Open your eyes, your Lordship (retired)
JOHN DAYAL
As a Malayalee who was also a judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice Kallupurackal Thomas Thomas occupies an enviable place in the Kerala Christian social pantheon. No one in his right mind will dare say he is turning senile. Far from it. That man of justice, and of peace, remains as sharp as when he was on the highest Bench in the land. It therefore remains a mystery why Justice Thomas, invited often by right wing forums in his twin identity as jurist and Christian, always ends up praising the Hindutva lunatic fringe and denouncing the conversions of new people turning to Christ.
In an address in Kochi on 1 august 2011, Justice Thomas praised the RSS for its discipline and said the propaganda that the organisation was anti-minority was "baseless". The Press Trust of India reported that speaking at a function here, attended by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, he also said the ''smear campaign'' against RSS that it was responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi must end. “There is a smear campaign that RSS was responsible for Gandhi’s assassination just because the assassin was once an RSS worker," he said, adding that the organisation had been ''completely exonerated'' by the court. This smear campaign must end against RSS," he said.
Gratuitously, Justice Thomas sought to expand his personal views to make them seem he spoke for the entire Christian community, including you and me. “I am a Christian. I was born as a Christian and practise that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also learnt many things about RSS," he said. He said he became an admirer of the RSS in 1979 when he was posted as district judge of Kozhikode, adding simple living and high thinking was its hallmark. During the Emergency, RSS was the only non-political organisation which fought against it. "We owe very much to RSS for sacrificing many lives for regaining our fundamental rights ...". "The propaganda that RSS was anti minority was also baseless," he said, adding he is a great admirer of the organisation as discipline is given importance.
This writer share some qualifications with the venerable justice. Like him, “I too am a Christian, a Catholic as a matter of fact. I was born as Christian and practice that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also leant many things about the RSS.”
One may in fact have learnt many more things about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, for when he was rapidly going the ladder of jurisprudence, Reporting on the RSS forty years ago, visiting their shakhas, recording what their leaders said, and documenting their written statements and literature, one saw the training of youngsters and college students, and the excesses of fat pot bellied middle agenda traders in khaki shorts and white shirts, an hour before they went back to their shops in Chandni chowk and Chawri bazaar, the wholesale market of old Delhi.
It was perhaps too early in the day,, because one did not see what crowds in Jhansi saw decades later -- the frightening scene of RSS cadres practicing with mock and real rifle and double barrelled guns down the main thoroughfares of town, or of RSS chief ministers themselves firing military hardware while posing for photographs. But one did see how RSS cadres were trained in meetings early morning in public parks as much as in closed door vyayamshalas, their “boudhiki” intellectual brain washing, and their war games. “Exercises” no less frightening –elaborate handwork with thick lathis, or staves, the sort policemen carry at night. One also saw “children’s games” in which boys formed a string holding hands, and then swopped down on a rival group, trying to “abduct” or capture persons, presumably women. The “boudhikis” were given to reading the editorials and main articles in those poison-pen official mouthpieces of the Sangh, the Organiser in English, not read at the Shakhas, and the Hindi language Panchjanya, the mainstay of the morning discourses. They would then discuss what damage the Muslims had done to India. It would all conclude with another salute not to India, but to a mythical “Mother India”, more goddess than a symbol of the land which they shared with practitioners of all other religions.
And therefore it is quite obvious that Justice Thomas, as is his right, looked only at the pretty saffron flowers, and forgot to look at the blood which sullies the earth on which the RSS flag is hoist.
First things first. Let us get the Gandhi murder out of the way, so to say. And I am indebted to Professor Shamsul Islam, the global authority of the Sangh Parivar, for once again going me this documentary evidence. He remains, with Communalism Combat, Anhad, Sahmat and the All India Christian Council, the national libraries on this fascist organisation.
After the murder of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on January 30, 1948 the RSS was banned on February 4, 1948. It was banned for anti-national activities and the government communiqué banning the RSS was self-explanatory: “In their resolution of February 2, 1948 the Government of India declared their determination to root out the forces of hate and violence that are at work in our country and imperil the freedom of the Nation and darken her fair name. In pursuance of this policy the Government of India have decided to declare unlawful the RSS.” [Cited in Justice on Trial, RSS, Bangalore, 1962, p. 64.]
The communiqué went on to disclose that the ban on the RSS was imposed because,” undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by members of the Sangh. It has been found that in several parts of the country individual members of the RSS have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoit, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military.” [Ibid, pp. 65-66.]
Prof Islam points out that the then Home Minister, Sardar Patel, reputedly had a soft-corner for the RSS. Patel continues to be a favourite with the RSS. However even Sardar Patel found it difficult to defend the RSS in the aftermath of Gandhiji’s assassination. In a letter written to the head of the RSS, Golwalkar, dated 11 September 1948, Sardar Patel stated: “Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…Apart from this, their opposition to the Congress, that too of such virulence, disregarding all considerations of personality, decency or decorum, created a kind of unrest among the people. All their speeches were full of communal poison. It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. In fact opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death. Under these conditions it became inevitable for the Government to take action against the RSS…Since then, over six months have elapsed. We had hoped that after this lapse of time, with full and proper consideration the RSS persons would come to the right path. But from the reports that come to me, it is evident that attempts to put fresh life into their same old activities are afoot.” [Ibid, pp.26-28.]
Hindu Mahasabha and RSS were jointly responsible for the murder of Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, this fact was further corroborated by Sardar Patel in a letter to a prominent leader of Hindu Mahasabha, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee on July 18, 1948. Sardar wrote: "As regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, the case relating to Gandhiji’s murder is sub judice and I should not like to say anything about the participation of the two organizations, but our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in the conspiracy.
The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.” [Letter 64 in Sardar Patel: Select Correspondence19450-1950, Volume 2, Navjiwan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1977, pp. 276-277.]
Congress secretary general Digvijay Singh, who was for ten years chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, and Union Home ministered P Chidambaram are supported by historical data when they called a focus on right-wing terror groups, specially the progeny of the RSS. Chidambaram recently has favoured a proper research and study of the phenomenon, asking the security forces to deal with the right-wing terror groups "sternly and fearlessly". He said that these groups were also radicalising the youth in the same manner as was done by banned SIMI or Indian Mujahideen. There was no difference between Indian Mujahideen and Hindu terror groups and both were enemies of the country."..so actually, we do not have one enemy within today, we have two enemies within and hope there will not be a third or a fourth or fifth," Chidambaram said.
Digvijay Singh has repeatedly said “I do not rule out anything. If they want evidence about Sangh’s involvement in terror activity, I have got evidence”.
Just in case Justice Thomas, and his friends such as Karnataka Minority commission member P N Benjamin, whose organisation BIRD provides occasional platform for the former judge’s fulminations and homilies, require judicial evidence, here is a brief summary of extracts from a series of judicial commissions that have investigated the role of the RSS in anti-Muslim violence since the Ahmedabad riots of 1969. That is over forty years of history.
"Here was not only a failure of intelligence and culpable failure to suppress the outbreak of violence but (also) deliberate attempts to suppress the truth from the Commission, especially the active participation in the riots of some RSS and Jana Sangh leaders." — Report of the Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots of 1969
“The organisation responsible for bringing communal tension in Bhiwandi to a pitch is the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal. The majority of the leaders and workers of the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal belonged to the Jan Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) or were pro–Jan Sangh and the rest, apart from a few exceptions, belonged to the Shiv Sena.” — Report of the Justice D.P. Madon Commission on the Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad of 1970
“In Tellicherry the Hindus and Muslims were living as brothers for centuries. The ‘Mopla riots’ did not affect the cordial relationship that existed between the two communities in Tellicherry. It was only after the RSS and the Jana Sangh set up their units and began activities in Tellicherry that there came a change in the situation. Their anti-Muslim propaganda, its reaction on the Muslims who rallied round their communal organisation, the Muslim League which championed their cause, and the communal tension that followed prepared the background for their disturbances....That is what the rioters who attacked the house of Muhammad asked him to do. “If you want to save your life you should go round the house three times repeating the words, ‘Rama, Rama’. Muhammad did that. But you cannot expect the 70 million Muslims of India to do that as a condition for maintaining communal harmony in the country. This attitude of the of the RSS can only help to compel the Muslims to take shelter under their own communal organisation.” — Report of the Justice Joseph Vithyathil Commission on the Tellicherry riots, 1971
"The RSS adopts a militant and aggressive attitude and sets itself up as the champion of what it considers to be the rights of Hindus against minorities. It has taken upon itself to teach the minorities their place and if they are not willing to learn their place to teach them a lesson. The RSS methodology for provoking communal violence is: a) rousing communal feelings in the majority community by the propaganda that Christians are not loyal citizens of this country; b) deepening the fear in the majority community by a clever propaganda that the population of the minorities is increasing and that of the Hindus is decreasing; c) infiltrating into the administration and inducing the members of the civil and police services by adopting and developing communal attitudes; d) training young people of the majority community in the use of weapons like daggers, swords and spears; e) spreading rumours to widen the communal cleavage and deepen communal feelings by giving a communal colour to any trivial incident."— Report of the Justice Venugopal Commission on the Kanyakumari riots of 1982 between Hindus and Christians
"The dispute on the route of the procession became sharp and agitated reactions from a group of persons calling themselves the Sanyukt Bajrang Bali Akhara Samiti who systematically distributed pamphlets to heighten communal feelings and had organisational links with the RSS. A call for the defiance of the authority and the administration when it refused permission for one of the routes led to a violent mob protesting and raising anti–Muslim slogans and thereafter an incendiary leaflet doing the rounds of Jamshedpur that is nothing short of an attempt to rouse the sentiments of Hindus to a high pitch and to distort events and show some actions as attacks on Hindus that appear to be part of a design. A survey had already established that all policemen, havaldars, home guards etc. were at heart ready to give support to them (Hindu communalist organisations)." — Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Jamshedpur, April 1979
“Even after it became apparent that the leaders of the Shiv Sena were active in stoking the fire of the communal riots, the police dragged their feet on the facile and exaggerated assumption that if such leaders were arrested the communal situation would further flare up, or to put it in the words of then Chief Minister, Sudhakarrao Naik, “Bombay would burn”; not that Bombay did not even burn otherwise.” — Report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission on the Mumbai riots of 1992–1993
Justice Thomas is invited to look up the full reports ,if he wishes too.
It would help the Church leadership, too, if it were to read those reports.
[ends]
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Just a moment, Mr Narayan Murthy
Not suggesting a coup, Infosys Murthy?
Billionaire Narayana Murthy owes an explanation for his slur against Sonia
JOHN DAYAL
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, of course had the backing of the billionaires of his time, the Ghanshyamdas Birlas and the Jamnalal Bajaj families, if not of the Tatas who could be presumed to be leaning just a trifle towards the British with whom their community identified so strongly. Jawaharlal Nehru, with his perceived socialist political ideology, was all but an anathema to India’s industrial, corporate and business classes, and the landlords, who inevitably drifted towards the Swatantra party and eventually found a safe haven in the bosom of the Jana Sangh which is now the Bharatiya Janata party. So was Nehru’s daughter, Indira whose sweeping nationalisations of vital sectors such as banking and finance left the rich seething with suppressed anger.
Analysts understand this angst. This is a global phenomenon, as much as corruption and nepotism. Money bags in India or in the US want governments under their control. Historically, in India from the times perhaps of Dhhana Seth and Jagat Seths, Marwari money princes who financed caravans and armies going past their strategic locations in the Rajputana, money has also meant political clout. In the recent corporate history of India since Rajiv Gandhi, India’s corporate sector has sought liberation from the “Permit Raj” or stifling government regulations made in the public interest to prevent profiteering. But the same industrialists, including such giants as the Ambanis, have sought protection from western monopoly capital. That would seem strange to anyone with reason, but such is the logic of high competition.
While the middle and small traders continued with the BJP, it was being presumed that big industry had developed a soft corner for Rajiv Gandhi with his modernistic views and futuristic vision, and because of the thrust to technology that he gave during his short five year term in government.
The drift towards the Congress became a flood, again in perception, when Prime Minister Narsimha Rao brought in as Union Finance Minister the International Monetary Fund former economist Dr Manmohan Singh [and with him such luminaries as Planning Commission deputy chairman Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia] and launched the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Despite a BJP interlude in power as the National Democratic Alliance for six years or so, with Dr Manmohan Singh’s advent into power as Prime Minister in United Progressive Alliance One and Two, one would have thought the Corporate sector, better known by its euphemism “India Inc.” were now firmly fixed in the Congress corner.
This of course did not happen.
Dr Manmohan Singh’s coalition regime’s fast-paced liberation in UPA-I has understandably sought time to consolidate in UPA-II. The rise in poverty, the land acquisition tension are all signs that the government is working for big business and not for the poor man in the parched fields. But this so called delay has created suspicion among India Inc.
It is not surprising that the biggest boys in industry support the BJP, and go as far on the limb as to support Narendra Modi, that icon of Hindutva and that persecutor of those who oppose him, specially Muslims. His role in the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 is well documented, and is now before the courts at various levels of investigation by a multitude of central and state agencies.
Two years ago, in an infamous statement, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani endorsed Narendra Modi as the “Next Prime Minister”
Fortunately, there was a popular uproar, and the troika was condemned in no uncertain terms. Political elements also took on big business and questioned its morality and short-sightedness, as much as its collective amnesia in forgetting what bloodletting had taken place in Gujarat. Ratan Tata got his small car project in Gujarat, but stopped carrying his love for Modi on his sleeve. His involvement in the Radia Tapes, which he has challenged in court, further silenced him as far as political indiscretions were concerned. The 2- G Scam has also made the Ambanis and the Mittals beat a hasty retreat from the public microscope.
It seems to have, however, taught no lessons to Infosys founder and chairman N R Narayan Murthy. Unless of course one were to argue that Murthy’s recent statement is part of an elaborate strategy to sow seeds of dissent and de-stabilisation in the UPA and the Congress with a much deeper conspiracy or agenda which could include a split in the Congress, the formulation of a new ruling alliance which marginalises the Nehru-Gandhi family. These have been tried before, the most recently during the Narsimha Rao era.
In an interview with the New Delhi Television channel 24x7, Murthy said UPA-II had failed to move ahead with reforms despite being in office for over two years. He put a part of the blame on the dual leadership structure with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heading the government while Sonia Gandhi controlled the party. "You know, I mean, I understand that he (Singh) leads a coalition. I understand that we have two leaders in the whole set-up. There is a leader of the party (Sonia), there is a leader of the government. So, all these things do slow down the decision-making; but I think that's precisely why the reason that the prime minister must, in fact, take acute note of that and perhaps accelerate decisions," Murthy told NDTV.
As news reports said, the Infosys founder, who is due to step down, was highly critical of the slowdown in decision-making. In the past too, he had expressed concern over corruption but his remarks coincide with those made by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, which is headed by C Rangarajan, a close aide of Singh. The panel of economists had blamed the government's preoccupation with corruption-related controversies for going slow on decision-making. "Well, you know we have a culture of taking slow decisions, we have a culture of dithering. This is not just at Delhi, it happens in every state. It happens in corporations, it happens in educational institutions. Therefore, the need of the day is for all of us to realise that nothing is gained by dithering. Nothing is gained by postponing decisions. You have to take decisions quickly, no matter that they appear unpalatable in the short term. Well, if I look at the facts and data, then it is true that we haven't had, or you know, taken any decisions ever since this government came back to power in 2009. Which means it is already two years and about three months old. So, to that extent, I think we should all be concerned," Murthy said.
Incidentally, Murthy also spoke out against corruption saying economists have argued that graft shaved off 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points from economic growth. By controlling inflation, India could have growth at double-digit rates. And he had some advice for politicians too. "It's a good idea to have politicians retire at 60."
He did not speak against business dynasties, though his own son has not succeeded him at Infosys but will, of course, inherit much of his wealth regardless.
It is not that Murthy alone is concerned at the slowdown in the economy which robs them of some profit taking, specially for service sector tycoons who do not have much stakes in the long term vision of brick and mortar companies. Newspapers have carried warnings by various corporate leaders on the “policy paralysis” . One such outburst was at a meeting tycoons had with Union Finance Minister and trouble shooter Pranab Mukherjee . The minster brushed aside suggestions of policy paralysis, saying it was perception,
Those who keep a keen eye on India Inc have said they are not surprised at all that Murthy said what he said, and how he said it.” With success comes hubris. This seems to have hit Narayana Murthy too. One tends to believe that I am successful, so I must be right. Whatever I think, say and do must be right. Because if I was wrong, I couldn't be successful, my company couldn't be successful. So I am right. Since I am right, I have a right to lecture the world on what is right,” blogged one critic.
He was commenting on Narayana Murthy's writing in a recent issue of Smart Manager, reproduced by Rediff.com on its website. The article starts off with describing and defining leadership, mostly quoted from Robert F Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. “Sadly, Murthy has started off on a wrong note. Many of the quotes in his article apply equally well to leaders of the wrong sort, which Narayana Murthy has in mind. "Leadership is about raising the aspirations of followers and enthusing people with a desire to reach for the stars. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi created a vision for Independence in India and raised the aspirations of our people." So did Hitler, said the blogger. Or Chairman Mao. “It is good to use Mahatma's name to justify your statement. Only, when you take Mahatma's name, be careful that what is attributed to Mahatma or Martin Luther King does not apply equally well to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. But it does. Good leaders need not always be impeccable men. While trying to describe leadership, Narayana Murthy unknowingly puts leaders of all kinds into the same box. He fails to distinguish the ideal leadership strain that he has in mind, thereby putting great names to disrepute.”
There is nothing theoretical when Murthy talks so directly of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.
There is no doubt that Murthy is critical of Sonia Gandhi’s leadership, and of her place as the chairman of the UPA, a position to which she wad democratically elected. Murthy also tends to forget that Sonia could well have been UPA chairman as also Prime minister if she so desired, but chose deliberately to enounce that option and chose a more democratic form of governance with a distinction between party and governance. The RSS would never understand this difference, for whenever the BJP was in power, so too was the RSS.
It is this duality in governance that has provided the correctives and kept a check on runaway liberalisation. The economic meltdown in the west is evidence that unchecked liberalisation is a recipe for disaster. The number of poor has grown in the USA in the last decade. In India, some tribals at least have been spared their land because the Congress party and its leadership cried a halt to the government’s plans. Ministers rooted in the party showed a human and political instinct. Rahul Gandhi’s recent sojourns in rural and Dalit and Tribal India could not have been done by mere economists of UPA-II. If the Congress returns to power next time, it will be in spite of India Inc, and because of the political will displayed by Rahul Gandhi, and by Pranab Mukherjee, come to think of it.
Murthy’s is, unfortunately, a direct call for a coup within the Congress. More so when it comes at a time that Sonia Gandhi is in a hospital, un-named, in an undisclosed country, presumably the US, where she has been operated upon for an unknown abdominal condition. In any other country including the US and the UK, this would be a reason for much political gossip and considerable political uncertainty. It speaks for the maturity of Indian politics that the country has taken this in its stride, respecting the Gandhi family’s privacy and allowing Sonia to convalesce without politics chasing her.
It also speaks for the dual system of political governance she has put in place. The party’s day to day affairs have been left to a small committee consisting of family and senior untainted advisers who have no agenda other than the welfare of the party. A K Anthony, the Defence Minister, loyal political trouble shooter Ahmad Patel, and Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi have been appointed together with Rahul Gandhi. This is a core group that cannot be denied. Government has been left to Dr Manmohan Singh, with Pranab Mukherjee standing by with him. Manmohan Singh’s health itself is cause for concern, but there is no threat to the government.
The opposition seems to feel this is an opportune time to mount the most vicious attack it has done in the past seven years. The criss in Parliament on the 2-G scam and Commonwealth Games scams and the crisis on the roads on the Lok Pal Bill are signs of the BJP and the RSS flexing their collective muscles.
It is, therefore, a pity that there has been no major denunciation of Murthy’s statement by the party official spokesmen. Mukherjee has dismissed such talk. Even Manmohan Singh ahs chosen not to give it any credence. They must point out that the twin leadership is the best course for the country for the present times, when the UK burns and the US melts down in fires of their own making, fires fuelled by the greed of their own corporate sectors.
Billionaire Narayana Murthy owes an explanation for his slur against Sonia
JOHN DAYAL
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, of course had the backing of the billionaires of his time, the Ghanshyamdas Birlas and the Jamnalal Bajaj families, if not of the Tatas who could be presumed to be leaning just a trifle towards the British with whom their community identified so strongly. Jawaharlal Nehru, with his perceived socialist political ideology, was all but an anathema to India’s industrial, corporate and business classes, and the landlords, who inevitably drifted towards the Swatantra party and eventually found a safe haven in the bosom of the Jana Sangh which is now the Bharatiya Janata party. So was Nehru’s daughter, Indira whose sweeping nationalisations of vital sectors such as banking and finance left the rich seething with suppressed anger.
Analysts understand this angst. This is a global phenomenon, as much as corruption and nepotism. Money bags in India or in the US want governments under their control. Historically, in India from the times perhaps of Dhhana Seth and Jagat Seths, Marwari money princes who financed caravans and armies going past their strategic locations in the Rajputana, money has also meant political clout. In the recent corporate history of India since Rajiv Gandhi, India’s corporate sector has sought liberation from the “Permit Raj” or stifling government regulations made in the public interest to prevent profiteering. But the same industrialists, including such giants as the Ambanis, have sought protection from western monopoly capital. That would seem strange to anyone with reason, but such is the logic of high competition.
While the middle and small traders continued with the BJP, it was being presumed that big industry had developed a soft corner for Rajiv Gandhi with his modernistic views and futuristic vision, and because of the thrust to technology that he gave during his short five year term in government.
The drift towards the Congress became a flood, again in perception, when Prime Minister Narsimha Rao brought in as Union Finance Minister the International Monetary Fund former economist Dr Manmohan Singh [and with him such luminaries as Planning Commission deputy chairman Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia] and launched the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Despite a BJP interlude in power as the National Democratic Alliance for six years or so, with Dr Manmohan Singh’s advent into power as Prime Minister in United Progressive Alliance One and Two, one would have thought the Corporate sector, better known by its euphemism “India Inc.” were now firmly fixed in the Congress corner.
This of course did not happen.
Dr Manmohan Singh’s coalition regime’s fast-paced liberation in UPA-I has understandably sought time to consolidate in UPA-II. The rise in poverty, the land acquisition tension are all signs that the government is working for big business and not for the poor man in the parched fields. But this so called delay has created suspicion among India Inc.
It is not surprising that the biggest boys in industry support the BJP, and go as far on the limb as to support Narendra Modi, that icon of Hindutva and that persecutor of those who oppose him, specially Muslims. His role in the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 is well documented, and is now before the courts at various levels of investigation by a multitude of central and state agencies.
Two years ago, in an infamous statement, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani endorsed Narendra Modi as the “Next Prime Minister”
Fortunately, there was a popular uproar, and the troika was condemned in no uncertain terms. Political elements also took on big business and questioned its morality and short-sightedness, as much as its collective amnesia in forgetting what bloodletting had taken place in Gujarat. Ratan Tata got his small car project in Gujarat, but stopped carrying his love for Modi on his sleeve. His involvement in the Radia Tapes, which he has challenged in court, further silenced him as far as political indiscretions were concerned. The 2- G Scam has also made the Ambanis and the Mittals beat a hasty retreat from the public microscope.
It seems to have, however, taught no lessons to Infosys founder and chairman N R Narayan Murthy. Unless of course one were to argue that Murthy’s recent statement is part of an elaborate strategy to sow seeds of dissent and de-stabilisation in the UPA and the Congress with a much deeper conspiracy or agenda which could include a split in the Congress, the formulation of a new ruling alliance which marginalises the Nehru-Gandhi family. These have been tried before, the most recently during the Narsimha Rao era.
In an interview with the New Delhi Television channel 24x7, Murthy said UPA-II had failed to move ahead with reforms despite being in office for over two years. He put a part of the blame on the dual leadership structure with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heading the government while Sonia Gandhi controlled the party. "You know, I mean, I understand that he (Singh) leads a coalition. I understand that we have two leaders in the whole set-up. There is a leader of the party (Sonia), there is a leader of the government. So, all these things do slow down the decision-making; but I think that's precisely why the reason that the prime minister must, in fact, take acute note of that and perhaps accelerate decisions," Murthy told NDTV.
As news reports said, the Infosys founder, who is due to step down, was highly critical of the slowdown in decision-making. In the past too, he had expressed concern over corruption but his remarks coincide with those made by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, which is headed by C Rangarajan, a close aide of Singh. The panel of economists had blamed the government's preoccupation with corruption-related controversies for going slow on decision-making. "Well, you know we have a culture of taking slow decisions, we have a culture of dithering. This is not just at Delhi, it happens in every state. It happens in corporations, it happens in educational institutions. Therefore, the need of the day is for all of us to realise that nothing is gained by dithering. Nothing is gained by postponing decisions. You have to take decisions quickly, no matter that they appear unpalatable in the short term. Well, if I look at the facts and data, then it is true that we haven't had, or you know, taken any decisions ever since this government came back to power in 2009. Which means it is already two years and about three months old. So, to that extent, I think we should all be concerned," Murthy said.
Incidentally, Murthy also spoke out against corruption saying economists have argued that graft shaved off 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points from economic growth. By controlling inflation, India could have growth at double-digit rates. And he had some advice for politicians too. "It's a good idea to have politicians retire at 60."
He did not speak against business dynasties, though his own son has not succeeded him at Infosys but will, of course, inherit much of his wealth regardless.
It is not that Murthy alone is concerned at the slowdown in the economy which robs them of some profit taking, specially for service sector tycoons who do not have much stakes in the long term vision of brick and mortar companies. Newspapers have carried warnings by various corporate leaders on the “policy paralysis” . One such outburst was at a meeting tycoons had with Union Finance Minister and trouble shooter Pranab Mukherjee . The minster brushed aside suggestions of policy paralysis, saying it was perception,
Those who keep a keen eye on India Inc have said they are not surprised at all that Murthy said what he said, and how he said it.” With success comes hubris. This seems to have hit Narayana Murthy too. One tends to believe that I am successful, so I must be right. Whatever I think, say and do must be right. Because if I was wrong, I couldn't be successful, my company couldn't be successful. So I am right. Since I am right, I have a right to lecture the world on what is right,” blogged one critic.
He was commenting on Narayana Murthy's writing in a recent issue of Smart Manager, reproduced by Rediff.com on its website. The article starts off with describing and defining leadership, mostly quoted from Robert F Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. “Sadly, Murthy has started off on a wrong note. Many of the quotes in his article apply equally well to leaders of the wrong sort, which Narayana Murthy has in mind. "Leadership is about raising the aspirations of followers and enthusing people with a desire to reach for the stars. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi created a vision for Independence in India and raised the aspirations of our people." So did Hitler, said the blogger. Or Chairman Mao. “It is good to use Mahatma's name to justify your statement. Only, when you take Mahatma's name, be careful that what is attributed to Mahatma or Martin Luther King does not apply equally well to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. But it does. Good leaders need not always be impeccable men. While trying to describe leadership, Narayana Murthy unknowingly puts leaders of all kinds into the same box. He fails to distinguish the ideal leadership strain that he has in mind, thereby putting great names to disrepute.”
There is nothing theoretical when Murthy talks so directly of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.
There is no doubt that Murthy is critical of Sonia Gandhi’s leadership, and of her place as the chairman of the UPA, a position to which she wad democratically elected. Murthy also tends to forget that Sonia could well have been UPA chairman as also Prime minister if she so desired, but chose deliberately to enounce that option and chose a more democratic form of governance with a distinction between party and governance. The RSS would never understand this difference, for whenever the BJP was in power, so too was the RSS.
It is this duality in governance that has provided the correctives and kept a check on runaway liberalisation. The economic meltdown in the west is evidence that unchecked liberalisation is a recipe for disaster. The number of poor has grown in the USA in the last decade. In India, some tribals at least have been spared their land because the Congress party and its leadership cried a halt to the government’s plans. Ministers rooted in the party showed a human and political instinct. Rahul Gandhi’s recent sojourns in rural and Dalit and Tribal India could not have been done by mere economists of UPA-II. If the Congress returns to power next time, it will be in spite of India Inc, and because of the political will displayed by Rahul Gandhi, and by Pranab Mukherjee, come to think of it.
Murthy’s is, unfortunately, a direct call for a coup within the Congress. More so when it comes at a time that Sonia Gandhi is in a hospital, un-named, in an undisclosed country, presumably the US, where she has been operated upon for an unknown abdominal condition. In any other country including the US and the UK, this would be a reason for much political gossip and considerable political uncertainty. It speaks for the maturity of Indian politics that the country has taken this in its stride, respecting the Gandhi family’s privacy and allowing Sonia to convalesce without politics chasing her.
It also speaks for the dual system of political governance she has put in place. The party’s day to day affairs have been left to a small committee consisting of family and senior untainted advisers who have no agenda other than the welfare of the party. A K Anthony, the Defence Minister, loyal political trouble shooter Ahmad Patel, and Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi have been appointed together with Rahul Gandhi. This is a core group that cannot be denied. Government has been left to Dr Manmohan Singh, with Pranab Mukherjee standing by with him. Manmohan Singh’s health itself is cause for concern, but there is no threat to the government.
The opposition seems to feel this is an opportune time to mount the most vicious attack it has done in the past seven years. The criss in Parliament on the 2-G scam and Commonwealth Games scams and the crisis on the roads on the Lok Pal Bill are signs of the BJP and the RSS flexing their collective muscles.
It is, therefore, a pity that there has been no major denunciation of Murthy’s statement by the party official spokesmen. Mukherjee has dismissed such talk. Even Manmohan Singh ahs chosen not to give it any credence. They must point out that the twin leadership is the best course for the country for the present times, when the UK burns and the US melts down in fires of their own making, fires fuelled by the greed of their own corporate sectors.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Too early to seeka second freedom struggle
Enough! said the People
But caution before one gets carried away with the rhetoric of a second freedom movement"
John Dayal
The problem with revolutions is that no one can predict how they will end up. That is as true of Cromwell’s in England’s hoary history as of Jose Marti and Bolivar in South America, and not forgetting Napoleon Bonaparte and Lenin in Europe. The jury is still out in the Indian subcontinent which saw “revolutions” in 1857 and 1942. The last one, a so-called “peaceful” one, led to Independence five years later in 1947 in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest unclassified religious civil wars in the history of the world, with at least a million dead, and tens of millions displaced in what are now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
And if you are of a religious bend of mind, the revolution started by Martin Luther. Not many would dare write about moral revolutions started by Jesus Christ, Mohammed and Nanak, which today face charges of paedophilia and prosperity doctrines, terrorism and xenophobia. Hinduism escaped a study because of its unforgiving allegiance to Brahminical exclusivity, and the Manu code, both proof against mere social, political and religious revolutions and analysis.
Retired Havildar Kisan Baburao Hazare, better known to TV news-channel audiences as “Gandhian Anna Hazare”, yoga teacher and tele-evangelist Ramdev, and for that matter Arya Samaj breakaway sect leader and former Haryana Minister Agnivesh, each promise India a new revolution which will cure “Bharat Mata”, the mythological icon common to their rhetoric, of such ills as corruption, hunger, mal-governance and homosexuality. Millions of middle class innocent and lumpens have sought instant nirvana in their arguments, “satyagrahas” and fasts unto death. No one has died for the cause so far, barring perhaps the death of credibility and a diminishing of a faith in parliamentary democracy and its instruments.
Faced with food shortages and corruption, rising prices in uncured inflation, a shortage of jobs and a rapidly widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, it is not spurring that in both the poor and the middle classes – who are not starving, but do feel the pinch of rising prices of fruit and television sets -- there is a desire to see the system change. For want of any other argument, they mistakenly also see the omen of systemic failure as a failure of democracy itself, and then seek solutions and instant cures outside the perimeter of Parliament and its structures. They lose faith in judicial institutions which, as wheels of justice are wont to, grind exceedingly slow, even if they occasionally grind exceedingly fine and do deliver justice. It remains to be seen if justice delivered in the rare judgments of the Supreme Court has the inertia to change systems of governance and of democracy in a permanent manner. Because such judgments are rare, as are the infrequent piece of legislation, they remain tantalizing in their hope. But they do not have the strength to reassure the masses, and stop them from pursuing mirages of permanent revolutions, and “new independence struggles.”
Early in the 1960s, a mere 15 years after the dawn of Independence, one of the grandsons of Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, launched the Moral Rearmament Movement. Raj Mohan Gandhi, one of the three celebrity siblings – the others were his elder brother and philosopher Ramu Gandhi and the younger Gopal Gandhi who last was Governor of West Bengal – had reinvented for India a version of the MRA birthed as a moral and spiritual movement in 1938 from the Reverend Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. This was a response to the first indications of the second world war and the militarisation of Europe. The slogan was that moral recovery was critical to economic recovery. MRA was, in Europe at least as well as in emerging free nations after the second world war, important in bringing unity between groups in conflict, and helping ease the transition into independence.
In its initial phases, Rajmohan Gandhi’s MRA attracted the youth, and as a student of Delhi University, this correspondent participated in some of the meetings together with hundreds of others. MRA however failed to take off as a major social movement in India, fast losing even its youthful participants. But it did leave an impact on the discourse on politics and critiquing the state apparatus in a non violent way.
Ram Manohar Lohia, lifelong critic of Jawaharlal Nehru’s eliticism, and articulating a socialism of his own away from the Gandhi-Nehru brand of Congress politics after 1947, had even earlier attracted the young, together with the socialist elements in the Congress such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Aruna Asaf Ali and others who flirted with democracy, socialism and Marxism of the Russian variety through the early years of Independent and democratic India.
It was perhaps left to Jaiprakash Narayan, working in the economic and political crisis after the euphoria of the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971 and India’s transient victory over Pakistan -- remember the 90,000 Prisoners of War from the Pakistani army captured by India – had ended, to launch another, and the most powerful, movement in contemporary history. His version of a “sampoorna kranti”, or total revolution, based on morality, rebelling against all forms of corruption and dynastic rule, would perhaps have taken another route if it were not for Indira Gandhi losing a court case against her election to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. Instead of accepting defeat and bowing to the judicial ruling, Indira chose a drastic way out. Believing that the people would eventually back her up, she suspended the Constitution, and imposed a state of internal emergency. Narayan, in hindsight, played into her hands, calling upon the army to revolt. That was the last straw. Opposition leaders were arrested overnight, the media shackled and democratic discourse banished. With no checks and balances, power, as it is wont to, soon passed into the hands of a apolitical coterie led by her younger son Sanjay Gandhi.
This was an extra-constitutional centre of authority. A vicious governance became the norm.. More people filled jails. Bulldozers cleared off slums an millions were banished to far off resettlement camps. Muslims rebelled in town after town in Uttar Pradesh, seeing a design to disperse them and disenfranchise them. Forcible sterilisations were the norm, but Muslims again saw themselves as the main targets. There was much violence. Obviously, a police state of this sort could not last long and Indira Gandhi had to lift emergency after 22 months and call for elections. A grand coalition in which the RSS was partners with the Marxists and all sorts of middle parties, many of them break way groups of the Congress, came to power as the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai. But JP's movement was quite dead in that government.
By the way, two major evils of today have roots in that rule of the Janata Party. One is the legitimisation of the Sangh Parivar [and what was then the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and is today the Bharatiya Janata Party], in its members’ shared incarceration in several jails with Marxists and rebel Congressmen. The second is the infiltration by RSS cadres into Media, the Police and other administrative and judicial structures which came under the control of this motley bunch in their brief “raj” or governance between mid 1977 and 1980 when Indira Gandhi swamped Parliament once again in a powerful resurgence.
It is always, therefore, good to remember a bit of history as one sees, or imagines, seeds of a revolution in the Hazares and the Ramdevs, Kiran Bedis and sundry self appointed leaders of civil society.
The people are today correctly and legitimately questioning the dispensation of the day. The IMF-ordered liberalisation and globalisation that the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh unsheathed in India has not brought about the desired impact on the economy as it is visible at the grassroots. It has created thousands of Dollar Billionaires in India. It has sired a 200 million and expanding middle class, estimates say. But it has had a terribly negative impact on the poor in the villages and the small towns, and in the slums of the metropolitan cities.
Writing in a rent edition of the Tehelka magazine, that bright young journalist Revati Laul – who defied the trend by switching from satellite news channels to the print media – wrote “The Indian growth story has been written with the blood of famers and tribals” She is referring to sell-outs to big land mafias and multinationals such as Posco and Mittals, but also to home grown giants such as Reliance and Tatas.
India’s education, food and employment records – the so called quality of life index – make it shrink from a economic powerhouse to a pigmy not too far ahead of new Africa.
India’s record as presented in its UPR – the Universal Periodic Review that nations have now to face in the United Nations once every five years – makes for dismal nod tragic reading in just about every segment – from gender and dalits, farmers and landless peasantry, all the way to police atrocities, custodial deaths, miscarriage of justice, and the xenophobic treatment meted out to religions memories, specially to the Muslims and Christians.
At a recent hearing in Geneva, NGOs spoke at length of the “exclusion of the most vulnerable – Dalits, adivasi communities, the rural poor – being perpetuated by the current economic growth model”. The vast majority of India’s working population are employed in the informal sector as “flexible labour”. As a result of this, the vast majority of India’s working population has been reduced to further poverty – about 77% (850 million) of the working people of India subsist on Rs. 20 per day. With no social protection, their rights are totally denied to them. The “social cost” of India’s growth was also discussed, particularly the mass displacement of millions of families due to purported “development” projects. With the displacement, traditional livelihoods are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale.[Data from the NGOs document for the UPR]
Although the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Parliament of 6,000 communal riots [mostly attacks on Muslims, but also the Kandhamal atrocities against Christians] in the last decade, the Indian state has failed to acknowledge this. Or to address human rights violations, including: large-scale displacements resulting from development projects and communal violence; enforced disappearances in conflict areas, deaths through encounters. widespread use of torture and increasing attacks against human rights defenders. The curtailing of human rights in the state’s response to terrorism, and the need to interrogate this response and its impact on human rights, was also discussed in the UPR.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the international associate of the All India Christian Council, specialising in religiousfreedom, told international for a of the widespread abuses in India, and the infringements of religious freedom, particularly that of the most oppressed castes, the Dalit Christians, “which are symptomatic of the extremist nationalist agenda of Hindutva.” It noted that the issue of caste lies at the heart of many of India’s human rights problems, including prejudicial violence, discrimination, labour exploitation and religious freedom infringements. “It should be considered as the main prism through which to view and interpret these problems; and the means of addressing these problems should involve reference to caste. The hierarchical caste system continues to dominate and shape Indian society to a considerable extent, detrimentally affecting the social status, treatment and socio-economic prospects of the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who comprise the ‘lowest’ layer of the caste system and represent 16% of the total population (at least 167 million), according to official 2001 census data. Dalits often bear the brunt of religious freedom violations in India, owing largely to proponents of Hindutva.
It is not just international agencies that have noted the extremist nationalist manifestation of Hindutva, which encompasses a vision of India as a Hindu nation in which minorities must assimilate to and revere the Hindu religion, race and culture and which, in practice, seeks to preserve and defend the cultural hegemony of Hinduism at the expense of minority religions.
CSW and others note that the chief victims of human trafficking, bonded labour, sexual slavery and other forms of labour exploitation, are Dalits or members of ‘low’ castes. The implementation of laws to prevent such exploitation is extremely poor.
Freedom of religion is infringed by legislative means: specially through religious discrimination in reservation policy and through state-level ‘anti-conversion’ laws. It is also threatened by religiously-motivated violence against the minority Christian and Muslim communities, which is typically committed with impunity.
Former Delhi high court chief justice Rajindar Sachhar, author of the eponymous report on the social and economic status of India’s Muslim community, recently noted “The cynicism of political parties is shown by the facts that inspire of warning in recent state elections which show another trend to criminal nexus in elections, thus of 824 newly elected MLAs of recent elections in the States a total of 257 have criminal cases pending against them. As is well known the politicalization of criminal is a stark and dangerous reality. Even in Parliament there are nearly over 100 MPs having criminal cases pending against them. There has been demand that tainted persons should not be allowed to contest elections. I feel that the law of Lok Pal should provide that the legislator has to be prosecuted for his misdemeanour, he should be deemed to be ineligible to continue as legislator till he is proved innocent.” Justice Sachhar was commenting on the controversy raised in the formulation of the Lok Pal, or Ombudsman Bill, with government keeping the Prime Minister, the senior judiciary and Members of Parliament out of its purview while the Hazare led group not only wanted all these groups to be coved by the Bill, but also demanded that government have no say in the choice of the ombudsman.
The furore over the Bill is an indication of the rot that has sent in. But the debate also shows that the voice of the pretty well off middle class – the same group that does not want affirmative action for Dalits in education -- has swamped the voice of the men and women in the village, the bonded labour, the homeless.
What sort of a second Freedom Struggle can we envisage for the poor. Not a freedom from Direct taxes, and certainly not the freedom to profiteer in the guise of free market economy.
Aruna Roy, perhaps one of the more sober human rights activists in the country – like many others, she too was a member of the elite Indian Administrative service, but resigned long before she would have become entitled to a pension – came up with some telling comments in recent reflection. “We have warned that in its current form, the Lokpal could become a Frankenstein Monster, concentrating power in a few, new, hands. Our key argument is over democracy itself. You know how easily one can become almost fascist in this country under its democratic overlay. To prevent that, one has to make sure he parliamentary process is strengthened, cleansed. But if you bypass the institution, you create very serious worries. Tomorrow, if three lakh RSS workers want a joint committee to look at changing the Constitution to make India into a theocratic state, will there be space for the/”
There is absolutely no question but that India needs reforms. Sensible economic reforms that put food into the mouth of babes and ensure cash transfers to the poor and the marginalised for all sorts of things, from education to clothing and a roof.
There must me a multiple pronged attack on corruption – the institutionalised payolas of the ministries and the nexus between the tycoon and the minister as exposed in the 2G scam have to be stopped. So also the corruption in the educational sector, and even in the private sector. It is common knowledge that in the entire private sector, including schools and colleges run by famous groups, the employees including teachers sign one certain amount as salary and get a substantially lesser one. There must be an end to the corruption which sends a soldier to the Siachin Glacier clad in ill suited uniform, and an end to the racket in coffins in which some of these soldiers return home.
Above all there must en end to the corruption – the bribe giving and the bribe taking – which impinges on the common man back in the village, in the small town, over every facet of life – from the making of a ration card to the money that comes from the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme.
It needs a commitment and a political will to contain this corruption. It can surely be done. That is the sort of revolution that can bring a second Independence. Independence from the tyranny of corruption and the moral and physical poverty it breeds.
[end]
But caution before one gets carried away with the rhetoric of a second freedom movement"
John Dayal
The problem with revolutions is that no one can predict how they will end up. That is as true of Cromwell’s in England’s hoary history as of Jose Marti and Bolivar in South America, and not forgetting Napoleon Bonaparte and Lenin in Europe. The jury is still out in the Indian subcontinent which saw “revolutions” in 1857 and 1942. The last one, a so-called “peaceful” one, led to Independence five years later in 1947 in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest unclassified religious civil wars in the history of the world, with at least a million dead, and tens of millions displaced in what are now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
And if you are of a religious bend of mind, the revolution started by Martin Luther. Not many would dare write about moral revolutions started by Jesus Christ, Mohammed and Nanak, which today face charges of paedophilia and prosperity doctrines, terrorism and xenophobia. Hinduism escaped a study because of its unforgiving allegiance to Brahminical exclusivity, and the Manu code, both proof against mere social, political and religious revolutions and analysis.
Retired Havildar Kisan Baburao Hazare, better known to TV news-channel audiences as “Gandhian Anna Hazare”, yoga teacher and tele-evangelist Ramdev, and for that matter Arya Samaj breakaway sect leader and former Haryana Minister Agnivesh, each promise India a new revolution which will cure “Bharat Mata”, the mythological icon common to their rhetoric, of such ills as corruption, hunger, mal-governance and homosexuality. Millions of middle class innocent and lumpens have sought instant nirvana in their arguments, “satyagrahas” and fasts unto death. No one has died for the cause so far, barring perhaps the death of credibility and a diminishing of a faith in parliamentary democracy and its instruments.
Faced with food shortages and corruption, rising prices in uncured inflation, a shortage of jobs and a rapidly widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, it is not spurring that in both the poor and the middle classes – who are not starving, but do feel the pinch of rising prices of fruit and television sets -- there is a desire to see the system change. For want of any other argument, they mistakenly also see the omen of systemic failure as a failure of democracy itself, and then seek solutions and instant cures outside the perimeter of Parliament and its structures. They lose faith in judicial institutions which, as wheels of justice are wont to, grind exceedingly slow, even if they occasionally grind exceedingly fine and do deliver justice. It remains to be seen if justice delivered in the rare judgments of the Supreme Court has the inertia to change systems of governance and of democracy in a permanent manner. Because such judgments are rare, as are the infrequent piece of legislation, they remain tantalizing in their hope. But they do not have the strength to reassure the masses, and stop them from pursuing mirages of permanent revolutions, and “new independence struggles.”
Early in the 1960s, a mere 15 years after the dawn of Independence, one of the grandsons of Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, launched the Moral Rearmament Movement. Raj Mohan Gandhi, one of the three celebrity siblings – the others were his elder brother and philosopher Ramu Gandhi and the younger Gopal Gandhi who last was Governor of West Bengal – had reinvented for India a version of the MRA birthed as a moral and spiritual movement in 1938 from the Reverend Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. This was a response to the first indications of the second world war and the militarisation of Europe. The slogan was that moral recovery was critical to economic recovery. MRA was, in Europe at least as well as in emerging free nations after the second world war, important in bringing unity between groups in conflict, and helping ease the transition into independence.
In its initial phases, Rajmohan Gandhi’s MRA attracted the youth, and as a student of Delhi University, this correspondent participated in some of the meetings together with hundreds of others. MRA however failed to take off as a major social movement in India, fast losing even its youthful participants. But it did leave an impact on the discourse on politics and critiquing the state apparatus in a non violent way.
Ram Manohar Lohia, lifelong critic of Jawaharlal Nehru’s eliticism, and articulating a socialism of his own away from the Gandhi-Nehru brand of Congress politics after 1947, had even earlier attracted the young, together with the socialist elements in the Congress such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Aruna Asaf Ali and others who flirted with democracy, socialism and Marxism of the Russian variety through the early years of Independent and democratic India.
It was perhaps left to Jaiprakash Narayan, working in the economic and political crisis after the euphoria of the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971 and India’s transient victory over Pakistan -- remember the 90,000 Prisoners of War from the Pakistani army captured by India – had ended, to launch another, and the most powerful, movement in contemporary history. His version of a “sampoorna kranti”, or total revolution, based on morality, rebelling against all forms of corruption and dynastic rule, would perhaps have taken another route if it were not for Indira Gandhi losing a court case against her election to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. Instead of accepting defeat and bowing to the judicial ruling, Indira chose a drastic way out. Believing that the people would eventually back her up, she suspended the Constitution, and imposed a state of internal emergency. Narayan, in hindsight, played into her hands, calling upon the army to revolt. That was the last straw. Opposition leaders were arrested overnight, the media shackled and democratic discourse banished. With no checks and balances, power, as it is wont to, soon passed into the hands of a apolitical coterie led by her younger son Sanjay Gandhi.
This was an extra-constitutional centre of authority. A vicious governance became the norm.. More people filled jails. Bulldozers cleared off slums an millions were banished to far off resettlement camps. Muslims rebelled in town after town in Uttar Pradesh, seeing a design to disperse them and disenfranchise them. Forcible sterilisations were the norm, but Muslims again saw themselves as the main targets. There was much violence. Obviously, a police state of this sort could not last long and Indira Gandhi had to lift emergency after 22 months and call for elections. A grand coalition in which the RSS was partners with the Marxists and all sorts of middle parties, many of them break way groups of the Congress, came to power as the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai. But JP's movement was quite dead in that government.
By the way, two major evils of today have roots in that rule of the Janata Party. One is the legitimisation of the Sangh Parivar [and what was then the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and is today the Bharatiya Janata Party], in its members’ shared incarceration in several jails with Marxists and rebel Congressmen. The second is the infiltration by RSS cadres into Media, the Police and other administrative and judicial structures which came under the control of this motley bunch in their brief “raj” or governance between mid 1977 and 1980 when Indira Gandhi swamped Parliament once again in a powerful resurgence.
It is always, therefore, good to remember a bit of history as one sees, or imagines, seeds of a revolution in the Hazares and the Ramdevs, Kiran Bedis and sundry self appointed leaders of civil society.
The people are today correctly and legitimately questioning the dispensation of the day. The IMF-ordered liberalisation and globalisation that the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh unsheathed in India has not brought about the desired impact on the economy as it is visible at the grassroots. It has created thousands of Dollar Billionaires in India. It has sired a 200 million and expanding middle class, estimates say. But it has had a terribly negative impact on the poor in the villages and the small towns, and in the slums of the metropolitan cities.
Writing in a rent edition of the Tehelka magazine, that bright young journalist Revati Laul – who defied the trend by switching from satellite news channels to the print media – wrote “The Indian growth story has been written with the blood of famers and tribals” She is referring to sell-outs to big land mafias and multinationals such as Posco and Mittals, but also to home grown giants such as Reliance and Tatas.
India’s education, food and employment records – the so called quality of life index – make it shrink from a economic powerhouse to a pigmy not too far ahead of new Africa.
India’s record as presented in its UPR – the Universal Periodic Review that nations have now to face in the United Nations once every five years – makes for dismal nod tragic reading in just about every segment – from gender and dalits, farmers and landless peasantry, all the way to police atrocities, custodial deaths, miscarriage of justice, and the xenophobic treatment meted out to religions memories, specially to the Muslims and Christians.
At a recent hearing in Geneva, NGOs spoke at length of the “exclusion of the most vulnerable – Dalits, adivasi communities, the rural poor – being perpetuated by the current economic growth model”. The vast majority of India’s working population are employed in the informal sector as “flexible labour”. As a result of this, the vast majority of India’s working population has been reduced to further poverty – about 77% (850 million) of the working people of India subsist on Rs. 20 per day. With no social protection, their rights are totally denied to them. The “social cost” of India’s growth was also discussed, particularly the mass displacement of millions of families due to purported “development” projects. With the displacement, traditional livelihoods are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale.[Data from the NGOs document for the UPR]
Although the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Parliament of 6,000 communal riots [mostly attacks on Muslims, but also the Kandhamal atrocities against Christians] in the last decade, the Indian state has failed to acknowledge this. Or to address human rights violations, including: large-scale displacements resulting from development projects and communal violence; enforced disappearances in conflict areas, deaths through encounters. widespread use of torture and increasing attacks against human rights defenders. The curtailing of human rights in the state’s response to terrorism, and the need to interrogate this response and its impact on human rights, was also discussed in the UPR.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the international associate of the All India Christian Council, specialising in religiousfreedom, told international for a of the widespread abuses in India, and the infringements of religious freedom, particularly that of the most oppressed castes, the Dalit Christians, “which are symptomatic of the extremist nationalist agenda of Hindutva.” It noted that the issue of caste lies at the heart of many of India’s human rights problems, including prejudicial violence, discrimination, labour exploitation and religious freedom infringements. “It should be considered as the main prism through which to view and interpret these problems; and the means of addressing these problems should involve reference to caste. The hierarchical caste system continues to dominate and shape Indian society to a considerable extent, detrimentally affecting the social status, treatment and socio-economic prospects of the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who comprise the ‘lowest’ layer of the caste system and represent 16% of the total population (at least 167 million), according to official 2001 census data. Dalits often bear the brunt of religious freedom violations in India, owing largely to proponents of Hindutva.
It is not just international agencies that have noted the extremist nationalist manifestation of Hindutva, which encompasses a vision of India as a Hindu nation in which minorities must assimilate to and revere the Hindu religion, race and culture and which, in practice, seeks to preserve and defend the cultural hegemony of Hinduism at the expense of minority religions.
CSW and others note that the chief victims of human trafficking, bonded labour, sexual slavery and other forms of labour exploitation, are Dalits or members of ‘low’ castes. The implementation of laws to prevent such exploitation is extremely poor.
Freedom of religion is infringed by legislative means: specially through religious discrimination in reservation policy and through state-level ‘anti-conversion’ laws. It is also threatened by religiously-motivated violence against the minority Christian and Muslim communities, which is typically committed with impunity.
Former Delhi high court chief justice Rajindar Sachhar, author of the eponymous report on the social and economic status of India’s Muslim community, recently noted “The cynicism of political parties is shown by the facts that inspire of warning in recent state elections which show another trend to criminal nexus in elections, thus of 824 newly elected MLAs of recent elections in the States a total of 257 have criminal cases pending against them. As is well known the politicalization of criminal is a stark and dangerous reality. Even in Parliament there are nearly over 100 MPs having criminal cases pending against them. There has been demand that tainted persons should not be allowed to contest elections. I feel that the law of Lok Pal should provide that the legislator has to be prosecuted for his misdemeanour, he should be deemed to be ineligible to continue as legislator till he is proved innocent.” Justice Sachhar was commenting on the controversy raised in the formulation of the Lok Pal, or Ombudsman Bill, with government keeping the Prime Minister, the senior judiciary and Members of Parliament out of its purview while the Hazare led group not only wanted all these groups to be coved by the Bill, but also demanded that government have no say in the choice of the ombudsman.
The furore over the Bill is an indication of the rot that has sent in. But the debate also shows that the voice of the pretty well off middle class – the same group that does not want affirmative action for Dalits in education -- has swamped the voice of the men and women in the village, the bonded labour, the homeless.
What sort of a second Freedom Struggle can we envisage for the poor. Not a freedom from Direct taxes, and certainly not the freedom to profiteer in the guise of free market economy.
Aruna Roy, perhaps one of the more sober human rights activists in the country – like many others, she too was a member of the elite Indian Administrative service, but resigned long before she would have become entitled to a pension – came up with some telling comments in recent reflection. “We have warned that in its current form, the Lokpal could become a Frankenstein Monster, concentrating power in a few, new, hands. Our key argument is over democracy itself. You know how easily one can become almost fascist in this country under its democratic overlay. To prevent that, one has to make sure he parliamentary process is strengthened, cleansed. But if you bypass the institution, you create very serious worries. Tomorrow, if three lakh RSS workers want a joint committee to look at changing the Constitution to make India into a theocratic state, will there be space for the/”
There is absolutely no question but that India needs reforms. Sensible economic reforms that put food into the mouth of babes and ensure cash transfers to the poor and the marginalised for all sorts of things, from education to clothing and a roof.
There must me a multiple pronged attack on corruption – the institutionalised payolas of the ministries and the nexus between the tycoon and the minister as exposed in the 2G scam have to be stopped. So also the corruption in the educational sector, and even in the private sector. It is common knowledge that in the entire private sector, including schools and colleges run by famous groups, the employees including teachers sign one certain amount as salary and get a substantially lesser one. There must be an end to the corruption which sends a soldier to the Siachin Glacier clad in ill suited uniform, and an end to the racket in coffins in which some of these soldiers return home.
Above all there must en end to the corruption – the bribe giving and the bribe taking – which impinges on the common man back in the village, in the small town, over every facet of life – from the making of a ration card to the money that comes from the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme.
It needs a commitment and a political will to contain this corruption. It can surely be done. That is the sort of revolution that can bring a second Independence. Independence from the tyranny of corruption and the moral and physical poverty it breeds.
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