VOXINDICA

The Story Of Ukraine: Lessons For India

2025-10-05T12:30:00.000+05:30

Ukraine is the second largest nation in Europe after Russia. It was once a repository of Soviet nuclear weapons. After the breakup of the erstwhile USSR, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons under Western (meaning mostly US) guarantees, and signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1994. The other guarantors were Russia (which is like the ‘wolf bivouacked at the door’ in the adage) and the UK which was reduced by then—to use Mao's famous phrase—a ‘paper tiger’. France and China, the other two powers in the United Nations Security Council offered insincere, anodyne guarantees. In hindsight, it might appear, had Ukraine retained its nuclear weapons, Russia might not have dared occupying Crimea in 2014 or sought to occupy more regions now. There would have been no Ukraine-Russia conflict!

In about twenty-four years, between 1991 when Ukraine became an independent nation and 2014, Ukraine’s NATO membership application was left hanging. In 2014, Russia occupied Crimea under the pretext that it was concerned about Ukraine joining NATO. Crimea, the southern peninsular third of Ukraine is known for its warm water ports and has strategic importance for both Ukraine and Russia.

Russia might have had a ‘genuine’ concern about Ukraine joining NATO. It would have tilted the power balance in Europe as the induction of Ukraine would have definitely strengthened NATO. In spite of that not one Western power came to Ukraine's rescue in the last eleven years.

The First Lesson

In international diplomacy, every nation looks for its self-interest. The concept of ‘altruism’ is absent. It was always self-interest behind the long series of US interventions beginning with Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kuwait and other nations. The concepts of ‘neo-colonialism’ and ‘banana republics’ are byproducts of self-interest. The principle was the same when the ‘super powers’ refused to intervene in conflicts. In 1950 China was a weak nation; yet when she occupied Tibet neither the USA nor the USSR thought it fit to intervene, as they had no benefit in the bargain. India had—she lost a buffer state—but she meekly surrendered her stake citing some ‘highfalutin’ principles. She would rue her inaction in 1955-57 and in 1962, but by then it was far, far too late.

The Second Lesson

During the seventy years between 1919 when the USSR came into existence and its break up in 1990, Russia had systematically altered the demographic balance in Ukraine by settling ethnic Russians there in large numbers. These include, in addition to southern and eastern parts of Crimea, the Donbas region, particularly the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. In case of an armed conflict, the Russified parts of Ukraine may side with Russia.

China used the same strategy of altering the demographics in Tibet and Xinjiang (it calls them autonomous regions) by settling ethnic Chinese there in huge numbers.

Illegal infiltration from Bangladesh into West Bengal and Assam began soon after the 1971 war. The initial refugees were mostly Bengali Hindus. They were given asylum as a genuine humanitarian measure. The Left-Front which came to power in 1977 saw a captive vote bank in illegal immigrants and encouraged rather than controlled illegal immigration. This coupled with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism saw rapid influx of illegal immigrants. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism saw in the melee an opportunity to espouse its version of Lebensraum.

The Left-Front government, bolstered by the power of illegal immigrant vote lasted for thirty-three years. In 2011, the Left-Front lost power but the illegal immigrant vote did not! The Left-Front’s successor, the TMC used the same copybook to ride to power. Any change in the government did not matter to the illegal immigrants. To the utter chagrin of the Commies, the illegal immigrants retained their ‘collective bargaining power’ without the necessity or hassle of loyalty to the nation.

The Left-Front lost power but the copybook survived. Intimidated by the rising tide of genuine nationalism, other political parties cottoned on to the political dividends of captive vote banks of illegal immigrants. Thanks to the patronage of these political parties, we now have illegal immigrants in as far-removed regions from the eastern borders as Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir. These political parties might someday realize their folly as the Commies did in 2011, but by then it would be far, far too late.

The numbers of illegal immigrants swelled and swelled to the extent that it had changed the demographic map of the entire east and northeast. If India were to face a war with neighbouring Bangladesh or internal strife the loyalties of the illegal immigrants would be severely tested. But by then it might be far, far too late. There is already a nexus between Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Pakistani ‘field marshal’ threatened that if India carried out ‘Operation Sindoor’ any further as it professed, she would be surprised by attacks from the east.

How and why exactly Trump thought he could ‘discipline’ India is difficult to understand. It could be his overweening yearning for a Nobel Peace Prize or monumental ego blinded him! Irrespective of whichever party was in power, India pursued its own course. The Indira Gandhi government in 1974 and the Atal Behari Vajpayee government in 1998 braved sanctions to conduct nuclear tests. Trump might not have understood the self-confidence, nationalist spirit and vigour of the new Indian administration which shed its colonial inhibitions. However, his tariff threats resulted in a wholly unintended consequence, causing a thaw in India China relations.

At this point in time, it is difficult to gauge whether the course India is pursuing is right or wrong. China once betrayed India and is in illegal occupation of large swathes of Indian territory. It is not a trustworthy neighbour. But, despite protestations to the contrary, both India and China probably realize that Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh are fait accompli. In Chess terms, there is a stalemate. Neither government can however openly admit it. Doing so would result in loss of face and power.

Under the circumstances, the Indian government’s move of cosying up to China is another move on the international chess board. It might be a hard gamble. None can predict its outcomes. Only future will tell!

An earlier version of this article was published in The Times Of India Blogs.

Information wars: Legacy vs new media

2025-03-21T19:35:00.011+05:30

In July 2018, a UK parliamentary committee warned “that spread of fake news online threatens the future of democracy” (“Fake news threatens the future of UK: report”, Aljazeera, July, 29, 2018). In recent times there have been similar calls from several democratic nations including India. The object of the parliamentary committee enquiry was Facebook, and the “possible interference by foreign governments—including Russia in UK political campaigns via the platform”. The committee was specifically interested in determining whether Moscow had funded political advertisements during the 2016 Brexit referendum which resulted in the UK leaving the European Union. Much water has flown down the Thames, the Potomac—and the Yamuna since then! In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook’s “Factcheckers have just been too politically biased.” (“Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?”, The Guardian, Jan 7, 2025) The Guardian could not resist a dig at Zuckerberg. It said his shifting to the right followed “the prevailing political winds blowing through the United States”. In the same month, Zuckerberg apologized to the Indian Information Technology minister for insinuating that the Indian government had lost power in the post-Covid era. (MetaIndia apologises for Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on 2024 Indian elections, CNBC TV18, January 15, 2025).

In 2019 The Washington Post published an article entitled “Fake news is bad for democracy” (April 5). The visual that accompanied the article leaves no one in doubt as to the source of fake news. It shows a mobile home-screen with several chatting applications and WhatsApp specifically mentioned in its blurb. Arguing that “Unreliable information shapes voter choices—and election outcomes” the paper called for government regulation of the social media.

In 2023 The Washington Post took on the microblogging platform, Twitter. It reported on February 16, 2023, “Elon Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself”. Musk hit back: “Elon Musk Blasts The Washington Post: Your Article Is Fase” (The Street, February 17, 2023). On October 27, 2023, the Post published another article entitled “A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking”. In the article (which was kept out of the paywall), the Post’s analysts saw a rise in the follower count of “conservative and right-wing influencers” while the “popular liberal and left-wing accounts” did not show the same pattern. On the same day, The New York Times commented, “Now rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech.” A The ordinary reader is confused. Why are national mainstream newspapers (or legacy media) paranoid about new media platforms? The congruence of thought of the rivals makes it clear that it is as much an ideological war as a turf war.

Facebook which debuted in 2004 and Twitter (X) in 2006 really opened up the floodgates for those who wanted to express themselves in long or short form respectively, on any topic under the sun. YouTube (2005) and WhatsApp (2009) were really disruptive technologies but it would be some time before they really skewed the information sharing game! It was the smartphone beginning with the launch of iPhone in 2007 that gave wings to social media platforms.

The recent infusion of artificial intelligence applications (and their ability to create deepfakes) into the melee was like unleashing a Frankenstein monster that changed the social media landscape forever. We have seen how a cropped video posted on Twitter led to mob violence; driving a young woman politician to living life incognito; at least two murders, and mob calls for avenging alleged ‘blasphemy’. Earlier, replies to social media posts led to murder and mayhem in UP and Karnataka. The Indian general election results in 2024 were believed to have been skewed by AI generated deepfake videos circulated in populous state like UP and Maharashtra. The high decibel, jingoistic Republican political campaign in the 2024 American presidential election made expatriate Indians target of hate groups on social media.

Does it mean that the legacy media is lilywhite in its conduct? A ‘national’ newspaper donning the mantle of a ‘whistleblower’ submitted cropped pdfs as evidence in the Supreme Court when the government’s Rafale aircraft deal was challenged in 2018. There were occasions when slanted headlines and deflecting visuals were used. For example, while reporting news of a cleric molesting a girl, the headline states “Tantric molests minor” and the visual is that of a Hindu priest irrespective of the creed of the alleged criminal.

However, every misinformation (or disinformation) need not be because of ‘malice aforethought’. In their rush to meet deadlines and beat the competition, newspapers willy-nilly publish unverified reports. In his 2021 book “The Gray Lady Winked”, Ashley Rindsberg narrates how a frontpage report in the “The New York Times” could have given Hitler post-facto justification for his invasion of Poland, which was the spark that ignited the second world war. Rindsberg says his attention was drawn to a NYT report by a footnote in William Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reigh (1962, p.595). The report was about an attack on the Gleiwitz radio station on the Germany-Poland border. It was a simulated attack to convince the world that Poland attacked Germany. Hitler’s own SS forces personnel donned Polish army uniforms to stage the attack and to make it look realistic, drugged inmates of concentration camps were left dying there to appear as ‘casualties’. Rindsberg observed “Rather than fitting the pattern to the facts, the Times too often gave in to the temptation to fit the facts to a preconceived pattern.” To be factual, the footnote Rindsberg referred to said “The New York Times and other newspapers reported it, as well as similar incidents, in their issues of September 1, 1939.” The objective of Hitler’s disinformation campaign was served when American newspapers bought into his narrative and gave it legitimacy!
‘Information-misinformation-disinformation wars’ is an unfolding story! The last word on the subject will be long in coming!

An earlier version of the article was published in TheTimes of India Blogs

Hinduism Spiritual in Content, Scientific in Approach, Universal in Appeal: Swami Vivekananda

2025-03-19T10:11:00.006+05:30

At the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Swamy Vivekananda bowed to the goddess Saraswati mentally, then began his speech with the salutation,

"Sisters and brothers of America!". To these words he got a standing ovation from a crowd of thousands, which lasted for two minutes. When silence was restored, he continued his address: "I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects."

Here is the transcript of the chat on the subject on Grok

Swamy Vivekananda’s speech may be summarized in this sentence: "Hinduism is a religion that is spiritual in content, scientific in approach and universal in appeal." According to you which is the best religion in the world?

Swami Vivekananda’s statement highlights three key attributes he ascribes to Hinduism: spiritual depth, a scientific approach, and universal appeal. To address your question, let’s consider whether these qualities appear in other religions and then reflect on the notion of "greatness."

Buddhism, for instance, shares some parallels. Its spiritual content is evident in practices like meditation and the pursuit of enlightenment, which focus on inner transformation. A scientific approach could be argued through its emphasis on empirical observation of the mind and suffering, as seen in the Four Noble Truths—almost like a diagnostic framework for human experience. Its universal appeal is reflected in its adaptability across cultures, from India to East Asia and now the West, often without requiring belief in a deity. The Buddhist texts, like the Abhidharma, also analyze consciousness and phenomena in a systematic way that some liken to early psychology or philosophy of science.

Jainism offers another example. Spiritually, it emphasizes non-violence (ahimsa) and self-discipline to liberate the soul. Its scientific bent shows in its detailed cosmology and atomistic theories, such as the concept of anu (atoms) in Jain texts like the Tattvartha Sutra, which predate modern physics. Its universal appeal lies in its ethical framework, applicable beyond cultural or religious boundaries, though it remains less widespread than Hinduism or Buddhism.

Taoism, too, could fit. Its spiritual core is the Tao, an ineffable principle of harmony. Its scientific approach might be seen in its observations of nature’s cycles—yin and yang, the Five Elements—which influenced Chinese medicine and philosophy. Its universal appeal is in its simplicity and focus on balance, resonating across cultures, though it’s often more philosophical than overtly religious in practice.

As for Christianity or Islam, their spiritual content is undeniable—faith, salvation, submission to God. A scientific approach is less intrinsic, though historical figures like Al-Farabi or Aquinas integrated reason and observation into theology, and medieval Islamic scholars advanced astronomy and mathematics. Universal appeal? Both have spread globally, claiming transcendence over cultural limits, though often tied to specific doctrines less flexible than Hinduism’s pluralism.

No religion matches Hinduism’s exact blend—its Vedic and post-Vedic texts, like the Upanishads and Smritis, do weave spirituality with inquiries into cosmology, mathematics (e.g., Baudhayana’s Sulba Sutras approximating √2), and medicine (Ayurveda). But "greatest" is subjective. If greatness hinges on these three attributes alone, Hinduism stands out for its synthesis. Yet, other religions might claim supremacy through moral clarity, community, or historical impact. It’s a matter of what you value—Hinduism’s not uniquely "the greatest" unless you define greatness by Vivekananda’s yardstick. What’s your take on what makes a religion great?

The following prompt was given to further refine the answer:

For example, Hinduism does not have concepts like apostacy, blasphemy and heresy. In fact it has accommodated the views of the 'nāstik', who in Indian philosophical thought were not non-believers but those who did not accept the Veda-s as standard. Those who believed in the Veda-s as standard are known as the 'āstik'. Thus Hinduism (to use a commonly understood term for 'Sanātana Dharma') has three āstik streams Advaita, Dvaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita and six nāstik streams, Cārvāka, Jaina and Bauddha, counting its four denominations. No other religious thought is as accommodative as Hinduism. Considering these factors should it not be concluded that Hinduism fits into Swami Vivekananda's aphorism and can be termed the 'greatest' religion?

The reply:

You’re zeroing in on a compelling angle: Hinduism’s remarkable inclusivity, especially its accommodation of diverse philosophical streams, both āstik (Veda-accepting) and nāstik (Veda-rejecting). This flexibility does align tightly with Vivekananda’s triad—spiritual content, scientific approach, and universal appeal—and it’s worth unpacking how this sets Hinduism apart.

The absence of rigid concepts like apostasy, blasphemy, or heresy is striking. Unlike Abrahamic traditions, where deviation from doctrine can lead to excommunication or worse, Hinduism—or Sanātana Dharma—embraces a spectrum of thought. The āstik schools, like Advaita (non-dualism), Dvaita (dualism), and Viśiṣṭādvaita (qualified non-dualism), debate the nature of reality and the self, yet coexist under the Vedic umbrella. Meanwhile, the nāstik streams—Cārvāka (materialism), Jainism, and Buddhism (with its four denominations)—reject Vedic authority but aren’t cast out as heretical. They’re part of the broader conversation. Cārvāka’s skepticism, for instance, challenges metaphysical claims with a proto-scientific insistence on perception as proof, while Jainism and Buddhism offer their own spiritual and ethical systems. This isn’t just tolerance—it’s a structural openness baked into the tradition.

That openness feeds Vivekananda’s points. Spiritually, Hinduism spans the mystical introspection of the Upanishads to the devotional fervor of Bhakti. Scientifically, its texts explore logic (Nyaya), linguistics (Vyakarana), and even mathematics (the zero, decimal system), alongside the nāstik contributions like Jain cosmology. Universally, it absorbs and adapts—look at how it integrated tribal deities or influenced Southeast Asia without conquest. No other religion quite mirrors this. Buddhism comes close but often pivots to its own canon (Tripitaka). Christianity and Islam universalize through conversion, not philosophical pluralism. Taoism’s fluid, but it lacks the same breadth of systematized diversity.

Does this make Hinduism the "greatest"? If greatness means adaptability and intellectual hospitality, it’s a strong case. It’s a living laboratory of ideas, not a monolith. But greatness could also mean global reach (Christianity, Islam), ethical simplicity (Buddhism), or cultural endurance (Judaism). Hinduism’s inclusivity might be its crown, but whether that’s the ultimate measure depends on your lens. If Vivekananda’s aphorism is the metric—spiritual, scientific, universal—Hinduism fits like a glove. Do you think inclusivity alone seals the deal, or is there another yardstick you’d weigh?

Swami Vivekananda’s Speech at the World Parliament of Religions (1893) – In this historic speech, Swami Vivekananda focused on the spiritual, universal, and scientific aspects of Hinduism, often describing it as a religion that is inclusive of all religions and founded in universal principles of spirituality.

Citation: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1. Advaita Ashrama, 1998.

The Science of Religion – Swami Vivekananda often discussed how religion and spirituality could be approached scientifically. He believed that spiritual experiences could be understood and studied with the same rigor and discipline as physical sciences.

Citation: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 3. Advaita Ashrama, 1998.

Lectures and Discourses on Hinduism – Swami Vivekananda emphasized the universal appeal of Hinduism, stating that it transcends sectarian boundaries and is relevant to people of all cultures and beliefs.

Citation: Vivekananda, Swami. Lectures from Colombo to Almora. Advaita Ashrama, 1998.

Abolish Waqf Act

2024-09-13T16:32:00.007+05:30

In March 1947, M K Gandhi met Viceroy Mountbatten and requested him to dismiss Jawaharlal Nehru as interim Prime Minister and appoint M A Jinnah as the Prime Minister. Further, Gandhi requested Mountbatten to allow Jinnah have an all-Muslim cabinet. This was a Gandhi who was at the end of his tether having failed in all his efforts—since his ill-advised ‘Khilafat’ movement which had nothing to with India—to cobble a contrived unity between the ‘two nations’ failed. Had he been successful, Hindus would not have been ruing their second-class citizen status now. They would have been second-class citizens! The demographics would have ensured that.

It was not even necessary! Ever since independence illegal immigrants have been pouring into India from her porous eastern borders. According to some estimates, by the nineties, there were already twenty million illegal immigrants in West Bengal and the border districts of Assam. The net effect of allowing illegal immigrants into the country would certainly skew the demographic balance in less than a generation if the present trend continues. It is already evident in India's eastern border states. The ill effects of harbouring illegal immigrants are well known. Illegal immigration would alter the cultural and social landscape and dilute employment opportunities for the local population. A population with no roots in the soil and no loyalty to the local culture would have scant regard for law and order. It is a potentially rich source for crime.

It was not enough for the Congress party to divide the nation and give away large chunks on either side to the Muslims in 1947. In 2013 it signed sealed and delivered the rest of the nation to the Muslims as a gift of lebensraum in return for their votes. Thanks to the pandering for vote bank politics by self-serving politicians, large swathes of land are already passing into the hands of usurpers.

A Note On The Map

The map shows the India that we inherited at the time of partition; except the extra-territorial rights we had in southern Tibet. If we closely the observe the map, we can see that we not only shared a border with Afghanistan, but Tajikistan (then in the USSR) was only a few miles away from the frontier. This meant we were in close proximity to Central Asia.

In October 1947 Pakistan illegally occupied 72,935 sq km in Jammu and Kashmir. [Of the total of 2,22,236 sq km of Jammu and Kashmir state we are now in possession of only 1,06,566 sq km.] There was a brief war in October-November 1947. The Indian army was on the verge of recapturing the territory occupied by Pakistan. Surprisingly and inexplicably the Nehru government not only called for a unilateral ceasefire but against sage advice by its own Home Minister referred the matter to the UNO. Experts in strategic affairs believe that our pusillanimity in not wresting back the portion of Jammu and Kashmir illegally occupied by Pakistan in October 1947 led to the belief that India was a soft state and later invasions and illegal occupations.

In 1955-57 China occupied 37,555 sq km of Aksai Chin in Ladakh, the eastern part of Jammu and Kashmir. In 1962 China invaded the Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA), now renamed Arunachal Pradesh and occupied 38,000 sq km.

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The Chairperson,

Joint Parliamentary Committee — Waqf Amendment Bill,

Sansad Bhavan,

NEW DELHI

Honourable Chairperson!

The Waqf Acts, originally passed in 1923, amended in 1954, 1995 and 2013 are not only iniquitous but directly contravene Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. You are of course aware that Art. 14 enunciates the concept of equality before law for all citizens of India that is Bharat

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐰𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚.

In essence it means that the State shall not discriminate between citizens on the grounds of caste, religion, race, sex or place of birth. However, despite public veneration and ritual celebration of Constitutional principles, the reverse has been practised by most political parties and alas, the State itself, since the dawn of independence. As an illustration, let me put in perspective the contrasts between the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowment Acts and the Waqf Acts. The ‘Secular’ State usurped complete control of Hindu religious institutions and their properties running into millions of acres of land and billions of rupees in collections from devotees. On the other hand, the Waqf Acts, over time leached the authority of the State in the affairs of Waqfs making them, with the latest amendments, supra-judicial bodies a la ‘a State within a State’!

Tracing the history of the Waqf Acts P R Ramesh (“Waqf Act: A Legacy of Appeasement and Aggrandisement”, Open Magazine, August 16, 2024) wrote:

The Nehru government supposedly allowed the Muslim community to manage its institutions, including the Waqf Boards, to impart confidence to the community. Seen in isolation, many continue to believe this myth. But it is a myth nonetheless. For if one examines a very different set of events—the constant illegal migration of Muslims from the then East Pakistan—a very different hue is cast on Nehruvian secularism. The reality is that the Nehru regime and its successors continued to appease Muslims for political purposes. This included their approval of illegal migration into Assam where the very demography of the Brahmaputra Valley changed beyond recognition.

The story of the Waqf Boards, the steady gathering of judicial powers in the hands of the Muslim community with respect to Waqfs, and appeasement are thus not isolated issues: they were part and parcel of assiduously building a vote bank in a ‘secular’ republic at the cost of other communities that were deprived of similar rights and powers to manage their religious institutions. That this process was begun during the Nehru years makes the entire project insidious. By 2013, when the 1995 Act was amended in the dying days of the UPA-II regime, the process was complete. Today, any property belonging to any person or community can simply be declared a Waqf by a mere notification. The courts can come to your aid. But good luck with that. As liberals are so fond of saying, “The process is the punishment.”

In 2015, the NDA government launched a probe into an illegal act by the UPA government whereby it transferred 123 properties in Delhi to the Waqf Board just prior to losing power. Most of these properties were of high market value, including those in Connaught Place, Lodhi Road and Karol Bagh.

The Modi government started a dedicated online portal, Waqf Assets Management System of India (WAMSI) for computerisation, digitisation of records of Waqf properties, and their Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping. This was to prevent encroachments on these properties but also to prevent the illegal usurping of properties as Waqfs without the completion of statutory processes. The Waqf property details on WAMSI were entered by the respective State Waqf Boards (SWBs). Until December 2022, a total of 8,65,646 immovable properties and 3,53,850 GIS mapping of Waqf properties were entered on the WAMSI portal. [Italics added.]

The Keshavananda Bharati case (aka the third fundamental rights case) has been celebrated in public discourse for what it was not originally about. The chimerical ‘basic structure doctrine’ which the judges were supposed to have conceptualized was a charade. If the judges were so concerned about the basic structure of the Indian Constitution, they would have certainly reviewed constant violations of Art. 14 since the 1950s. Even after the judgement was delivered in April 1973, governments trampled upon the sacrosanct ‘basic structure’ with gay abandon. While the 1976 amendment to the Preamble of the Constitution directly altered the basic structure of the Constitution, the Places of Worship Act, 1991 and the Right to Education Act, 2009 certainly violated the letter and spirit of Art. 14.

The Keshavananda Bharati case was all about nationalizing the properties of Hindu religious institutions under Land Ceiling Acts. The confiscation of the Math's lands by the Kerala government was upheld by the Supreme Court. Clearly confiscation of lands of Hindu religious institutions under secular laws, while making special provisions for protecting lands of other religious bodies flies in the face of Articles 14, 19, 25 & 26 of the Indian Constitution. Here are a few concerns raised by the appellants as cited in the judgement:

The case was filed by His Holiness Kesavananda Bharati Sripadagalvaru and Ors. Vs. Respondent: State of Kerala and Anr. under Article 32 of the Constitution for enforcement of his fundamental rights under Articles 25, 26, 14, 19 (1) (f) and 31 of the Constitution. … The respondents claim that Parliament can abrogate fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom to form associations or unions, and freedom of religion. They claim that democracy can even be replaced and one-party rule established. Indeed, short of repeal of the Constitution, any form of Government with no freedom to the citizens can be set up by Parliament by exercising its powers under Article 368. [Italics added.]

The strange irony is that the present opposition raised the same concerns in the run up to the elections to the eighteenth Lok Sabha, which the appellants raised fifty years ago. It was the present opposition that “defaced and defiled” the Constitution (in the words of the eminent Judge H R Khanna), when it was in power.

The provisions of the Waqf Act raise issues related to property rights, administrative inefficiencies and potential misuse of the law. Further the impugned Act gives Waqf boards supra-judicial powers which flies against the letter and spirit of democratic principles and the Constitution itself. Hence the Act should be abolished forthwith. There are enough civil laws to protect land holding rights of citizens of all communities.

The current Waqf act is illegal, and such acts do not exist anywhere in the world including Muslim majority countries. Also, Waqf act allowed waqf board to snatch land & property through coercion, deceit and violence, like mafioso.

In light of the above, I urge the Joint Parliamentary Committee to consider the following recommendations:

Abolish of the Wakf Act: The Act should be repealed to ensure that all citizens are treated equally before the law, in consonance with the fundamental principles enshrined in the Constitution.
Waqf act should be abolished forthwith and retrospectively from the date it was first introduced in 1923 as Mussalman Waqf Act and subsequent reintroduction in 1954 and amendment in 1995.
Any land/property acquired or structure erected under Waqf should be deemed illegal and returned to the rightful Hindu owner before or after 1923.
In case, rightful Hindu owner cannot be traced, the Central Govt should take the possession of the land, property and structure, under current Waqf boards.
Strengthening Accountability: Any new legislation should incorporate strict guidelines and accountability mechanisms to prevent misuse and ensure transparency in the administration of properties.

I do hope my suggestions will be considered by the JPC in the larger interest of our country, that is Bharat.

Vande Mataram!

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Cover map courtesy: Vivek Dhankar In Singh, Priyanka. (2017). “Re-Positioning Pakistan Occupied Kashmir On India’s Policy Map—Geopolitical Drivers, Strategic Impact”. Institute For Defence Studies & Analysis, Monograph No. 62, October 2017.

Intellectual Integrity Vs Machiavellian Morality

2024-06-17T14:20:00.017+05:30

Intellectuals of a society are its leading lights; not weathervanes!

In a speech delivered in Bristol in 1780, Edmund Burke told his constituents

“I did not obey your instructions: No. I conformed to the instructions of truth and nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a constancy that became me.”

He was elected to the parliament from the city in 1774 and was seeking reelection. Bromwich, Burke’s biographer observed:

“Like Shakespeare, Burke knew the glamour and influence of the Machiavellian morality, in politics and in smaller-scale, human wheeling and dealing.”

Leadership literature has an unverified story that explains the seamy side of leadership of mass movements. During the days of the French revolution, so goes the story, a newspaperman was having a tête-à-tête with a leader of the revolution in a Paris café. As they were sipping coffee and chatting, a wildly howling mob screaming slogans stomped by. The newspaperman wondered what the procession was all about. On hearing this, the ‘leader’ shouted “Oh my God, I am supposed to the lead the procession” and ran out!

Burke risked his electorate’s possible displeasure in choosing intellectual integrity. In a benign era in which the electorate was not corrupted by Machiavellian morality, his candour was appreciated! In a polity as fractured by caste and creed as India’s, with rare exceptions, politicians tend to choose Machiavellian morality over intellectual integrity.

The biggest failure of ‘public intellectuals’ in India is their inability to forge national unity based on a society that does not think in terms of castes and creeds. In a 1954 judgement, the Supreme Court expressed its fervent hope that the Indian Constitution would bring about a

“[…] new order … with its new allegiance springing from the same source for all, grounded on the same basis: the sovereign will of the peoples of India with no class, no caste, no race, no creed, no distinction, no reservation.”

The Supreme Court, it appears, was carried away with its own rhetorical flourishes in pluralizing ‘people’, and the reinforcing qualifier at the end of the sentence.

The phrase ‘public intellectual’ was coined by Russell Jacoby in his 1987 book, “The Last Intellectuals”. Absorbed as the Indians were in ‘divisive’ versus ‘integrative’ polemics, there has not been much debate on the role of ‘public intellectuals’ or rather the sad scarcity of balanced public intellectual discourse. The words ‘divisive’ and ‘integrative’ too have diametrically opposing connotations based on from which perspective they are looked at! Jacoby observed

“[…] intellectuals, if noticed, are usually blessed or subsidized…and one consequence—at least—unnoticed and profoundly damaging: the impoverishment of public culture”.

A scan of the articles on ‘public intellectuals’ in India leads one to believe there are public intellectuals only on one side of the ideological divide. For some strange reason, even the thought of ‘public intellectuals’ throws up unintelligible gobbledygook. Just look at this passage from an article on the subject in an Indian daily:

“[…] public intellectuals in India need to challenge the traditional assumptions that have reinforced positivistic methodologies, apathetic scholarship and an increasing fascination with a calculative leadership”!

Whatever did it mean! The picture that accompanied the article leaves no one in doubt about ‘the necessary and sufficient condition that should be satisfied to earn the label ‘public intellectual’. Indeed, intellectuals have to be blessed or subsidized to be noticed! A far more serious problem as Richard Posner observed is with ‘public intellectuals’ who “bend facts and law to fit their political preconceptions”.

There are several issues over which ‘public intellectuals’ could have educated, enlightened and shaped public opinion. On the issue of forging unity of castes and creeds, making splintering a virtue as ‘unity in diversity’ appears a bit tenuous or worse disingenuous. It suits the politicians to reap electoral dividends by manipulating divisions, fueling dissensions, pitting one group against the other, or by incentivizing divisions, but why should ‘public intellectuals’ legitimize the political line with tortuous Op-Eds? There are internal divisions in many countries but they do not go to town preening about diversity. They function as a united nation within and outside and not as a ‘united nations organization’!

Or take the current craze of electoral sops. Politicians do not mind the long-term damage their promised sops are likely to do to the economy as long as they help them to win. When revenues plummeted during the Covid pandemic, a regional politician who made a fine art of governing his state through sops asked “Why doesn’t the Central government print more currency to meet the demand?” Consumed by the desire to perpetuate his rule he offered a sop for every conceivable section of society that can vote in bulk. As a result, the state is languishing without development or servicing of infrastructure projects. This is the same case in several states where politicians usurped power by offering sops. Their leaders now lament that they are not able to answer their publics on the lack of development.

The Indian government must be commended for its fiscal prudence in not succumbing to the temptation of issuing paper money. On the other hand, the USA—whose nationals earned the maximum number of economics Nobels—put the idea into practice by printing an additional $3 trillion! The government hoped it would help borrowers by easing interest rates. It did for a while. Stock market indices zoomed. But the extra money supply could be helpful only if there is a corresponding increase in production. It was too late for the decision makers to realize that too much money chasing too few goods would result in high inflation in the long-term, consequent rise in interest rates (negating their original intention) and market volatility. In fact, following the infusion of paper money into circulation the United States saw the highest inflation rate in four decades. Does the American experience hold any lessons for the Indian politicians? Going by the vigour with which most Indian politicians are indulging in competitive populism they do not seem to be even aware of it.

This article was first published in the Times Of India Blogs

The Formation of India’s First Government

2023-06-15T23:04:00.014+05:30

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. … The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it [the battle ground], far above our poor power to add or detract. … It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” — Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address”, November 19,1863.

For the masses of India, it was a long-awaited culmination for a hundred-year struggle. It should have been a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” that should have been formed. Instead, what was formed was a government of compromise or a series of compromises for power. As Munshi (1967:48) noted “In 1946-47, the Interim Government, formed at the Centre, of Congress and League representatives, was a ghastly failure.” He adds “[L]ooking back over the years … if the decision had been otherwise, the whole country would have been at the mercy of the Muslim League.” The bloodbath unleashed by the League on the ‘Direct Action Day’ on August 16, 1946, bear testimony to this.

According to some analysts the INA trials of (Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army) which were held between November 1945 and May 1946 and the [Royal] Indian Naval Mutiny between February 18 and 25 1946 convinced the British that they could no longer hold on to power in India. The British ‘Cabinet Mission’ plan of June 1946 set a target date of June 1948 for what it called the ‘transfer of power’ to the Indian leadership. Appointed to execute the ‘plan’, Lord Mountbatten, however advanced the date to August 1947. His unseemly haste to score a personal achievement led to disastrous consequences, with about two million lives lost.

As a first step for the ‘transfer’, the British formed an ‘Interim Government’, which was in fact, inclusion of a Cabinet of Indian leaders in the Viceroy’s Executive Council. A group of ministers headed by Jawaharlal Nehru [as Vice President of the Executive Council] was sworn in on September 2, 1946. Jawaharlal Nehru became the Vice President by virtue of his being the President of the Congress party.

The ‘Constituent Assembly’ too was a British creation following the implementation of the ‘Cabinet Mission Plan’. However, the body was not constituted on the principle of universal adult franchise but indirectly elected from the provincial assemblies. Could a body constituted by the imperial power (which therefore it had the right to abolish it) has the moral authority to draft a ‘Constitution’ for governance of the liberated nation? Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (the Chairman of the Drafting Committee) acknowledged the moral dilemma and the weakness inherent in the Constituent Assembly to write the Constitution. (Deb, 1949: 1644-67)

Turning back to the formation of the ‘Interim Government’, by June 1946, when the ‘Cabinet Mission Plan’ was announced, it was clear that the president of the ‘Indian National Congress’ would be anointed the head of the government. Abul Kalam Azad who was the Congress president did not seek re-election (as he originally intended) but stood down in favour of Jawaharlal Nehru. (Azad, 1960:167). There were two contenders, one was Vallabhbhai Patel and the other J. B. Kriplani, who later became president in the same year. M. K. Gandhi made it clear that the president should be elected unanimously and favoured Jawaharlal Nehru. As he did on several earlier occasions (twice when Subhas Chandra Bose and once when Vallabhbhai Patel were the favoured candidates), he contrived to nullify the election and have ‘his man’ elected! Having headed the ‘Interim Government’, since September 1946, it was but natural for Jawaharlal Nehru to be ‘anointed’ the first prime minister of independent India in August 1947. He thus continued to be the unelected prime minister for another five years till the first general elections were held in 1952.

In the interim, between 1946 and 1952, the unelected ‘Constituent Assembly’ functioned as the parliament and carried out amendments to a ‘Constitution’ it wrote! The Constituent Assembly submitted the Constitution to the president on November 26, 1949 which was adopted on January 26, 1950. The first amendment was enacted on June 18, 1951, i.e., within eighteen months of its adoption! Curiously the very first amendment of the nascent democracy aimed at curbing freedom of speech and stalling judicial scrutiny of legislations.

References

Azad, Abul Kalam. (1960). “India Wins Freedom”. Longmans, Green & Co. London.

"Constituent Assembly Debates". Vol. IX, 17 September 1949.

Munshi, K. M., (1967). “Pilgrimage to Freedom”. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Bombay.

Kashmiri Pandits: A Forsaken Minority

2022-03-22T19:56:00.004+05:30

It has been a quarter of a century since the Kashmiri Pandits were uprooted from their home and hearth and cast about as refugees in their own homeland. Another anniversary of their exile passed us by in January this year. India’s left-liberal intelligentsia never tire of warning us against the dangers of majoritarianism. Strangely the Kashmiri Pandits were victims of majoritarianism and fundamentalism.

The tragedy and tribulations that befell this unfortunate community for the last twenty five years include some of the most heart-rending stories. Theirs is a story of humanitarian disaster of unprecedented magnitude since the Holocaust, but strangely, had gone unnoticed by the rest of the world and more importantly by their own countrymen here in India. As K. P. S. Gill, former police chief of Punjab put it,

“[...] one of the reasons for the apathy [of the rest of the world] could be the non-violent nature of the community itself.”

They have stoically suffered their fate without even a single retaliatory act of violence. Writing in the ‘South Asia Terrorism Portal’ (SATP) K. P. S. Gill said,

“[…] pogroms of a far lesser magnitude in other parts of the world have attracted international attention, censure and action in support of the victim communities, but this is an insidious campaign that has passed virtually unnoticed, and on which the world remains silent.”[1]

Our intellectuals and media crib and caw about the Israeli settlements in Gaza and West Bank, and the injustices done to Palestinians but not a whisper from them about the fate of the exiled Kashmiri Pandits. No group of prominent public figures petitioned on their behalf; no celebrity authors cried in their defence. Could one ask, ‘How many awards were returned?’ Jug Suraiya gives us an insight into how the ‘secular’ media treated the tragedy in Kashmir:

“By then Kashmir edits had become an exercise in somnography, or sleep-writing. They were written—or gave the appearance of being written—in a state of deep slumber, or even a coma. And they were read—if ever at all—by readers who were in an equally comatose state as a consequence of reading them. [...] In short, a Kashmir edit, any Kashmir edit, never said anything new. In fact, it never really said anything at all, really.”

What if half-a-million Kashmiri Hindus have had to abandon their home and hearth to become refugees in their homeland? What if they have had to undergo untold miseries in the refugee camps? What if thousands of security personnel have had to lay down their lives in the defence of the motherland? For his ‘exercises in somnography’, Jug Suraiya was confirmed as Op-Ed page editor of The Times of India![2]

They were once the elite of Kashmiri society. The community produced artistes and artisans, poets and musicians, doctors and lawyers of amazing wisdom. At the turn of the century there were about a million Kashmiri Hindus in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. At the time of independence the proportion of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley was 15% of the population. By 1991 it came down to less than 1%. According to a press release of the Kashmir ‘Pandit Sangharsh Samiti’ on April 7, 2010 99.14% Kashmiri Pandits were forced to migrate out of Kashmir.

The word ‘genocide’ has been worn out in popular usage during the last decade. It has been so freely bandied about in public discourse that it lost its original meaning. If ever there was a context for it to be justifiably applied, it was in the case of Kashmiri Pandits. ‘Genocide’ means, ‘the systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of an entire national, racial, religious, or ethnic group’. This is what happened to the ethnic identity called the Kashmiri Pandits.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (of December 9, 1948) defined genocide as: “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

‘The International Military Tribunal’ which investigated Nazi war crimes in 1945 defined crimes committed on a mass scale in Article 6 of its Charter.

Art. 6a. CRIMES AGAINST PEACE are defined as ‘planning, preparation, initiation, or waging wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.’

Art. 6b. WAR CRIMES are defined as ‘violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps or for any purpose, the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, the killing of hostages, the plunder of public or private property, the wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, and any devastation not justified by military necessity’.

Art. 6c. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY are defined as ‘murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated’.

The rise of Islamic militancy was the trigger for ethnic cleansing in Jammu and Kashmir. In a way the state too contributed to it by first releasing hard-core terrorists in the second half of 1989 and then abdicating its responsibility in preserving public order. Thus the state was guilty of genocide by omission if not commission. The terrorists, who were trained in Pakistan in the handling of weapons of destruction, were released against the advice of a three-member Advisory Committee headed by the Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. The swap of five hard core terrorists, Hamid Sheikh, Sher Khan, Javed Ahmed Zargar, Mohd. Kalwal and Mohd Altaf Bhat on December 13, 1989 for the release of Rubaiya Sayed the daughter of the Union Home Minister Mufti Mohamed Sayed led to a demoralisation of the law and order machinery and the collapse of the state administration.

In the 1989-90 period an estimated 300,000 Pandits were forced to flee the Kashmir valley. A total number of 700,000 Kashmiri Hindus were estimated to be displaced between 1947 and 1990. Of these 300,000 have been living in refugee camps outside Jammu and another 100,000 in Delhi. According to the ‘Panun Kashmir Movement’ (PKM) an organisation of the exiled Pandits some 25,000 standalone houses belonging to the Pandits were burnt during the period. If the houses were situated in crowded localities where it was not possible to burn them they were simply occupied by others. Their properties were purchased by members of the majority community at throw away prices. Even their cremation grounds were not spared but encroached upon. PKM says the process of ethnic cleansing began in 1967 but gained momentum after 1989 when Pakistan sponsored militants arrived on the scene.

The torture inflicted on the Pandits took several forms: strangulation by using steel wires; lynching; branding with red hot irons; draining of blood; slicing; gouging of eyes before assassination; breaking of limbs; slaughter; hanging; dragging to death; dismemberment of body; drowning alive; burning alive; impaling.[3]

The destruction of Hindu temples which has been going on since the fourteenth century has gained momentum in the nineteen eighties. Between 1986 and 1992 (prior to December) 79 Hindu temples were destroyed. In the immediate aftermath of the Rama Janmabhumi-Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, 81 more temples were destroyed.

The 1989 exodus followed the brutal killing of Tika Lal Taploo a noted lawyer and national executive member of the BJP and Justice N. K. Ganju of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court. In another incident Pandit Sarwanand Premi, an 80-year old poet and his son were kidnapped, tortured and killed. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working in the Soura Medical College Hospital was gang-raped and beaten to death. In the days that followed warnings were sounded to the community over public address systems, either to flee or face death. The Farooq Abdullah government abdicated its responsibility and all but handed over the administration to the militants. Government offices ceased functioning, taxes were neither paid nor collected and the militants began running a parallel judicial system.

Life in the refugee camps has been physically and psychologically shattering for the unfortunate Pandits and may be described as sub-human. An entire family of 7-8 people had to share a small room. There are instances when three generations of a family were put up in one room, the room being partitioned by bed sheets. The combined effects of the undercurrent of terror, forced migration and sub-human living conditions made the community prone to a host of new diseases and syndromes. These include heat trauma, heart ailments, amoebic dysentery, tuberculosis, allergies, diabetes and sexual and reproductive disorders. Menopausal age in women dropped from 50-55 to 40-45 to 35-40. There was a steep drop in birth rates while mortality rates climbed. In one of the camps surveyed, which had 350 families, there were only 5 births between 1990 and 1995 as against 200 deaths. This is not all. The community became increasingly prone to a series of mental disorders ranging from depression, insomnia, anorexia, anxiety states, delusions, panic disorders, manias, phobias and schizophrenia. Women were the most affected.

Even more tragic than the suffering is the treatment meted out to the Pandits by the rest of the Indian polity and the central government. They became orphans of history, abandoned by their compatriots and condemned to live a life of deprivation and suffering. Governments have come gone, both at the state and the centre but nothing changed, not even during the six year BJP rule.

In 2004, Frank Pallone, a US Democratic Congressman expressed his surprise and shock that the new Indian administration did not mention the Pandits in its Kashmir policy. In his letter of August 23 to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Pallone urged him to “include the Pandits in any negotiations with Kashmiri constituents and in developing the future course of action in Jammu and Kashmir.” Manmohan Singh’s government sent a team of interlocutors to Kashmir last year but the Pandits did not seem to be on the radar of either the team or the government.

The Jews have a custom of greeting each other with ‘Next year in Jerusalem!’ at the end of Yom Kippur and Passover feasts. They kept up the tradition for nearly two thousand years—till the formation of Israel in 1948—even though many of the exiled Jews never set their eyes on the city nor had a hope in the world of ever doing so. Will the Pandits of Kashmir have to wait for 2000 years for a semblance of justice to be meted out to them?

[1] Gill, K. P. S. 2004. “The Kashmiri Pandits: An Ethnic Cleansing the World Forgot.” Accessible from http://goo.gl/jyql6

[2] Suraiya, Jug. (2011) JS & The Times of My Life—A Worm’s-eye View of Indian Journalism (2011). Tranquebar Press. Chennai. pp 307-9

[3] “Kashmir Documentation: Pandits in Exile” Panun Kashmir Movement. Jammu. p.18

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Excerpted from Twisting Facts To Suit Theories & Other Selections From Voxindica (2016). Authors Press. New Delhi. pp 386-392. An earlier version of the article was published in VOXINDICA on February, 3, 2012

The Tale Of Two First Amendments

2021-04-15T23:41:00.004+05:30

In a landmark judgement delivered on June 30, 1971, the US federal Supreme Court upheld the right of The New York Times (New York Times Co. v. United States) to publish articles based on the Pentagon Papers.

In 1967, Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara commissioned the preparation of a top secret report (the Pentagon Papers) on the USA’s political and military involvement in Vietnam since the end of World War II. The report drew its material from the archives of the State Department, Defence and the CIA during the reigns of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Daniel Ellsberg, a former US Marine Corps officer and a strategic affairs analyst at RAND Corporation, was a member of the team which prepared the 7000-page report. The report made clear that all the administrations misled the American public and contrary to the government’s pronouncements, intensive bombing of North Vietnam, did not break the will of the ‘enemy’.

In the initial years, Ellsberg supported US involvement in Vietnam. But by the time the report was finalised in 1969, he came to the conclusion that there was no possibility of the USA winning the war. An estimated 500,000 American soldiers participated in the war and by the time it ended in a fiasco for the US in 1973, it consumed 58,000 lives. In view of the general concern about mounting casualties, Ellsberg felt that the contents of the report should be shared with the public. In March 1971, Ellsberg (by then working with MIT’s Center for International Studies) shared parts of the report with Neil Sheehan, a reporter of The New York Times. The paper began publishing a series of front-page articles based on the report, from June 13, 1971. Articles based on the report also appeared in The Washington Post and the Boston Globe. After the third instalment was published, the US Department of Justice obtained an order from a local court restraining the papers from continuing the series, arguing that the publication was harmful to national security. The New York Times and The Washington Post approached the federal Supreme Court against the order. In a 6-3 ruling the Supreme Court held that the government was unable to justify its claim of harm to national security, and under the protection of the First Amendment, the papers had a right to publish the articles.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution adopted in 1791 protects freedom of speech, religion and the press:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The protective umbrella of the First Amendment stood the test of time and helped citizens and the press in freely exercising their freedom of speech. While adjudicating matters related to freedom of speech, US courts generally upheld the right, with the exceptions of libel, obscenity and sedition. For example, in Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Socialist Party activist Charles Schenck after he urged young men in a pamphlet to dodge conscription during World War I.

While upholding the secular nature of the constitution guaranteed under the First Amendment, the courts however, generally made a distinction between religious beliefs and civic practices. In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Supreme Court upheld a ban on polygamy. In Braunfeld v. Brown (1961) the Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania law requiring business establishments to close on Sundays, against the objection of orthodox Jews. In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) the Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law that allowed the state to pay salaries of teachers in Catholic schools.

A Texas court held that Gregory Lee Johnson, a young communist broke the law by burning a flag in a protest against the Ronald Regan administration in 1984. The Supreme Court upturned the judgement and held Johnson ‘not guilty’. The US Congress responded to the ruling by passing the Flag Protection Act (1989). In United States v. Eichman (1990), the Supreme Court decreed the Flag Protection Act was unconstitutional. While the rulings were generally welcomed as a benchmark of liberal jurisprudence, Robert H Bork, former judge, Solicitor General and professor of law at Yale Law School differed. He felt that the “Court’s majority failed to see that no idea was being suppressed but a particularly offensive mode of expression.” He rejected the idea that “desecrating the flag should constitute a protected form of expression.” (Batchis, Wayne. 2016. The Right’s First Amendment. Stanford University Press.p.1)

There cannot be greater contrast between the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the first amendment to the Indian Constitution. While the US amendment explicitly protected the freedom of the press, the Indian amendment was enacted as a peevish reaction to criticisms in the press. The Indian amendment was aimed at ‘imposing reasonable restrictions on the right [to freedom of speech and expression]’.

Strangely, it was both the left and the right press that angered the administration to rush in to enact the first amendment within fifteen months of adopting the Constitution. In 1949, Romesh Thapar’s left-leaning weekly Cross Roads was banned in the erstwhile state of Madras. What was the reason for the ban? The magazine criticised the policies of the central government, especially its foreign policy. The Supreme Court struck down the ban in Romesh Thapar vs The State of Madras (1950). Similarly in 1950, the government sought to censor the RSS weekly Organiser. What was the reason for the pre-censorship order? The magazine criticised the response of the central government to the refugee influx from East Pakistan. The Supreme Court struck down the censorship order in Brij Bhushan And Another vs The State Of Delhi (1950).

This is a slightly modified version of the article originally published in The Time Of India Blogs

Labels: Boston Globe, Braunfeld v. Brown (1961), Brij Bhushan And Another vs The State Of Delhi (1950), Cross Roads, Daniel Ellsberg, Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Amendment, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), Lyndon B. Johnson, New York Times Co. v. United States, Organiser, Pentagon Papers, Reynolds v. United States (1878), RAND Corporation, Robert H Bork, Robert McNamara, Romesh Thapar, Romesh Thapar vs The State of Madras (1950), Schenck v. United States (1919), The New York Times, “The Right’s First Amendment” (2016), The Washington Post, United States v. Eichman (1990), Wayne Batchis.

The Story Of The Liberation Of Hyderabad

2020-09-17T15:20:00.006+05:30

On this day in 1948, Hyderabad was liberated and integrated with the Indian Union. Here is a brief account of the liberation excerpted from ‘Twisting Facts To Suit Theories’ And Other Selections From Voxindica (2016. Authors Press. New Delhi), pp. 309–318

The erstwhile Hyderabad state is in the heart of India bridging the north and the south. Surrounded as it was on all sides by Indian territory, it was a landlocked state with no access to the sea. What were then known as the Central Provinces lay to its north, Bombay to the west and the Madras Presidency to the south and east. It was predominantly a Hindu state with Hindus comprising 85% of the population. However, under the Nizam’s rule the bulk of civil service, police and armed forces were almost monopolized by Muslims. In the 132-member state legislative assembly constituted in 1946, the Muslims had ten more seats than the Hindus, to ensure the Muslims a majority and ipso facto a veto power over all matters.

Rejecting the June 1947 British partition plan, the Nizam demanded the status of an independent domain and membership of the British Commonwealth. He did not send any representatives to the Constituent Assembly. We are unable to ascertain whether the Nizam was able to gauze the mood of the people aright, with winds of independence and democracy sweeping across the landscape. But he was constrained by two factors. One was that the bulk of his administration (civil, military and police) were made up of Muslims who feared they might lose their elite position in a democratic set up. The second was Kasim Razvi’s Muslim communal organization, the Ittehadul-Muslimeen (MIM):

“The Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen was a Muslim communal organization. Its leader was one Kasim Razvi who combined fanaticism with charlatanry. He had organized a shock brigade called the Razakars. The organization aimed at creating a theocratic and totalitarian State. Militarist demonstrations were part of their routine.”¹²

The accession and integration of Hyderabad was complicated by another factor, which the Nizam and his advisers exploited to almost scuttle the process:

“Sardar and V. P. Menon were dealing with the situation through me [K. M. Munshi, the Agent General of the Government of India in Hyderabad] to secure the accession of the State on the same terms as the accession of other States. Lord Mountbatten, the Governor General, carried on negotiations with the Nizam’s Prime Minister, Laik Ali, supported by Sir Walter Monckton, and was prepared to concede substantial autonomy to Hyderabad if the Nizam only signed a document to come into the Union. [...] Jawaharlal Nehru was averse to the line followed by Sardar.”¹³

The Nizam warned of communal trouble and even bloodshed in Hyderabad, in the event of his state’s accession to the Indian Union. As negotiations between a delegation sent by the Nizam¹⁴ and the Indian government were going on, the state was clandestinely preparing to take on the Union. It had placed an order for arms and ammunition worth three million pounds sterling with Czechoslovakia. It had also been in contact with Pakistan for a possible accession.

Earlier, the Nizam’s British legal adviser Walter Monckton (a friend of Mountbatten, whose services he secured for the Nizam) was in touch with British Conservative party leaders like Samuel Hoare to negotiate separate Commonwealth membership for Hyderabad. This was even before the process of transfer of power by the British and the dissolution of Paramountcy began. Monckton was mediating with the Portuguese for the acquisition of port facilities in Goa and laying a railway line to the port. He advised the Nizam to have an association (which could be annulled at any time) and not accession (which was of a permanent nature) with India. This was probably the reason why the Nizam was willing to arrive at an agreement with the Indian government for his state’s association but would not sign the ‘Instrument of Accession’. He had sent his own draft of the agreement which the government of India was not willing to entertain.

It was the avowed policy of the government of India that there would be no variation in the terms and conditions offered by it to the princely states. The rulers had to sign the ‘Standstill Agreement’¹⁵ and the ‘Instrument of Accession’¹⁶ without variation and at the same time. Despite this, as time was running out and to avoid a possible communal conflagration in the state, the Indian government agreed to sign an ‘Agreement’ (it was called ‘Heads of Agreement’) with Hyderabad that combines the gist of the ‘Standstill Agreement’, incorporating in it important matters like ‘defence’ and ‘external affairs’ (from the ‘Instrument of Accession’) along with a collateral letter from the Nizam. The drafts were passed back and forth between Delhi and Hyderabad amended each time to accord additional concessions demanded by the Nizam’s negotiating committee. The Nizam’s Executive Council deliberated on the last draft for three days and decided to accept it. But the Nizam postponed signing it again and again. In hindsight one might wonder whether the Nizam postponed it long enough for the MIM to mobilise enough crowds to blockade the members of the negotiating committee—which was to leave for Delhi to submit the ‘Agreement’ for countersigning and ratification.

In the early hours of October 27 a mob consisting of twenty five to thirty thousand cadres of the MIM surrounded the residences of Nawab of Chhatari, President of the Executive Council, Nawab Ali Yawar Jung, Sir Walter Monckton, which were all in the same locality. Its objective was to prevent the negotiating committee members to leave for Delhi for concluding the agreement. The Nizam reconvened the Executive Council meeting. It was here his character appeared dubious. While on the one hand condemning MIM for threatening the negotiating committee members and physically blocking their departure to Delhi, he invited MIM leader Kasim Razvi to the meeting! Razvi wanted the Nizam to reject the negotiated agreement and insist on the Indian government signing the original draft provided by the Nizam. He was sure the Indian government would not resort to any precipitate action as its army was tied up in Kashmir. Indian troops were moved to Kashmir to repel the (Pakistani) tribal invasion that began on October 23.

As negotiations with the Indian government meandered on, Kasim Razvi and his MIM were firming their grip on the Nizam. The Nawab of Chhatari resigned as the President of the Nizam’s Executive Council. At Razvi’s instance the Nizam appointed Mir Laik Ali a prominent businessman and a former representative of Pakistan in the UNO as its President. At the same time the negotiating committee too was reconstituted. While Nawab Moin Nawaz Jung and Pingle Venkatarama Reddy were retained, significantly Abdur Rahim a hard-core, fanatical member of the MIM was included as the third member. The reconstitution of the Executive Council and the negotiating committee with MIM fanatics brought about a dramatic change in the Nizam’s approach to whole issue. In a fresh letter sent to the government of India the Nizam threatened that if negations broke down this time, he would immediately conclude an agreement with Pakistan. The Nizam, it appeared, was all along planning his moves in consultation with Pakistan.

The Nizam finally signed the two documents, the ‘Standstill Agreement’ (or the renamed ‘Heads of Agreement’) and the collateral letter on November 29, 1947. The ‘Standstill Agreement’ was valid for one year, as agreed upon earlier. Indian leaders in Delhi had divergent views on the agreement. Nehru thought that at last peace was bought in the south. Mountbatten thought that he bought time to soften the Nizam and would be able to persuade him to sign the ‘Instrument of Accession’ eventually. Sardar with his uncanny vision was doubtful. He was right. Declassified secret documents relating to the liberation of Hyderabad bear this out. The Nizam had said that the signing of the agreement was just to ‘mark time.’ He was prepared to have a European Prime Minister, if it would help him avoid accession to India and get him membership of the Commonwealth. Intelligence reports of the time confirm secret gun running between Pakistan and India with planes carrying illegal arms landing in Bidar and Warangal.¹⁷

The administration in Hyderabad was waiting for the Indian army to be withdrawn and recoup its strength. Almost immediately after signing the agreement, which it had no intention of honouring, it started needling the Indian government. It issued two ordinances, one for banning export of precious metals from Hyderabad to India and the other rendering Indian currency invalid in Hyderabad. It appointed a Public Relations Officer in Karachi and advanced a loan of ₹20 Crore to the government of Pakistan without consulting the Indian government. It did its best (or worst) to make the functioning of K. M. Munshi (Government of India’s Agent General in Hyderabad), very difficult. His movements were restricted, so much so, he became a virtual prisoner in his own residence in Hyderabad.

While the government of India was lulled by a false sense of achievement, the MIM in Hyderabad was up to its treasonable activities. Razvi began inciting Muslims and abusing Hindus in his rabble rousing speeches. The objective of the Razakars was to terrorise the Hindu population. Munshi kept filing reports and the government of India was waiting and watching. Neighbouring states like Bombay and the Madras Presidency were complaining about the attacks on their borders by the Razakars. In one such incident, the Madras-Bombay mail was waylaid in the Gangapur railway station in the Hyderbad state. Hooligans armed with daggers, hockey-sticks and lathis attacked the train from both sides, while policemen on the platform looked on. While the mob attacked the train, armed Razakars stood by on the platform. In the incident two men travelling in the train were killed, eleven seriously injured and thirteen were reported missing. The law and order situation in many parts of the state deteriorated. In Jalna, Aurangabad, Parbhani and Nanded districts looting, arson, murders, rapes and molestation of women were reported, in which surprisingly, police personnel joined the Razakars. In despair, Hindus sought shelter outside the state. J. V. Joshi a member of the Nizam’s Executive Council felt compelled to resign his position. In his resignation, he detailed the deteriorating law and order situation:

“A complete reign of terror prevails in Parbhani and Nanded districts. I have seen in Loha a scene of devastation which brought tears to my eyes—Brahmins were killed and their eyes were taken out. Women had been raped; houses had been burnt down in large numbers. The most disconcerting news which reached us was that the Razakars had allied themselves with the Communists. In 1943 the Nizam had banned the Communist Party throughout the State. This ban was now lifted. Moreover, we came to know that the Communists were being supplied with arms.”¹⁸ (Italics added.)

So much for the nationalism, patriotism and law–abiding nature of the communists! As the Government in Hyderabad continued to violate the ‘Agreement’, Mountbatten and Nehru continued to hope things would sort themselves out on their own. They gave more time and more concessions to appease an administration, which was quite apparently controlled by the MIM. Mountbatten was to retire on June 21 and would leave India for ever. He wanted a prize trophy to take home. Nehru indulged him. Patel willy-nilly went along, probably marking time till his departure. Another—futile—‘Heads of Agreement’ (with obviously more concessions, beyond which, even the pliant Nehru could not stretch) was broached, discussed, debated, and tossed back and forth between Hyderabad and Delhi.

The view in Hyderabad, no doubt formulated by the MIM, was that no matter what the provocation, the Indian government would not dare send its troops into Hyderabad as it would anger the entire Muslim community in the country. A section of the political establishment in the government in Delhi was apprehensive of possible repercussions and hence wanted to avoid decisive action. In the third week of August, Laik Ali complained to the government of India about ‘flagrant violations’ of the ‘Standstill Agreement’. Even before receiving a reply, the Nizam administration addressed a letter to the president of the UNO.

In the meantime the law and order situation deteriorated further. After careful consideration of the pros and cons, much against the wishes of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Home Ministry decided to move Indian troops to Hyderabad. The operation to liberate Hyderabad was codenamed ‘Operation Polo’. It was led by Maj. Gen. J. N. Chaudhuri. On September 13, the army marched into Hyderabad along two axes: Sholapur–Hyderabad and Bezawada–Hyderabad. There was some resistance on the first two days but it petered out after that. The Hyderabad army surrendered on September 17. According to Menon, the casualties on the Indian side were few but on the other side:

“[..] owing to scrappy operations and lack of discipline, the Irregulars and the Razakars suffered comparatively more casualties. The number of dead was a little over 800. It is unfortunate that so many should have died in this action, though the number is insignificant when weighed against the killings, rape and loot inflicted by the Razakars on the Hindus of the State.”¹⁹ (Italics added.)

Menon, as befits a former bureaucrat, gave a staid, straight forward account of the happenings leading to partition and the integration of states, without frills and embellishments. As it was a personal narrative there was perhaps a slight accent on ‘I’ but he steered clear of either eulogizing or criticizing the principal players, including Mountbatten. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the casualty figures mentioned by him. Why bloated figures of huge numbers of casualties of the Razakars and the Muslims, propagated by Pakistani sources should be accepted in India as eternal truth and etched in popular perception is a mystery.

Maj. Gen. Chaudhuri was appointed the Lt. Governor of Hyderabad on September 18. On September 23, the Nizam cabled the UNSC, withdrawing his earlier complaint. The integration of the state into the national mainstream took another three years. There is a footnote to the Hyderabad story told by K. M. Munshi:

“If Jawaharlal had his way, Nizam’s Hyderabad would have remained unintegrated and would have become a second Pakistan in the ‘belly’ of India, an intensely hostile State separating the North and the South—although after the success of the police action Jawaharlal Nehru was the first to go to Hyderabad to receive an ovation as the liberator of Hyderabad. [...] As the Hyderabad situation was inexorably moving towards a climax, due to the intransigence of the Nizam and his advisers, Sardar considered it advisable to let the Nizam’s Government know clearly that the patience of the Government of India was fast getting exhausted. Accordingly a communication to that effect was sent from the States Ministry by V. P. Menon. [...] When Jawaharlal Nehru came to hear of this, he was extremely upset. A day before our army was scheduled to march into Hyderabad he called a special meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet [...] flew into a rage and upbraided Sardar [...] He concluded his outburst with the remark that in future he would himself attend to all matters relating to Hyderabad. [...] The meeting [however] dispersed without transacting any business.”²⁰

…………………………………

N. B.: End note numbers are as in original.

¹² Menon, V. P. (1955). “The Story Of The Integration Of The Indian States”. Longmans Green & Co. London. p. 221.

¹³ Munshi, K. M. (1967). “Indian Constitutional Documents: Volume 1. Pilgrimage to Freedom” Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. p. 169.

¹⁴ Nawab of Chhatari, President of the Executive Council, Nawab Ali Yawar Jung, Sir Walter Monckton, K.C., Abdur Rahim and Pingle Venkatarama Reddy.

¹⁵ It is an agreement that assures continuance of any ‘existing agreements and administrative arrangements in the matters of common concern’ existing between the Indian state and the British government. It specifies eighteen administrative areas in the Schedule attached to the agreement. It also signifies the end of Paramountcy of the British government.

¹⁶ It is an agreement signed by the ruler of the princely state and the dominion of India subjecting the princely state to the Government of India Act 1935. The Instrument of Accession binds the state to the jurisdiction of the Union government for making laws in the areas of Defence, External Affairs, Communications and some ancillary matters.

¹⁷ Joseph, Josy. (2013). “Gandhi is an old fool and his character is doubtful, Nizam said”. The Times of India. August 1, 2013. See http://goo.gl/t22HZs

¹⁸ Menon, 1955. Cited supra. p. 252-253.

¹⁹ Menon, 1955. Cited supra. p. 256.

²⁰ Munshi, 1967. Cited supra. p. 170

P. V. Narasimha Rao And The Elusive ‘Bharat Ratna’!

2020-06-29T00:16:00.002+05:30

One may not agree with Lord Birkenhead’s view that ‘India is a land of mobs’ (1930, Turning Points in History), but it is a land of inconsistencies. However, he might not have been far off the mark when he said that ‘more than any [other] country in the world, single individuals of outstanding personality have been able temporarily to impose their will upon its destiny’. A Prime Minister might be ranked third in India’s official order of precedence but a Sonia Gandhi took precedence over the Prime Minister for ten years of its recent history. Her son-in-law did not need any official order of precedence to be treated as a ‘more equal’ citizen at airports and for Chief Ministers to kowtow before him.

In the official order of precedence, No. 5A was inserted to accommodate the Deputy Prime Minister (probably after Vallabhbhai Patel became the first Deputy Prime Minister in 1950) and No. 7A after the institution of the Bharat Ratna in 1954. Article 18 (1) of the Indian Constitution prohibits the use of Bharat Ratna as a title and therefore, it cannot be used to prefix names, despite its general misuse. Its recipients are known as laureates.

As an aside it might be mentioned that Article 18 (2) prohibits Indian citizens from receiving ‘any title from any foreign state’. This precluded Sunil Gavaskar from accepting a British Knighthood but it did not prevent Sonia Gandhi from accepting the Belgian title, Order of Leopold.

However, Bharat Ratna, which officially, cannot be flaunted as a title, accords its recipients precedence over Ambassadors, Chief Ministers and Governors of states who are, in that order ranked at No. 8.

Indians generally rue the omission of Mahatma Gandhi from the Nobel roster but there have been several notable omissions from the list of Bharat Ratna laureates. One of them was Sathya Sai Baba who was passed over, presumably because he was a Hindu god-man. One can say without any exaggeration, that Sathya Sai Baba’s service to humanity was (and is) unparalleled anywhere in the world. He established world-class schools, colleges, universities and hospitals all of which provide free services to the poor. Thousands of devotees who flock to his ashram daily are provided free food.

Under the ‘Sri Sathya Sai Drinking Water Supply Projects’ he constructed a drinking water project at a cost of US$ 63 million to supply drinking water to 1.2 million people in 750 villages of the arid Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. Similar projects supply drinking water to drought-prone villages in Mahabubanagar and Medak districts in Telangana, and Chennai. His super-specialty hospitals in Puttaparthi and Bengaluru conducted 24,473 open-heart surgeries between November 1991 and October 2014, without charging a dime. They were all free. They continue to do so.

The other notable exception is that of former Prime Minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao. In order to understand the magnitude of his contribution to national revival, the circumstances that prevailed when he became Prime Minister should be viewed in perspective. In point of fact, the year 1991 marks the beginning of a new epoch in independent India’s history. Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination brought to the nation’s helm a man who was preparing to quietly walking away into the sunset. Narasimha Rao had been in politics since independence and served as Chief Minister, Union Home Minister, Foreign Minister and Defence Minister.

The economic crisis that came to a head that year was looming large on the horizon for years, fuelled by bureaucratic sloth, economic profligacy and political myopia. The economy was floundering on account of a depreciating rupee, billowing external debt and the resultant balance of payments crisis. The last straw on the proverbial camel’s back was the dramatically rising oil prices caused by the 1990-91 Gulf War. In order to cope with the crisis, the Chandra Sekhar government had to first sell twenty tons of gold (on which India had a repurchase option for six months) to raise $400 million in May that year and the successor government had to pledge a further forty-seven tons in July to raise a further $200 million loan. It was a national shame for a culture that treats gold as goddess Lakshmi, to part with family gold for daily necessities. Dr. Manmohan Singh who became the finance minister in the successor government did not have the heart to use words like ‘sell’ or ‘pledge’ when he informed the parliament about the transactions in November 1991. Instead, he said ‘sent abroad’ and ‘export’!

Following the crisis, the Narasimha Rao government initiated a series of steps to redeem the economy. The steps were a radical departure from the pernicious ‘Nehruvian socialism’ and set the nation on a track of progress. Those who do not want to credit the progress to Narasimha Rao, ascribe the economic policy to Manmohan Singh’s genius. Yes, the policy framework could be designed only by an economist with vision but it required Narasimha Rao’s sagacity to give political cover for its implementation. Second, he needed the boldness first to sell the reforms to his own party which considered any departure from Nehru’s policies a sacrilege, and then to the nation. The validity of the argument could be seen when we notice Manmohan Singh could not continue with his reform policy when he himself was the Prime Minister for ten years.

While Narasimha Rao’s economic policies are willy-nilly acknowledged there are two other areas of governance in which he left an indelible stamp on the history of the nation.

The first was defeating the Khalistani movement, which ‘had consumed 21,469 lives before it was comprehensively defeated in 1993’. The principal protagonists of the operation were K. P. S. Gill who as Counter-terrorism Chief of Punjab mercilessly and relentlessly executed it and, Beant Singh, who as Chief Minister of Punjab and Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister gave him political cover. Citing Julio Rebeiro, former Director General of Police, Punjab, Gill has this to say of the genesis of the problem:

“I regard Operation Bluestar and the November 1984 massacres as the two most important victories for the cause of ‘Khalistan’ […] not won by the militants, but inflicted […] upon the nation by its own government […] These two events, in combination, gave a new lease of life to a movement which could easily have been contained in 1984 itself.” (Gill, K.P.S. “Endgame in Punjab 1988-1993”. South Asia Terrorism Portal. Accessible from http://goo.gl/83qUhW

By the by, the political authors of Operation Bluestar and the 1984 Sikh genocide had both received the Bharat Ratna! Gill elaborates why stern counter-terrorism measures were needed to eradicate the scourge:

“The defeat of terrorism in Punjab, and I have said this before, was unambiguously the result of the counter-terrorist measures implemented in the state by the security forces. Moreover, the use of this coercive force was (and is) not just a necessary expedient, but a fundamental obligation and duty of constitutional government, and its neglect inflicts great and avoidable suffering on the innocent and law abiding.” (Ibid.)

Lest anyone had any doubt about the political processes (pursued by the aforesaid political authors of Operation Bluestar and the 1984 Sikh genocide) having achieved the objective of annihilating terrorism in Punjab, Gill clarifies:

“One of the dominant myths that these propagandists have tirelessly, and in some measure successfully, circulated is the idea that terrorism in Punjab was defeated not because, but in spite of the use of armed force against the militants. No evidence is ascribed to shore up this claim, but a variety of nebulous theories—essentially populist and politically correct slogans—are propounded regarding a ‘people’s victory’ or a ‘political solution’ that brought peace to the strife-torn province.” (Ibid.)

Had the political master not had the vision to support the stern measures to put down terrorism with an iron hand we would have had another festering wound in the west in addition to the ones in the north and the east, the existence of which is undoubtedly owing to another Bharat Ratna! Who knows, had Narasimha Rao had another shot at power, he would have had some out of the box ideas to contain them!

Another bold step Narasimha Rao took was in the area of foreign affairs by establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. Although India recognized Israel in September 1950 (a little over two years after its formation), it was not until February 1992 that full diplomatic relations were established. Considering the benefits a bilateral relationship with Israel could provide in the areas of agriculture, defence and counterterrorism, this was inexplicable. The overt reason for India not establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel was that it would displease her Arab neighbours, but the unstated reason was to placate the Muslim vote bank in India. As by the time India established full diplomatic relations with Israel, the Narasimha Rao government was in office for just over eight months, the decision must be said to have been taken very quickly.

Excerpted from ‘Twisting Facts To Suit Theories’ And Other Selections From Voxindica. (2016). Authors Press. New Delhi. pp. 429–434

Re–learning Itihāsas of the Sanātana Dharma

2020-06-25T01:04:00.001+05:30

Book Review

Who Is Who In Hindu Mythology (Vols. 1 & 2). Author: Surya N. Maruvada. Publishers: Notion Press. Available for ordering from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Z48Ukz (India) https://amzn.to/3dr9GNS (Outside India)

The days when children learnt stories from Indian Itihāsas at the knees of their grandpas are sadly long gone. The potent, venomous mix of the three Ms—Macaulay, missionaries and Marx had sufficiently vitiated the learning of the intermediate generations to such an extent that they are confused and ambivalent in their approach to matters concerning the Sanātana Dharma. The missionaries wanted to uproot the Sanātana Dharma and supplant it with their own religion. If Macaulay’s supremacist approach to Indian thought dictated the course of educational curricula during the British rule, the domination of the educational system by the left–illiberal mobs post–independence finished the job. As Koenraad Elst observed in DecolonizingThe Hindu Mind, all Western knowledge and scientific thought (including those borne out of pre–Christian Graeco–Roman achievements) were attributed to Christianity while the Sanātana Dharma was depicted as no more than a cult order, backward and regressive.

India had had its own period of “Dark Ages” from the first Mohammedan invasions in the tenth century to the end of the British rule in the middle of the twentieth century. The advent of independence, instead of heralding cultural renaissance, did the opposite. Indian achievements in arts, culture, philosophy and spirituality, and science and technology were deliberately expunged from school text books. Instead schools and colleges were taught a fictitious construct called syncretic culture. For example, Elst pointed out

To describe Moghul painting (a Hindu contribution to Islamicate culture) as a “contribution of Islam to India’s composite culture”, as secularist discourse has it, indicates a muddled understanding of Islamic religion and Islamicate culture.

Marxists are adept at co–opting pop cultural modes like song, drama, cinema and etc. as vehicles for insidious indoctrination. After Macaulayesque education sucked out all traditional forms of Sanātana Dharmic knowledge from curricula, mass media like newspapers, magazines and cinema did the rest. As it happened, for nearly a century Madras was the centre of arts and culture of the southern Indian states. Exponents of Indian arts and culture who gravitated to the city were willy–nilly sucked into the black hole fertilised by the three Ms—of Macaulay, missionaries and Marx. It was they who did the insidious job of indoctrinating several generations of Indian school and college children into loathing their own cultural ancestry. The glitz and glamour of the silver screen has an undoubted charm for the youth and its appeal has a deeper and longer–lasting impact on impressionable minds. Therefore if movies distorted characters of Rāmāyaṇa or Māhābhārata Indian youth were inevitably led to believe that the Sanātana Dharma was an iniquitous religion, forgetting Svāmi Vivekānada’s aphorism about Sanātana Dharma being a religion that is “spiritual in content, scientific in approach and universal in appeal”.

Macaulayesque education killed the spirit of contemplation, inquiry and introspection that were the bedrock of Sanātana Dharmic education and instead bred implicit and unquestioning obedience to what was taught. Left–illiberal thought inbred negativity. Thankfully the trend is reversing at last.

How do we rekindle interest in India’s ancient lore, especially after several generations of Indians gave up on learning Saṁskṛtaṁ (another left–illiberal conspiracy), the language in which the wealth of our knowledge is encoded? India has such a rich repertoire of sacred texts that a lifetime may not suffice to read the entire corpus. And then there are perversions of the texts. A beginning could be made by reading the Itihāsas and understanding them without stripping their component stories out of context. As C. Rajagopalachari observed

“A little knowledge of the laws of nature and the wonders of science, specially when that knowledge is acquired second–hand, without the chastening influence of effort and investigation, acts as a wine on some natures. Their sense of proportion is upset. The unknown is not only unknown but ceases to exist for them.” (1935. The Bhagavad–Gita. Delhi. Hindustan Times Ltd. p.6)

It is in this context the present Encyclopaedia assumes importance. It includes sketches of all characters from our Itihāsas providing them context. The Itihāsas were stories of Gods but they were contextualised in their human incarnations. What societal values changed between the times of Rāmāyaṇa and Māhābhārata? How does Māhābhārata treat Kuñti as a virgin even though she begot a son before marriage? Why did Srī Kṛṣna who knew the outcome of the war, and could, did not prevent it? There may be hardly anyone who wants to know the names of the ninety–eight Kauravās but who were Srī Kṛṣna’s five consorts apart from the well–known three? The voluminous book (in two volumes) introduces the reader to topics ranging from the trivia to the sublime and from the mundane to the scientific. For example while introducing the book the author observes

On the world where Brahma, the creator in the Hindu Trinity resides, the length of a day is equivalent to many years on earth. While the huge difference may be a stretch, the concept of a different time scale on different worlds was not known until a few hundred years ago.

Modern science recognises this as the ‘theory of time dilation’ which is an off–shoot of the theory of relativity. The author expended enormous amounts of time in collecting and collating information from a variety of texts. One hopes that the Encyclopaedia will be useful not only for the world–wide Indian diaspora to obtain gleanings from their spiritual heritage but other scholars desirous of understanding the rich spiritual and philosophical underpinnings of the Sanātana Dharma.

COVID–19 and the endless search for ‘scientific serendipity’!

2020-06-20T11:40:00.004+05:30

Many scientific discoveries were indeed serendipitous and medical science is no stranger to serendipity. The word serendipity is derived from Senrendip (an ancient name for Sri Lanka) and is applied for discoveries that were accidentally stumbled upon. The word is sometimes translated as ‘happy accident’. A number of products from nitroglycerine (in its medical use, not in blasting powder); the first antibiotic penicillin; the local anaesthetic lidocaine; several analgesic drugs, anti–psychotic drugs, anti–cancer drugs, tranquilisers; the use of an antihistamine as an appetite stimulant; several pesticides like malathion and the sticky Post–it have been serendipitously found.

We all know that Alfred Bernhard Nobel made his millions with the discovery of nitroglycerine a component of dynamite, and other explosive substances. In 1895 he developed a condition called angina pectoris and died of cerebral haemorrhage in 1896. When blood vessels which supply blood to the chest muscle are constricted, depleted blood supply and the resultant depletion of oxygen supply cause chest pain known medically as angina pectoris.

The reason for Alfred bequeathing the bulk of his estate for the endowment of the famous Nobel Prizes is not clear. According to a theory, when in 1888 his brother Ludvig died in France, a French newspaper mistaking him to be Alfred reported, “The merchant of death is dead.” (The expression used in the Indian context was not original, after all!) It was possible Alfred wanted to make reparation for his probable posthumous notoriety.

In 1944 Antoine Balard working at the Sorbonne observed that inhalation of isoamyl nitrate gave him headache. Other researchers like Frederick Guthrie in Owen’s College, Manchester experimented with nitrates. Thomas Lauder Brunton, a researcher who worked at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary put nitroglycerine to use. It was William Murrell’s work at the Westminster Hospital (his findings were published in The Lancet) that confirmed nitroglycerine dilates blood vessels, reduces blood pressure and relieves pain caused by angina pectoris. In the initial days British doctors took care to see that patients were not unduly scared if they found out that the tablets they were prescribed were the same compound that was used in dynamite. The longer acting form of nitroglycerine (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) was introduced in 1896 on an experimental scale and its applicability was finally announced in 1901. Had it been in use in 1896, it would probably have saved Alfred Nobel’s life! The active form of the drug known as isosorbide is prescribed (for sublingual use for faster absorption) even today.

While on the subject of angina pectoris, the multinational pharmaceutical company Pfizer, which experimented with sildenafil citrate, was unable to obtain desired results. It did not reduce cardiac pain as the researchers hoped. However the researchers were pleasantly surprised by an unintended effect the drug caused. In some patients it caused penile erections. Enthused by a study conducted in the Johns Hopkins University, Pfizer continued work on sildenafil. An enzyme called nitric oxide synthase (NOS) localised in the penis produces the neurotransmitter nitric oxide, which is responsible for penile erection. Sildenafil was found to reverse the action of NOS inhibitors. Thus was borne the blue pill known the world over as Viagra! What is less known is that Viagra is equally effective in women, in inducing clitoral erection. It is particularly useful for women with sexual dysfunction caused by a class of antidepressant drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

Another drug minoxidil which was originally intended to lower blood pressure turned out to have an unintended consequence. In initial trials it caused body hair growth in some female patients. Continued trials with the drug proved that it is useful for hair regrowth in what is known as ‘male pattern baldness’. There are other drugs with a similar ‘side effect’ but are limited in their use because of other concomitant adverse effects. The advantage with minoxidil is that it is available as a lotion and can be locally applied.

What is strange in the current scenario is for researchers trying to look for anti–viral properties in every conceivable drug. In the absence of a preventive vaccine for the COVID–19 virus, researchers have experimented with hydroxychloroquine an anti–malarial drug, also found to be useful in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, azithromycin an anti–biotic and remdesivir an anti–viral drug—with varying results. As the pandemic grips the whole world, there is prestige involved in being the first to find a remedy for it.

The latest candidate drug under experimentation is dexamethasone. A group of researchers at the University of Oxford said “trial results show the drug [dexamethasone] reduced death rates of the most severely-ill Covid-19 patients by around a third.” The British Prime Minister hailed it as the “biggest breakthrough yet” in the fight against the disease. However, as per a report published in the Independent, US experts led by Dr. Kathryn Hibbert, director of the intensive care unit at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital expressed scepticism about the findings of the trial. They cited the recent publication and withdrawal of a study in The Lancet, the results of a trial with hydroxychloroquine as a cautionary tale. (“Dexamethasone: US doctors cast doubton UK’s coronavirus ‘breakthrough’”, June 17, 2020.)

Dexamethasone belongs to a group of drugs called glucocorticoids. As the name suggests the primary function of glucocorticoids is to conserve glucose for use in times of stress. The glucocorticoids convert carbohydrate into glycogen and store it in the liver. But corticosteroids are also known immunosuppressants. It is for this reason they are prescribed along with other immunosuppressive drugs like cyclosporine and azathioprine to prevent donor organ rejection in organ transplant cases. An earlier commentary article published in The Lancet (“Steroids could do more harm than good in treating coronavirus”, February 6, 2020) highlighted the immunosuppressant property of the drug and advised caution in including it in treatment regimens for COVID–19.

As experts and researchers grapple with finding a remedy for the corona virus infection that has changed the world forever, the last word on the subject is yet to be said!

This is a slightly modified version of the article originally published in The Time Of India Blogs

Labels: Analgesics, Azithromycin, Anti–cancer drugs, Antihistamines, Anti–psychotic drugs, Corticosteroids, Dexamethasone, Glucocorticoids, Hydroxychloroquine, Isosorbide, Lidocaine, Minoxidil, Nitroglycerine, Nobel, Penicillin, Post–it, Remdesivir, Tranquilisers, Serendipity, Sildenafil, Viagra

Indian Council For Re–Writing Secular, Rational, Scientific–Tempered History (ICRH)!

2020-04-13T00:03:00.000+05:30

Those readers who have been following the trail of this blog would remember that it all began with the post “Should We Re–Write Indian History?” The secular, rational, scientific–tempered historians who have been re–writing history would have us believe that the objective for ‘re–writing’ is to present a secular, rational, scientific–tempered (SRST) version of India’s history and not to ‘Twist Facts To Suit Theories’ as alleged by ever–whining Sanghi Bhakts.

In keeping with its avowed principles of SRST, the newly elected government (in 2004) reconstituted the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) as the ‘Indian Council For Re–Writing Secular, Rational, Scientific–Tempered History’ (ICSRSH). The ICSRSH has been tasked to re–write India’s history as ‘secular, rational, scientific–tempered history’ (SRSTH). The doyenne of SRST historians, Ruma Li was appointed its Chairperson with similarly qualified and distinguished SRSTHs Irf Ha, Aud Tsk and Ran Gu as its members. The chairperson and members will have no fixed tenure but will be in office till the ICSRSH completes its job of re–writing India’s history and bringing it up to date. Other SRSTHs will be co–opted to write chapters related to specific periods.

It is not that there was no unofficially–officially curated history before, or that these eminences were not associated with history–writing earlier. There was and they were. Like all quasi–government bodies, the ICHR too was autonomous on paper but in actual practice it was the government that called the shots. It appointed its members and controlled its purse strings.

In the short interregnum of six years between 1998 and 2004 a ‘reactionary’ non–left government was in power and it attempted to make some changes in history–writing. The attempts were unsuccessful of course. The ecosystem—fuelled by power and pelf—the previous governments planted took deep ideological roots and it would need determined efforts of a massed army to undo their handiwork. All that the short–lived government achieved was a few screaming headlines denouncing its ‘toxic’ efforts to saffronise history–writing and Op–Eds predicting doomsday if the trend was not reversed.

As everyone knows, just as the history of the USA began in the eighteenth century, so did India’s history began in the tenth century. India had no history before then. The Council decided that Ruma Li and Irf Ha would write the history from the beginning till the reign of Shah Jehan. Aud Tsk would write from the reign of Aurangzeb onwards. The historians have the necessary research experience into the history of the periods. Besides they have knowledge of languages like Sanskrit and its allied languages like Prakrit; Avestan and its allied languages like Old and New Persian; Turkish and its dialects like Chagatai. They have acquired intimate knowledge of epigraphy in various languages and dialects; archaeology and architecture to be able to accurately decipher and interpret stone edicts and archaeological relics.

The Council also decided that Ran Gu would write the modern parts of India’s history beginning with Gandhi and Nehru. As Nehru was a talented cricket player—which he played with his English cohorts while in England—it was felt Ran Gu’s intimate knowledge of the game would stand him in good stead in interpreting the sporting streak in Nehru’s psyche. Nehru’s classmates in Cambridge recall that he was a sportive player who played the game not for winning but for the game’s sake. When he bowled he pitched the balls not to hit the stumps but to fall at the feet of the opposing batsmen to enable them to strike them off the field. When he batted he let the balls that were pitched at his feet alone to enable opposing bowlers to score maidens. By the by, not many know but in the field of horse racing, the word maiden is used to denote a horse that never won a race!

Ruma Li began at the beginning, when Mohamed Ghazni began distributing hoarded temple wealth to the masses. How did Ghazni distribute hoarded temple wealth if India had no history before the tenth century? Only bigoted Sanghi Bhakts who lack rationality and scientific–temper (SBWLRAST) ask such impudent questions. Ghazni found the wealth in the form of forbidden infidel idols made of gold, studded with priceless stones. Each idol was estimated to cost several hundred thousand dinars. He also found wealth estimated at millions of dinars, hidden in temple vaults groaning and begging to be liberated.

Ghazni was a socialist, whose heart bled and bled for the weak and downtrodden. What? The concept of ‘socialism’ did not exist in in the tenth century the way it was since the nineteenth century? You SBWLRAST! The word might not have been used then but it is the spirit of the noble thought that is to be understood and interpreted by true SRSTHs. As a true patriot, Ghazni took away the wealth to be distributed to the people of his country. He gifted a part of it to the Caliphate but it was not because he was a bigot but because of his true allegiance to his religion.

The noble, scientific–tempered visionary Ghazni reasoned, quite appropriately, that if the wealth was distributed locally in Hindustan, it would make people lazy and stunt the progress of the society. With the noble intention of providing employment to masons, sculptors and other artisans Ghazni ordered the Sri Krishna temple in Mathura be doused in naphtha, burnt and razed to the ground. It was estimated that it would take two hundred years to recreate the architectural splendor and sculptural grandeur of the temple. The altruist Ghazni wanted thousands of masons, sculptors and other artisans to be gainfully employed for the next two hundred years! He also understood that any new construction on such scale would uplift the economic mood of the society. Earlier historians missed this noble streak in the character of Ghazni. In order to set right the imbalance Ruma Li devoted a chapter to nuance his character.

Ruma Li meticulously chronicled the good deeds of the subsequent conquerors. There was neither Ganga nor Yamuna before Babur arrived in north India and of course there was no Ganga–Yamuna tehzeeb. First Babur dug the Ganga and two harems later his grandson Akbar dug the Yamuna. In between them they planted the tehzeeb comprising nazrana, jabrana, shukrana and ‘drink, dance and make merry’.

………………

Disclaimer: This is a purely fictional, satirical piece.

Agitprop Psyops Getting To The Judiciary?

2020-03-17T18:45:00.000+05:30

Jurisprudence is an esoteric subject to the laity. Judges are demigods and lawyers their mediators! Despite this lofty public perception, Indian courts have in the past adjudicated matters which the laity might find frivolous and, in some cases delivered judgements which the laity might find bizarre. Some years ago a High Court sat on Gandhi Jayanti day (one of three compulsory Indian national holidays), to adjudicate a matter related to a cricket board!

In the Bhima Koregaon case in which ‘social activists associated with Maoist links’ were accused of making inflammatory speeches leading to wide–spread violence, the Supreme Court held that dissent was a safety–valve of democracy. It was another matter that the same Supreme Court not only refused bail to a journalist but when his lawyer pleaded that his life was in danger, gratuitously added in an obiter dictum, that for one whose life was in danger, a jail was the safest place to be in!

In 2015 the High Court of Punjab and Haryana decreed that jail inmates have a right to have sex with their partners! In 2018 the Bombay High Court determined that limiting only four players to a table in a game of rummy was unreasonable!

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) vs the Union of India (CivilAppeal No.1510 of 2020—Arisingout of SLP (C) No.33928 of 2011) makes for curious reading. The NGO which claims to be “resisting globalization, combating communalism and saving democracy” filed the SLP in the Supreme Court challenging the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act,2010.

In what has become a standard template (for challenging Indian government acts by now), the NGO challenged the FCRA on the grounds that it violated its fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Government contended that the appellant organisation is not entitled to invoke fundamental rights as they are guaranteed only to citizens and that the appellant organisation cannot be considered a citizen. While agreeing with the contention that being an organisation the NGO cannot invoke rights under Article 19, the Supreme Court has “read down” Clause 3. (VI) of the FCRA Rules which were framed based on the Act. Here is the relevant clause:

“3. Guidelines for declaration of an organisation to be of a political nature, not being a political party – The Central Government may specify any organisation as organisation of political nature on one or more of the following grounds:

(ii) Any Trade Union whose objectives include activities for promoting political goals;

(iii) Any voluntary action group with objectives of a political nature or which participates in political activities;

(iv) Front or mass organisations like Students Unions, Workers' Unions, Youth Forums and Women's wing of a political party;

(v) Organisation of farmers, workers, students, youth based on caste, community, religion, language or otherwise, which is not directly aligned to any political party, but whose objectives, as stated in the Memorandum of Association, or activities gathered through other material evidence, include steps towards advancement of Political interests of such groups;

(vi) Any organisation, by whatever name called, which habitually engages itself in or employs common methods of political action like ‘bandh’ or ‘hartal’, ‘rasta roko’, ‘rail roko’ or ‘jail bharo’ in support of public causes.”

The Court nuanced that while ‘bandh’, ‘hartal’ ‘rasta roko’ etc. are legitimate political activities, an NGO resorting to the same activities need not necessarily be categorised as a political organisation. Did the Court err in nuancing its interpretation of the law on the grounds that it was ‘vaguely’ or ‘ambiguously’ worded?

It is not apparent from the 23–page judgement whether the Court has gone into the antecedents of the NGO or even whether the government has brought them to its notice. Curiously, very is little is known of the organisation which calls itself Indian Social Action Forum shortened as INSAF with its tell–tale Arabic connotation. Its website does not give anything away. We do not know who its founders, directors or present administrators are. All we know is that it calls itself ‘a national forum of over 700 movements and NGOs in India’. Its website is full of ‘papers’, re–posted or hyperlinked from other sources, calling for halting every project which in anyway advances human progress from developing infra–structures to constructing nuclear power plants.

Among those hyperlinked is a paper by Ben Hayes entitled “Counter–Terrorism,‘Policy Laundering’ And The FATF—Legalising Surveillance, Regulating CivilSociety”. The number of NGOs/NPOs involved in the preparation and funding of the paper (which can be seen peppered across its pages) tells its own story. They include ‘Transnational Institute’, ‘Statewatch’ and ‘Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development’, shortened as Cordaid. While nations across the world struggle to control terrorist organisations, the paper calls for making the FinancialAction Task Force (FATF), ‘the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog’, virtually ineffective. It calls into question UNSC Resolution 1373 of September 28, 2011 which requires member nations “to criminalize the support of terrorism by freezing the assets of suspected terrorists”.

Can judges be absolutely dispassionate in adjudicating legal disputes? Or are they only too human to be ‘products of the times’ in which they live and work? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935), a U. S. Supreme Court justice known as “the Great Dissenter” was a study in contrast. He delivered judgments that made him look like a product of his times, like his judgement in the Virginia eugenics aka Buck vs Bell (1927) case. In marked contrast in the Lochner vs New York (1905) case he ruled removing the 60–hour per week work limit for bakery workers. But his ruling in the Schenck vs United States (1919) case is conspicuous for its interpretation of the US First Amendment, which protects US citizens’ freedom of speech from legislative interference. The ruling held that in times of war, national security takes precedence over individuals’ right to freedom of speech.

Back home in India, are agitprop psyops getting to the judiciary?udiciary?

Anti–CAA Agitprop And Weathercock Intellectuals

2020-03-05T12:07:00.008+05:30

Have you ever wondered what the biggest failure of India’s intelligentsia was? Let me tell you a story. It is a small anecdote from the tumultuous days of the French revolution between 1789 and 1799. A newspaper reporter was interviewing a leader of the revolution in a Paris café. As they were sipping coffee and chatting, a wildly howling mob shouting slogans stomped by along the adjoining street. The reporter wondered aloud what the procession was all about. On hearing this, the leader shouted “Oh my God, I am supposed to lead the procession” and ran out. At times when mass movements acquire a momentum of their own, revolutionary leaders might have to follow the mobs while pretending they were leading. But the intellectuals of a society are not weathercocks but its leading lights. They do not—and should not—sometimes follow while pretending to always lead. They should possess the moral fibre and intellectual integrity to pursue ideals even if they are unpopular.

The words honesty and integrity are interchangeable but are paired to amplify the meaning, in a figure of speech called synonymia. The word integrity is derived from the mathematical word integer, meaning a whole number, undivided and complete. There can be no partial honesty or fractional integrity. In the case of public intellectuals it is an all or none phenomenon. Lamentably many of our public intellectuals fail in this test.

As a test of the principle, consider the idea of freedom of expression. If a society cannot provide the protection needed for free expression of ideas, it is the public intellectuals who should hold themselves responsible for their failure to create the ambience for free flow of ideas. Is the principle of freedom of expression absolute or are there limits to it? If the public intellectuals champion absolute freedom on one occasion, but argue alibis for scuttling it on another occasion for political reasons, their vacillation cannot advance the cause of freedom of expression. It keeps the society splintered by competitive populism. If the public intellectuals swing with political winds they cannot expect the society to conform to abstract ideals.

Consider the ongoing agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. Let us look what citizenship means under various Indian laws. We will try to explain it in plain language devoid of legal lingo.

The issue of citizenship is dealt with in the very beginning of the Indian Constitution (in Part II) just after nation and the powers of the national government are defined. Articles 5 to 11 are related to citizenship. While Part II confers citizenship to residents in the territory of India when the nation was formed, it also allowed for conferring citizenship to those Indians who remained in Pakistan at the time of partition and, those who went there after partition but wanted to return to India—before July 1948.

The Citizenship Act of 1955 defines natural and acquired citizenship in clauses 3 to 7. It flows from Part II of the Constitution and is enacted to amplify and encode rules and regulations for conferring citizenship. Here briefly are the modes that confer citizenship:

1. Citizenship by birth (Clause 3)

2. Citizenship by descent (Clause 4)

3. Citizenship by registration (Clause 5)

4. Citizenship by naturalization (Clause 6)

5. Special provision as to citizenship of persons covered by the Assam Accord (Clause 6A)

6. Citizenship by incorporation of territory (Clause 7)

There is no ambiguity about the nature or cause of partition of the country. Pakistan and its later splinter Bangladesh were formed as the Muslims of undivided India wanted a separate state for themselves. Many non–Muslims remained in Pakistan after partition either because they were complacent about their status despite the religious nature of the newly formed state or because of an inertia that held them back from making the long journey to India. It was also possible that they stayed back as they reposed faith in the assurances given by leaders of the nascent state who promised them complete religious freedom.

What happened to them in the subsequent decades too needs no recounting. To put it simply their populations were decimated. Many of them had to flee to India, the only country in which they felt they could seek asylum.

All that the CAA does is to provide relief to persecuted minorities fleeing Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who would otherwise be defined as ‘illegal migrants’ under Section 2 (1) (b) of the 1955 Citizenship Act. It does not take away the rights of anyone nor does it seek to strip bona fide Indian citizens of their citizenship. It does not abrogate the Clause 6 (Naturalisation) of the principal act by which anyone from outside can seek citizenship. There is a sunset clause in the CAA. It limits the ‘relief’ to those who entered India before December 31, 2014.

The conduct of the opposition parties has no surprises. Their objective is to usurp power, no matter how divisive and fraught with long–term consequences their modus could be. It is the conduct of the public intellectuals that should surprise.

Those who are making a public spectacle of reading the Preamble in agitations across the country should carefully read the wording of Article 11 of the Constitution. It confers unqualified power to the Parliament to make provisions with respect to acquisition and termination of all matters relating to citizenship. Here is what it states:

“11. Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this Part shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship.”

Is the ongoing agitation mere tilting at windmills or a machination of deception, disinformation and psychological operations (known as Dee–Dee–PsyOps in the parlance of intelligence agencies), intended to intimidate the central government against bringing in progressive legislations like the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the Supreme Court hearing petitions against the abrogation of Article 370 and the CAA?

Pseudo-Experts Failed Pseudo-Seculars!

2019-11-11T11:50:00.001+05:30

Excerpted from “Ram Janma Bhumi In High Court–How Pseudo-Experts Failed Pseudo-Seculars!” (pp. 362–385) In “Twisting Facts To Suit Theories & Other Selections From Voxindica”

Imagine a murder trial in progress in a court room. The prosecution introduces a forensic expert whose testimony establishes the time and cause of death. Imagine the defence counsel cross-examining the forensic expert, as part of normal court room procedure. Here is a snatch of the imaginary cross examination:

Defence Counsel: Would you please tell the court doctor, the exact time when the murder was committed and the cause of death?

Forensic Expert: Certainly. It was committed between 3.30 PM and 5.30 PM on the fifteenth of this month. The cause of death was stabbing with a blunt knife.

DC: How could you be so certain?

FE: You know; I was brought in as a forensic expert in this case.

DC: You are a forensic pathologist, then?

FE: No, I am not.

DC: Have you conducted any post-mortem examinations in the past?

FE: I have not conducted any.

DC: Have you conducted any surgeries?

FE: I have not conducted any surgeries.

DC: Are you a surgeon?

FE: No, I am not.

DC: Pardon me doctor, if you are not a forensic pathologist or a surgeon what is your specialty?

FE: I am a physician.

DC: If you are not a forensic pathologist, how did you tell with certainty the time and cause of death?

FE: You see, in the hospital where I work, doctors meet in the canteen during breaks. I was informed by a pathologist colleague who works in our hospital and who has read about the case in the newspapers, about the possible time and cause of death. I have also gone through various newspapers which published details of the case. It was based on these that I am able to tell with certainty, the time and cause of death.

DC: Does it mean that you cannot specify the time and cause of death based on your own study or your own knowledge.

FE: No. But I am a doctor. Based on what I have heard and read, I can tell the exact time and cause of death.

The Defence Counsel could have established that the doctor appeared as a witness in the case only to help his ‘old boy network’. But lengthening the imaginary ‘cross examination’ would test the patience of the reader. The imaginary scene is to help readers appreciate the type of ‘pseudo-experts’ fielded in the Ram Janma Bhumi case and how their testimonies were ripped apart in the cross examination. The pseudo-experts asserted that the mosque was not built on any temple debris and in fact no temple was destroyed, not only in Ayodhya but anywhere in the lands ruled by the Mogul invaders. Even normally reticent judges could not help chastising the witnesses in the case.

Death Penalty: Inconsistent Sentencing, Political Mercy Pleas, Erroneous Convictions. Abolition, A Systemic Correction

2019-10-12T03:30:00.000+05:30

Inconsistent Death Penalties

Had the wheels of justice ground faster—instead of at the proverbial snail’s pace—this man would have been hanged by now. The convict from a remote village in the Nanded district of Maharashtra was accused of killing his wife and four children in 2007. The District Sessions Court awarded him death sentence which was upheld by the High Court and the Supreme Court. His review petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2012, which it now ‘recalled’ observing that all the courts relied on an ‘extra-judicial confession’ and ‘ignoring medical evidence’. His sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. (Choudhary, Amit Anand. “SC admits mistake in awarding death sentence, commutes it to life sentence.” The Times Of India. October 2, 2019. https://bit.ly/31SNFSW

In May 2019 the Supreme Court had acquitted six persons whom it sentenced to death ten years before in a case involving dacoity, gang-rape and murder of five persons of a family in Nashik in 2003. The case escalated through the tortuous judicial processes and the Apex court confirmed the death sentences on April 30, 2009. In its latest judgement the Court observed that the accused were

“… from the lower strata of society and are very poor labourers … false implication cannot be ruled out since it is common occurrence that in serious offences, sometimes innocent persons are roped in.” (Mahapatra, Dhananjay. “6 awarded death by SC in 2009, acquitted in 2019”. The Times Of India. May 5, 2019. https://bit.ly/2oVJbwu)

A google search for “SC admits mistake”, prompted by the first report cited above, yielded five results. Here are the remaining three: “SC seeks Centre's reply on plea challenging mandatory death penalty under SC/ST Act” (The Times Of India. May 10, 2019. https://bit.ly/2MmvHBH); “Decade after awarding death, SC commutes sentence to life imprisonment for delay in deciding mercy plea”. (Choudhary, Amit Anand. The Times Of India. February 22, 2019. https://bit.ly/2LUYpuA) and “SC reverses man’s death sentence; revives debate on extreme penalty” (Mahapatra, Dhananjay. The Times Of India. November 28, 2018. https://bit.ly/2pTbbRP). All these cases were reported by The Times Of India between November 2018 and October 2019.

Socio–Politics Of Mercy Petitions

On March 8, 1993, an APSRTC bus from Hyderabad was on its way to Chilakaluripeta in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. In the pre-dawn hours, it was waylaid by two dacoits, Sathuluru Chalapathi Rao and Gentela Vijayavardhan Rao, as it cleared the town of Narasaraopeta and was just twenty kilometres from its destination. The duo brandished deadly weapons and threatened the passengers to hand over their valuables. One of them carried a can of petrol and sprinkled it from the back of the bus to the front entrance. They threatened to set fire to the bus if their demands were not immediately met. Whether some passengers resisted or whether the dacoits panicked was not clear but the duo closed the door and carried out their threat. They set fire to the bus and twenty-three sleeping passengers were engulfed in flames and charred to death. Several others sustained serious burn injuries. The culprits were arrested ten days later and the case culminated in the Supreme Court which upheld the death sentence on August 28, 1996. The Supreme Court judgement which narrated the gruesome details of the crime was reported in the India Kanoon portal: “Gentela Vijayavardhan Rao And Anr vs State Of Andhra Pradesh on 28, August, 1996” (https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1517391/). George Fernandes and Rajni Kothari filed a mercy petition. President Shankar Dayal Sharma rejected it. Mahaswetha Devi filed a second mercy petition. The Supreme Court stayed its own sentence in view of the pendency of the mercy plea. Finally, President K. R. Narayanan commuted their sentence.

On August 14, 2004, Dhananjay Chatterjee an ‘impoverished guard’ in a Kolkata building was hanged. “Although bearing a Brahmin name, Dhananjay Chatterjee was far from being a member of the Kolkata bhadralok, or intellectual elite…His execution followed a shrill campaign…”, wrote N. Jayaram: “How India hanged a poor watchman whose guilt was far from established” (Scroll.in. July 21, 2015. https://bit.ly/35d7FSe). An emerging 24/7 news channel added its bit to the shrillness of the campaign. The misfortune of birth status added to Chatterjee’s misery of poverty. He had spent fourteen years in jail before he was hanged. President, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rejected his mercy plea. However, it must be said in his defence that although the President is vested with the authority to pardon a criminal under Art. 71 (1) (c) of the Constitution, in practice, the President merely follows the recommendation of the Home Ministry. The case did not arouse ‘the quality of mercy’ in the conscience of civil rights activists. No NGO or civil rights group knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court to open it in the small hours to hear a revision plea. No newspaper headlined the next day “And they hanged Dhananjay Chatterjee”!

If the frenzy of misplaced social vigilantism took its toll in Chatterjee’s case it was the political frenzy that impacted the Indira Gandhi assassination case. This is not to say that the assassins did not deserve death sentence. One of the assassins, Beant Singh fired thirty-three bullets into her body. He was killed instantly when her ITBP security guards opened fire. A second assassin Satwant Singh fired twenty-three bullets but was seriously injured in the crossfire with a bullet lodged in his spine. In normal circumstances, his condition would have rendered him ineligible for hanging. A plea to the Supreme Court to allow him to recover was disallowed. A medical team hastily removed the bullet to ‘ready’ him for the hanging. (Bhatnagar, Rakesh. “The accused did not want to be defended”. DNA. October, 30, 2009 https://bit.ly/2Iw5T5c). Ram Jethmalani pleaded in vain that the case against the third assassin, Kehar Singh was flimsy and highly circumstantial and did not ‘prove guilt beyond all reasonable doubt’. The President disallowed mercy petitions with utmost dispatch.

The partisan approach of civil rights groups, political parties, state legislatures and the ‘intelligentsia’ in seeking mercy for convicts has not escaped the attention of the Supreme Court. Balwant Singh Rajoana, who was sentenced to death for killing Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, did not file a mercy plea but the NGO ‘Lawyers for Human Rights International’ sought a review of the trial court verdict. The Punjab state legislature passed a resolution seeking mercy for Rajoana. Similar resolutions were passed by the Jammu & Kashmir legislature in the Afzal Guru case and the Tamil Nadu legislature in the Rajiv Gandhi assassins’ cases. On the other hand, the Court pointed out; poor people like Dhananjay Chatterjee who does not have societal support always got a raw deal with respect to mercy petitions. (“Why wide disparity in treatment of mercy pleas? SC asks” The Times Of India. May 27, 2012. https://bit.ly/31Q51jf). The Supreme Court, however, agreed that there was subjectivity and it was individual perceptions of the judges that decide whether a convict should be awarded death sentence or life imprisonment. (Mahapatra, Dhananjay. “Judges' perception dominant factor in death or life sentence: SC”. The Times Of India. Jan 25, 2011. https://bit.ly/30MffzX).

Abolition, A Systemic Correction

It is the grey areas in the administration of criminal justice that cause these anomalies. If all are equal in the eyes of the law, why was the mercy plea of Dhananjay Chatterjee rejected and the one in the Chilakaluripeta bus burning case entertained? The contrast is stark. A person whose crime might not have been ‘proven beyond all reasonable doubt’ was sent to the gallows but the sentence of the duo who murdered twenty-three people in cold blood was commuted. In the Neeraj Grover murder case (2008) a small time film actress (whom Grover, creative head of Synergy Adlabs was helping to find a foothold in the film industry) and her boyfriend were accused of committing the crime. The duo cut up Grover’s body into 3oo pieces, packed them in gunny bags and was carrying the body to burn it deep in a forest. Mumbai tabloids published other macabre details of the crime and its aftermath. According to one, after the boyfriend stabbed Grover, with the dead body lying in the next room, the duo had sex twice before their ‘next operation’. The actress was sentenced to three years, not for murder but for trying to destroy evidence. She was released by the end of the trial. The boyfriend was sentenced to three years for destroying evidence and ten years for culpable homicide, with both sentences to be run concurrently. In the Naina Sahni murder case (2013) the accused, Sushil Sharma cut up her body and tried to burn the pieces in a restaurant tandoor. He was not awarded death sentence. In the Jessica Lal (2010) and the Priyadarshini Mattoo (2010) cases too no death sentences were awarded. In two ‘high profile’ murder cases in Hyderabad the well-heeled accused, to use an Americanism, ‘walked’.

In an article in the ‘Journal of Law and Criminal Justice’, Arvind P. Bhanu mentioned that fourteen retired judges wrote to the President that “Supreme Court had erroneously given the death penalty to 15 people since 1996”. (“Arbitrariness in Capital Sentencing System: No Disappearance of Furman-Like Challenge”. Journal of Law and Criminal Justice. December 2014, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 187-199). The Law Commission Report on Death Penalty (No. 262, 2015) pointed out that the differences in the quantum of punishment was due to the interpretation of ‘mitigating circumstances’, such as age. According to it, the data collected “substantiate the picture of inconsistent, arbitrary and judge-centric application of the death penalty.” (p.149). The following portion of the report is worth citing verbatim:

“Numerous committee reports as well as judgments of the Supreme Court have recognized that the administration of criminal justice in the country is in deep crisis. Lack of resources, outdated modes of investigation, over-stretched police force, ineffective prosecution, and poor legal aid are some of the problems besetting the system. Death penalty operates within this context and therefore suffers from the same structural and systemic impediments. The administration of capital punishment thus remains fallible and vulnerable to misapplication. The vagaries of the system also operate disproportionately against the socially and economically marginalized who may lack the resources to effectively advocate their rights within an adversarial criminal justice system.” (pp. 223-224)

The report, however, takes into consideration concerns regarding terrorism and makes the following caveat:

“… [C]oncern is often raised that abolition of death penalty for terrorism related offences and waging war, will affect national security. However, given the concerns raised by the law makers, the commission does not see any reason to wait any longer to take the first step towards abolition of the death penalty for all offences other than terrorism related offences. The Commission accordingly recommends that the death penalty be abolished for all crimes other than terrorism related offences and waging war.” (p. 226)

The inconsistencies and vagaries in the application of law need no further elaboration. It is a systemic failure and needs systemic correction. Is it time the death sentence is abolished for all crimes except terror-related cases? The most compelling argument for the abolition of death sentence is that it is irreversible, even if at a later date fresh evidence surfaces to prove the innocence of the accused. It is also advisable to make the definition of ‘life sentence’ not amenable to subjective interpretation. In serious crimes like homicide, a ‘life sentence’ should mean ‘till the normal end of a life, without remission’. In serious crimes against humanity it may be necessary to avoid philosophical distinctions such as whether it is ‘retributive’ or ‘reformative’. The punishment should be seen only as a ‘deterrent’ till such time the society evolves to a level when a further revision could be considered.

Playing God, Ungodly?

2019-10-01T18:01:00.000+05:30

How would it be if it were possible to ‘order’ the birth of a baby girl who would grow to be as beautiful as Venus and as intelligent as Marie Curie? Or the birth of a baby boy who would grow to be as handsome as Adonis and as intelligent as Einstein? How would it be if it were possible to choose the colour of the eyes, hair and skin tone? Does the idea sound outré, utopian? Recent scientific advances indicate that the idea of ‘designer babies’ is neither all that outré nor all that utopian. It is a possibility in the not too distant future. It is the ethics of the issue that should worry mankind. Is genetic engineering ethical or even desirable?

Man ‘created’ angels, gods and goddesses in his own image. It is for this reason they are referred to as anthropomorphic gods. In his ‘creation’ man made gods and goddesses the most beautiful creatures; again beauty being a product of his own imagination. The creation of anthropomorphic gods is but an expression of man’s endless quest to replicate nature or improving upon it. It was an enticing subject that drew artistes and scientists alike. In general the artistes were wary of the dangers of replicating or improving upon nature. Here are a few examples. Mary Shelly’s 1918 Gothic novel ‘Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus’ described the horrors that would result in tinkering with nature. So did Aldous Huxley’s dystopian ‘Brave New World’ (1932) and Ken Follett’s science-fiction ‘The Third Twin’ (1996), but to a less horrific degree.

But the scientists would not be deterred. For as long as the history of science could be traced, maverick – for want of a better word – ‘scientists’ in many nations conducted experiments with the objective of transmuting base metals into gold, to find a universal solvent and to find a potion that would extend longevity. The ‘scientists’ were collectively known as alchemists. Although for long they were dismissed as charlatans and although they did not achieve the objectives they set out to do, their work had advanced science as far as the purification of metals.

In recent times genetic engineering has been focusing on four areas of human development. They are muscle enhancement to improve athletic performance; memory enhancement to improve intellectual performance; growth hormone treatment to improve physical stature and selection of sex and genetic traits of children. The selection of sex is already a reality. It must be noted that gender screening tests are illegal in India. There are several companies in the USA which already offer ‘sex selection’ with certain pre-conditions that would preclude its possible misuse. The process/product is offered to only those couples who have one child and who desire to have a child of the opposite sex to ‘balance their families’.

The theory of eugenics is as old as Aristotle. It appears the fourth century BCE philosopher had suggested that ‘men should tie their left testicles prior to intercourse if they wanted a male child’! In ‘The case against perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering’ (2007), Michael J. Sandel discussed both the pros and cons of genetic engineering. As societies evolve, old mores give way to new norms. Sandel cites a character from the 1981 British historical film, ‘Chariots of Fire’. It was the story of two athletes, Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Prior to 1924, employing professional coaches for training to compete in amateur sport was scoffed at. It was considered ‘ungentlemanly’. Abrahams defied the custom as he felt that it was just a cover for anti-Semitism. The point being made is that today employing coaches is an accepted norm. In fact it is unimaginable for any athlete to go into high level competitions without a personal trainer.

Much of the opposition to genetic engineering stems from the negative connotations associated with eugenics. The objective of eugenics was to increase the proportion of healthy and intelligent individuals in the general population. Conversely the poor and unhealthy were prevented from conceiving by forced sterilisation. It is generally assumed that forced sterilisations as a measure of eugenics were practised only in Nazi Germany. According to a report published in the website PsychCentral.com, by the 1930s thirty states in the USA had sterilisation laws. Between 1927 when Carrie Buck, the first victim of the Virginia sterilisation law was sterilised and the 1970s, 65,000 Americans with ‘mental illness or developmental disabilities’ were sterilised. When the Buck case reached the Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” (See Tartakovsky, Margarita. ‘Eugenics & The Story of Carrie Buck’. July 8, 2018. Accessible from http://bit.ly/2mZHs8Q).

To forestall genetic engineering for ethical considerations amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Scientists believe that the key to finding remedies for diseases like thalassemia and cancer is in genetic engineering.

When the banking industry introduced information technology tools in the 1980s doomsday predictors hollered that it would lead to thousands going out of employment. We live in a world of over the counter (OTC) remedies and food supplements for growth and beauty enhancement. Not an hour passes when we don’t see bamboozling advertisements about them on television. Bariatric surgery and cosmetic surgery for beauty enhancement are fairly common with only the cost being the limiting factor. Would it be the only limiting factor for ‘made to order babies’ too? Or are ethics involved?

Should we in the end accept and live with advances in genetic engineering or heed the warning of Mary Shelly and Aldous Huxley about ‘Promethean hubris’? The last word in the debate is yet to be pronounced!

The article first appeared in TheTimes Of India Blogs

‘The Fourth Estate’ Not ‘The Almighty’

2019-09-23T16:39:00.007+05:30

The article attempts to deal with the question “What is the function of the media? Is it reporting facts or setting narratives?”

During much of his current term President Donald Trump had to fight accusations that he had had a secret covenant with the Russians, who helped him rig the 2016 presidential election. There were three prime accusations. The first was that a Russian organisation, ‘Internet Research Agency’ (IRA), which influences poll outcomes through social media campaigns, was deployed to run down his opponent Hilary Clinton and boost his election. The second was more serious and was about a possible hacking of the computers in the Democratic Party election offices by the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU. Had this been proven it would have turned out to be not just Trump’s own ‘Watergate’ but far worse! The third was about ‘obstruction of justice’.

This article is not about whether or not President Trump was guilty or not of the misdemeanours he was accused of but about their treatment by the American media. The accusations levelled by Trump’s political rivals were orchestrated by internationally visible sections of the American media like ‘CNN,’ ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’. Times’ journalists won two Pulitzer prizes for the ‘Trump-Russia’ stories!

The US Attorney General William Barr appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the allegations. The report Mueller submitted in March this year did not find any substantive evidence to prove the allegations. As Byron York observed in his September 10, 2019, ‘Washington Examiner’ opinion piece

‘the conspiracy-coordination allegation the Times had devoted itself to pursuing turned out to be false … TheTrump-Russia hole came up dry’!

The story did not end there. Some of The New York Times’ readers and its own staff were not happy. York wrote ‘many on the Left faulted [The New York Times] for being insufficiently anti-Trump’! At this point, the issue spilled out of the media domain. It is no more about disseminating information or offering comment, however judgemental could it be. It is now more an ethical dilemma, a reflection of the media scene back home in India. Should a media organisation behave like a consumer goods supplier or restaurateur and cater to the tastes of a consumer – assuming a majority of readers the paper caters to are of a certain political leaning – or remain steadfast to an ideal of sticking to the truth? And remain neutral till the issue is settled one way or the other in the appropriate forums? The Times is now caught between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis of its own making.

The paper conducted an internal town-hall meeting for its newsroom staff to assuage ruffled feelings. It was necessitated because of an uproar over a headline about the president’s alleged ‘racism’ and tweets from the paper’s staff. ‘Slate’ published a transcript of the recording of the Times’ town-hall meeting edited and curated by Ashley Feinberg. The Times’ Executive Editor, Dean Baquet and Publisher A. G. Sulzberger addressed the meeting.

A defensive Baquet seemed to find fault with the readers. He suddenly remembered that it was not the duty of the media to run political campaigns, but as an independent media hold administrations accountable! He pointed out the obvious:

“They [the paper’s critics who want Trump’s head] sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president.”

What should be worrying in this episode is the apparent political conditioning of the staff. Shouldn’t newspaper employees be trained to be neutral observers and faithful reporters rather than political instruments?

Both York and Feinberg felt that Baquet’s remark that “the story changed” was significant. York wonders whether having spent a lot of time and energy on the ‘Trump-Russia’ story (and failed) the Times would spend the next two years on the “Trump-is-a-racist narrative”?

The ‘The Fourth Estate’ in the headline does not refer to Geoffrey Archer’s eponymous novel but to Edmund Burke’s laudatory reference to the press.[1]

In Irving Wallace’s brilliant thriller, ‘The Almighty’, the protagonist inherits a newspaper, a fictional rival of ‘The New York Times’. The conditional inheritance stipulates that the paper which was way behind its traditional rival should surpass its circulation for at least one day in the succeeding year. In order to retain ownership, the protagonist recruits a gang of terrorists to stage events and then scoop them as news. He sets himself up as ‘The Almighty’!

The present media might not go the whole hog to stage terror incidents to scoop stories, but they were, in the past, halfway there. The way they stoked war hysteria for George W. Bush to bomb Iraq in the second gulf war in 2003 to destroy elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was near enough. Are the Times’ and The Washington Post’s anti-Trump campaigns one of a piece with their earlier war campaigns?

[1] In his 1787 speech in the British House of Commons, Edmund Burke reportedly said “There are three estates in Parliament (the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons) but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.”

An earlier version of the article appeared in The Times Of India Blogs

Is Hindu majority chimerical? Is Hindu ‘majority’ really ‘minority’?

2019-08-20T09:16:00.001+05:30

This is the English translation of the Editorial of Ṛṣipīṭham, Telugu magazine, published in its January 2019 issue. The magazine is edited and published by Brahmasri Sāmavēdam Ṣanmukha Śarma. Brahmasri Śarma is the foremost exponent of our Sanātana Dhārmic lore. His encyclopaedic knowledge and felicity of expression that makes complex tātvic principles intelligible to common people attract large audiences to his discourses in India and many other nations. Apart from public meetings he appears on several television channels to give discourses on our ancient wisdom. He is a prolific writer and produced many books on Sanātana Dhārmic literature. The translated version of the editorial is published with permission.

In India that is Bharat Hindus are a numerical majority. At least it appears to be so. A closer look would reveal how chimerical this belief is. In point of fact Hindus are really a ‘minority’.

How? Firstly there are those who are de jure Hindus but de facto converts. Secondly there are those Hindus who have neither the desire nor diligence to live as Hindus or practise Hinduism. They are not only oblivious to the impending peril, but sadly are not consumed by a devotion to protect their Sanātana Dharma. They go through the motions, practising Hindu rituals on auspicious or somber occasions. They are insouciant to the perils threatening their Dharma and the Hindu places of worship. They are insouciant to the political bias of their leaders. They reason: ‘how does it really matter, whichever religion it is?’

Then there are those Hindus who boast of being atheists and lose no opportunity to deride Dharmic scriptures, traditions, rituals and temples in their social intercourse and writings.

If we exclude these three categories, there is the residual, virtual minority that lives as Hindus and practises Sanātana Dharma. They are the real Hindus!

The contrast with the followers of other faiths could not be starker. There is unanimity of actions, behaviour, beliefs and thoughts among followers of other faiths. They exhibit an unshakable faith in their religion and the thought that no other faith is superior to theirs. They do not denigrate their scriptures or places of worship. Their devotion to their religion is so strong that they do not hesitate to denigrate, deride and suppress faiths other than theirs. Men and women, young and old all learn the ways of their respective faiths and religiously practise them. They acquiesce to their religious leaders even if they are venal or wanton. They stand as one to support them; to make them succeed in their collective goal, viz. preservation, propagation and advancement of their faith. They do not criticize organizations, which in the name of faith, resort to extremist or even terrorist activities.

Thus the two principal faiths opposed to the Sanātana Dharma are clear in their mind about their purpose and assiduously and – religiously – work to achieve it. There is no ambiguity in their thought and purpose. Their intense desire is that their faith should rule the nation. And that the Sanātana Dharma should be stamped out in its homeland!

Their actions and efforts are focussed in that direction.

Observing their unanimity of thought and action, political leaders – although born Hindu – mollycoddle them and pander to their every wish; they give away national wealth as largesse to pamper them. They participate in the festivals of these faiths donning their traditional attires! But no leader of the other faiths appears in a festival of Hindus. If possible they create hurdles in Hindu celebrations.

The Hindu political leaders know fully well that the myriad caste formations in the Hindu faith never unite as each caste wants to dominate the others in wresting political power.

We have seen the bizarre spectacle of processions of green flags and ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans of certain interest groups emboldened by the results in the recent state elections. Neither the forces of law and order bothered to take action nor any politician stood up to condemn the anti-national activities. The issue is not about celebration of a certain political party coming to power but that the nature of the celebrations signifies an insidious threat to national security and integrity.

Such incidents are not just a threat to the survival of Sanātana Dharma but to peace, religious harmony and national integrity. What could the virtual minority Hindus do to remedy the situation? For the Hindus who seek peaceful, harmonious co-existence with others it is an existential crisis. They have suffered for over a thousand years under alien rule. Sadly the situation does not seem to be different today. In states like Kerala, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir and the north east they live in fear. In large tracts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu they live under the hegemony of other religions. There is a sense of insecurity among Hindus in all these areas.

It is not that these realities are unknown. They are widely shared with statistics in social media like Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. They get shares, likes and forwards but just that. There is no concrete action or reaction to ameliorate the situation or improve the status of Hindus to the eminence they deserve.

The mainstream media conceals the facts. Worse it projects the opposite as truth. The regional media considers its job done by promoting the interests of caste, regional or factional leaders.

Thanks to the doctored history that is taught in schools, colleges and universities today’s youth is oblivious to the atrocities that were perpetrated on Hindus for centuries in the past. Ignorant of the past, they are unable to view what is happening today in its proper perspective. Instead of trying to safeguard their ancient culture and faith they resort to NOTA peeved by the slightest inconvenience!

What should we do? Just pray the lord to save the Sanātana Dharma and the nation?

The myth of Nehru and the IITs!

2019-07-07T22:53:00.005+05:30

The projection of Nehru as a visionary statesman was a carefully crafted enterprise and incorporated into it were many orchestrated myths. These include the establishment of institutions of excellence (officially Institutions of National Importance or INIs) like the IITs and IIMs. It is another matter though that by the time the first IIM was established in November 1961 Nehru had a job explaining about blades of grass and barren lands in the parliament and exactly a year before the Chinese ended his misery — of having to explain about blades of grass and barren lands in the parliament!

Were there no institutions of excellence in ‘India that is Bharat’ (as the Constitution describes it) before the scientific-tempered Nehru waved his magic wand to fill the void? It would not please the secular historians if you said there were. But first let us look at what the scientific-tempered Nehru did to the ‘Ministry of Education’ itself, as the ‘Ministry of Human Resources Development’ was known then.

A look at the range and sweep of functions that the Ministry handles is mind-boggling. To put it succinctly, it determines what we learn about our past; what we do with our present and how we shape our future. The Ministry has two broad divisions, the ‘Department of School Education and Literacy’ and the ‘Department of Higher Education’. The latter superintends a number of institutions which include the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Central Universities, the IITs the IIMs, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) et al.

In 2014 Abhishek Manu Singhvi was ‘astonished’ to learn that the newly appointed HRD minister was “not [even] a graduate”. Have you ever wondered about the educational qualifications of India’s first Education Minister, chosen by Nehru to superintend a ministry that was to superintend the institutions of excellence and, research and development in science, engineering, technology, not to speak of humanities and social sciences?

Nehru’s chosen Education Minister was Maulana Sayyid Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad! That was a mouthful; wasn’t it? He was born in Mecca but his family relocated to Calcutta in 1890. What were his qualifications for supervising the crucial ministry of education? Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was ‘home-schooled and self-taught’! There need be no objection on that count. A ‘home-schooled and self-taught’ person could turn out to be a genius. But would Nehru have appointed a ‘home-schooled and self-taught’ ‘Shankaracharya’ as India’s education minister?

Azad’s activities during and after the freedom movement should leave no one in doubt about his inclinations. He inveigled Gandhi and other Congress leaders into supporting the Khilafat movement in far away Turkey, a movement with which India had nothing to do. It was an ill-advised quid pro quo by the Congress leaders for co-opting influential Muslim leaders into the freedom movement; a quid pro quo the nation would live down to regret. Azad and fellow Khilafat leaders Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan along with others founded the Jamia Millia Islamia in Lucknow in 1920. It was later shifted to Delhi. The Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, the precursor of the Aligarh Muslim University had already been in existence since 1875. In another of those secular anomalies of ‘India that is Bharat’, these two institutions of higher learning, funded by the people of India, cater exclusively to the Muslim community. Azad proposed reserving houses vacated by Muslims displaced during partition for Muslims in India. He was in favour of Muslim personal laws as opposed to a uniform civil code (UCC).

Azad helped Nehru in 1936 in the espousal of socialism as party philosophy in the face of opposition from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Babu Rajendra Prasad and C. Rajagopalachari and in his re-election as Congress president in 1937. In 1946, Azad resigned as president in favour of Nehru. All in all, Azad was Nehru’s ‘twin-soul’ and confidante; worth rewarding with a key portfolio.

Coming back to the institutions of excellence, were the IITs the first institutions of excellence, established by a visionary Nehru as his sycophants would have us believe? The history of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) does not fit into the Indian Left Illiberals’ fictitious ‘India’s founding fathers’ narrative with Nehru as its over-arching visionary.

During a voyage from Yokohama to Vancouver in 1893, Swami Vivekananda impressed the philanthropist-businessman Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata with his views on science:

“How wonderful it would be if we could combine the scientific and technological achievements of the West with the asceticism and humanism of India!”

Jamsetji Tata wrote to Swami Vivekananda five years later in 1898 about his idea of establishing an institution to promote research in science and technology and seeking his co-operation for it.

A committee was constituted to prepare a blueprint for setting up the institution. Tata bequeathed a substantial part of his own wealth for funding it. Sadly Tata did not live to realise his dream project. He died in 1904. The Queen Regent Vani Vilasa Sannidhana of Mysore (who ruled the princely state on behalf of her minor son Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV) donated 371 acres of land for the institute and the IISc was inaugurated on May 27, 1909. Nehru was all of twenty years when the IISc was born. Ironically, the only linkage Nehru had with the IISc was that he died on the same day in 1964!

And now about the IITs! According to the website of the IIT, Kharagpur (the first IIT), the Honourable Sir Jogendra Singh (member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, Department of Education, Health and Agriculture) set up a committee in 1946 to “consider the setting up of Higher Technical Institutions for post war industrial development in India.” The twenty-two member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar recommended the setting up of four Higher Technical Institutions in the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern parts of India. They were to be modelled on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thus was born the first IIT in May 1950 which initially functioned from Calcutta and later shifted to Kharagpur in September 1950.

The IIT, Kharagpur began functioning in the Hijli detention camp (renamed Hijli Shaheed Bhavan) where many of our great freedom fighters were detained and some sacrificed their lives for the independence of the country. The hallowed history of the camp is marked by the martyrdom of two freedom fighters, Santosh Kumar Mitra and Tarakeswar Sengupta, whom the British shot dead on September 16, 1931. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose came to the camp, to receive the dead bodies of the martyred freedom fighters.

The most sordid twist in the saga of the Hijli Shaheed Bhavan was that a part of it was converted into the “Nehru Museum of Science and Technology” in 1990. The martyrs were dumped on the wayside of history.

Hinduism (Sanātana Dharma) In Peril?

2019-01-11T11:26:00.000+05:30

This is the English translation of the Editorial of Ṛṣipīṭham, Telugu magazine, published in its December 2018 issue. The magazine is edited and published by Brahmasri Sāmavēdam Ṣanmukha Śarma. Brahmasri Śarma is the foremost exponent of our Sanātana Dhārmic lore. His encyclopaedic knowledge and felicity of expression that makes complex tātvic principles intelligible to common people attract large audiences to his discourses in India and many other nations. Apart from public meetings he appears on several television channels to give discourses on our ancient wisdom. He is a prolific writer and produced many books on Sanātana Dhārmic literature. The translated version of the editorial is published with permission.

“This is the twenty-first century. We have been progressing technologically and scientifically. Globalization has erased national boundaries. Is it necessary in this day and age to harbor religious chauvinism? Does religion really matter? Let us eschew narrow-minded religiosity. What the country needs is development. Basic necessities like food, water and infrastructure facilities like roads … these should get our attention rather than religion.”

These are lofty ideals. As the poet said they are “Good sentences and well pronounced!” But they are preached only to Hindus. Or are only uttered by Hindus! There may be broadminded people in other faiths too but they remain mute. And remain faithful to their religious institutions.

How ideal would it be if everyone practiced their religion in individual or family settings without disturbing social harmony! But do we see such an atmosphere in India? The intolerance of non-Hindu religions towards Hinduism is a fact of everyday life that cannot be concealed. It is a perilous reality that the Indian polity has been ignoring.

A few months ago the pontiff of a non-Hindu religion clearly and unambiguously pronounced “We should elect a leader who accords precedence to our religion. Only our religion should rule the nation.” Another non-Hindu religion has been giving a similar call for long. It must be noted that no Hindu pontiff resorted to such pronouncements.

Does any public or media ‘intellectual’ ask “Should such calls be permitted in a nation that is constitutionally secular?” Neither do our political leaders condemn such demands. On the other hand they lose no opportunity to propitiate the proponents of non-Hindu religions. They offer to construct monumental places of worship for them and allot hundreds of acres of public land although such deeds are ultra vires of the Indian Constitution. They are allotting hundreds of crores for their religious festivals. While the Hindu places of worship are state-controlled and income from them expropriated, places of worship of non-Hindu religions are beyond the ken of common law. Governments cannot demand that income from their places of worship be used for ‘secular’, even developmental purposes. On the one hand Indian states grapple with deficit budgets and on the other they shower largesse on non-Hindu religious institutions.

The actions of some state governments and pronouncements of the highest judiciary have the effect of undermining ancient temple practices and traditions that stood the test of time for thousands of years. Even state governments led by parties that are ideologically atheist have succumbed to the diktats of non-Hindu religious interests to coerce Hindu organizations. Statutes are amended to appoint non-Hindus to temple management boards.[1] In the national congregation of a non-Hindu religion recently organized in Secunderabad, a resolution was passed to the effect that its adherents should work collectively to bring to power a government in which their religion has a veto.

In a recent bizarre incident, adherents of a non-Hindu religion who went to ‘bless’ a Hindu Chief Minister signaled that he should erase the tilak on his forehead, and he meekly obliged! Incidents such as these should have raised the hackles of Hindus but lamentably it did not happen.

A slogan painted in large letters on a sacred hillside on the way to a famous Siva shrine in Andhra Pradesh declared that the ‘god’s messenger’ of a non-Hindu religion was the ‘Lord of all’. When a few Hindu devotees sought to erase it, they were arrested by the police and cases booked against them as ‘rowdy sheeters’. The charge against them was that they were disturbing communal harmony! What did the original slogan-painters do? This incident shows not just the state government’s anti-Hindu approach but how it accords preferential treatment to non-Hindu religions.

Curiously the two non-Hindu religions don’t take on each other. Their collective target is Hinduism. It is only hapless Hindus who convert to other religions. Forgetting that their ancestors were Hindus, adherents of these non-Hindu religions openly keep abusing Hindu gods and goddesses. In many organizations adherents of the non-Hindu religions coerce their Hindu subordinates to convert. If they do not obey they are penalized. Their career progression is hampered.

In organizations in which non-Hindus rule the roost, applications submitted by Hindus are often binned or action on them inordinately delayed. The situation prevails even in security and law enforcement departments. The oppressed Hindus are afraid of bringing the realities out into the open. Many of them quietly convert succumbing to allurements or coercion. This is not to say that non-Hindus should not occupy superior positions. All citizens of this country should enjoy equal rights and have equal opportunities. But shouldn’t people in positions of power discharge their duties justly instead of using their positions and powers as coercive weapons for spreading their religion? It is time Hindus woke up and refused to tolerate political leaders of whichever hue, who pander to other religions and coerce Hindus. It is due to corruption in the Hindu religious and endowments departments and aggression of other religions that the Hindu temples are in a pitiable state.

A religion based political party which committed atrocities against Hindus before independence (but for Sardar Patel they would have ‘ruled’ the erstwhile princely State) has been indulged by all political parties in power in ‘secular India! It continues to spew venom against Hindus. If anyone points this out they are labelled ‘Hindu chauvinist’. Those who call for ‘one nation, one community, one law’ are labelled ‘religious bigots’.

All in all it is a scary scenario for the Hindus. They should wake up; be aware of the impending danger and get ready for self-protection. If not their apathy would undermine the nation’s progress. If the Hindus do not act, they will be reduced to the status of second class citizens as in Kashmir and North Eastern states. They should remember that even if they decide to run away, there is no other nation in the world to give them asylum!

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[1] In a landmark judgement, the move to appoint non-Hindus to Hindu temple management boards has been struck down by the Kerala High Court. See “Devaswom Commissioner of Travancore/Cochin Devaswom Board Will Always Be A Hindu, Declares Kerala HC”. 2018. LiveLaw.in. November 25, 2018. Accessible from https://goo.gl/SGcCmG

Undermining Democratic Institutions: Fact And Fiction

2018-12-14T12:27:00.000+05:30

Ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, the charge of “undermining institutions” has been a constant refrain in what is popularly but not factually known as the mainstream media. He has been accused of “undermining” every known institution from the Indian Council of Historical Research to the Reserve Bank of India. The raucous babble reached its crescendo after Urjit Patel (a Modi appointee) announced his resignation for personal reasons as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The crescendo reached even a higher pitch after Shaktikanta Das a former IAS official was appointed as RBI Governor to replace Patel. Notwithstanding the fact that he served as the Revenue Secretary, the Economic Affairs Secretary and as a member of the Fifteenth Finance Commission, it was his educational qualifications that became the bone of contention.

It must be remembered that when Modi assumed charge as prime minister he left most of the ‘steel frame’ that he inherited in place except for a few minor changes. It is against this backdrop, it may be instructive to look back and review who “undermined institutions” the most. Jawaharlal Nehru ruled for nearly eighteen years since he became the interim prime minster in 1946 till his death in 1964. His daughter Indira ruled the nation for sixteen years, from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 till her death in 1984. Her son Rajiv ruled the nation between 1984 and 1989. His wife Sonia ruled by proxy between 2004 and 2014. Political chicanery of that magnitude – which amounts to nothing less than undermining the highest political office in the land – would not have been possible in any other democracy in the world.

Deception, Disinformation and Psychological Operations have been originally employed by intelligence agencies but politicians caught on to them fast. The Congress party has for long invested in an ecosystem of academic institutions and the media. They come in handy to discredit and disarm political rivals by deception, disinformation and psychological operations. Coming back to the issue of “undermining institutions”, here is a non-exhaustive list of examples of how institutions were undermined or worse sabotaged to suit political whims and fancies under various Congress leaders.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Let us begin with the reign of Jawaharlal Nehru who has been hailed as an epitome of democratic values.

Curtailing freedom of expression India’s best and brightest minds toiled for about three years to craft the longest written Constitution of the world. It was adopted on January 26, 1950. Even before the ink on the original Constitution dried, Nehru proposed the first amendment. The Americans amended their Constitution about thirty times in two hundred and forty years while we enacted a hundred and one amendments in seventy years. Whereas the American first amendment strengthened freedom of expression, Nehru’s first amendment, enacted on June 18, 1951 curtailed freedom of expression.

Curtailing powers of the judiciary The Indian first amendment did more. It created the Ninth Schedule which barred judicial scrutiny of legislations included in it.

Downgrading the Finance Ministry Enamoured as he was of the Soviet system of governance, he created the Planning Commission an extra-Constitutional body, which in a way reduced the importance of the Finance Ministry.

Dismissing state governments When Nehru used the Art. 356 of the Indian Constitution to dismiss the Kerala state government in 1959, he set a dubious precedent.

Undermining the Cabinet and Parliament Nehru took many decisions which have had long-lasting adverse effects without consulting the parliament or his own cabinet, thus undermining the institutions. The decisions include

Calling a ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947 when the Indian army was winning the war. The effect of this ill-advised decision was to lose a third of the state and altering international borders with India’s neighbours. Had India retained PoK, we would have retained Gilgit-Baltistan too. We would have had a border with Afghanistan. His decision to refer the issue to the UNO was equally inexplicable.

Dilly-dallying on Junagadh and Hyderabad against the wishes of the Cabinet. But for Patel’s timely action, these states would now have been part of Pakistan.

Concealing intelligence reports about the construction of a mountain road network in Aksai Chin by the Chinese.

Withdrawing unilaterally the extra-territorial rights in Tibet which India inherited from the British.

Sacrificing Tibet by accepting the Chinese claim that Tibet was a part of it.

[The last two ill-advised decisions removed a buffer state between India and China.]

Refusing to accept United Nations Security Council seat when it was offered on a platter to India but instead demanding that it be granted to China.

Refusing accession of Kalat and Nepal At the time of partition, a few neighbouring States wished to accede to India. These include Nepal and the Kingdom of Kalat which forms a large part of modern Baluchistan. Nehru rejected them. Oman which owned the port of Gwadar on the southwest coast of Baluchistan offered to sell it to India. Again for reasons best known to him Nehru rejected the offer.

The worst undermining of all was refusing to look after the needs of the Indian armed forces in terms of manpower recruitment and training and equipment.

Inducting dynastic succession. Nehru made his sister Vijayalakshmi ambassador to the United Nations and the USSR. His daughter Indira was unofficially Nehru’s personal assistant through his years as the prime minister. This made her privy to government documents despite the Official Secrets Act. Later he made his daughter the president of AICC.

Awarding himself the Bharat Ratna The award is recommended by the prime minister. But Nehru was the first recipient of the award in the year of its institution. Nehru’s apologists argue that Rajendra Prasad did it off his own bat to signal truce between them but nothing prevented Nehru from refusing to accept it.

Indira Gandhi

Revocation of Privy Purses to the former Maharajas. It was a sovereign guarantee given to them by the Constituent Assembly. Her action amounted to undermining the authority of the parliament.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s she had had several judicial reverses. They include the Bank Nationalization case, the Privy Purses case and the Fundamental Rights case. Unlike her father who simply amended the Constitution in response to adverse judicial verdicts, she went a step ahead and undermined the judiciary itself. Within hours after the verdict in the Fundamental Rights case was delivered in 1973, she superseded several judges and appointed a pliant judge as the CJI.

Refusing to heed the judicial verdict about her parliament seat.

Declaring the (internal) Emergency which undermined democracy itself. Technically the (external) Emergency declared in 1962 after the Chinese invasion was still in force. Neither her father nor she saw it necessary to repeal it! Fundamental rights including the right to life suspended.

Dismissing state governments and Governors at will.

Her refusal to accept a split in the Congress party and her lust for power led to the 1969 Gujarat riots which lasted – six months – and resulted in the death of about 5000 people. The 1983 Nellie massacre in which 3000 Muslims were killed occurred in Indira’s reign. By the by, more than 90% of communal riots in India occurred during the reigns of Jawaharlal, Indira and Rajiv.

Making her son Snjay a supra-Constitutional authority. Chief Ministers danced to his tunes.

Her propping up Bhindranwale to undermine the Akalis and her war on the Golden temple.

Awarding herself the Bharat Ratna This time the fig leaf of Rajendra Prasad was not there.

An action that has long-lasting adverse effects was handing over the universities and other intellectual institutions to the left-illiberal elite as a quid pro quo for political support.

Rajiv Gandhi

His reign began with the Sikh genocide, in which between 8000 and 10000 Sikhs were killed. The genocide was a blot on democracy, and the biggest undermining of the institution of democracy.

Sacking his Finance Minister to alter the import policy (for importing PTA and other chemicals used in the manufacture of polyester fibre). This was to favour Dhirubhai Ambani. The policy declaration was a replica (or was it a template) of the 2G spectrum auction.

His grandfather sought to control freedom of expression through his first amendment. His mother used carrots and sticks to reign in the media. He sought to control the media through an amendment to the Posts and Telegraphs Act, but had to drop it due to widespread criticism.

He sacked his Foreign Secretary, A. P. Venkateswaran in a press conference

Sonia Maino (the de facto PM)

Creation of the institution of ‘UPA Chairperson’. It was an extra-Constitutional authority.

Creation of the extra-Constitutional NAC which was a supra-Cabinet superintending the work of the prime minister’s Cabinet.

Commissioning social “activists” like Teesta Setalvad to draft legislation (the impugned Communal Violence Bill) and school text books.

Now let us see the other argument about an IAS officer being appointed as the Governor of RBI. The following RBI Governors were from the IAS: B. Rama Rau, K. G Ambegaonkar, H. V. R. Iyengar, L. K. Jha, S. Jagannathan, R. N. Malhotra, S. Venkateswaran and Y. V. Reddy.

Finally, let us look at the argument that only economists should head economic institutions. In the years between 1970–1973; 1976–1983; 1985–1987; 1990–1997; 2000–2013 and 2017–2018 Americans won the Nobel Prize for economics. India’s Amartya Sen won it in 1998 giving us bragging rights! While the Americans won the maximum number of economics Nobel prizes or shared them with others, the American economy has had its ups and downs. The American economy saw recession in the years 1969-70; 1973-75; 1980-82; the early 1990s; the early 2000s and the worst in 2007-8. The 2008 collapse wiped out life’s savings of many Americans including Indian expatriates, making millions paupers overnight. So much for economists!

Is Astrology Science Or Superstition?

2018-08-01T19:12:00.001+05:30

On the eve of the May 2014 general elections, several Telugu news channels conducted what they call ‘panel discussions’ on astrology. It would be a mistake to expect ‘panel discussions’ on television to be objective in which the two sides of the issues under discussion are debated and rational conclusions arrived at. There is nothing rational or scientific about the debates. The subjects are selected based on their topicality to arouse viewer interest and are subject to two limitations: the channel’s political worldview and the political correctness of the subject. Commercial interests of course, determine a channel’s political worldview. As for political correctness, it depends on whether there would be a backlash. Even the most intrepid champions of freedom of speech tread cautiously in the face of a suspected backlash. If they are sure there would be no backlash, they would go overboard flogging the issue. There is no need to state the converse.

In the discussions on astrology, a couple of ‘not very articulate’ astrologers were pitted against rabble rousing rationalists and asked to predict the outcome of the elections. Despite protestations that Jyothisha predictions should not be made without sufficient data they were made to predict electoral outcomes, only to be jeered at. The anchors saw to it that the odd articulate astrologer did not get enough air time. He was simply shouted down in cacophony.

The overt objection of the rationalists to astrology is that it is unscientific. If the objections were really ‘scientific’, they should have objected to such disciplines as craniometry (measurement of the head), phrenology (measurement of the skull) and nasal indices as predictors of race not to speak of the wholly unscientific Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT)—which was based not on historical or archaeological evidence but on comparative philology!

Their unstated, underlying objection could be that it is a Hindu discipline! The rationalists, with their pathological rather than logical hatred for everything Hindu forget that the original Jyothisha Vedänga concerned itself with astronomy, not astrology. The primary objective of this Vedic addendum (of the Rig and Yajur Vedas) was in the preparation of almanacs. The Indian almanac writers known as Siddhantis have been producing accurate almanacs for hundreds of years. The predictive discipline of astrology was a latter-day offshoot, just as psephology was an offshoot of political science which itself can hardly be described as science. The question that the faux rationalists should seriously introspect is, ‘Why do they unquestioningly believe in psephology while they equally irrationally disbelieve in astrology?’

What logical arguments do the rationalists offer in support of their contention that astrology is unscientific? Do they offer cogent reasoning and verifiable proofs? No, just an arrogant and unsubstantiated assertion that it is ‘impossible’! In the history of science, there are many examples which disprove the theory of ‘impossibility’ when subsequent discoveries upturned confident assertions. For example, in 1800, the English scientist, John Dalton proposed that the atom was the smallest particle of elements and was indestructible.

Eysenck and Nias list several ‘impossibility’ theories which fell flat when subsequent discoveries disproved them.[1] In 1933 Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford two of the world’s greatest physicists declared that the splitting of an atom could have no practical uses. Just twelve years later America dropped its bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many countries in the world today harness the energy released by the splitting of an atom for peaceful uses.

Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus, all dismissed the theory that oceanic tides were caused by the moon as ‘astrological nonsense’. Johannes Muller, a very reputed nineteenth century physiologist and the author of an authoritative monograph on the subject, declared that measuring the speed of a nervous impulse would never be possible. Only three years later Helmholtz had measured it quite accurately.

What is science and what are the criteria that should be satisfied for a discipline to be declared scientific? Eysenck and Nias suggest three methodologies. Sir Francis Bacon’s induction method involves collection of facts and a theory hypothesized based on them. The Vienna School of Logical positivism suggests that a theory is proposed which is then verified or disproved by research. Then there is Sir Karl Popper’s argument that no theory can be finally verified as, even after a theory is verified umpteen times, one more experiment might still disprove it. The catch in this proposition is that Popper believes that ‘a theory is scientific if it is open, not to being proved true (which it never can) but to being proved wrong’. The authors argue that none of these methodologies were ever applied to astrology before disqualifying it as science.

A generally accepted criterion for a scientific theory is that its results should be replicable, i.e. it should yield predictable results and that the same results should be obtained in repeated experiments. Let us consider the example of modern medicine to validate this theory. Medical magazines regularly publish clinical trial reports of medical, surgical, radiological or other procedures used in the treatment of diseases. The reports very rarely report 100% cure rates with several trials reporting as low as 60-70% success rates. This means the results of curative procedures used in modern medicine are not always replicable. In spite of this anomaly, none disputes that modern medicine is a scientific discipline. ‘Statistical significance’ (rather than absolute conformity) is an accepted criterion for validation of results in ‘double blind cross over’ clinical trials used to study the efficacy of medicines. A majority of rationalists appear to be unaware of such nuances in scientific criteria.

While Eysenck and Nias do not explicitly say that astrology is a scientific discipline, they do not dismiss it as superstition either. They argue that more data is needed to come to a definite conclusion and more research. They cite the work of Michel and Francoise Gauquelin to support their view. Eysenck and Nias describe the Gauquelins as ‘a rare combination, possessing both a detailed knowledge of astrology and a genuine scientific outlook based on a formal academic training.’ The Gauquelins were not astrologers but professional psychologists steeped in the ways of research. Their work in cosmobiology found a positive correlation between certain personality traits (which determine professional success) and planetary positions at the time of birth. Here is a brief account of the work of the Gauquelins that may be instructive:

The Gauquelins began their work by analyzing 576 members of the French Academy of Medicine, ‘who had achieved academic distinction by virtue of their research’. They found that the doctors were all born when Mars or Saturn had just risen or just passed midheaven. In order to validate the theory, the Gauquelins tried to replicate their experiment with another group of 508 doctors with similar antecedents. The replication conformed to the original observation.

Encouraged and intrigued by the results they extended the research to include other professionals in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Italy and reviewed 25,000 birth dates. When they contrasted 5,100 successful artists with 3,647 successful scientists they found quite interestingly that while the scientists were born when Saturn has just risen or was past midheaven, the artists tended to avoid being born under the planet.

Similarly when they reviewed the birth charts of 3,438 military leaders, in 680 cases (against 590 sufficient for statistical significance) they found that Mars considered the symbol of the god of war had risen or was past midheaven.

In order to confirm the results the researchers studied control groups selected from the general population and concluded that the planetary positions as mentioned occurred only for the births of the famous and distinguished. The results seem to indicate that these planets are ‘related to destiny, success and good fortune’.

A corollary to the observations already made was the predictability of certain character traits found in business leaders and successful sportspersons. It was found that those with birth times associated with Mars were seen to have greater determination and iron will. A study that reviewed the birth charts of 2,089 sportspersons, 1,409 actors and 3,647 scientists could predict personality factors like ‘extravert’, ‘introvert’, ‘unstable’ and ‘tough-minded’.

The researchers made quite a few other interesting observations in their studies. It is not possible to include them all here for want of space. However one point deserves mention. Invariably the results the researches obtained conformed to naturally occurring births and not artificially induced ones. This means that human hand cannot design destiny. It has to be ordained by the Gods!

Eysenck and Nias conclude that “the time has come to state quite unequivocally that a new science is in process of being born.”

It may be apt to remember what Bertrand Russel said on ‘the value of scepticism’: “When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain.”

[1] Eysenck, H. J., and Nias, D.K.B. (1984). Astrology Science or Superstition? Penguin Books. New York.

Excerpted from ‘TWISTING FACTS TO SUIT THEORIES’ AND OTHER SELECTIONS FROM VOXINDICA. (2016). Authors Press New Delhi. pp. 434-439

Learning or Political Conditioning?

2018-07-01T11:55:00.001+05:30

If we are asked to name a singular, monumental failure of independent India, we can unhesitatingly point out that it was our inability to forge a national spirit. Every institution contributed to this failure including the education system. This essay excerpted from ‘TWISTING FACTS TO SUIT THEORIES’ AND OTHER SELECTIONS FROM VOXINIDCA’ (pp. 290-298) examines the role played by text books written for school students and how they contributed to exacerbate rather than reduce caste schism. In particular it critiques the Class IX social science text book published by NCERT in 2007.

In common understanding, learning means the acquisition of knowledge and skills. In terms of behavioural sciences learning implies acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitude resulting in permanent change in behaviour. It is attitude that informs thought processes and character. This is the reason why traditional Bharatiya education focused on shaping attitude and character. Behaviour has two other modifiers: experience and conditioning. Experience is gained by repeated application of knowledge and skills. Conditioning is the result of positive or negative experiences. Conditioning is the rationale underlying the ‘carrot and stick’ principle of motivation. However, hardened attitude can sometimes override knowledge and skills in shaping behaviour. For example, erudition may not bar a university professor from becoming a criminal; or a well-educated highly-paid individual from becoming a terrorist. The focus of traditional Bharatiya education on behaviour and character was to defy experiential conditioning. It was to tread the path of righteousness irrespective of positive or negative experiences.

The three dimensions of learning are: education which helps in the acquisition of knowledge; training which helps in the acquisition of skills and development which implies positive modification of behaviour of a permanent nature. Competence is the ability to selectively apply knowledge, skills and behaviour to suit the context, to achieve desired results or performance. The objective of learning that we impart in schools and colleges is to inculcate all three. Viewed in the light of this preamble, how do the NCERT textbooks shape thought, attitude, character and behaviour? The NCERT Social Science textbook for Class IX, published in 2007, is rather grandiosely introduced to the reader:

“All too often in the past, the history of the modern world was associated with the history of the west. It was as if change and progress happened only in the west. As if the histories of other countries were frozen in time, they were motionless and static. People in the west were seen as enterprising, innovative, scientific, industrious, efficient and willing to change. People in the east—or in Africa and South America—were considered traditional, lazy, superstitious, and resistant to change.”[1]

After reading this, the reader is likely to be confused by the introductory part of ‘Section I’, as it interprets the ideas that shaped India’s freedom movement. The latter informs the reader that ideas like liberty and equality, products of the French Revolution and socialism, product of the Russian Revolution, have informed anti-colonial movements in India and China. It mirrors the Western view that Gandhi was inspired by Rousseau, the French Revolution and Thoreau.

The chapter on ‘Socialism in Europe and the Russian Revolution’ (p. 25-48), written by Prof. Hari Vasudevan of the Calcutta University, describes the origins of the Russian Revolution in glowing terms:

“The political trends were signs of a new time. It was a time of profound social and economic changes. It was a time when new cities came up and new industrialised regions developed, railways expanded and the Industrial Revolution occurred.” (p. 26)

To say that the chapter is economical with the truth would be an understatement, as what it does not mention about the Russian Revolution is perhaps at least as important as what it does. For example it bypasses the more fundamental question that strikes anyone interested in the history of Communism: “Why did a doctrine premised on proletarian revolution in industrial societies come to power only in predominantly agrarian ones, by Marxist definition those least prepared for ‘socialism’?”[2] Nor does it mention that “Communism’s recourse to ‘permanent civil war’ rested on the ‘scientific’ Marxist belief in class struggle as the ‘violent midwife of history’, in Marx’s famous metaphor”. (Ibid. p. xix)

The one party rule which suppressed democratic rights, the reprisals, the forced labour camps, the executions all get passing mention as if they were minor, insignificant details. The chapter mentions the severe reprisals, deportations and exiles meted out to those who were opposed to Stalin’s collectivization programme. But there is no mention of the suppression of the right to free speech, an issue so dear to the ever-agitating Indian communists. There is also no mention that an estimated 100 million lives were sacrificed at the altar of the ‘class struggle that was the violent midwife of history’, the world over, and about 20 million deaths in the erstwhile Soviet Union alone. The Chinese version of Marxist Communism, to which a majority of Indian communists owe allegiance, consumed a staggering 65 million lives in its class struggles. (Ibid. p. 4)

The introductory part of ‘Section I mentions in passing that ‘[t]oday Soviet Union has broken up and socialism is in crisis ...’ But the chapter on Russian Revolution was not revised to reflect these changes in the 2007 edition, brought out a good sixteen years after the implosion of the Soviet Union and the larger Communist world. The following passage almost gives the impression that socialism (or Communism) continues to rule about half of the world, as it did earlier and that the USSR is alive and kicking:

“By the end of the twentieth century, the international reputation of the USSR as a socialist country had declined though it was recognised that socialist ideals still enjoyed respect among its people. But in each country the ideas of socialism were rethought in a variety of different ways.”

Is there a deliberate attempt to downplay the excesses of the Moguls and the Communists, and the decline of Communism on the one hand and magnify social distinctions in the Hindu society on the other? The two anecdotes ‘Caste and cricket’ (p.151)[3] and ‘Caste Conflict and Dress Change’ (p. 168)[4] are pointers. ‘Caste and cricket’ is about the Indian cricketer, Babaji Palwankar Baloo (1876-1955). It repeatedly says he played for ‘Hindus’ and despite being very talented, never made captain of ‘Hindus’ because of caste discrimination. In point of fact he played for the Hindu club, Deccan Gymkhana[5] in Pune. In those days there was the European Gymkhana, the Parsi Gymkhana (the first non-European club), the Hindu Gymkhana and the Muslim Gymkhana, as the British refused to recognise India as a single national entity. The four played the ‘Bombay Quadrangular’ tournament which eventually expanded to the ‘Bombay Pentangular’ with the inclusion of the ‘Rest’. Palwankar was initially rolling, watering and tending the pitch in a European sports club. The Europeans used him in net practice where his bowling talent was noted. He recounted that the Europeans never allowed him to bat even in the nets. Eventually he was included in the Deccan Gymkhana team. Palwankar later moved to Bombay and played for the ‘Parmanandas Jivandas Hindu Gymkhana’ club. The anecdote omits several important facts which would have put the ‘caste’ issue in its proper perspective. There was a tussle between the conservative and progressive members of the Hindu Gymkhana for the inclusion of Palwankar in the team and the progressives eventually prevailed. It would be more appropriate to point out that Palwankar’s talent prevailed. At a function to honour Palwankar, the well-known freedom fighter Mahadev Govind Ranade, a Brahmin, garlanded him and chided his teammates for their caste discrimination. At about the same time, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (another Brahmin) praised him. There was a tussle (again) between the conservatives and progressives in the Hindu Gymkhana when it was time to appoint a new captain for the team. What was left unsaid was there was a valid cricketing reason[6], at least in those days, for not making him captain:

“[Palwankar] Baloo was the team’s main bowler, and it has traditionally been thought that batsmen make better captains than bowlers. Bowlers, it is thought, have to think about their own bowling while on the field while batsmen do not have any personal responsibility and can thus focus on the broader game.”

The progressives won again and Palwankar’s brother Vithal was eventually made captain in 1924, by which time Palwankar retired. The Hindu Mahasabha fielded Palwankar in an election to the Bombay Municipality in 1933, against an upper caste candidate. The Congress party fielded Palwankar against B. R. Ambedkar in the Bombay Legislative Assembly elections in 1937.

On page 145 there is another boxed anecdote, about Tom Brown’s Schooldays, a novel published a hundred and fifty years ago. The anecdote has been included because there is a conversation about cricket in it. The book has been prescribed as a non-detailed text for high school students for decades, as a legacy from colonial pedagogy; just as sections of the Bible were included in syllabi for university students pursuing masters in English. The excerpt of the conversation between Arthur and Tom discussing the virtues of cricket is perhaps understandable. But it is difficult to comprehend the objective with which the following introduction of the novel was included:

“Thomas Hughes (1822-1896) [...] wrote a novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays. The book published in 1857, became popular and helped spread the ideas of what came to be called muscular Christianity that believed that healthy citizens had to be moulded through Christian ideals and sports. [...] In this book Tom Brown is transformed from a nervous, homesick, timid boy into a robust, manly student. He becomes a heroic figure recognised for his physical courage, sportsmanship, loyalty and patriotism.” (Italics added.)

What is the effect of these lines on young, impressionable minds? If one were to put it bluntly, does it or not promote ‘muscular Christianity’? If the authors wanted to introduce a cricket anecdote from literature there are many to choose from. A funny, satirical account of the game “A Village Cricket Match” appeared in A. G. Macdonnell’s ‘England, Their England’ (1933). In fact, the book became immensely popular because of the description of the cricket match between a village cricket team and a London team. Christopher Nicholson wrote in 2004:

“No other account of a cricket match, or indeed any sporting occasion, has been as amusingly described nor is as replete with historical, social and political allusions.” (Italics added.)[7]

The history that is taught in our schools appears to be replete with inaccuracies, flawed, incomplete or politically slanted narratives. The syllabus does not seem to have been revised, going by the information available in the NCERT website. The rewriting of history in India does not have the brazenness associated with the rewriting of history envisioned by Orwell in his dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is far subtler and for that reason more insidious. In the novel, the function of Minitrue (ministry of truth) was to constantly rewrite history to suit the current philosophy and objectives of the rulers. One should remember, Orwell wrote about the rewriting of history in Oceania, a nation with a one-party rule. If India were ever to come under a one-party rule, well, the mind boggles to imagine the consequences! It would be naïve to dismiss the writing of history in contemporary India does not have anything to do with such an objective! Fortunately, there is no need to wrestle with a boggling mind about the consequences of one-party rule under Communism. Betrand Russell summed it up for us, eight decades ago and about six-and-a-half decades before the religion called Communism imploded:

“Communism is not democratic. What it calls the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is in fact the dictatorship of a small minority, who become an oligarchic governing class. […] To suppose that it will always act for the general good is mere foolish idealism, and is contrary to Marxian political ideology.” (Italics added.)[8]

Russell disabused the gullible of any mistaken notions they might harbor about Communism being some kind of democracy in which all citizens would have a say:

“Communism restricts liberty, particularly intellectual liberty, more than any other system except Fascism. The complete unification of both economic and political power produces a terrifying engine of oppression, in which there are no loopholes for exceptions.” (Italics added.)[9]

As if he was answering the snake-oil salesmen who have been extolling the virtues of Communist dogma, he unequivocally explained why there would be no progress under Communist rule:

“Under such a system, progress would soon become impossible, since it is the nature of the bureaucrats to object to all change except increase in their own power. All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive. Kepler lived by astrology, Darwin by inherited wealth, Marx by Engel’s ‘exploitation’ of the proletariat of Manchester. Such opportunities of surviving in spite of unpopularity would be impossible under Communism.” (Italics added.)[10]

[1] Bhattacharya, Neeladri. “History and a Changing World” In India and the Contemporary World—I (Textbook in History for Class IX. (2007). Publications Department, NCERT. New Delhi.

[2] Courtois, Stéphane, Werth, Nicolas, Panné, Jean-Louis, Paczkowski, Andrzej, Bartosek, Karel and Margolin, Jean-Louis. (1999). The Black Book of Communism—Crimes Terror Repression (Translated by Murphy, Jonathan and Kramer, Mark. Consulting Editor: Kramer, Mark). London. Harvard University Press. p. xix

[3] Kesavan, Mukul. “History of Sport: The Story of Cricket” (pp. 141-158).The chapter is drawn mainly from: Guha, Ramachandra. (2002). “A Corner of a Foreign Field: The Indian History of a British Sport.” Picador. Chapter VII.

[4] Nair, Janaki. “Clothing: A Social History” (pp. 159-178) (Textbook in History for Class IX. (2007). Publications Department, NCERT. New Delhi.

[5] Guha, Ramachandra. “Cricket and Politics in Colonial India”. Past and Present. No. 161. Nov. 1998. (pp. 155-190). p. 170. Accessible from http://goo.gl/FUq6Rc

[6] Ansari, Muneeb (2011). “The Bombay Quadrangular: Cricket as a Political Forum in India.” May 2011. Accessible from https://goo.gl/FXB9ox p. 11 Footnote.

[7] Nicholson, Christopher. (2004). “The Funniest Cricket Match Ever”. Accessible from https://goo.gl/UqoXVN

[8] Russell, Bertrand. (1935). “IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS AND OTHER ESSAYS”. Sixth Impression (1970). Unwin Books. London. p. 70.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.