Fazl I, the abode of middle-class and upper-class Muslims, and Abul Fazl-II (also known as Shaheen Bagh), which has a higher density of population and a larger concentration of lower-middle-class Muslims, although it is undergoing a rapid process of gentrification.

This was in 2012. Today, Shaheen Bagh has progressed to a peaceful coexistence where the affluent and the poor often live cheek-by-jowl. It is not uncommon to find an upper-middle-class family and its retinue of servants, drivers, maids and cleaners living down the same road. Then, there are small traders and businessmen hailing from towns of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who would have come here with almost zero capital, but scaled their way up. For them, Shaheen Bagh, while opening a window of opportunity in the national capital, also provides a taste of home: similar food, familiar people, mosques, etc. It brings about a certain degree of social equality and compassion not found in very many other places. The fact that men stand together while praying in a mosque helps. Equally, women gather for religious congregations across the class barriers.

That at the protest site one often found the owner of the house and her maid sitting at the same place was not an aberration. It stemmed from mutual respect and appreciation. There was easy acceptance of the others. Both the women, from different spectrums of society, were used to each other’s presence in life.

As Prof. Talib put it:

‘It is true that Shaheen Bagh is not an affluent area of Delhi yet it could spare its time and material support for organising protest. This may seem ironical on the face of it. The reality is that the majority of residents around Shaheen Bagh belonging mostly to informal sector of society and economy have the required “surplus” borne out of shared experiences of collective life which is not entirely exhausted by the wider productive system. Sociologically speaking, humanity needs a threshold of relative deprivation to produce the extra sociality that is usually missing in areas where the majority may be characterised by high achievers. Perforce, individuals, groups, and institutions heavily integrated in the serious productive frame of society are also depleted of creative resources and alternative visions of humanity required to foster active citizenry. Communities who share among themselves symbolic goods tend to surprise those who observe them from a distance as to what keeps them engaged in a given place and time. The dominant prejudicial environment against the minorities, especially the Muslims has produced enclaves of mutual help and protection to deal with the perceived “danger” which the aggressive negative stereotyping in the wider society produces.’

The brave women of Shaheen Bagh demolished many a negative stereotype.

These excerpts are from 'Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement' written by Ziya Us Salam and Uzam Ausaf and published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

Sedition: the Law itself is the Problem

2022-05-11T18:23:00.003+00:00

By Mahtab Alam

Ever since its inception in 1860, the contentious law against sedition (section 124-A of Indian Penal Code) has been used against thousands of people. During the colonial period, the law was extensively used by the British government to stifle dissent and curb the independence movement. Among the notables who were charged under the law during this period include a galaxy of freedom fighters like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Annie Besant, Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Jawaharlal Nehru, to name a few.

Gandhi, when charged under the law, termed it as the “prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.” Nehru, who was charged and convicted under the law, was of the view that this “particular Section (124A IPC) is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in anybody of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better.” Despite that, the law not only continues to exist in our statute books but has also been brazenly used ever since India’s independence. What is important to note is that those who were charged under the law during the colonial regime were seen as Rajdrohi (one who rebels against the state or government of the day), and in post-Independent India are seen as Deshdrohi (anti-National), though nowhere in the law is it stated that a sedition is an act against the country or nation. In common parlance, thanks to the media and its deliberate misinformation campaign, the ‘government’ has now become synonymous with the country.

While there lies a huge difference between someone being ‘seditious’ and ‘anti-National’, someone being anti-government or anti-establishment does not necessarily mean that the same person is also ‘anti-national’. This deliberate misinformation has created an environment where it becomes almost impossible to defend someone charged under draconian law. The moment someone is accused of being seditious or charged under it, s/he is assumed to be guilty not just in the eyes of the public but also with a section of the legal fraternity, despite it being against the very cardinal principle of justice — innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The recent incident of the Hubli Bar Association passing a resolution to the effect that none of its lawyers would appear for the three Kashmiri students accused of Sedition is a case in point.

What is even more important is that a cursory glance of the sedition cases reveal that most of these have no grounds for being charged under section 124 A of the IPC. As I begin writing this piece, the news came out that noted lyricist and former Rajya Sabha MP Javed Akhtar has been charged with sedition in Bihar. According to news reports, the complaint was filed by a local lawyer Amit Kumar, before the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Begusarai, Thakur Aman Kumar. The complaint refers to a tweet by Akhtar, alleging that his remarks were seditious and promoted religious hatred. The tweet, which was posted on February 27 read, ”So many killed, so many injured, so many houses burned, so many shops looted so many people turned destitute but the police has sealed only one house and are looking for its owner. Incidentally, his name is Tahir. Hats off to the consistency of the Delhi police.” One just fails to understand how could this tweet or remark be seditious.

It can be recalled that, in Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar (1962), a five-judge bench of the apex court had ruled that:

“(a) citizen has a right to say or write whatever he likes about the Government, or its measures, by way of criticism or comment, so long as he does not incite people to violence against the Government established by law or with the intention of creating public disorder. The Court, has, therefore, the duty cast upon it of drawing a clear line of demarcation between the ambit of a citizen’s fundamental right guaranteed under Art. 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and the power of the legislature to impose reasonable restrictions on that guaranteed right in the interest of, inter alia, security of the State and public order.”

In spite of this, not just the police but the courts as well have been admitting cases under Sedition on flimsy grounds such as Akhtar’s case above. Instead of outrightly rejecting the matter, it was admitted by the court and, as per media reports, it is likely to come up for hearing on March 25.

Let me cite another recent case in which a local court in Bihar acted in a similar manner. In October, an FIR was registered in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district against 49 persons, including historian Ramachandra Guha, filmmaker Mani Ratnam and actress Aparna Sen, who wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi raising concern over the growing incidents of mob lynching. The case was registered after an order was passed by the chief judicial magistrate of Muzaffarpur, Surya Kant Tiwari, acting upon a petition filed by a local lawyer Sudhir Kumar Ojha. According to the petitioner, the accused “tarnished the image of the country and undermined the impressive performance of the Prime Minister” besides “supporting secessionist tendencies”. After much criticism, the case was closed by the state police, calling it false. However, what is to be underlined here is that a court of law passed such an order. Moreover, to think that the misuse of 124A is just limited to Bihar would be a huge mistake. As per the latest available information, the five topmost states in India, in terms of using the sedition law in the recent years (2014-2018) are Assam, Jharkhand, Haryana, Bihar and Kerala.

The Bidar case in Karnataka is yet another example of the flimsy grounds on which the law is used. On January 26, the Bidar police registered a case of sedition against the principal and other authorities of a local school for allowing its students to stage a drama that allegedly portrayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi in poor light in connection with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens. They were later arrested and released on bail after spending more than two weeks in Jail. Moreover, the minor students who took part in the drama were also subjected to questioning several times. Only recently, the district and sessions court in Bidar noted that the drama did not cause any disharmony in society and cited a lack of grounds for sedition.

Another recent case is that of activist Amulya Leona, who raised ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans along with ‘Hindustan Zindabad', etc. during an anti-CAA rally in Bengaluru’s Freedom Park on February 20. Her father’s house was later attacked and members of the Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva outfits threatened them with ‘dire consequences’. A Sri Ram Sene leader Sanjeev Marady announced a bounty of Rs 10 lakh for anyone who would kill her. Not only that, B.C. Patel, the agriculture minister of Karnataka also called for a law to “shoot at sight” those who spoke against India or raised pro-Pakistan slogans. This despite the fact that the apex court in Balwant Singh v State of Punjab (1995), indicated that mere sloganeering is not a seditious crime. In this case, the accused was charged with sedition for shouting slogans such as “Khalistan Zindabaad” and “Raj Karega Khalsa” outside a cinema hall after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The court noted:

“It appears to us that the raising some slogans only a couple of times by the two lonesome appellants, which neither evoked any response nor any reaction from anyone in the public can neither attract the provisions of Section 124A or Section 153A IPC. Some more overt act was required to bring home the charge to the two appellants, who are Government servants. The police officials exhibited lack of maturity and more of sensitivity in arresting the appellants for raising the slogans – which arrest -and act the casual raising of one or two slogans – could have created a law and order situation, keeping in view the tense situation prevailing on the date of the assassination of Smt. Indira Gandhi. In situations like that, over-sensitiveness sometimes is counter-productive and can result in inviting trouble. Raising of some lonesome slogans, a couple of times by two individuals, without anything more, did not constitute any threat to the Government of India as by law established nor could the same give rise to feelings of enmity or hatred among different communities or religious or other groups.”

One can draw a long list of people who have been charged under the law against sedition in recent years. To name a few, politician Simranjit Singh Mann (2005), medical doctor and human rights activist Binayak Sen (2007), thousands from Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu (2011), cartoonist Aseem Trivedi (2012), student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and others (2016), hundreds of tribals of Pathalgarhi in Jharkhand (2018), Chattisgarh journalist Kamal Shukla (2018), Assamese scholar Hiren Gohain (2019), students activist Sharjeel Imam and anti-CAA protesters in Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh) have been charged under the law. An analysis of these cases indicates that the (mis)use of the law against Sedition in Independent India is not different from that in the colonial era. As per the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, the conviction rate in these cases is very low. According to the NCRB, only four people were convicted in four years (2015-2018). It can be noted that as per the available data, as many as 233 Sedition cases were registered between 2014 to 2018. The NCRB data also informs us that while in the last four years, 191 cases were registered, trials in only 43 cases were completed during the same period. It should be noted that while the conviction rate might have been very low, it serves the prime purpose for which the law of against Sedition was designed — to stifle dissent and curb freedom of expression.

Once charged under the law, it becomes very difficult to avail bail while the trial stretches on for years. The recent case of the three Kashmiri students accused of sedition in Hubli (as mentioned above) is a good example. The local court rejected their bail plea saying that “(t)he safety and security of this Country gets priority overall. We must allow the investigation agency to do its job without anybody’s intervention, by considering the nature of the allegation, until the completion of the Investigation, the petitioners are not entitled for the bail as prayed therein, even on any ground they are not made out of the grounds to grant the bail.” In many ways, the process itself ends up becoming the punishment. Moreover, even if most of those accused of Sedition are acquitted at the end of the long (financially as well as emotionally) draining legal battle, the process ensures that the same person will think twice before using the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. It will also have a chilling effect on people at large. Thanks to the rampant (mis)use of the law, it is being used to create fear among the masses of being involved in long drawn out cases charged for speaking ‘too much’ or raising their voice, even for constitutionally legitimate concerns. Furthermore, due to the demonisation and media trail of the accused in these cases, life becomes very difficult even if they are acquitted by the court. They are constantly watched over and seen suspiciously (with their allegiance in question) both by state agencies as well as society. Moreover, it has been observed that the law is often selectively used to target and criminalise marginalised and vulnerable communities such as Dalits, Tribals and Muslims.

Given the scenario, one would have thought that the apex court would come to the rescue but, as advocate Chitranshul Sinha explains in his book The Great Repression: The Story of Sedition in India, even the Court has failed to act in this regard. He draws our attention towards a PIL filed in the apex court by the NGO Common Cause and Kudankulam activist S.P. Udayakumar. The prayer before the court was to lay down specific guidelines for sedition cases in the absence of specific guidelines. As Sinha rightly points out, specific guidelines are urgently needed because the Kedar Nath judgment “does not provide (guidelines) for pre-arrest requirements and compliances. Any person arrested for sedition will have to obtain bail, attend proceedings, make themselves present for investigations, etc. before the chargesheet is filed or the case is closed.”

A similar if not identical PIL was filed in the Supreme Court recently. According to Live Law, the petition was filed by activist Yogita Bhayana, in the wake of recurring instances of sedition FIRs, particularly the recent case registered in Bidar. The Court refused to entertain the PIL, which sought guidelines for registering criminal cases for sedition under Section 124A Indian Penal Code. The bench comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari reportedly said, “let the aggrieved party come before the Court.” This was a bit strange on the part of the court because when S.P. Udayakumar, an aggrieved person, had approached the apex court, the matter was disposed of saying “we don’t have to explain the sedition law. It’s already there in the five-judges constitution bench judgement in Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar of 1962.” But fact of the matter remains that the said guidelines have hardly ever been followed.

In my understanding, there is no other way to stop it but to strike down section 124A from the statue book. That’s because the problem is not just of its rampant (mis)use, but the law which is a problem in itself. And as long as it is a part of the IPC, it is bound to be misused. Unfortunately, no ruling party or government is willing to remove it as the very law comes handy while targeting dissidents and political opponents. There is no surprise that in the recent years when, at least on two occasions (once during the Congress led UPA government in 2011 and once during the BJP led NDA rule in 2015), attempts were made in the parliament either to fully repeal the law or amend it, the proposal was either not entertained or sidelined by making some false promise. As recently as July 2019, the government informed the parliament that, ”there is no proposal to scrap the provision under the IPC dealing with the offence of sedition.” According to the Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai, “there is a need to retain the provision to effectively combat anti-national, secessionist and terrorist elements.” However, there is hardly any data explaining how many ‘anti-national’, ‘secessionist’ and ‘terrorist elements’ have been convicted under the law.

Mahtab Alam is a Delhi based multilingual journalist. He writes on issues related to politics, law, media, human rights and tweets @MahtabNama.

Courtesy: Law School Policy Review

उत्तर प्रदेश की राजनीति में मुस्लिम मतदाता कहाँ है?

2022-02-05T06:43:00.027+00:00

मोहम्मद वसीम

नहीं आती तो याद उन की महीनों तक नहीं आती

मगर जब याद आते हैं तो अक्सर याद आते हैं ।

(हसरत मोहानी)

उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव 2022 मुसलमानों की याद न लाए तो क्या लाए ? समाजवादी पार्टी (सपा) और बहुजन समाज पार्टी (बसपा) मुसलमानों के सहारे दोबारा सत्ता पाने की कोशिश कर रही हैं। कांग्रेस भी मुस्लिम वोटरों के ज़रिये अपनी साख बचाने में लगी हुई है और साथ ही ऑल इण्डिया मजलिस ए इत्तेहादुल मुस्लिमीन (AIMIM) भी फिर से एक बार उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव में खाता खोलने के लिए बेताब है। वहीं दूसरी ओर भाजपा गठबंधन की सहयोगी पार्टी (अपना दल-एस) भी मुस्लिम बहुल सीट पर अपना भाग्य आजमा रही है।

2011 की जनगणना के अनुसार, उत्तर प्रदेश में मुसलमानों की संख्या 3 करोड़ 84 लाख 83 हजार 967 यानी लगभग 19.26 फीसदी है। कहा जा सकता है कि प्रदेश का हर पांचवां शख्स मुसलमान है। सेंटर फॉर द स्टडी ऑफ डवलपिंग सोसायटीज (सीएसडीएस) के अनुसार, उत्तर प्रदेश में 15 विधानसभा क्षेत्र ऐसे हैं जिनमें मुस्लिम वोटरों की संख्या 51 से 65 फ़ीसदी, 20 विधानसभा क्षेत्रों पर 35 से 50 फ़ीसदी, 45 विधानसभा क्षेत्रों पर 25 से 34 फ़ीसदी, 83 विधानसभा क्षेत्रों पर 15 से 24 फ़ीसदी हैं। कुल मिलाकर उत्तर प्रदेश की 403 विधानसभा सीटों में 163 (15+20+45+83) विधानसभा सीटों पर मुस्लिम मतदाता अहम रोल अदा करते हैं। जातिगत समीकरण के साथ बसपा और सपा अपने-अपने मूल वोट बैंक दलित- यादव एवं मुस्लिम मतदातओं के सहारे समय-समय पर अपनी सरकारों का गठन करती आई हैं।

2011 की जनगणना के अनुसार, उत्तर प्रदेश के 75 ज़िलों में से 30 ज़िलों में लगभग 17 से 50 फ़ीसदी तक मुस्लिम आबादी हैं जिसमे रामपुर, मुरादाबाद, बिजनौर, सहारनपुर, मुजफ्फरनगर, अमरोहा, बलरामपुर, सम्भल, बरेली, मेरठ, शामली, हापुड़, बहराइच, श्रावस्ती, सिद्धार्थनगर, बाग़पत, ग़ाज़ियाबाद, पीलीभीत, संत कबीर नगर, बाराबंकी, बुलंदशहर, बदायूँ, लखनऊ, सुल्तानपुर, खीरी, सीतापुर, अलीगढ़, गोंडा, मऊ और शाहजहांपुर शामिल हैं।

2017 विधानसभा चुनाव में मुस्लिम बहुल 163 विधानसभा सीटों में से बीजेपी ने 137 सीटें, समाजवादी पार्टी ने 21, कांग्रेस ने 2, बसपा, आरएलडी और अपना दल-एस ने सिर्फ एक-एक सीट पर जीत हासिल की थीं। अपना दल और भाजपा गठबंधन ने 138 सीट पर अपनी जीत का परचम लहराया, और सपा-कांग्रेस का गठबंधन इन मुस्लिम बहुल सीटों में केवल 23 सीटों पर ही जीत हासिल कर पाया था, उत्तर प्रदेश में बीजेपी गठबंधन को 325 सीटें मिली थीं। पिछले चुनाव में भाजपा की इस प्रचंड जीत में मुस्लिम बहुल क्षेत्रों का बहुत बड़ा योगदान रहा था, या यूँ कहना भी गलत नहीं होगा कि इन 163 मुस्लिम बहुल विधानसभा सीटों पर मुस्लिम मतदातओं के वोट का सपा, बसपा, कांग्रेस, ए.आई.एम.आई.एम. व अन्य पार्टियों एवं निर्दलीय उमीदवारों में बंटवारे का सीधा-सीधा फायदा बीजेपी को पंहुचा था।

2012 के विधानसभा चुनाव में सपा ने 224 सीटों पर जीत हासिल कर पूर्ण बहमत वाली सरकार बनायी। सपा की इस पूर्ण बहुमत वाली सरकार में उन 163 मुस्लिम बहुल विधानसभा सीटों का भरपूर्ण योगदान रहा। 163 विधानसभा सीटों में से सपा को 90 सीटें, बसपा को 30 सीटें, भाजपा को 22 सीटें, कांग्रेस को 11 सीटें, रालोद को 5 सीटें, पीस पार्टी को 3 सीटें, कौमी एकता दल और इत्तेहाद मिल्लत काउंसिल को 1-1 सीट मिली थीं।

2007 के पंद्रहवे विधानसभा चुनाव में बसपा ने 206 सीटों पर जीत हासिल कर पूर्ण बहुमत वाली सरकार बनायी थी। बसपा को भी इन मुस्लिम बहुल क्षेत्रों की 163 विधानसभा सीटों का भरपूर्ण फायदा मिला था। 163 विधानसभा सीटों में से बसपा को 82 सीटें, सपा को 35 सीटें, भाजपा 21 सीटें, कांग्रेस 10 सीटें, रालोद को 6 सीटें, निर्दलीय प्रत्याशियों को 7 सीटें, आरपीडी और यूपीयूडीएफ़ 1-1 सीट मिली थीं।

2017 विधानसभा चुनाव में सबसे आश्चर्यजनक बात यह थी कि भाजपा ने 82 सीटों में से 62 सीटें ऐसी जीती जहाँ मुस्लिम मतदाताओ की संख्या एक-तिहाई या उससे अधिक थी। मुजफ्फरनगर, बरेली, बलरामपुर, गोंडा, फैजाबाद, पीलीभीत, बुलंदशहर, अलीगढ़ ऐसे ज़िले थे जहाँ मुस्लिम जनसंख्या 18 से 40 फ़ीसदी तक है, लेकिन भाजपा ने इन सभी ज़िलों सीटों पर बाकी पार्टियों का सूपड़ा साफ़ कर दिया था। इसकी सबसे अहम वजह थी मुस्लिम मतदाताओं के वोट का बंटवारा और सपा बसपा जैसी पार्टियों का मूल वोट बैंक भाजपा के खाते में चलें जाना, जिसका सीधा-सीधा फ़ायदा भाजपा को पंहुचा।

2017 के विधानसभा चुनाव में 25 मुस्लिम उम्मीदवार जीत कर विधानसभा पहुचें। वहीं दूसरी तरफ़ 84 मुस्लिम उमीदवार उपविजेता रहे। इन्ही 84 सीटों में से 79 सीटों पर भाजपा विजय रही; 1 सीट पर अपना दल-एस, 2 सीटों पर सपा, 1-1 सीट पर बसपा और कांग्रेस विजय रहीं। 84 सीट में से 36 सीट पर बसपा, 35 सीट पर सपा और 13 सीट पर कांग्रेस उपविजेता रही। इस लिहाज़ सपा-कांग्रेस 48 सीट पर मुस्लिम उम्मीदवारो के साथ उपविजेता रहीं। 2012 विधानसभा चुनाव में पहली बार 69 मुस्लिम विधायक उत्तर प्रदेश की विधानसभा पहुंचे। इससे पहले 2007 में 56 मुस्लिम विधायक और 2002 में 47 मुस्लिम विधायक जीत कर विधानसभा पहुंचे थे।

विशेषज्ञों के अनुसार मुस्लिम फैक्टर 2022 के विधान सभा चुनाव में इसलिए बहुत अहम माना जा रहा है क्यूंकि सपा और बसपा अपने मूल जनाधार की वापिसी का बहुत चढ़-बढ़ कर बखान कर रहीं हैं। सपा बसपा मुस्लिम मतदाताओं की उम्मीद के सहारे बैठी हैं। शायद बसपा फिर एक बार उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव में 100 से ज़्यादा मुस्लिम उम्मीदवारों को उतारने वाली है, वहीं सपा गठबंधन भी 60-80 के बीच मुस्लिम कैंडिडेट को टिकट बाटती नज़र आ रही है। इस बार एआईएमआईएम भी 100 सीटों पर अपनी उम्मीदवार खड़े कर रही है।

उत्तर प्रदेश में 2002, 2007, 2012 और 2017 विधानसभा चुनावों में सबसे ज़्यादा मुस्लिम वोट समाजवादी पार्टी को मिले हैं जो क्रमशः 53%, 49%, 47%, 45% हैं। बसपा को क्रमश: 11%, 17%, 20%, 19%; कांग्रेस को क्रमश: 10%, 14%, 18%, 19%; भाजपा को क्रमश: 03%, 02%, 07%, 05%, व अन्य को क्रमश: 20%, 14%, 16%, 12%, मुस्लिम वोट मिले हैं।

विशेषज्ञों के अनुसार 2022 विधानसभा चुनाव में 55% से 65% फ़ीसदी मुस्लिम वोट सपा की झोली में आना तय माना जा रहा है। कहीं न कहीं समाजवादी पार्टी इसी वोट बैंक के ज़रिये सत्ता में वापस आने का दावा कर रही है। जबकि बसपा भी अपनी सोशल इंजीनियरिंग के ज़रिए सरकार बनाने का दावा कर रही है। पिछले कुछ सालों से एआईएमआईएम उत्तर प्रदेश की मुस्लिम राजनीति को लेकर अपना एक अलग ठहराव रखती हैं। एआईएमआईएम की रणनीति भी उन्हीं समीकरणों पर आधारित है जिन जातिगत समीकरण व संप्रदाय के आधार पर बनीं ये अन्य पार्टियां अपने मूल जनाधार को समेटे हुए सालों से अपने जाति अथवा संप्रदाय का प्रतिनिधित्व करती आ रहीं हैं। उत्तर प्रदेश विधानसभा चुनाव 2022 की शुरुआत किसी भी मुद्दे से शुरू हुई हो, लेकिन अंत में चुनाव का रुख सिर्फ़ इन्हीं मुद्दों की ओर जाता दिख रहा है, जैसे हिन्दू-मुस्लिम, अस्सी-बीस, जिन्ना, पाकिस्तान, अफ़ग़ानिस्तान, तालिबान, आज़म खान, पलायन, काशी, मथुरा, अयोध्या, मंदिर-मस्जिद, शमशान कब्रिस्तान इत्यादि। 2022 के विधानसभा चुनाव किस पार्टी के सर सेहरा बांधता हैं यह तो 10 मार्च को साफ़ साफ़ ज़ाहिर हो जायेगा लेकिन इस में कोई दो राय नहीं इन चुनावों में मुस्लिम वोट अग्रणी भूमिका निभाएगा। यदि मुस्लिम वोट विभाजित होता है तो सम्भव है कि उत्तरप्रदेश को पुन: अनैच्छिक परिणामों का सामना करना पड़े।

मोहम्मद वसीम फ्रीलैन्सर हैं। ये लेखक के अपने विचार हैं। ईमेल – suff.new@gamil.com

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Antimicrobial resistance now causes more deaths than HIV/AIDS and malaria worldwide

2022-01-21T16:36:00.003+00:00

Some estimates suggest antimicrobial resistance could cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050

By Jonathan Cox

Antimicrobial resistance is spreading rapidly worldwide, and has even been likened to the next pandemic – one that many people may not even be aware is happening. A recent paper, published in Lancet, has revealed that antimicrobial resistant infections caused 1.27 millions deaths and were associated with 4.95 million deaths in 2019. This is greater than the number of people who died from HIV/AIDS and malaria that year combined.

Antimicobial resistance happens when infection-causing microbes (such as bacteria, viruses or fungi) evolve to become resistant to the drug designed to kill them. This means than an antibiotic will no longer work to treat that infection anymore.

The new findings makes it clear that antimicrobial resistance is progressing faster than the previous worst-case scenario estimates – which is of concern for everyone. The simple fact is that we’re running out of antibiotics that work. This could mean everyday bacterial infections become life-threatening again.

While antimicrobial resistance has been a problem since penicillin was discovered in 1928, our continued exposure to antibiotics has enabled bacteria and other pathogens to evolve powerful resistance. In some cases, these microbes are resistant even to multiple different drugs. This latest study now shows the current scale of this problem globally – and the harm it’s causing.

Global problem

The study involved 204 countries around the world, looking at data from 471 million individual patient records. By looking at deaths due to and associated with antimicrobial resistance, the team was then able to estimate the impact antimicrobial resistance had in each country.

Antimicrobial resistance was directly responsible for an estimated 1.27 million deaths worldwide and was associated with an estimated 4.95 millions deaths. In comparison, HIV/AIDS and malaria were estimated to have caused 860,000 and 640,000 deaths respectively the same year. The researchers also found that low- and middle-income countries were worst hit by antimicrobial resistance – although higher income countries also face alarmingly high levels.

They also found that of the 23 different types of bacteria studied, drug resistance in only six types of bacteria contributed to 3.57 million deaths. The report also shows that 70% of deaths that resulted from antimicrobial resistance were caused by resistance to antibiotics often considered the first line of defence against severe infections. These included beta-lactams and fluoroquinolones, which are commonly prescribed for many infections, such as urinary tract, upper- and lower-respiratory and bone and joint infections.

Bacteria were resistant to even commonly prescribed antibiotics. fizkes/ Shutterstock

This study highlights a very clear message that global antimicrobial resistance could make everyday bacterial infections untreatable. By some estimates, antimicrobial resistance could cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050. This would overtake cancer as a leading cause of death worldwide.

Next pandemic

Bacteria can develop antimicrobial resistance in a number of ways.

First, bacteria develop antimicrobial resistance naturally. It’s part of the normal push and pull observed throughout the natural world. As we get stronger, bacteria will get stronger too. It’s part of our co-evolution with bacteria – they’re just quicker at evolving than we are, partly because they replicate faster and get more genetic mutations than we do.

But the way we use antibiotics can also cause resistance.

For example, one common cause is if people fail to complete a course of antibiotics. Although people may feel better a few days after starting antibiotics, not all bacteria are made equal. Some may be slower to be affected by the antibiotic than others. This means that if you stop taking the antibiotic early, the bacteria that were initially able to avoid the effect of the antibiotics will be able to multiply, thus passing their resistance on.

Likewise, taking antibiotics unnecessarily can help bacteria to evolve resistance to antibiotics faster. This is why it’s important not to take antibiotics unless they’re prescribed, and to only use them for the infection they’re prescribed for.

Resistance can also be spread from person to person. For example, if someone who has antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their nose sneezes or coughs, it may be spread to people nearby. Research also shows that antimicrobial resistance can be spread through the environment, such as in unclean drinking water.

The causes driving this global antimicrobial resistance crisis are complex. Everything from how we take antibiotics to environmental pollution with antimicrobial chemicals, use of antibiotics in agriculture and even preservatives in our shampoo and toothpaste are all contributing to resistance. This is why a global, unified effort will be needed to make a difference.

Urgent change is needed in many industries to slow the spread of antimicrobial resistance. Of the greatest importance is using the antibiotics we have smarter. Combination therapy could hold the answer to slowing down antimicrobial resistance. This involves using several drugs in combination, rather than one drug on its own – making it more difficult for bacteria to evolve resistance, while still successfully treating an infection.

The next pandemic is already here – so further investment in research that looks at how we can stop this problem will be key.

Jonathan Cox is a Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at Aston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Omicron may not be the final variant, but it may be the final variant of concern

2022-01-06T21:51:00.002+00:00

By Ben Krishna

It is controversial whether viruses are alive, but – like all living things – they do evolve. This fact has become abundantly clear during the pandemic, as new variants of concern have emerged every few months.

Some of these variants have been better at spreading from person to person, eventually becoming dominant as they out-compete slower versions of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This improved spreading ability has been ascribed to mutations in the spike protein – the mushroom-shaped projections on the surface of the virus – that allow it to bind more strongly to ACE2 receptors. ACE2 are receptors on the surface of our cells, such as those that line our airways, that the virus attaches to in order to gain entry and start replicating.

These mutations allowed the alpha variant, and then the delta variant, to become globally dominant. And scientists expect the same thing to happen with omicron.

The virus cannot, however, improve indefinitely. The laws of biochemistry mean that the virus will eventually evolve a spike protein that binds to ACE2 as strongly as possible. By that point, the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to spread between people will not be limited by how well the virus can stick to the outside of cells. Other factors will limit virus spread, such as how fast the genome can replicate, how quickly the virus can enter the cell via the protein TMPRSS2, and how much virus an infected human can shed. In principle, all of these should eventually evolve to peak performance.

Has omicron reached this peak? There is no good reason to assume that it has. So-called “gain-of-function” studies, which look at what mutations SARS-CoV-2 needs to spread more efficiently, have identified plenty of mutations that improve the spike protein’s ability to bind to human cells that omicron doesn’t have. Besides this, improvements could be made to other aspects of the virus life cycle, such as genome replication, as I mentioned above.

But let’s assume for a second that omicron is the variant with maximised spreading ability. Perhaps omicron won’t get any better because it is limited by genetic probability. In the same way that zebras haven’t evolved eyes at the back of their heads to avoid predators, it’s plausible that SARS-CoV-2 can’t pick up the mutations required to reach a theoretical maximum as those mutations need to occur all at once, and that is just too unlikely to emerge. Even in a scenario where omicron is the best variant at spreading between humans, new variants will emerge to handle the human immune system.

After infection with any virus, the immune system adapts by making antibodies that stick to the virus to neutralise it, and killer T-cells that destroy infected cells. Antibodies are pieces of protein that stick to the specific molecular shape of the virus, and killer T-cells recognise infected cells via molecular shape as well. SARS-CoV-2 can therefore evade the immune system by mutating sufficiently that its molecular shape changes beyond the immune system’s recognition.

This is why omicron is so apparently successful at infecting people with previous immunity, either from vaccines or infections with other variants – the mutations that allow the spike to bind to ACE2 more strongly also reduce the ability of antibodies to bind to the virus and neutralise it. Pfizer’s data suggests that T-cells should respond similarly to omicron as to previous variants, which aligns with the observation that omicron has a lower fatality rate in South Africa, where most people have immunity.

Importantly for humanity, past exposure still seems to protect against severe disease and death, leaving us with a “compromise” where the virus can replicate and reinfect, but we do not get as severely sick as the first time.

Probable future

Herein lies the most probable future for this virus. Even if it behaves like a professional gamer and eventually maxes out all its stats, there is no reason to think that it won’t be controlled and cleared by the immune system. The mutations that improve its spreading ability do not greatly increase deaths. This maxed-out virus would then simply mutate randomly, changing enough over time to become unrecognisable to the immune system’s adapted defences, allowing waves of reinfection.

We might have COVID season each winter in the same way we have flu season now. Influenza viruses can also have a similar pattern of mutation over time, known as “antigenic drift”, leading to reinfections. Each year’s new flu viruses are not necessarily better than last year’s, just sufficiently different. Perhaps the best evidence for this eventuality for SARS-CoV-2 is that 229E, a coronavirus that causes the common cold, does this already.

Omicron will therefore not be the final variant, but it may be the final variant of concern. If we are lucky, and the course of this pandemic is hard to predict, SARS-CoV-2 will probably become an endemic virus that slowly mutates over time.

The disease might very likely be mild as some past exposure creates immunity that reduces the likelihood of hospitalisation and death. Most people will get infected the first time as a child, which could occur before or after a vaccine, and subsequent reinfections will barely be noticed. Only a small group of scientists will track SARS-CoV-2’s genetic changes over time, and the variants of concern will become a thing of the past – at least until the next virus jumps the species barrier.

Ben Krishna, Postdoctoral Researcher, Immunology and Virology, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The politics of non-citizenship in Assam

2022-01-02T09:46:00.003+00:00

By Sanjib Baruah

‘Every Hindu living anywhere in the world has the right to come to India when he faces problems there’, proclaimed Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma at an event in New Delhi last November. Many in the ruling party have long wanted this to be the prevailing common sense of the country. The passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) through Parliament in December 2019 was for them a major accomplishment toward that goal. Yet few would have expected such sentiments to be expressed by an elected chief minister of Assam, especially one heading a government that includes some veterans of the Assam Movement (1979-1985), whose legacies remain live, unresolved issues in the state’s politics.

The defining feature of this movement’s ideology – rooted in a local past that predates the Partition – was its historically constituted opposition to unauthorized immigration from across Partition’s eastern border irrespective of faith. The six years of political turmoil saw the collapse of four elected ministries, the outbreak of an armed insurgency, and three spells of president’s rule. Even the 1981 Census operations had to be suspended in Assam because of this turmoil. The violent elections of 1983, including the horrendous Nellie massacre, are also part of this history.

The campaigners of the Assam Movement had said that the foreign nationals’ issue should be construed as a national problem, and not as a problem facing just Assam. Today it has become a prominent, if divisive, national issue. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) was once known only to aficionados of the Assam Movement. But recently there has been talk of an NRC exercise at the national level. Could it be that the Assam Movement has been more successful than is generally thought in nationalizing the foreign nationals’ issue? But while the politics of foreign nationals may have gone national, the issue has been radically reframed by the ideologues of Hindutva. The CAA, after all, effectively gives legal recognition to an idea long held by Hindu nationalists that no Hindu can be a foreign national in India, which is impossible to reconcile with the goals of the Assam Movement.

If the Assam Movement was a watershed event in the politics of post-Independence Assam, the inauguration of Sarma as chief minister could prove to be the most consequential political shift since then. When the BJP announced last May that Sarma would replace Sarbananda Sonowal as chief minister, it may have seemed like a simple switch from one BJP man to another. But the two men could not be more different in rhetorical style, political energy, and ideological orientation. Sonowal, a former leader of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and the Assam Movement, has built his career as an uncompromising warrior in the cause of the state’s khilonjia or autochthonous peoples. Sarma had been a Congress party man all through his political career before joining the BJP in 2015. He joined the Congress at a time when it was at loggerheads with the forces of khilonjia regionalism unleashed by the Assam Movement.

Just as Sarma was making his mark in student politics, he was recruited to the Congress by the late Hiteswar Saikia, who at that time was trying to strategically reorient the party in response to the state’s profoundly changed political circumstances resulting from the Assam Movement. Sarma became his protégé. Subsequently as trusted lieutenant of former Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, he helped the Congress party win three consecutive elections. Significantly ‘the state’s top BJP leaders, including Sarbananda Sonowal’ did not welcome his entry into the party.[1] Yet Sarma has been displaying the zeal of a recent convert in his new political incarnation and is proving to be equal to the most ardent Hindu nationalist politicians in the country. The party’s national leadership has clearly decided that he would be more effective than Sonowal in enforcing the CAA in a state where it has been controversial and unpopular. Perhaps Sonowal was too tied to the legacy of the Assam Movement to do an about-turn on the issue.

It is often forgotten that the Assam Movement broke out in the same decade as the Bangladesh liberation war of 1971, and it was not an accident. Nor is it a coincidence that 25 March 1971, a key date in Indian citizenship law after it was amended to make it conform with the Assam Accord, is more significant to Bangladeshis than to Indians. It was the date when the Pakistani military crackdown on the liberation struggle in East Pakistan began, which triggered the refugee exodus to India. There would have been no Assam Movement had there been no Bangladesh liberation war leading to the Great Migration of 1971.[2]

Under the terms of the Indira-Mujib Pact – the bilateral agreement between India and Bangladesh that addressed the issue of refugee return – newly independent Bangladesh took responsibility for only those East Pakistanis who moved to India after 25 March 1971 and not for those who relocated to India before the country was born, i.e. during the Pakistani period (1947-71) of the region’s history. India was thus forced to accommodate all those who had moved from East Pakistan to India during the twenty-four years of its existence. During negotiations with leaders of the Assam Movement Indian officials insisted that 25 March 1971 had to be the cut-off date for determining who is and who is not a foreign national in Assam to meet this treaty obligation. That remained Indian law until 2019. Only with the CAA, the cut-off date has been effectively extended to 31 December 2014 for Hindus and people of other minority faiths, but not for Muslims.

The break-up of Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh is generally known for the change it brought to the subcontinent’s geopolitical landscape. But the turbulent politics of Assam of the past four decades testifies to the terrible consequences of the refugee influx on India’s domestic stability. The sheer size of the refugee population gave new life to old fears that the migration from eastern Bengal risks turning Assam’s khilonjia peoples into minorities in their own lands. The politics of numbers in a democracy and the curious phenomenon of ‘suffraged non-citizens’ – to use Kamal Sadiq’s felicitous phrase – gave political force to those fears. The fact that the exercise of franchise in India rely on rudimentary documents that can be easily obtained through informal means blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens at the voting booth.[3]

Not surprisingly, the perception that the number of voters had risen abnormally in the aftermath of the refugee influx became the trigger for the Assam Movement. A byelection in 1979 for the Mangaldoi parliamentary constituency – an area with a high concentration of foreign-born residents – brought this anomaly to light giving substance to the fear that foreign nationals posed a clear and present danger to the balance of political power in the state.

A barely hidden secret about the 1971 refugee influx was that a majority of those who fled East Pakistan for India were Hindus. This was only to be expected since the Pakistani military regime, as Bangladeshi scholar Meghna Guhathakurta puts it, saw the liberation movement as an Indian conspiracy and treated Bengali freedom fighters as if they were Indian infiltrators. The repressive backlash of the Pakistani state fell upon almost 90 percent of Bangladesh’s Hindu households. And as the military campaign against Bengali resistance intensified, the proportion of Hindus fleeing to India increased significantly.[4] Around 70 percent of the 9.7 million refugees who migrated to India in 1971 were Hindus.[5] The West Pakistani generals calculated that forcing millions of East Pakistani Hindus to flee to India would weaken Bengali nationalism as a political force.

Yet, despite Indian officials’ frequent description of the Pakistani military’s massacre of East Pakistanis as genocide, ‘the best case for branding these atrocities as genocide’, says Gary Bass of Princeton University, ‘was one that India did not dare make.’ They feared that ‘publicizing anti-Hindu genocide could have splintered Indians on communal lines… possibly setting off riots.’ So, rather than basing ‘their accusations of genocide on the government’s best evidence about the victimization of Hindus’, Indian officials were content to use the word only for its shock effect.[6] The leaders of the Assam Movement, of course, saw the influx for what it was: that there were both Hindus and Muslims among the refugees, but a clear majority were Hindus.

The Yahya Khan regime’s strategy of demographic engineering failed only because of the determined response by the Indira Gandhi government. Stopping the refugee influx and ensuring the safe return of the millions already in India were the key goals of India’s military intervention. The story often told about the refugee influx is that most refugees immediately returned home after the liberation of Bangladesh. But there are good reasons to doubt this narrative of complete repatriation. The Indian government has itself cast doubts on this narrative on various occasions. For instance, a piece of legislation passed by the Indian Parliament in 1983 begins with the following preamble:

‘A good number of the foreigners who migrated into India across the borders of the eastern and north-eastern regions of the country on and after the 25th day of March 1971, have, by taking advantage of the circumstances of such migration and their ethnic similarities and other connections with the people of India and without having in their possession any lawful authority to do so, illegally remained in India.’[7]

Others have also made this point. Bangladeshi commentator Sarwar Jahan Choudhury said in an article published in 2019 that many of the Hindu refugees of 1971 were ‘suspected to have stayed back in West Bengal, Tripura, and Barak valley.’[8] Had all refugees gone back, the foreign nationals’ issue would not have festered for all these years. Indeed, by the 1990s the notion that the Assam Movement failed in its primary objective became the conventional wisdom in Assam, which made the Assam Accord a hallowed document in the state’s political discourse. No political party could afford to be seen as not supporting the Assam Accord.

In the election to the state Assembly in 2016 the BJP made a clever political calculation and made the implementation of the Assam Accord a campaign promise, which helped the party win power in the state. But not long after this election victory the BJP began to move on the citizenship amendment bill. Predictably, the resistance to it in Assam focused entirely on the fact the bill grossly violates the Assam Accord since it nullifies the 25 March 1971 cut-off date for determining citizenship status. Chief Minister Sonowal was criticized for not publicly opposing the bill given his storied past as a prominent leader of the Assam Movement. The controversy threatened to unravel the BJP-led coalition government in the state.

In the final version of the bill that was passed by Parliament in 2019, there were a few revisions made supposedly to allay apprehensions of people in Assam and the Northeast. But they were designed more to give the bill’s grudging supporters in the region a way to save face. The cut-off date of 31 December 2014 was not in the bill’s original version; it was inserted to mollify criticism that it would encourage ceaseless future migration of Hindus from Bangladesh. However, it is hardly realistic to think that any future government will close its doors to Hindus from Bangladesh after 2014.

In another revision, the CAA was made inapplicable to those North-eastern areas where the Inner Line permit regime or the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule are in place. But these exemptions were more cosmetic than substantive. For people who are not indigenous to those areas in any case cannot settle there. An explicit reference to this was presumably considered necessary to manage the opposition to the bill in the Northeast. Politicians from a number of Northeastern states could now claim that they have turned around to supporting the CAA after winning assurances that it will not adversely affect the interests of their states.

But the CAA’s grudging supporters in Assam – whether one-time Assam Movement activists that are now in the BJP or the party’s regional party allies – may have entered a Faustian bargain. By acquiescing with the CAA, they can continue enjoying the loaves and fishes of power. But they are junior partners in this political arrangement. They can hardly expect to get their way on an issue that is as important as the CAA to the ruling party’s ideological identity. Enforcing the CAA in Assam under these circumstances would be a challenge that would require unusual ingenuity and political cunning.

When it was announced in August 2019 that the NRC in Assam excludes as many as 1.9 million people – effectively identifying them as non-citizens – many feared that a Rohingya-like crisis of statelessness may be looming on the horizon. Indian officials, however, said repeatedly that the NRC is an internal matter; and diplomats assured Bangladesh that large-scale deportation is not on the cards. The combined effects of the NRC and the CAA are now beginning to make themselves felt in Assam. Because of the NRC, and the CAA that effectively grants a faith-based amnesty to Hindus excluded from the NRC, there are signs of a shift in the narrative of moral worth and deservingness and of a new hierarchy of belonging.

Since the CAA legally sanctifies the idea that a Hindu can never be a foreign national in India, a ‘Bangladeshi illegal’ can now only be a Muslim. The Bangladeshi illegal is stigmatized as a people; the category is oblivious to a person’s formal citizenship status. The overwhelming majority of Muslims of east Bengali descent in India are obviously Indian citizens. Yet in this rhetorical configuration encroachers and Bangladeshi illegals can be called upon to do the imaginative work of eviction even before the deployment of direct violence.[9]

This dismal practice of non-citizenship was in full display in the large-scale evictions that took place in Sipajhar last September. Sipajhar forms part of the Mangaldoi parliamentary constituency – a near sacred site in the history of the Assam Movement. The controversy over electoral rolls there in 1979 was a catalyst for the Assam Movement. The area has remained conflict-prone ‘with a section of indigenous residents claiming their land has been usurped by migrants.’[10] For ideological descendants of the Assam Movement the political connotations of the evictions occurring in Mangaldoi can hardly be understated. It is hard to think of a more apposite site for enacting the practice of non-citizenship.

The evictions involved the demolition of the homes of more than 800 families and of three mosques to clear up 4,500 bighas of land for an agricultural development project designed to provide livelihood opportunities to the area’s ‘indigenous youth.’ The evicted families were all Muslims of east Bengali descent.[11] The evictions were planned and executed with unusual precision. The agricultural development project for which the land was cleared was fast-tracked in an unparalleled manner. The tilling of the land to prepare it for new crops began the day the police, bulldozers, and elephants carried out the evictions. According to Chief Minister Sarma the evictions were part of state government’s continuing ‘drive against illegal encroachments.’

The primacy of the stigmatized category Bangladeshi illegal over actual citizenship status was poignantly brought home during the disturbance surrounding the evictions. One of those killed in the police firing that ensued was 12-year-old Farid. His identity came to be known immediately because he had in his pocket a new Aadhaar card with his name and date of birth. He picked it up at the local post office just before he got caught in the melee. Journalist Arunabh Saikia noted the irony of Farid who would fall into the stigmatized category of a Bangladeshi illegal being certified as an Indian citizen minutes before being killed by the police; and in Assam, he reminds readers, ‘only those with irrefutable citizenship credentials are issued new Aadhaar cards.’[12]

It is hard not to see the emerging practice of non-citizenship as the latest chapter in the tale of woe that has been unfolding in Assam since the refugee influx of 1971. Whatever the official rationale for the CAA, its adoption marks a decisive break from Indira Gandhi’s policy of refusing to yield to the demographic engineering strategy of the West Pakistani generals who ran the war in East Pakistan. The geo-political effects of the Bangladesh war have received more attention than its effects on India’s domestic stability largely because these effects have been most pronounced in a region long relegated to the periphery of Indian policy. But the dismal practice of non-citizenship that has since emerged in Assam suggests the events that unfolded across the Partition’s eastern border fifty years ago have profoundly impacted on the contest over India’s national identity as well.

Footnotes:

1. Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, Assam: The Accord, The Discord. Penguin Random House India, 2019, p. 188.

2. Partha N. Mukherji, ‘The Great Migration of 1971’, Parts I, II & III, Economic and Political Weekly, 2, 9 & 16 March 1974.

3. Kamal Sadiq, Paper Citizens: How Illegal Immigrants Acquire Citizenship in Developing Countries. Oxford University Press, New York, 2009, p. 142.

4. Meghna Guhathakurta, ‘Amidst the Winds of Change: The Hindu Minority in Bangladesh’, South Asian History and Culture 3(2), April 2012, p. 290.

5. Zillur R. Khan, ‘Islam and Bengali Nationalism’, Asian Survey 25(8), August 1985, p. 848.

6. Gary J. Bass, ‘The Indian Way of Humanitarian Intervention’, Yale Journal of International Law 40(2), 2015, pp. 255-56.

7. Government of India, The Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983. This law was declared unconstitutional in 2005.

8. Sarwar Jahan Choudhury, ‘History, Truth, and Reconciliation’, Dhaka Tribune, 5 November 2019.

9. I am paraphrasing words used by literary theorist Rob Nixon in another context.

10. Tora Agarwala, ‘Explained: Assam’s Conflict Over Land’, Indian Express, 28 September 2021.

11. Arunabh Saikia, ‘Moments before a 12-year-old fell to Assam police bullets, he had secured a crucial identity card’, Scroll.in, 25 September 2021.

12. Ibid.

Sanjib Baruah is a Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, New York. The article first appeared in Seminar.

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The Future of Indian Federalism

2022-01-02T08:54:00.010+00:00

By Madhav Khosla

The Indian federal model has always been heavily centralized.[1] Yet, over the past half-decade or so, the nature and form of centralization has grown exponentially, raising questions about the very character of federalism in India. The changes are perhaps captured most powerfully on fiscal-related matters. From the loss in the taxation powers of the states under the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) schema, with its tensions over the compensation to be given by the central government to the states, to the transfer of central funds to the states from the pool of centrally collected tax revenues, which have become linked to the formation and implementation of particular welfare schemes at the state level, India’s states have far less power today than they have previously enjoyed.[2]

Such a scenario naturally invites a question over how the formal constitutional scheme has accommodated such a profound shift in the distribution of power. In particular, federalism-related changes invited constitutional scrutiny, and, if so, how has the Supreme Court adjudicated such matters? This question has been relatively understudied for two reasons. First, a great number of federalism-related changes are yet to receive judicial attention, such as the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act in 2019 which divided the state of Jammu and Kashmir and placed the two new entities under the authority of the central government. Second, the rights-related controversies over the last half-decade or so – and the broader approach of the Supreme Court that they have brought to light – have been so significant that commentary on Indian federalism has somewhat inevitably receded into the background.[3]

Given this, the closing of 2021 is an ideal opportunity to reflect on one crucial decision of the Supreme Court during this past year that has invited less attention than one might have expected. What might this case – the case of Union of India v. Rajendra N. Shah – tell us about the future of Indian federalism?[4] This case dealt with the constitutionality of a 2011 amendment to the Indian Constitution which introduced a chapter on ‘The Co-operative Societies’ in the constitutional text. The regulation of co-operatives has, of course, long been a matter of legal interest in India. The Constitution mentions the matter in Entry 32 of List II of Schedule VII to the text, giving the states the exclusive power to legislate with regard to cooperative societies.

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing political interest in the better regulation of co-operative societies, and questions have been raised about their management, autonomy, and professional conduct. In due course, political momentum grew around a desire to amend the Constitution to include a new set of provisions that would guide, inform, and determine the functioning of co-operative societies. In furtherance of this, the Constitution (Ninety Seventh Amendment) Act was prepared in 2011. The constitutional amendment’s self-articulated aim was to initiate reforms within co-operative societies to ensure elections at regular intervals and address a growing lack of professionalism within such bodies.

The Constitution (Ninety Seventh Amendment) Act inserted a new Part (Part IXB) in the Constitution, as well as additional provisions such as a new clause within the Directive Principles of State Policy. As per Part IXB, rules were laid down with regard to the board of directors of a co-operative society; the terms of office for the board and office bearers; disciplinary action that would apply to the board; the rights that members may have to receive information; auditing requirements and the filing of returns; and so forth. Simply put, the new segment of the constitutional text included a diverse and detailed set of ways in which co-operative societies would be required to function.

An interesting question that arose as a result of this constitutional amendment was the following: Could these provisions in Part IXB be brought into being without the consent of the state governments? The question arises because of Article 368(2) of the Constitution. As per this provision, constitutional amendments that, among other things, alter the power of the state governments must be ratified by at least half of the state legislatures. In other words, the majority of states must assent to a constitutional amendment that alters the power of state governments. Such amendments cannot be brought into force merely by the power of Parliament. The requirement in Article 368(2) therefore raised the question of whether Part IXB had impacted the power of state governments – as we have noted above – as Entry 32 of List II of Schedule VII grants states the exclusive power with reference to co-operative societies.

The central government’s argument in defence of Part IXB took three forms. First, there was an attempt to draw a distinction in the provisions contained in this Part. It was suggested that Part IXB deals with multi-state co-operative societies that might have an impact beyond a single state as well as co-operative societies that function within a single state; and at least with reference to multi-state co-operative societies, the impugned provisions would be valid.

Second, there was an effort to suggest that, de facto, states had essentially consented. This consent was evident both by the fact that a majority of states had enacted statutes in furtherance of Part IXB, thereby underlining their acceptance of the Part, and that states had been extensively consulted prior to the enactment of the impugned constitutional amendment. Finally, it was suggested that, on a substantive reading of Part IXB, no power had been usurped from the state legislatures: the Union had not been granted any additional powers under these new provisions.

The challenge to Part IXB offered a different set of claims. First, it was claimed that the provisions pertaining to multi-state co-operatives and those within a state were linked in ways that were inseparable. Second, it was argued that the requirement in Article 368(2) is a procedural and legal requirement: it is not a requirement, that is, which can be achieved by the states implementing the constitutional amendment and thereby expressing some form of consent. The consent that is demanded by Article 368(2) is of a specific and particular kind.

Finally, it was contended that the power of state legislatures had indeed changed by way of the new provisions. For example, the maximum number of directors that a co-operative society could have was now specified. The defence that the Union had not been granted any additional powers under Part IXB somewhat missed the point because the Union had already exercised powers through enacting the provisions and thereby reduced the power of the states. There was no need to directly transfer power, it was suggested, from the states to the Union, as the same was done by the very provisions of the amendment.

The Supreme Court assessed these varying positions by reflecting on the constitutional schema. As per Articles 246 and Schedule VII, the Constitution was clear in its demarcation of powers. The matters in List I of the Schedule are those on which the Union government has the exclusive power to legislate; the matters in List II of the Schedule are those on which the state governments have the power to legislate; and the matters in List III are those on which the Union and states governments can concurrently legislate. Where a matter falls under an item in either List I or List II, then there can be no conflict with another law in such a situation, because the applicable legislature has plenary power – if it has the power to enact legislation pertaining to a particular field, then it has the complete power to do so.

With regard to co-operative societies, there were three relevant entries. There was Entry 32 of List II, which granted states the exclusive power to legislation on the ‘Incorporation, regulation and winding up of corporations, other than those specified in List I, and universities; unincorporated trading, literary, scientific, religious and other societies and associations; co-operative societies.’[5] And there were two entries in List I, dealing with the exclusive legislative power of the Union government. The first was Entry 43 which mentioned the ‘Incorporation, regulation and winding up of trading corporations, including banking, insurance and financial corporations, but not including co-operative societies.’[6] The second was Entry 44, which read: ‘Incorporation, regulation and winding up of corporations, whether trading or not, with objects not confined to one State, but not including universities.’[7]

Upon a reading of these provisions, it was clear, the Supreme Court held, that co-operatives societies fell solely and fully within the domain of the state governments. In the case of multi-state co-operative societies, however, the power would lie with the Union government given Entries 43 and 44 of List I. Prior cases had, the court noted, underlined this division between co-operative societies and multi-state co-operative societies. As a result, there was no overlap between the powers of the central and state governments. As the court put it, ‘co-operative societies as a subject matter belongs wholly and exclusively to the state legislatures to legislate upon, whereas multi-state co-operative societies, i.e., cooperative societies having objects not confined to one state alone, is exclusively within the ken of Parliament.’[8]

The question was therefore whether the 97th Amendment had brought about a change in the power of the state governments – in the power granted by Entry 32 of List II. Would this amendment be invalid on the ground that the procedural requirement of ratification had not been complied with?

In answering this question, the court held that the ‘change’ that was specified in Article 368(2) is not one that had to be explicit and direct. That is to say, for a change to occur, it was not necessary that the textual language in a provision had to be altered. Rather, one needed to focus on the impact

and effect of the constitutional amendment, and how such an amendment would alter the power that states effectively had. Crucially, the requirement was not – as the central government had contended – that power needed to be transferred from the state to the Union government. Even if such transfer did not occur, there could still be a change if ‘there is enlargement or curtailment of the subject matter contained in a field of legislation exclusively reserved to the States.’[9]

Part IXB was to be analysed considering this test. The Part contained provisions where, as has been observed, requirements were laid down regarding the directors of a co-operative society; rules were listed with reference to elections; various specifications were mentioned in the context of the board; financial and auditing prescriptions were articulated; and so forth. Given these provisions, it was clear, the Supreme Court held, that ‘the exclusive legislative power that is contained in Entry 32 List II has been significantly and substantially impacted in that such exclusive power is now subjected to a large number of curtailments.’[10] The power under this Entry could now ‘only be exercised subject to the provisions of Part IXB.’[11]

Even though the specific clause in the Constitution – Entry 32 of List II – had not been altered in any way, the impact on the provision and on the power that it granted state governments was clear. As a result, the court concluded that such a change would require ratification by at least half of the state legislatures; and that, in the absence of such ratification, such a change would violate the procedural requirements in Article 368(2). The telling contrast was with the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution in 1992 where relatable provisions were included regarding panchayats and municipalities. In that case, however, unlike the present instance, the amendments were ratified by the state legislatures. (The court proceeded to hold that Part IXB was severable and that those provisions that pertained to multi-state co-operative societies would stand.)[12]

How might the Supreme Court’s opinion in Rajendra N. Shah – authored by Justice R.F. Nariman – inform the future of Indian federalism? Even though state power has been constrained and limited in new ways in the recent past, the court’s verdict is promising in important ways. What is crucial is not so much the interpretation of Article 368(2), but the broader principle that emerges – the principle that, in reviewing the power of the states under the Indian Constitution, one must not only consider the formal textual changes to the power that states enjoy, but the means by which new legal measures alter the use, meaning, and interpretation of those powers.

It is possible to see this principle informing battles over legislative competence in important ways. Consider a matter of growing political controversy: the role of the central government in matters that one regards as falling within the exclusive power of state governments. Two instances come to mind. The first is the role of central investigative and crime-related agencies within states. The battle between state and central law enforcement agencies is not new. It has been the subject of much constitutional contestation in the case of anti-terror legislation. Whereas the Constitution grants the Union exclusive legislative powers with reference to the Defence of India, it grants the state government exclusive legislative power with regard to public order.

A case like Rajendra N. Shah encourages us to ask not only whether the actions of central agencies might encroach upon the powers in List II in formal terms, but more thoughtfully, what the practical and effective impact might be on the public order and policing power of the states.

A very different instance are the farm laws and the battle over agricultural reform. Here, again, there is a legal contest – that between the state’s authority over agriculture and the central government’s authority over the right to regulate inter-state commerce. Though the agricultural laws appear to have been stalled for the moment as a result of their political fallout, Rajendra N. Shah’s emphasis would be equally useful – and promising – in such a case. Here, again, the case would ask us to focus not necessarily on the distribution of power between the central and state governments, but rather on whether the legal changes effectively alter the ways in which the states can exercise their power. Such a shift in orientation is, to be sure, a subtle one, but it holds the promise of seeing India’s federal schema through the lens of the state governments, and is focusing on the use of power rather than on its textual formulations.

In the ongoing debates over Indian democracy, much has been said about the role of federalism, and the ways in which this system of government may enable new political allegiances and possibilities. How the relationship between democracy and federalism unfolds in India will in part depend on how federalism will be understood as a legal principle that distributes power. In a time when the Supreme Court’s authority and role has been questioned in profound ways, Justice Nariman’s opinion in Rajendra N. Shah is among the most significant and hopeful interventions of this past year.

Footnotes:

1. See C.H. Alexandrowicz, ‘Is India a Federation?’ International and Comparative Law Quarterly3(3), July 1954, pp. 393-403; Madhav Khosla, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2020, pp. 72-109; Louise Tillin, ‘Building a National Economy: Origins of Centralized Federalism in India’, Publius: The Journal of Federalism 51(2), Spring 2021, p.161.

2. See Yamini Aiyar and Avani Kapur, ‘The Centralization vs. Decentralization Tug of War and the Emerging Narrative of Fiscal Federalism for Social Policy in India’, Regional and Federal Studies 29(2), 2019, p. 187; Yamini Aiyar and Louise Tillin, ‘“One Nation”, BJP, and the Future of Indian Federalism’ 19(2), India Review, 2020, pp.117-135; Madhav Khosla and Milan Vaishnav, ‘The Three Faces of the Indian State’, Journal of Democracy 32(1), 2021, pp. 117-118.

3. On the Supreme Court’s recent history, see Gautam Bhatia, ‘The Troubling Legacy of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi’, The Wire,16 March 2019; Anup Surendranath et al., ‘Justice Arun Mishra and the Supreme Court’s Rule of Whim’, Article 14, 5 September 2020, www.article-14.com/post/justice-arunmishra-the-supreme-court-s-rule-of-whim.

4. Union of India v. Rajendra N. Shah,2021 SCC OnLine SC 474.

5. Entry 32, List II, Schedule VII, Constitution of India.

6. Entry 43, List I, Schedule VII, Constitution of India.

7. Entry 44, List I, Schedule VII, Constitution of India.

8. Rajendra N. Shah, note 4, at para 26.

9. Rajendra N. Shah, note 4, at para 60.

10. Rajendra N. Shah, note 4, at para 65.

11. Rajendra N. Shah, note 4, at para 65.

12. There is an important debate to be had here, as Justice K.M. Joseph’s partly dissenting opinion reveals, about the conditions under which severability can apply, but we shall leave this aside for the present moment.

Madhav Khosla is Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, New York. The article was first published in Seminar

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From abusing Gandhi to advocating genocide

2022-01-02T08:44:00.004+00:00

By Alishan Jafri , Neel Madhav and Apoorvanand

The arrest of the foul mouthed Kalicharan is seen as a very courageous step taken by the Chhatisgarh government.

Kalicharan, a self-styled Hindu saint was booked by the state police after he made abusive remarks against Mahatma Gandhi at a Dharma Sansad held at Raipur. The meet was called to discuss ways to turn India into a Hindu Rashtra.

It was natural that the impediments in the path of Hindu Rashtra were thought fit for abuse and even elimination. Since Gandhi was eliminated for this very crime 75 years back, he could only be abused. He was seen as the biggest obstruction in the path to reach Hindu Rashtra by the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha leaders. Nathuram Godse, the disciple of VD Savarkar murdered Gandhi on their behalf claiming it as his lone decision.

But the assassination of Gandhi failed to remove him from the Indian mind. His appeal in fact grew after his death. That had to destroyed anyhow. So, for the last 75 years in the RSS shakhas and elsewhere a vilification campaign against him has been going on. The approach of the RSS people with regard to Gandhi has been dubious. They have his name in their pantheon of the greats but all of them hate him from their core of hearts and justify his murder.

Gandhi however, remains the greatest icon of India and any disregard or insult to him is seen as an act of blasphemy by many.

So, when Kalicharan, the Hindu saint expressed what is best said privately, it created an uproar and the state government reacted sharply. It asserted that he would have to pay a price for this crime. A criminal case was registered against him and the CG police pursued and caught him in Madhya Pradesh.

It was demonstrated as a proof of the secular resolve of the CG government. The BJP leaders in MP and CG have come out against the arrest, Their argument is very interesting and is yet another evidence of their dubious character. They say that the Congress government is acting against Gandhian principles by arresting him as Gandhi himself would have pardoned him. Some Gandhians also said that Gandhi would not have liked Kalicharan to be arrested.

They are right to a great extent. Gandhi never wanted punishment for those who attacked him physically. In South Africa, he was badly assaulted by Mir Alam, his client. But he did not want him to be punished. Similarly, in 1944, a man rushed to him with a dagger in hand. He was apprehended but Gandhi refused to hand over him to the police. He invited the potential killer to spend a week with him to understand his viewpoint. The man refused. He was allowed to go. The man was Nathuram Godse. He returned to finally murder Gandhi.

The magnanimity of Gandhi did not lead to a change in the heart of Godse and his mentors. They remained murderers. But it is ironic to see those who destroyed Gandhi physically and seek to destroy Gandhi’s values tell us that, while they follow their ideology of hate and murder, Gandhians should not deviate from their path of unconditional forgiveness. In short they should be allowed to remain free to spread the culture of hate and violence – they will continue to be Godses and everyone else should continue to be Gandhis.

But they are wrong about Gandhi. He could and did pardon those who attacked him physically but attack on Muslims and minorities remained a crime in his eyes for which the criminal must face punishment. In 1947 when Muslims were being attacked in Delhi, he had said that there was no question of a policy of pardon for the attackers. The law must act, he had said.

It is however a sad reality that 75 years after the murder of the man who was arguing for justice for the Muslims of India, violence and hate against Muslims are not seen as a crime serious enough to warrant action from the constitutional authorities. Political parties see anti-Muslim hatred as a valid viewpoint and violence against them as an understandable reaction of the Hindus to the sense of accumulated humiliation at the hands of Mughals and other Muslim rulers. They do not generally react to the call for attack on Muslims with the same alacrity as the CG government did in the case of abuses against Mahatma Gandhi.

Since the Mahatma is abused precisely for his steadfast support for the rights of Muslims in a predominantly Hindu India and his refusal to let India become a Hindu Rashtra, abuses against him have to necessarily come with attacks on Muslims. It helps secular parties. They can now criticise anti-Muslim hatred as they have Gandhi as a cover. How can those who insult Gandhi be allowed to remain free!

Suppose there was only a genocidal call against Muslims and Christians and Gandhi was spared, what will happen then? This is what we saw after the Haridwar Dharma Sansad. Civil society was outraged after the videos from the congregation emerged in which so-called Hindu saints were seen making open calls for total elimination of Muslims and Christians. Most of the secular parties have not reacted as yet officially. The Congress and the left parties did react but it was not their natural political reflex.

One has to understand that the last seven years of BJP rule in many states and in the union of India with absolute majority have now taken anti-Muslim violence to a qualitatively different level.

For a very long time and even now, the violence against Muslims was justified as a response to terrorism, their being pro-Pakistan, etc. But now the latest Hindutva grievance against Muslims in India is that they still have a right to life guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. They are asking for a full-blown genocide now. One could simply discard this as an extremist demand which the Indian government can never fulfil.

However, we have seen the mobs’ wishes being accepted each time after such confrontations. It started with campaigns against food habits, lynching in the name of saving cows, vigilantism to save Hindu women from Muslim men. This street violence was followed by discriminatory laws which restricted the civil rights of Muslims. Laws criminalising their food habit, their right to love, own properties, their right to livelihood were enacted in states after states and by the parliament.

Every time a violent street campaign is made, many well-meaning Hindus find this a distraction from the real issues like the price of petrol and economy. But Muslims don’t have that privilege, they’re seeing their country and dignity being robbed from them. They cannot not see their humiliation and demonization as a temporary phenomenon which will pass once elections are over. Now it has become the most permanent thing in India.

It’s been over 12 days since the explicit calls for mass killing of the Muslim community were made at the ‘Dharma’ Sansad in Haridwar by prominent religious clerics of the Hindu faith. As of now, the police and state look helpless to make arrests. The police are seen laughing with the perpetrators and the state’s CM is seen touching their feet.

It’s not that open calls for murder of Muslims are new to India but this time around it’s far more explicit and heinous. On as many as 5 occasions, including the mahapanchayats in Haryana or the hate rally at Jantar Mantar, thousands of people committed to the ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have called for the mass murder of Muslims. The difference between any of these events and the Dharma Sansad in Haridwar is easy to point out: There were namesake arrests in earlier cases, and the perpetrators tried to distance themselves from their statements after public flak. This time the participant Hindu saints have not tried to disown their genocidal calls. They have repeated them.

Since all these Hindu saints belong to the eco-system of the BJP and RSS, which still operate in a state bound by secular constitutional norms, such an open and crude mass murder call should have embarrassed them. Instead the BJP has even this time, shrugged it off. The top leadership has maintained a studied silence which is seen as an endorsement by its constituents.

To address the supporters of the BJP who are not from its ideological camp, another strategy is being adopted. Many BJP supporters have tried to paint the statements as a conspiracy of the opposition to defame the BJP. But there is no evidence from the BJP or RSS to show that they have distanced themselves from the Hindu saints asking Hindus to slaughter Muslims.

In the face of these growing threats, it is important for the world to stand up. Indians and Hindus in particular, need to push back against these genocidal thoughts. Even if they don’t, Muslims cannot wait and maintain strategic silence. Even those who have agreed to criticise and condemn the violence, do it, without acknowledging its nature. They call it everything but violence against Muslims.

“These videos from Haridwar have shamed 133 crore India,” “I am sorry as an Indian,” “What damage would this madness do to India’s image,” “They cannot be saints,” “it is a win-win situation for the BJP” “ignore the fringe” and “we won’t tolerate such comments against Mahatma Gandhi,” “this is not an attack on Muslims, it’s just an attempt to defame Hindus” “we are so hopeless”: these are some of the reactions which troubles the resistance against fascism in India.

There are again well-meaning people who think that if we talk about the hate campaign it would only help the BJP. It is important to understand that when the Dharm Sansad polarisation argument is rationalised as a win-win situation for the BJP, the political opposition is left with no option but to keep silent. The logic that the opposition would lose Hindu votes if it tries to offer a fresh ideological counter to the communal forces, is flawed at two levels: First, the political parties have been too scared to talk against Muslim hatred anyway yet that has not helped their cause electorally. Second, we saw leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav fight the BJP on purely ideological lines and defeat them quite a few times. One may argue that there are other parties that have managed to succeed without playing into the BJP’s plot.

Hindus are being deprived of information and ideological tools to resist anti-Muslim hatred and violence. Their compassion has been blunted. This madness of Muslim hatred is not going to succumb to its own contradictions. It needs to be actively resisted.

The ideological fight against BJP will start from calling out their genocidal plans for Muslims and standing up on behalf of Muslims and Christians. Until political parties take a stand and communicate it to their rank and file, there will be no motivation for their leaders and supporters to intervene and speak up.

The article was first published by Counter Currents

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What capitalism can learn from the religions of the world

2021-12-29T20:15:00.008+00:00

The answers are there if you look for them. Yogendra Singh, CC BY-SA

By Atul K. Shah

It may be the season for peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, but you don’t have to look very far in the financial pages to find stories about businesses doing exactly the opposite. NatWest, for example, has just agreed to pay US$35 million (£26 million) to the US authorities after pleading guilty to fraudulent activities in the financial markets.

KPMG, one of the largest professional services firms in the world, has temporarily resigned from bidding for UK government contracts. It is under pressure from the authorities to reform after being fined £13 million by an industry tribunal for serious misconduct relating to the collapse of bedmaker Silentnight, and an investigation by the Financial Reporting Council that has found that KPMG partners provided false and misleading information during routine audit inspections.

Meanwhile, chief executives and other corporate insiders have offloaded a record US$69 million in shares in 2021. Much of this is through a legitimate type of insider trading in the US, where executives use a system known as 10b5-1 plans to sell shares even when they have material information about the business which has not been publicly disclosed. This has prompted hasty new proposals from the US authorities to clamp down on how such sales can be carried out.

All these activities fly in the face of the high standards of integrity and protection of the public interest that are supposed to exist among banks, listed companies and consultancies. It’s tempting to think that there is a simple solution when such things come to light: a change of the rules here, a fine there, a temporary ban on bidding for contracts somewhere else.

Unfortunately something deeper is required. Here there are similarities to the huge debate about how to move to net zero emissions. Most of the emphasis is on moving to net zero technologies like wind farms or electric vehicles, rather than addressing the underlying problem of the corporation’s fundamental relationship with nature.

Whether we are talking about carbon emissions or corporate executives acting ethically, the issue is the same: economics and business have become a chainsaw on the very fabric of our interconnected world. We cannot escape a fundamental re-examination of our beliefs about money, markets, and a transactional, individualist and competitive society.

Learning from religion

Fortunately for us, faiths have been reflecting on the nature and limits of money for hundreds of years. They see business as a servant of society, never its master. Ancient traditions give us a caring and respectful attitude to planet Earth, where human greed is restrained, and kindness and compassion towards all living beings encouraged.

In Christianity, caring for the weak and the poor has always been central to its practices, and Christmas is intended to be a time for charity and generosity. It teaches us to control our greed, to experience interdependence and the joy of giving.

The Dharmic traditions of India - Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and my own tradition, Jainism – have never treated animals and nature as separate from humanity. It was under the Boddhi tree that the Buddha attained enlightenment. Trees provide safe havens to birds without charging them for parking, and offer them the choicest fruits without trying to turn themselves into restaurants.

Trees stand firm even on hot days, freely giving shade to those who come under their embrace. The interdependence of sun, soil and rain is understood by the tree. The silent actions of trees give us a timeless science of non-violence (ahimsa), non-possession (aparigraha) and humility (namrata).

Buddha became enlightened under the boddhi tree. susuteh, CC BY-SA

At root, money has always been a medium of exchange, a fiction which we humans have created to help us deal with everyday needs. Its value derives from the trust that we give to each other. The more we turn money into a factual, materialistic and overarching reality, the more insecure and selfish we become as a society.

Financial institutions and professions have forgotten these basic truths about the nature and limits of money. They have distanced themselves from the trust, relationships and conscience which ought to be central to how it is handled. Too often they have become the vehicles for spreading distrust and inequality, by using their political and economic power to benefit themselves at the expense of nature and society.

Money is merely a fiction that is supposed to help society. afiq fatah, CC BY-SA

India invented the zero, and it also has thousands of saints who even today live with zero wealth. These people are devoted to exploring the possibilities of inner security and freedom that lies beyond material existence.

In a similar way, the corporate world and finance education needs to go back to the fundamentals of money and its social roots to renew its culture. We have heard a lot about the need to transition to net zero emissions, but we also need to try and bring about a contented and sharing culture. Business needs to live in harmony with animals and nature, help support the weak and enable everyone to survive, not just a chosen few.

Atul K. Shah www.atulkshah.co.uk, Professor, Accounting and Finance, City, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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