Media Perspectives

The Inconvenient Truth about Maoists

2010-04-02T16:23:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, I attended a talk given by Arundhati Roy titled "Can We Leave the Bauxite in the Mountains". It was a slightly extended, somewhat less loopy version of her essay in the recent Outlook magazine, but both pieces were characterized by a peculiar romanticization of the insurgency in Chhattisgarh, and liberally sprinkled with her usual attention-seeking bon mots - terming Maoists "Gandhians with Guns", for example. I was somewhat perturbed by the assertion that Maoists were morally superior to the state, on grounds that they comprised of tribals who had taken to arms in support of their basic liberties, but couldn't put a finger on exactly why I was so discomfited. The record of the Indian state (to the extent that one can treat it as a monolithic entity) in dealing with its "marginal"/"peripheral" citizens is well-documented, and pathetic. So why was I getting so pissed off? Thankfully, I came across Apoorvanand's fine essay in Seminar today, and think he articulates perfectly the unease I felt at Roy's talk:

"This note attempts to understand the nature of the politics behind the violent actions of the Maoists. There seems to be an agreement among human rights activists that Maoist violence is a ‘forced’ response to the extreme repression of the Indian state. The argument is that since the Indian state has been consistently ignoring or violently repressing various people’s movements, the people are left with no choice but to take recourse to the gun.

There is a fallacy in this argument. We know about people’s movements on issues of land rights or displacement which have not turned into armed insurrections, even though they have suffered major losses and have been treated in a very callous manner by the state. Apart from the Narmada Bachao Andolan there are hundreds of big and small peoples’ resistance movements in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and other states which have not given up on the ‘parliamentary’ path of struggle.

Interestingly, we find that Maoist groups are also active in these areas and they constantly try to infiltrate and take control of such movements. We do not know of any movements organized by the Maoists which were initially ‘peaceful’ but compelled to turn to arms after all attempts at working with the state failed. I would suggest that the theory of ‘peaceful’ movements mutating into ‘violent’ insurrections appears flawed. Also that instead of using ‘Maoist’ as an adjective in a careless manner we should treat them as a political formation organized on the lines articulated in its political programme and constitution which is based on its own Marxian theory of revolution which is impossible without violence."

(I'm not convinced that Zizek is the best theoretical source for articulating a critical response to Roy, but he's not really germane to Apoorvanand's argument)

Roy's essay, not surprisingly, has prompted many critical responses. The best are collected in Outlook.

Soumitra Ghosh: "The Maoist movement is not a typical resistance group. It is driven by an ideology that has its own historicity and its own series of histories. Judging by that, the piece reads like a class-one propaganda, similar to those we used to receive from the occasional visitors to the 'closed' post-revolutionary societies throughout the last century. Many of those made for extremely good reading...and human. When it all came down, we saw the 'human' shrouded a lot of 'inhuman', and the ugly devils of hegemony, domination and power lurked behind the pleasant facade, and not all of that was bourgeois counter-revolutionary propaganda"

Anirban Gupta Nigam: The title - "Moonwalking with the Comrades" - summarizes what follows

But also, elsewhere.

Jairus Banaji's critique in Kafila: "In Arundhati’s vision of politics the only agent of social change is a military force. There are no economic classes, no civil society, no mass organisations or conflicts which are not controlled by a party (or ‘the’ party). There is no history of the left that diverges from the romantic hagiographies of Naxalbari and its legacies, and there is, bizarrely, not even a passing reference to capitalism as the systemic source of the conversion of adivasis into wage-labourers, of the degradation of their forms of life and resources and of the dispossession of entire communities."

Salil Tripathi's take in Mint: "Roy is experiencing the vicarious thrill all reporters yearn for—walking the jungle with rebels. The critical difference between real journalists and Roy is that she accepts what she is told, does not question much and romanticizes the revolutionaries, whereas someone like Alma Guillermoprieto in The New York Review of Books describes what she sees in Latin America, reminding us—and herself—how complex the world is, because there are at least two sides to every story. In Roy’s adventure in the Dandakaranya forest (a name resonating with Ramayana metaphors) there is “good” and “evil”; in the Marquezian landscape of Guillermoprieto, there are no angels, only devils of different hues"

What is additionally peculiar is Roy's emphasis on a "biodiversity of protest" when confronted with questions which fault her for excessive jingoism in support of violence. Roy seems to believe that the Maoists can coexist with Gandhian movements of a more traditional sort, and that the armed insurgency is likely to fall away once it's goals are reached. What Apoorvanand's essay does very successfully is to show this for the canard it is - Maoists are not likely to coexist with anyone who disagrees with their methods. Their aims, and in this they are very much like the LTTE, is to coopt, coerce, and infiltrate their competitors in dissent. Any ecology of dissenters with Maoists in it is thus unlikely to be very bio-diverse; if one has to be faithful to the analogy, they are like weeds who will only rest once they have destroyed all their competitors, sympathetic or otherwise, and taken over the entire eco-system. Whether Roy is blind to this scenario, or deliberately dissembling, is something which I leave to the reader to conjecture. A good place to start with the conjecture, however, would be Ramachandra Guha's old pieces: Arun Shourie of the Left, and Perils of Extremism

Debasing free speech

2010-03-08T13:53:00.004-05:00

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, in his usual perspicacious style, contrasts the treatment of MF Hussain by the Indian judiciary (upholding his right to free speech without significant qualification) with its treatment of a book titled "Islam: A Concept of World Political Invasion by Muslims", where:

"the normative and methodological claims in the judgment tell you how precarious free speech is. While the court makes expansive rhetorical claims on behalf of free speech, it equally makes expansive jurisprudential claims on restricting it. So under Section 153 of the IPC for example, it is “no defence that the writing contains a truthful account of past events or is supported by good authority.” No wonder even works of scholarship can be banned. In terms of incitement to violence it reiterates a rejection of the “clear and present danger test”; even a remote possibility is sufficient to invite a ban. Third, it does what a court should try and avoid. It directly engages in an interpretive battle with the petitioner over certain ayats of the Quran, trying to produce an “authorised” interpretation. This is disturbing because it frames the issue of religion in a bizarre way. Indian courts keep going to great lengths to show that there can never be anything offensive or bizarre in a religious text (and come up with claims like no religion can even preach violence, all religions are progressive if not the same and so forth). In short, courts confirm an ideology of respect for religion that emboldens those who claim they are offended”

Mehta’s suggestion is that the courts should stop messing about with defining what religion means in their terms, for this is a clear denial of the view that freedom of speech exists even for those who make statements which fall outside what counts as socially acceptable. Judicial protection for religion, in other words, is directly correlated with judicial disregard for individual liberties. This point is affirmed when one looks at the cases in which the judiciary steps in to correct perceived violations of the right to free speech and expression is that they are usually driven by controversies in the public eye. So, MF Hussain gets off when his paintings raise fundamentalist Hindu ire, but the uncelebrated author (one RV Bhasin) of “Islam: A Concept of World Political Invasion” does not. This raises significant barriers to a popular embrace of the concept of free speech, for protection for expression is then identified as a bourgeois value; available to the Shahrukh Khans, the Jaswant Singhs and the Taslima Nasreens, but not to the guy who writes crackpot anti-Islamic tomes and posts them on the internet. The right to free speech, traditionally regarded as being foundational to a truly democratic existence, now comes to be identified as a form of tamaashebaazi – a way by which to get yourself heard and gain some attention, but really nothing else. The dilution in the public regard for free speech is problematic, for this is represents one of the most common means by which democracy falls - by turning against its own core values from within.

The Naz Foundation Judgment and the Constitutionality of Book Bans

2009-09-12T11:56:00.003-04:00

The Indian Express has published, as an op-ed piece, an article I submitted to them on the Jaswant Singh book ban. You can find it here. The comments are particularly edifying.

Some Thoughts on Food Inc

2009-06-23T00:43:00.006-04:00

I recently caught a showing of the fascinating documentary Food Inc. There’s been enough pre- (and post-) release buzz generated for it already, so there’s little need to summarize its contents. While hardly novel in its scathing indictment of the way food is produced in America (and increasingly, across the world), what is truly significant about the movie is that it incorporates, virtually wholesale, all the different sorts of charges which are leveled against agribusiness and industrial food production. In its brief 90 minutes running time, the movie highlights the cultural critique of Western food production (think Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food), the consumerist critique (Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation), makes an effort to outline the disastrous environmental effects of meat production and over-dependence on corn (King Corn), the industrial roots of the obesity epidemic (Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma; The Future of Food), and the unhealthy influence which food producers (and retailers) wield over regulatory authorities in federal government, and in many of the states (The World According to Monsanto). Towards the end, it even manages to touch upon the impact American food manufacture has upon global food shortages.

Additionally, unlike the documentaries produced by militant environmentalist/animal rights groups, Food Inc. isn’t concerned solely with providing the viewer with a series of graphic images aimed at bludgeoning her into shocked revulsion. Its makers are far smarter than that, while there is plenty of animal cruelty on display in the movie (a healthy proportion of its footage is taken in slaughterhouses and chicken coops), the blood and guts are interspersed with plenty of reasoned discussion by production reform proponents (Pollan and Schlosser are given the most screen time), sustainable agriculturalists, organic food producers, animal husbandry lobbyists (though they are under-represented, most of the corporations whose activities are exposed in the movie were reluctant to be interviewed), and in what must be a notable coup, Walmart management. Through the sheer diversity of critical viewpoints presented, therefore, the filmmakers manage to provide something relevant for people of different ethical, political and gustatory persuasions.

Probably as a result of this overpacking of information, however, the movie comes across as somewhat rushed, and occasionally incoherent. Having a glancing awareness of some of the practices being criticized by the producers, I was able to appreciate where the movie was going. It is not clear, though, that viewers completely unexposed to the problems which result from contemporary food production patterns are likely to follow the argument in its entirety. Food Inc packs in arguments for food labeling, against closed chicken coops, against corn growers, in favour of seed-saving (and, as a corollary, against Monsanto and its strong arm IP protection strategies), against revolving door hiring practices in government, for stronger civic involvement in food consumption strategies, against the current structure of employment, against fast food production techniques, in support of stronger legislative protection for the food inspection regime, and much, much more. It is not clear exactly how all of these points are linked to each other in a coherent analytic manner, and what the central theme of the film is beyond a simplistic assertion of the ‘consolidation is bad’ line.The lack of a focused central narrative structure is an important flaw. Furthermore, the argument seemed somewhat forced at many points (in particular, the section on the likelihood that all of America’s consumption needs could be met by sustainable farming without an emphasis on the need to consume less than we presently do), whereas in other parts the trajectory of a particular line of thinking was left unmapped (the documentary is silent on what the increasing presence of big brand corporate food producers like Kelloggs, Pepsi and General Mills in the organic food sector means for the practice of conscientious consumption. At one point, Stonyfield Farm’s Gary Hirshberg informs us that ‘the jury is out’ on this question, but the movie makes no effort to flesh out why exactly that is). The producers could have done well to concentrate less on trying to capture all that is wrong in the way we make food and eat it, and more on developing their criticisms of particular egregious practices in a convincing manner.

I have a deeper problem with the nature of solutions the movie offers up for the crisis in our food system. While there are a plethora of options the producers provide us, both during the course of the film and in a convenient, eye-catching forest of bullet points prior to the closing credits, consumer activism is by far their most-preferred solution. In this regard, Food Inc shares the world view of both Schlosser and Pollan, who espouse civic action as the best way to bring about a change in the way we get our daily sustenance. This is, of course, not surprising given that they share producer credit for the movie. It is not entirely clear, however, that increased consumer awareness is ever likely to arise in the numbers sufficient to influence a systemic change on the scale necessary for a wholesome food utopia to come back into existence. Part of this, of course, comes from circumstances the movie itself highlights: food companies fight tooth-and-nail to maintain the system as it is, and will try to viciously stymie every attempt to provide greater information about their practices. These companies are also likely to provide information distortion (or, from their perspective, rectification) measures. Already, Monsanto has a site up seeking to rebut the claims made in the movie; this seems to be part of a broader internet-based backlash against Food Inc. The Pollans, Schlossers, and vocal WholeFoodistas of the world will continue to attempt to influence the public’s attitude towards healthy consumption, but they have a huge fight ahead on their hands, one which it seems extremely unlikely they are going to win on their own initiative. Consider for example the microscopic attention dedicated to President Obama’s diet. From the arugula controversy during the primaries, to the snide tittering about his consumption of a single French fry on his date night with the First Lady, his dietary preferences seem to provide an endless source of amusement (or vitriol, depending on who you listen to) for the country at large. Instead of sparking a greater debate about the benefits of healthy eating, or the fact that only those in the same economic category as the Obamas can take advantage of it, enlightened consumption patterns seem to signal a sort of snobbishness; something which is deserving of gentle mockery, if not open derision. In such an ideological climate, it is hard to imagine civic activism on a large scale taking off, far less bringing about a sea change in our current patterns of food production as part of a popular revolution against agribusiness.

What the makers of Food Inc fail to do adequately is to highlight the importance of governmental intervention (and not just regulation) into food production. While there is considerable criticism of the failures of the FDA and the USDA to enforce standards in an effective manner, the reluctance of Congress and State legislatures to strengthen their enforcement capabilities and toughen the applicable standards, and an entertaining and damning sequence listing the effects a revolving door policy have had in screwing farmers and consumers across the country, there is little discussion of the possibility that government could lead a greater cultural change in the way in which we eat. This is quite surprising, given that the documentary is quite clear to lay blame at the government’s door for its role in bringing us here in the first place. The makers note that seed production, for example, is now almost entirely privatized, and those who use publicly developed seeds are being squeezed into line, or out of work, by big agribusiness through the deployment of litigation threats and intellectual property protections. The State is responsible for this at two levels: firstly, by stepping out of the seed development process, thereby leaving farmers at the mercy of companies like Monsanto, and secondly, by taking the side of big agribusiness in its campaign against unencumbered farmers. Take another example: Pollan, in In Defense of Food, is quite clear to note that the calorific obsession plaguing our nation (and fuelled by food producers and packers) arose from a calculated decision by the Nixon administration to promote the production of cheap food. Like all forms of influential government regulation, consistent food policy privileged certain forms of interests over others, thereby leading eventually to a particular system of food production characterized by entrenched players with well-defined interests (a notable parallel: energy policy). Given the importance of governmental policy in getting us to here from grandma’s home cooked meals in less than 50 years, surely there is no reason to believe that government can’t be involved in moving us towards a better, more sustainable eating culture than the one we have now. More than just regulating the production and display of food, government has the power to use its institutions to enable a broader socio-economic shift in methods and patterns of consumption and production through the wise use of tax policy, grants for research and development, and the provision of greater access to knowledge through official information sources. This is not to argue, of course, that only the government can bring about this sort of change. Certainly not, civic activism has to be an integral part of the process as well. However, without significant governmental intervention and active policy encouragement, it is quite unlikely that any healthy eating initiative will have long-lasting (and widespread) effect.

Indeed, while it is beneficial for the government to intervene in influencing the prevailing attitudes towards food consumption and production, it is also probably essential for the state to step in if the wholesome food utopia is to be realized. This is because of the problem highlighted above: no entities other than the governments of the United States have the resources requisite to take the fight to food producers and agribusiness. Even concerted associational activity on the part of food defense activists is unlikely to be sufficient to counter the financial might and strategic cunning of these companies. For, as Hirshberg argues in the course of the movie, sensible eating campaigns cannot flourish only as Davids in a battle against Goliaths. As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in a recent New Yorker essay, while Davids have often prevailed against Goliaths in the history of conflict and innovation, this is hardly a dependable strategy for bringing about sustained change. What David needs, then, is a little help from a friendly giant: the State. One only wishes that the makers of Food Inc had taken this into consideration while presenting their argument to the public at large. The need of the day is not just to convince consumers to vote with their credit cards for better food, it is also to lobby government to help in the struggle for the consumers’ hearts, stomachs, and minds.

The Withdrawing State in West Bengal

2009-06-17T11:06:00.004-04:00

The Telegraph runs an editorial piece today about the 'Withered State' in West Bengal, which is mainly a description of how badly the government has messed up in dealing with the Lalgarh uprising, and the Maoist infiltration into the state. Its diagnosis of the condition seems convincing:

"A sectarian view of administration marked their long reign in the state. They did everything to blur and even obliterate the distinction between the government and the party. The administration was bent to serve the party’s interests. In a policy that was perfected by Anil Biswas, the late secretary of the West Bengal unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), top levels of the administration were packed with incompetent people. The only criterion for their selection was their ability to please the bosses at Alimuddin Street. With such people at the top, the administration simply lacked the capacity or will to deal with a crisis."

The title of the article may appear misleading, since the point being made is not so much the non-existence of the administration, as its sheer incompetence, brought about by years of subversion for political ends. However, the editorial goes on to clarify that the situation in Bengal isn't just about using the administration to further party ends (something which is a feature of politics in pretty much every other state in India), but also about replacing the enforcement process with a more deliberative, 'political' method of resolving disputes:

"To the party, all issues of governance must be reduced to politics. The result has been a bizarre situation in which all conflicts are sought to be resolved politically. This may sound pretty harmless; but what it meant in effect was that the party’s approach must prevail over all other options. Such an approach requires the administration to be constantly sidelined in order to make room for the so-called political approach"

This is reflected in the conditions leading to the Shalboni attacks on the CM's cavalcade: while the government did nothing for years to counter Maoist infiltration into Lalgarh and the surrounding areas, it reacted with brutal, and terrorising, force against local tribals following the incident. The decline of the administration implies that the state only has two options left when confronted with internal security crises: it can either do nothing (as it has done in Lalgarh, and continues to do in areas along the border with Bangladesh), or react with excessive, disproportionate force to try to re-establish some semblance of authority (Nandigram being the classic example of this). Neither of these options, of course, is sustainable in the long run to maintaining political authority over a large area of land, so this has led to a third feature of the state in Bengal: it is in withdrawal.

Much like the stereotypical Versailles court, the government in West Bengal is moving out of far-flung, troublesome areas towards consolidation in the centre, pausing along the way only to make a desperate attempt to prove its existence by gratuitous shows of violence. Again, bearing an uncanny similarity to Louis XVI's doomed reign, administration has been reduced to being a function of party games: the decisions of the mandarins at Alimuddin Street are final, and take precedence over the proposals of those in the administration who are far more experienced, and well-informed. This saga, as one may recall from history, is not likely to end well for anyone. Neither for the villagers caught in the cross-fire of the violent state and the despotic Maoists, nor for the pusillanimous administration, which can only withdraw so far and no further. It only took hours for Versailles to be occupied, but the aftermath of the march set back the course of French democracy by decades.

What's Wrong with Dynastic Politics?

2009-05-25T00:38:00.003-04:00

The Indian Express has just published, here, an article I wrote about why dynastic politics is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Comments and suggestions are welcome here.

Kristof: Is rape serious?

2009-04-30T12:01:00.004-04:00

Nicholas Kristof, in this NYT piece, wonders why rape investigations in the US are so desultory. It makes for very disturbing reading.

This links up to something I've been thinking about for a while: law enforcement officials in the US usually fall over backwards in haste when dealing with sexual crimes against minors (and understandably so). Why this apathy towards sexual crimes against women? Isn't there a worrying double standard in operation here: somehow, women who are raped aren't as deserving of the help of the State as those children who are. Is this distinction sensible?

Voting rights for Indians abroad: a bad idea

2009-04-22T22:52:00.004-04:00

I have an article in today's Telegraph on why Indian citizens shouldn't be allowed to vote when they leave the country. Comments, suggestions, insults most welcome here.

Feed him to the public

2009-03-19T17:36:00.002-04:00

My friend, and former colleague, Vinay Sitapati calls for Varun Gandhi's prosecution, both by the courts and the Election Commission, in this well-argued Indian Express op-ed. As behooves a rabid free-speech fundamentalist, however, I believe that Gandhi should not be prosecuted, and that hate speech regulations have no space in a healthy democracy.

Quite obviously, I do not endorse, support, or agree with anything in the comments Gandhi allegedly made here. I object to his prosecution, however, on matter of principle. Hate speech deserves protection like any other form of speech, because:

a. It is not clear that regulation of such speech will solve the more fundamental problem
b. Hate speech shines a light on social discontent, and is thus an important educational tool
c. In a democracy, one must have faith in the maturity of the people.

To build on each argument in turn. First off, by prosecuting Gandhi, or by preventing him from running for elections, the government/EC risks turning him into a martyr, and sparking a communal conflagaration. Already, sections of the Sangh Parivar, bloggers, and members of the public have begun speaking in support of Gandhi. Prosecution is likely to inspire a greater groundswell of opinion in his favour. Further, given that hate speech laws take as their aim the protection of minorities, it only furthers the resentment members of the majority feel towards the State's 'appeasement' of such groups. There is no need to make Varun Gandhi into a martyr for the religious right.

Secondly, the fact that Gandhi made these sorts of speeches on the campaign trail implies that he expected them to work (unless he's a psychopath, in which case prosecuting him makes little sense in any case). If this reflects the state of affairs in the constituency he was campaigning in, then it's a serious problem for communal harmony in Uttar Pradesh. Gandhi's outburst, therefore, is educative in its effect. It shows up this glaring social problem, and necessitates action against communalism in UP. Prosecuting Gandhi, in addition to increasing communal tensions, is also likely to be merely cosmetic. The real need, of course, is to combat the communal sentiment he is cashing in on. And his speeches have helped to identify the problem. Were hate speech driven underground, the wounds of hatred would fester without our ever coming to know about it, till perhaps it was too late.

Thirdly, Gandhi's comments were made in a particular political context: that of seeking votes prior to a massive democratic exercise. If one is truly committed to the notion of a liberal democracy, then his punishment must be left in the hands of the people. Democracies work on the principle that the multitude is ultimately wise, because there is no other political standard for wisdom in such systems of government. Second-guessing the decisions of citizens is not just politically foolish (for the reasons I've listed above), but also disrespectful of the views of the people. If we have enough faith in the views of the people to choose the best government from the various options available before them, we should also have the faith to believe that they will not be swayed by the hateful rants of a self-interested bigot. To do otherwise is, in this context, to strike at the very edifice the Indian Constitution bases our government on: the collective wisdom of the people.

Is Indian secularism dead?

2009-03-10T12:27:00.003-04:00

One of my first posts here was a qualified defence of the Indian version of secularism, which I took to mean a pluralist, inclusive approach to religion-state relations. This Indian secularism, I argued, was superior to the Western version because it was more tolerant than exclusionary; it did not require people to choose between communal identities in order to be good citizens. Additionally, this version of secularism was better in the Indian context, since it was informed by the Indian historical experience with a multiplicity of religions and institutional structures. European secularism emerged as a means of dealing with the conflicts which marked the modern religious experience in that context, and a forced importation of those principles into Indian law would probably have done more harm than good.

I'm no longer sure that I was right then. While it is incredible that the Indian version of secularism worked for as long as it did in the decades following Independence, the increased communalization of the public sphere seems to have rendered inclusive secularism a pipe-dream. Part of this may be explained by the ascension to power of the Hindu right, but I'm not sure that paints the whole picture. Firstly, the Hindu right has co-existed with the secular parties in India's political mainstream for a good while now. It's ideas have always been there, so why have they achieved salience only in the past 20 years? Secondly, the Hindu right's meteoric rise to political dominance on the backs of the Hindutva agenda is symptomatic of a greater willingness of the public to buy into their nightmare-peddling. The right didn't create its audience, the audience existed before they came to power. What, then, explains the greater sanguinity of the majority of the Indian population towards religious fragmentation and division in the last few years? Why have the Godhras and the Ayodhyas happened on our watch, rather than in the lives of the first generation of independent Indians?

This is obviously too huge a question to answer in a blog post. An entire book would perhaps be insufficient. I would, however, like to suggest one for the drift away from inclusive secularism towards an increased toleration for communalism in the public space. This draws on some of Pratap Bhanu Mehta's arguments in his brilliant Burdens of Democracy. The peculiar nature of the Indian constitutional system is that it tries to impose liberal institutions and political principles on what is still quite a feudal social structure. The moves to provide representative equality, exemplified by the burgeoning movement for reservations, does enfranchise previously repressed minorities. However, mere enfranchisement does not lead to a more inclusive, egalitarian form of government. What it does, instead, is create a more diverse political elite, which retains many characteristics of the previous regime. Politics in India still remains an effort to grab as much power and patronage one can for oneself (and one's immediate associates), it's just that the Mayawatis and the Mulayams are now as capable of corruption as the Gandhis and the Patnaiks of the past. This communalized race for public resources has an important effect on how people perceive themselves. One's conception of an Indian is no longer an important part of one's identity; rather, one regards oneself more in terms of how one is recognized by the State. It is more important, as a result, if I am a Brahmin, or a Dalit, a Muslim or a Hindu, because my interaction with the State depends on which of these categories I fall into. The line from group-based affirmative action to group-based political disintegration is quite easy to draw.

Now, this is not a post about caste. I use caste politics to make a point which would apply just as much to communal politics. A feudal state with a representative political elite is just as likely to reinforce communal disintegration as casteist fragmentation in political and social relations. This is because a caste- and religion-based political system is incapable of existing without reinforcing some set of prejudices. In Indian politics, therefore, there is no political independent of extant social relations; one cannot regard oneself as an Indian citizen without immediately also regarding onself as a Hindu/Muslim and Dalit/Brahmin (regional politics implies that parochial considerations play a large role here too. Asking what is good of India is likely to be answered with a response motivated by a perception of what is good for Bengal/Kerala/Northeast etc). Perhaps the integrated secularism preferred by the first set of Indian political leaders was destined to failure. A more robust secularism, which keeps religion out of the political sphere at all costs, might have led to a more robust nationalism in a time where the political elites were more representative of the population as large. I can't make the claim that this would have helped move India away from feudalism towards a more modern system of government, but it would have acted as a strong check on the influence of certain community-based ties on national government.

A Failure of 'Democracy'?

2009-03-03T16:36:00.005-05:00

Foreign policy 'experts' have been predicting the death of the Pakistani state for a few years now. While their ideological motivations may have been somewhat suspect, recent events seem to suggest that the facts are catching with the prophecy.

Exhibit A: The breathtakingly audacious attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team. In the heart of Lahore, amidst what were considered unusually strong security measures for such an event.

Exhibit B: The Pakistani government's response: blaming India.

Exhibit C: The Pakistani military suspending operations in Swat, a region bordering Afghanistan and virtually independent of government control. Initial reports seem to suggest increased Taliban control over the area.

Exhibit D: Pakistan is facing a severe financial crisis, inspite of availing of an IMF-administered multi-billion dollar aid package in November, 2008. If the US doesn't come through on its promised aid package, the economy is likely to collapse. Note the package comes with terms attached: none of the money promised is going directly to the government, it is going only to USAID-supervised projects. This seems to suggest worldwide suspicion of the effectiveness of the Pakistani state machinery.

Exhibit E: The complete breakdown of institutional integrity in Pakistan, as exemplified by the recent Supreme Court decision banning Nawaz Sharif and his brother from holding public office, and the subsequent dismissal of the provincial government in Punjab by President Zardari.

There are many more such incidents which shed doubt on the effectiveness of Pakistan's democratically elected political establishment, but these should suffice to make the point. Has the State in Pakistan finally failed?

I want to end on a provocative note. Sections of the international media greeted the end of Musharraf's rule with joy, relief and great hope. However, as New America Foundation President and veteran journalist Steve Coll points out in a recent New Yorker essay, South Asia's chances for peace will probably never be as good as they were under the General. With his departure, a ramshackle civilian administration has been besieged with challenges at every step, and has found itself hopelessly unprepared. Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned in this: that democracy itself (defined here as a system where the government is elected by the people, and nothing else) is an insufficient good. Without civic institutions and independent constitutional mechanisms strong enough to ensure the nurturing of a democratic culture, the mere fact of representative government is useless in resolving the problems which face a country emerging out of authoritarian rule. Ruthless corrupt tyrants are just as likely to emerge through elections as they are through coups, putsches or revolutions. This is especially so in countries which have no experience with constitutional government. Democracy isn't just a function of the ballot, it is a mode of political life. It is a form of political organization where citizens can exercise a check on the operation of their governments through independent institutions, like courts, the press, watchdog organisations; not just by pulling a level or punching a card every 5 years.

Perhaps, then, democracy isn't good for Pakistan. Perhaps military rule with limited provincial elections, a small but dedicated activist element, a robustly free English language press, and a moderately independent judiciary is what it needs right now. Till such time as peace comes to visit the region, and the seeds of democratic sentiment take root, perhaps authoritarian rule is the least worst option.

Another free speech assault

2009-02-13T11:32:00.004-05:00

In a shameful incident, the edito r of the Statesman was arrested for publishing this article by Johann Hari. The arrests were made pursuant to s. 295A of the IPC, which Tarunabh breaks down for us here. The article itself was unexceptional in every regard, and certainly can't be reasonably construed as an attack on Islam as a religion. Rather, it criticised the efforts of certain states to put forth an 'Islamic Declaration of Human Rights', intended as an alternative to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which permitted the exercise of civil liberties only within the limits set by sharia.

One could use this as a pretext for bemoaning the loss of respect for individual liberties in India, but I'd like to make a much more basic point here. If civil rights are only available at the behest of bureaucrats (as it is in the case of s. 295A), they risk being lost forever. The whole point of a pluralistic liberal state is to permit non-conformity, dissent, and criticism of others. By placing bureaucratic restraints on speech and expression, we stand to lose the vitality and energy which makes the right to free expression so valuable and important for culturally variegated societies like ours.

Chaddi charades

2009-02-12T17:46:00.007-05:00

Sagarika Ghosh has an article in the HT about why the Pink Chaddi campaign is a bad idea. While I don't agree with all of what she has to say (if young Mangaloreans think that wearing Shoppers Stop threads and downing Kingfishers gets them closer to Carrie Shaw, good for them. India has greater problems to worry about), I think it's fair to ask a few questions about the point of the campaign. Given the following, how effective is the protest likely to be:

a. The bunch of former Bajrang Dali-s who make up the Shri Ram Sena are no shrinking violets. Mailing them pink chaddis is not going to send them into hiding behind their wives' pallus; if anything, it's likely to enrage them even more. In any event, most of the chaddis are likely to be intercepted en route by lascivious mailmen. Initial responses to the campaign from Pramod Mutalik to suggest that he is far from blushing.

b. Perhaps it is about the principle of the matter; horrific acts of violence against women should not be permitted, and right minded individuals should express their protest in as forceful a manner as possible. Sure thing, but is the mailing of pink chaddis really the best way to launch a vigorous defence of liberal democratic values? As Ghosh points out, this is a move guaranteed to alienate many who are otherwise opposed to such disgusting displays of aggression. If the aim is to create a popular movement against vandalism, hooliganism, the colonization of public spaces and misogynistic moral policemen (and women), surely alienating potential supporters right off the bat isn't such an outstanding idea? If, however, the move is intended to sensationalise, then it's unfortunate that such a serious issue is being tackled in this callow fashion. The socio-cultural problems underlying such incidents are not going to be resolved (or even illuminated) by mere eyeball grabbing.

c. There's a more principled objection I have to this business. The whole point of the Shri Ram Sena's attack, it seems to me, is to assert that the consumption of alcohol in a pub at 3 am is somehow prurient, or sleazy. By launching a campaign which is centred around items of clothing imbued with sexual significance, the organizers risk endorsing the message of the Shri Ram Sena - that drinking in pubs is morally equivalent to being sexually liberal. Now I'm absolutely not claiming that there's anything morally wrong with sexual liberation; indeed India could well do with much more of it. All I am saying is that given the conservative nature of social mores in the country, this is hardly an effective plank on which to gain widescale sympathy for the victims of these horrendous attacks. It is also not clear to me that the campaign is a good way to educate the public about the need to respect individuality, for messages which alienate don't usually do a great job of educating.

Therefore, it strikes me that the Pink Chaddi campaign suffers from an identity crisis. On the one hand, it appears to be an effort to create a genuine mass movement against bigotry. On the other hand, it also appears to be a unique way of celebrating individual freedom, like the New York Central Park love-ins of the 1970s. The problem, of course, is that it can't do both. The latter aim, laudable as it is, contradicts the former; for it goes against the sympathies of many members of the public. And in failing to take into account the social conservatism of the Indian public, the campaign may just be falling into the Shri Ram Sena's trap.

PS: Pratap Bhanu Mehta makes a point which indirectly supports my conclusion above. In his wonderful op-ed, he argues that the Mangalore attacks indicate how poorly respect for rights is socialized in India. The solution, of course, is to launch social movements which aim at creating a broadbased rights culture in India. Sending goondas pink chaddis in the mail isn't going to get us very far down that road.

The hope and despair of 'Slumdog Millionaire'

2009-01-24T14:03:00.006-05:00

Ian Jack, former editor of Granta, has a column in the Guardian discussing how attitudes towards Indian attitudes towards 'poverty porn' have changed. He uses, as framing devices, the differing responses to Louis Malle's highly controversial Phantom India and Danny Boyle's universally applauded Slumdog Millionaire.

"A foreign director [Malle] comes to India and shoots a film that in part depicts considerable cruelty, poverty and squalor. The Indian government is outraged when the BBC broadcasts the film. There are official protests; severe restrictions are imposed on the BBC and any other foreign organisation that wants to film in India; the director never enters the country again. Forty years pass. Another foreign director [Boyle] shoots a film in India in which the cruelty, poverty and squalor are even more horrid. It wins four Golden Globes and 10 Oscar nominations. Most of India is delighted; domestic film-makers are chided for the timidity of their vision and mindless escapism of their output"

Why the change in response? What happened over the last 40 years to make Indians more accepting of such depictions of poverty?

"The reasons are complicated, but perhaps the main ones are that Indian society is a thousand times more confident, that the word "vulgar" has vanished from the critical lexicon, and that the world has grown very small"

The rest of the article fleshes out this hypothesis, drawing (among other things) upon a section of India's response to Mother India, Pather Panchali, and an interview with Vikas Swarup. It's very interesting, and provides quite a bit of food for thought, but I have one little doubt about it all. If Boyle had shot a documentary which went into corners of India rarely discussed in the foreign (indeed, even the Indian) press, and which didn't emphasise as much the triumphalism of the Indian spirit, would we still be as unflinching in our praise?

Terror in the time of apoplexia

2008-12-06T14:32:00.002-05:00

Mukul Kesavan brilliantly rips into the English-language television coverage of the Mumbai attacks in yesterday's Telegraph.

'During the crisis, the foregrounding of the Taj was inevitable. It was the site of the longest battle and the hideous drama of its near-destruction was bound to be framed by any sensible cameraman. But it’s still worth making the point Shyam Benegal made, that the dozens of people killed in VT (or CST) station and their grieving relatives and friends got very little screen time. When VT figured in the coverage, it was there for CCTV grabs of the T-shirted terrorist.'

It isn't news to anybody that the English media (even the Booker Prize winners among them) are notoriously susceptible to class prejudice, but Kesavan quite perceptively notes that the Mumbai attacks allowed for unveiled expressions of class resentment:

'Usually, privileged English-speaking Indians have the tact to be politically correct in their public statements; but in the middle of terror and tragedy, the sense of social self-preservation that keeps them from crassness, disappears. “Go to the Four Seasons and look down from the top floor at the slums around you.” That ‘you’ is us: Telegraph-reading, hotel-going people, who, in the heat of the moment and because of the death of people we know (or know of), become the world.'

Crassness. From the Latin crassus; solid, thick, dense, fat. What an excellent word to describe what passes for media analysis on English-medium TV channels today.

PS: Nivedita Menon has a somewhat less restrained, but equally thought-provoking, post here.

Bombay terror attacks: important phone numbers

2008-11-26T18:10:00.006-05:00

US State Dept hotline: 1-888-407-4747
Canada Foreign Affairs: 1-613-996-8885 (from Canada); 1-800-387-3124 (elsewhere)
UK FCO Emergency phoneline: +44 (0)207 00 800 00

(from Twitter)

Mumbai Police Control Room:
(+91-22) 22621855
22621983
22625020
22641449
22620111

Police Infoline: 1090

South Region Control Room:
(+91-22) 23089857
23089855
23070505

(PLEASE USE THESE NUMBERS RESPONSIBLY)

(From Mumbai Police)

Blood is required at JJ (+91-22-23739031) and St George's Hospitals (+91-22-22620240). Please call before venturing out.

(From Mumbai Help)

Adverse reactions to the Obama transition team

2008-11-21T10:33:00.002-05:00

The choice of Rahm Emanuel as Obama's Chief of Staff ('CoS') has led to some adverse reactions in the Middle East, and also among sections of the Indian media. Much of this is the usual underinformed (if not downright bigoted) response to the appointment of Jewish officials to positions of authority which intermittently emanates from these sources, but the responses are notable for they show how closely the Obama transition is being watched abroad. The CoS is an interesting executive position, previous office-holders have been variously referred to as the 'Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington' and 'the gatekeeper of the Oval Office', but the position is usually associated with internal organisation and external negotiations and is not clear how much influence Obama's CoS will have over the making of foreign policy. In light of this, another interesting question arises: are certain foreign leaders (or media elites) now having second thoughts about the Obama administration, and looking for excuses to justify their growing unease? International reactions to future appointments to his Cabinet (notably Secretaries of State and Defense) will be quite illuminating.

Global views on the Obama election

2008-11-06T10:35:00.006-05:00

The New York Times reports on reactions to Obama's win around the world. It's interesting to note that this article's (highly unrepresentative) sample of respondents often take the election win as being a reflection upon the American political system, as much as a means of expressing their resentment towards George Bush. The observations of Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at UCL, and Francis Nyamnjoh, of the CODESRIA, also make a lot of sense:

"'People feel he is a part of them because he has this multiracial, multiethnic and multinational dimension,” said Philippe Sands, a British international lawyer and author who travels frequently, adding that people find some thread of their own hopes and ideals in Mr. Obama. “He represents, for people in so many different communities and cultures, a personal connection. There is an immigrant component and a minority component.”

Francis Nyamnjoh, a Cameroonian novelist and social scientist, said he saw Mr. Obama less as a black man than “as a successful negotiator of identity margins.”

His ability to inhabit so many categories mirrors the African experience. Mr. Nyamnjoh said that for America to choose as its citizen in chief such a skillful straddler of global identities could not help but transform the nation’s image, making it once again the screen upon which the hopes and ambitions of the world are projected"

If these observations are true in part, then it becomes virtually impossible for Obama to sustain these levels of support within the international community. Given the different, often contradictory, reasons for his appeal, and the fact that his primary base is domestic, Obama is sure to dissatisfy some of his supporters soon after assuming office.

The Obama Effect I: Blacks in Britain

2008-11-03T22:29:00.005-05:00

In the past few months, for better or for worse, young Americans have been swept up in the heady wake of hope and optimism that follows Barack Obama wherever he goes. While there are far better places to track the growth of the Obamenon in America, this blog will take a little detour from its usual subject to follow international media reactions to Obama. This is in the hope of gaining some insight as to why this particular candidate, whose story is as much global as it is typically American, has brought forth such a uniformly positive response from the rest of the world, particularly when the American brand itself is taking such a tarnishing everywhere.

First up, an article in the Guardian looking at how the Obama effect is trickling down to black communities in Britain, and observing that Obama and Lewis Hamilton are now role models at 'the beginning of the greatest week ever in black history'. Note that both the Obama story, and Hamilton's, have similar inspirational overtones, both of them transcending economic hardships, tough family situations, and racial stereotyping to make it to positions of historic significance. It would be interesting to see whether the initial euphoria translates into something more tangible; as the article calls it, a 'new narrative' for black Britons.

Link: A great week in black history?

This article, of course, is being posted a day before the Presidential Elections of 2008. Irrespective of tomorrow's outcome, I think tracking international media opinion as a reaction to the result tomorrow is bound to provide for some interesting reading. Future themes follow two tracks: in the event of an Obama win, how long will his love affair with the rest of the world continue? In the event of an unlikely loss, will the sense of despondency and rejection have other effects on marginalised communities who look to the Obama ascendancy as a source of hope and validation for themselves? Will it further affect America's reputation among other countries?

"Neo-liberalism" and the Chinese Success Story

2008-08-07T11:39:00.002-04:00

The University of Chicago is considering setting up a Milton Friedman Institute. Some professors are strongly opposed to such an establishment, and have written a letter to the Provost and the President stating their objections. One of the chief objections is:

'Many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout much of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image. The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive. Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population, leading to the weakening of a number of struggling local economies in the service of globalized capital, and many would question the substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of “market democracy.” '

A Militant Defender of the Legacy of Friedman responds to this letter, ridiculing the 'Global South Objection' in this fashion:

'I can think of lots of words to describe what’s going on in, say, China and India, as well as what happened previously to countries that adopted the “neoliberal global order” like Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Billions of people are leading dramatically freer, healthier, longer and more prosperous lives than they were a generation ago.

Of course, we all face plenty of problems. I worry about environmental catastrophes, and their political, social and economic aftermath. Many people are suffering, primarily in pockets of kleptocracy and anarchy. Life’s pretty bleak about 5 blocks west of the University of Chicago. In my professional life, I worry about inflation, chaotic markets, and their possible death by regulation. There is a lot for thoughtful economists and social scientists to do. But honestly, do we really yearn to send a billion Chinese back to their “local economies,” trying to eke a meager living out of a quarter acre of rice paddy, under the iron grip of some local bureaucrat? I mean, the Mao caps and Che shirts are cool and all, but millions of people starved to death.'

Which is all well and good, but it leads me (and at least one other blogger) to ask the question: since when did China become a beaming poster child for the success of the neo-liberal agenda? How close, socio-politically, is the Chinese state to the neo-liberal dreamworld? Or, as Daniel Davies puts it far more eloquently:

'What is the intellectual journey that took the Davos crowd from laissez-faire via free trade and the WTO, to regarding China as a success story?'

Any thoughts?

A blow for free speech

2008-07-28T16:11:00.005-04:00

Here's an excellent piece by V Venkatesan breaking down the legal details associated with the FIR (and subsequent summons) issued against Ashis Nandy. It is a refreshing change from the usual equivocating defences of Sections 153A and 153B of the IPC (which criminalise "promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony" and "Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration" respectively) on grounds of maintaining civil harmony, national security, religious comity and what-not. Perhaps the best objection to these provisions is that of P Ananda Charlu, former President of the Indian National Congress:

"[S. 153A is] a dangerous piece of legislation and has been impolitic (among other reasons) by necessitating government to side with or to appear to side with one party as against another. In my humble judgment, it will only accentuate the evil which it is meant to remove. Far from healing the differences which still linger, or which now and then come to the surface, it would widen the gap by encouraging insidious men to do mischief in stealth…"

The point is similar to that made by Louis Brandeis when he noted that "sunlight is the best disinfectant"; the criminalization of politically unpalatable forms of speech merely pushes their expression underground, and thus prevents the State from taking positive steps to redress the grievances which lie at their root. More notable is the fact that Ananda Charlu was making his point in 1886, well before Brandeis, and at a time when freedom of speech in India was virtually non-existent. Ironically, not withstanding India's independence and the constitutional guarantees for the protection of speech, we now seem to have moved further away from Charlu's position than closer to it.

Thank God for Earthquakes?

2008-05-14T15:17:00.003-04:00

Simon Jenkins, in this fine Guardian piece, analyses how the earthquake in Xinjiang is a foreign policy blessing for many:

"You don't have to be cynical to do foreign policy, but it helps. A sigh of relief rose over the west's chancelleries on Monday as it became clear that the Chinese earthquake was big - big enough to trump Burma's cyclone."

Add to that China's relatively good behaviour, and then, Jenkins notes, the Western prophecy (of sit-and-wait-it-out-till-democracy-magically-blossoms) miraculously self-fulfils itself:

"To add to the relief, Beijing was behaving better than it has over past calamities. Since this might have been thanks to the west's "positive engagement" with China's dictators - even awarding them the Olympics - we could possibly take credit from the week's tally of disaster. Sorry about that, Burma."

Some of it is knee-jerk comparisons to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the piece is informed, at its heart, by a profound dissatisfaction with the motives of Western mandarins:

"After days of hand-sitting and abuse-hurling, the thesis that "diplomatic pressure" is going to burst the dam of Burma's hostility seems naive. I have read not one observer who believes this regime will admit aid workers, while many accept that it would be unlikely to contest a dump-and-run airlift under appropriate air cover. If the west refuses even to plan such an operation, it would be more honest to admit to doing nothing and stop counterproductive abuse of the regime.

What is sickening is the attempt to squeeze a decision not to help these desperate people into the same "liberal interventionist" ideology as validates billions of pounds on invading, occupying, destabilising, bombing and failing to pacify other peoples whose governments also did not invite intervention."

This deserves to be read.

Expose: India is classist

2008-04-13T13:32:00.003-04:00

Vir Sanghvi, in this quite hilarious article, stumbles onto a shocking fact about India:

"We are still shamelessly class-ist. We regard certain professions as so contemptible that any reference to them is treated as an insult."

And in what context did he reach this radical conclusion?

"[MP from Kerala] Abdul Wahab was supposed to board an Indian Airlines (now called Air India) flight at Kozhikode airport on Tuesday. He arrived at the aircraft late, escorted by the Indian Airlines manager. The aircraft’s pilot began shouting at the manager and complaining about the delay.

Why there was a delay is a matter of some controversy. According to Wahab, he had reached the airport on time, and had waited patiently in the VIP lounge to board. He suggests that Indian Airlines may have taken too long to emplane him. The pilot initially claimed that he had arrived late and expected the aircraft to be held up for him, but this claim has now been tempered.

What happened next, however, is clear. Wahab told the pilot to stop shouting at the Indian Airlines manager and said that he was no more than a ‘glorified driver’."

Hit the link for the best of what passes for class analysis in the mainstream media nowadays. I'm going to find myself a hockey stick.

Free speech for non-citizens?

2008-03-24T12:54:00.003-04:00

There's one aspect of the recent furore about the treatment of Taslima Nasreen which I believe hasn't received sufficient attention: the question of her citizenship. Unlike the producers of Jodha(a?)-Akbar, for example, she is not a citizen of India. She is a visitor at the courtesy of the Indian government, and as such is subject to restrictions on the enjoyment of certain rights which Indian citizens can avail of freely. To argue that what the Indian government has done in her case is unconscionable (and I refer here to her being asked to leave, not about her 'house arrest') is to take a position on an issue about which reasonable disagreement can exist.

The Constitution's founders, in their wisdom, founded the republic on the following basis:

'We the People of India having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Democratic Republic and to secure to all its citizens...liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship' (the Preamble to the unamended Constitution)

The limitation of the enjoyment of the right of free expression was quite deliberate, as may be seen from the wording of Art. 19(1)(a):

'All citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression'

Understanding the Constitution as it stood in 1950, therefore, it appears quite evident that certain freedoms are not automatically available to non-citizens of India. Parliament may, at its discretion, have extended these freedoms to such individuals, but this is not mandated by the Constitution. Thus, there's nothing immediately unconscionable about restricting the speech and expression rights of Taslima.

I don't think it should automatically follow, either, that the Indian government has an obligation to extend these constitutional freedoms to non-citizens in general, and to Ms Nasreen in particular. An Indian's citizenship is a valuable part of her identity, we have certain peculiar rights and obligations to enjoy and uphold by virtue of our constitutional position in the Indian state (since the Union of India rests on the endorsement of we, the people). To extend the enjoyment of the rights available to Indians to everyone else wholesale is to depreciate the value which one's own citizenship has. We have certain rights by virtue of our Indian-ness; either we have been born to the country, and have political, cultural and/or social ties (however distant) to it, or our parents do, and we enjoy the same ties by virtue of our relationship to them, or we have demonstrated a commitment to the idea of India by living there for a certain period of time (these are the requirements of Art. 5, and the Citizenship Act). Ms Nasreen is a political refugee, and it is quite a matter of pride that she chose India as her base away from persecution (as did the Tibetans, but more about them a little later), but she chose to live here at the pleasure of the government, and on the terms which it imposed on her, as on other visitors. In this respect, she is different from those who protested her presence in the country: the government is constitutionally obliged to respect their wishes, but it is not so required to protect her speech rights. When caught between the demands of (some of) its constituents, and the interests of a visitor, the government chose the former. It can well be debated whether this was the right postion to take, this is a matter on which reasonable disagreement can exist. It is unfair, however, to hold that there is only one position which the Indian government could morally take on the issue, to do so is to ignore the ethos of our Constitution: that being Indian means something special, and the enjoyment of the rights of Indian citizenship are a mark of distinction in this respect.

This is not to appear to be a rabid nationalist, far from it. Cosmopolitan arguments carry a good deal of influence with me, and I cannot deny that I have fully enjoyed the protection of good laws in the countries I have lived in as a guest. However, cosmopolitanism is not a universal value, it is possible to have reasonable (and morally acceptable) disagreement about whether a State should be cosmopolitan or not (e.g. Bhutan), and the degree to which it should be accommodating of the rights and interests of others who are not part of its political constituency. In light of India's experiences with imperial domination not too long ago, it is perhaps not surprising that its citizenship requirements are so onerous. Perhaps some day this will change, but that day is not here yet.

A word about Tibetan refugees and speech rights: I am a strong critic of the government's policy to bar Tibetan refugees from protesting in Delhi. This needs a longer discussion than a post-script, but I will outline my position in brief here: given the strength of the Tibetan government-in-exile's association with India, and the invaluable contributions of the Tibetan community to the State and the regions where they have settled, it is unfair to deny them the protection of the rights which other citizens enjoy. Questions of line-drawing, and substantive distinctions may well arise, but I think the point should not be over-emphasised too much. It would be tough to compare the contributions of the 100,000-odd Tibetan settlers in India with those of Ms Nasreen, and not just for reasons arising out of numerical superiority.

A short requiem for Indian civilization

2008-02-29T15:47:00.002-05:00

In which civilized country does this happen?

'Seventy-five-year-old Rajpati Devi of Kharagpur died on the streets of Calcutta early on Thursday, after being denied entry into a government-run hospital through the night.

The liver cancer patient died unattended after being referred by Nil Ratan Sircar (NRS) Medical College and Hospital to Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, where she was refused permission to even enter the premises.'

But all is well, for the babus are in action. Or are they?

' “We have not received any complaint yet. I will get in touch with the institute director and ask for a report once we get the complaint,” state health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra told [Telegraph] Metro late on Thursday.

The vice-chairman of the institute’s governing body added that the health department would “definitely look into the matter” once it received a formal complaint.'

I understand how well-intended concerns about the use of the label 'civilized' to create distinctions between nations are, but sometimes politically correct squeamishness just has to take a back seat to proper indignation. Can anyone, with a straight face, claim the mantle of civilization for India anymore?

PS - this post has been festering for a while, mainly in response to this, this, and this. If, as Emerson had us know, the true test of civilization is the kind of man it turns out, we've come a long, long way from the India which produced Tagore.

A New Bengali Radicalism?

2007-11-18T16:47:00.000-05:00

Ashis Chakravarti, in this Telegraph column, wonders if the Nandigram protests in Kolkata provides 'two simple messages':

'One, Bengal at last perhaps wants an alternative to the CPI(M). Two, the search for it cannot end in a return to the Seventies'

I'm not sure if this is true for all Bengalis, but as an analysis of the change in attitude towards violence among the bhadralok (especially those who had openly embraced militancy during the Naxalite period), the column makes for interesting reading. There's also more to the Ghare Baire reference in the piece than Chakravarti lets on, but that's matter for a different post.

Celebrating ad hoc justice

2007-10-19T15:10:00.000-04:00

I've been hearing many positive comments about stuff like this, and the public's reaction to the Rizwanur case in general. The middle class Bengali, tamed to within a shade of domestic felinity, now fully occupies himself with illusions of reclaiming the tiger's mantle. I am reluctant to join in the general enthusiasm for the popular reaction in cases like this, for much the same reason as some have problems with celebrating the 'indomitable spirit of Bombay'. I fear that we are becoming a nation of people who seek justice in the details, for whom instances of individuated claim resolution are sufficient to quench the desire for redressal. Instead of diverting our energies towards systemic reforms, to use such tragic cases as rallying points to press for an end to police impunity in general, we pat ourselves on our back for our candle-lit vigils, and our 'hard-hitting' editorials.

We had found ourselves in a great moral moment last month: we had the opportunity to not let the tragic death of Rizwanur go unatoned, and to use the tremendous groundswell of sentiment to actually press for radical change in the way we are governed. Instead, the CBI files a case against Todi, the CM calls on Rizwanur's family, and we are easily satisfied. Come tomorrow, and it's back to business for us, and for the defunct, dysfunctional bureaucracy which holds us in its thrall. Through our callousness, we are all complicit in the deaths of a thousand Rizwanurs. And no amount of lighting candles is going to change that.

Rethinking West Bengal's caste-free status?

2007-03-20T21:23:00.000-04:00

Yogendra Yadav calls the Left Front out for double-speak and hypocritical commitment to rights-talk in this Indian Express op-ed today. Pointing out the inconsistency in the CPM's actions, and it's positioning as "a party that swears by human rights and lofty democratic ideals lies vast hypocrisy", Yadav also notes that Nandigram isn't the first time something like this has taken place in West Bengal:

"The story of Alipurduar goes back to January 10 1987, twenty years before Nandigram. On that day, UTJAS had organised a rally of what they estimated to be about 50,000 people in Alipurduar, the headquarters of Cooch Behar district. As the rally started, they noticed something unusual: The police was nowhere in sight. Soon the rallyists found themselves surrounded by and under attack from the armed cadre of the CPM. The rally was dispersed as unarmed protesters were beaten and chased. The police surfaced, only to arrest the victims, once the party cadre had finished their job.

Note the parallels between Nandigram and Alipurduar: The Party faces a political challenge, decides to nip it in the bud and executes an onslaught in sync with the police and administration. The only difference this time was that there was unexpected resistance. And that an anti-SEZ movement makes more news today than a dalit movement did twenty years ago. There were no Gopal Gandhi or Tanika and Sumit Sarkar then to point out that the emperor had no clothes."

Nothing new here for those who've lived in West Bengal, but what is even more interesting is what follows after:

"This gap between the CPM’s preaching and practice did not surprise me. I have been looking at Christophe Jaffrelot’s research on the social profile of MLAs in India. His analysis shows that the proportion of upper caste MLAs is on the decline all over the country since the 1960s. There is only one exception: In West Bengal the proportion of upper castes has increased in the state assembly after 1977, after the Left Front came to power. A coincidence? Not if you calculate the caste composition of successive Left Front ministries: About two thirds of the ministers come from the top three jatis (Brahman, Boddis, Kayasthas). Perhaps you did not notice that West Bengal was the last major state to come out with an OBC list to implement Mandal. You might say, the CPM believes in class, not caste. Fair enough, but then why is the CPM in Delhi so aggressive about championing Mandal? Why does it present itself as more Mandalite than thou?

Or read the data supplied by the West Bengal government to the Sachar Committee. With 25.2 per cent of Muslim population, the state government has provided just 2.1 per cent of the government jobs to Muslims. West Bengal has the worst record of all Indian states in this respect. Gujarat has just 9.1 per cent Muslims and has 5.4 per cent Muslims among government employees. The irony, of course, is that the CPM was the first party to come out with a statement demanding implementation of the Sachar Report!"

Yadav's conjecture is a serious one, in essence arguing that in spite of the pride it takes in its apparent castelessness and commitment to secular tolerance, the West Bengal government is far worse off in respect of increasing opportunities for Muslims and lower castes than other states, even ones which have a proven track record of ill-treatment of minorities. This also turns much of the received political wisdom about caste and religion in West Bengal on its head, for it challenges the commonly held notion that institutional discrimination against lower castes and Muslims in Bengal is hardly prevalent.

Postscript: More on caste in Bengal:

Anjan Ghosh, "Cast(e) out in West Bengal" (Seminar)
Sandip Bayopadhyay, "Bengal's Caste Prejudices" (The Statesman)
VB Rawat, "Dalits Ask for Justice in West Bengal" (Countercurrents Newsletter)
Sukanta Bhattacharyya, "Caste, Class and Politics in West Bengal: Case Study of a Village in Burdwan", Economic and Political Weekly, January 18, 2003 (noting that, based on the study of data in one village in this district, "the numerical strength of the lower castes and lower classes has been established at the level of panchayat and other organisations. But at the leadership level, concentration of power is found in the hands of the middle peasantry", and further, "At the level of the elected village body one would expect a communist party to have a high percentage of agricultural labourers and poor peasants [Lieten 1992]. My findings show an absence of this group in the party level, which does not signify any radical restructuring of the rural power structure.")

Good old-fashioned whining

2007-03-03T18:04:00.000-05:00

Two Harvard-educated Rhodes scholars lay out their tale of great woe and deep misfortune. My heart bleeds for the battering they have had to take at the hands of cruel Fate:

Oxford Blues (do read the comments, they are often more sensible than the rest of the piece)

Moral of the story, don't go to Oxford (or any graduate school) if you are:

a. Ill-prepared for independent work, high expectations, a limited income and poor weather (aka "real life")
b. Can't bear to be away from Mum and Dad holding your hand, paying your bills and cooing to reassure you that everything will be alright
c. (from personal experience) Prone to liver trouble, or other alcohol-related occupational hazards

Dalits at a crossroads

2006-12-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

The Frontline runs an interesting analysis of why Dalits still have to face terrible atrocities on a regular basis. Significantly, it provides statistics to show how serious the problem is -

"The 2005 Annual Report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs states that a crime against Scheduled Caste (S.C.) communities is committed every 20 minutes in the country. It records that 26,127 cases of atrocities against S.C communities were reported last year. In 2004, the recorded number of crimes against Dalits was 26,887. The 2005 report states that there were 1,172 cases of rape of Dalit women, 669 cases of murder, 258 cases of kidnapping and abduction and 3,847 cases of causing hurt. There were 291 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act and 8,497 cases under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act."

The article notes that this happens in spite of adequate legal provisions for the protection of Dalits against violence and discrimination, and in contrast to the otherwise effective implementation of affirmative action policies -

"Successive governments have brought in legislation and programmes to protect the rights of Dalit communities. The safeguards enshrined in the Constitution stipulate that governments should take special care to advance the educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes, that untouchability is unacceptable and that all Dalit communities should have unrestricted entry in Hindu temples and other religious institutions. There are political safeguards in the form of reserved seats in State legislatures and in Parliament. The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, are designed to advance these safeguards. But prejudices die hard.
The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, is considered to be one of the most powerful pieces of legislation of its kind. But its implementation is unsatisfactory. The police, whose ranks are filled with members of the upper castes, are often reluctant to file cases under the Act, which provides for heavy punishment not only for the offenders but also officials who fail to take action. Often, the police take advantage of the victims' ignorance and file cases under the milder Indian Penal Code. Only 8,497 cases of the 26,127 cases registered in 2005 came under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which clearly shows the trend. Instances of the police refusing to register cases or even to accept complaints are widespread."

Perhaps most interestingly, the article puts a large amount of blame for the culture of toleration for Dalit mistreatment at the feet of Dalit leaders -

"The divided Dalit movement appears to be at a crossroads, with many of its leaders across the country losing their credibility. The "leaderless" violence in Maharashtra, many observers said, was a reflection of this reality. Fakir Bhai Vaghela, vice-chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, pointed out that while violence in any form could not be condoned, it should make Dalit leaders study the sentiments that caused it. "The sense I get is that [the] Dalit masses are getting increasingly upset at politicking between the leaders of the community and they want these leaders to come on a common platform that would advance Dalit interests in a united manner," he told Frontline. A number of small Dalit formations work in distant villages to get grievances redressed at various levels and to bring about a qualitative shift in the Dalit perspective about liberation. It is these groups that keep the flame alive."

One area in which the article does not venture is to examine the link between the hawk eye politicians and political activists keep on the enforcement of affirmative action policies, but the relative complacency they display for the enforcement of civil rights legislation (which are intended to help those Dalits who are truly unempowered). Is the problem of victimised Dalits in India today compounded by problems of class, in addition to the historical social disadvantage they have faced?

Letter against Sec 377

2006-09-17T15:36:00.000-04:00

Here's a petition signed by several Indian notables urging abolition of Section 377 of the IPC, which criminalizes "unnatural offences" and provides that

"Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Explanation: Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section."

Look out for the preface, written by Amartya Sen, who draws an interesting parallel

"(1877), as it happens, was the year in which the American Civil War began, which would ultimately abolish the unfreedom of slavery in America. Today, 145 years later, we surely have urgent reason to abolish in India, with our commitment to democracy and human rights, the unfreedom of arbitrary and unjust criminalization."

A little more eyewash

2006-09-14T21:31:00.000-04:00

And now for the UPA government's latest instalment of cosmetic lawmaking. After reservations for OBCs, it is now the turn of cash incentives for marrying beneath one's caste. Apart from the moral concerns involved, continuing to perpetrate caste hierarchies by rewarding upper castes, for example, it is also unclear as to what exactly this "incentive" is meant to achieve. Given that such measures already exist (in Gujarat the same amount is disbursed, with little known effect upon caste discrimination), the effectiveness of this initiative is quite dubious.

For those who take issue with my terming reservations for OBC "cosmetic", please see Dipankar Gupta's outstanding article in the Hindustan Times.

Pakistan in the War on Terror

2006-08-12T01:47:00.000-04:00

The NY Times calls Pakistan's involvement in the war on terror "a double-edged sword" (registration required). Noting the involvement of the July 7 bombers with Pakistan, and the gratitude expressed by Blair for the assistance extended by the Pakistani authorities in foiling the recent air terror threat, the article concludes that -

"But for Pakistan, success of this kind is a double-edged word. It allows Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to exhibit the country’s importance as a front-line ally in the global war against terror. But it is also a tacit acknowledgment of what a nexus Pakistan remains for would-be terrorists from halfway across the world."

Questioning whether the failure to combat terror operations from its soil is an intentional failure on the part of Pakistan, the article notes that -

"Still, Pakistani officials say they have been reliable allies against terrorism. It is impossible, they say, to keep tabs on everyone operating in difficult terrain in a country twice the size of California. “So there are maybe 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, or 500 people like this — we don’t know,” said a senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Whenever we get information like that, we do get hold of them.”"

There's some more about the exact links some recently apprehended terror suspects had with Pakistan, and how terrorists slip easily into Afghanistan from Pakistan. All in all it's not an earth-shatteringly revelatory piece, but a good place for someone unfamiliar with the issue to get an update on Pakistan's role in the war on terror.

"The Myth of the New India" - NY Times Op-ed

2006-07-07T05:23:00.000-04:00

An excellent op-ed piece by Pankaj Mishra in today's New York Times (registration may be required). Calling out the foreign media, and sections of our own, for incessantly crowing about India's financial and economic success, Mishra points out that

"But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country's $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106 (emphasis added)

Nor is India rising very fast on the report's Human Development index, where it ranks 127, just two rungs above Myanmar and more than 70 below Cuba and Mexico. Despite a recent reduction in poverty levels, nearly 380 million Indians still live on less than a dollar a day."

Noting that democracy is the only truly effective redressal mechanism which the people (i.e. the majority of India) have at their disposal is the power of the vote, Mishra also reminds us that

"But the anti-India insurgency in Kashmir, which has claimed some 80,000 lives in the last decade and a half, and the strength of violent communist militants across India, hint that regular elections may not be enough to contain the frustration and rage of millions of have-nots, or to shield them from the temptations of religious and ideological extremism"

Go read it.

Visualizing Development

2006-06-12T09:56:00.000-04:00

Google has brought out a new tool which allows you to look at how countries of the world perform on various development indices. It's available here. Once you're done fiddling around with the software (and I'm guaranteeing that you will mess about with it, it's very cool), do a comparative analysis of India, Mexico, South Africa, China and Brazil. Note that on almost all of the indices of development (except economic growth, where it's second, and life expectancy, second last after South Africa) India performs pathetically compared to these nations with whom we are supposedly similarly positioned.

Caste in the Indian Media

2006-06-11T16:46:00.000-04:00

Siddharth Varadarajan writes about the upper caste bias in Indian English language media here. It tells a sad story, but I had two reservations (no pun intended) about the piece -

a. It limits its analysis to the English language press. It would be interesting to see if this is a pan-Indian media problem, or limited only to this segment of the journalistic community. While still unfortunate and deplorable, it would not strike me as surprising that the English language media reflected the biases of the majority of their viewers (urban, upper middle-class etc)

b. The bias in reportage could also be explained by the real fear of the media's hiring policies being affected by the government moves on private sector reservation. As it would seem hypocritical to protest against reservations in the private sector, yet represent voices in favour of reservations in education, a broad policy of representing anti-reservation views seems to make sense purely from a selfish perspective.

Go read the piece anyway, it makes a vitally interesting argument.

Reservations: A Civilized Debate

2006-05-31T13:20:00.000-04:00

Here is Pratap Bhanu Mehta's letter of resignation from the Knowledge Commission, here's Yogendra Yadav's response, and Mehta's rejoinder. As Dilip D'Souza points out, the exchange is almost unique in the exceptionally polite manner in which it is carried out.

Both the letters agree on a single point - that the new reservations for OBCs are merely an extension of the politics of gimmickery which has come to symbolise affirmative action policy in India today. My position on reservations is here, and this latest drama has done little to change my views, except perhaps to strengthen my objection to reservations of all forms.

Is Calcutta Ugly?

2006-05-06T06:23:00.000-04:00

A very strange article in the Telegraph, commenting on efforts to create beautified zones in certain sections of Calcutta. The author asks, first -

"What sort of an eye would find Calcutta beautiful? Some would argue that such a gaze would have to be blinded with love. Or else, foreign enough to find in bad taste and dreariness exotic forms of the postcolonial. There is a certain slant of light in which a garbage heap, a roadside urinal, clouds of exhaust, a shopping mall, NRI apartments, or even a flyover might become radiant with beauty."

Thereby suggesting that s/he has already pre-judged the question of Calcutta's "beauty". S/he then claims that -

"At the core of Bengali public culture lies a form of irredeemable bad taste. This is as evident in the heaped-up gaudiness of the Marble Palace as in the ridiculous statues of regional heroes that have replaced the city’s imperial pantheon."

I don't understand how the Marble Palace, originally conceived as a private pleasure house, rather than a facet of "Bengali public culture" proves the argument (later examples include the New Market, designed by a decidedly non-Bengali architect R Bayney of the East India Railway Company). While one may criticise Bengal (and Bengalis) for a roster of vices, poor cultural taste isn't usually high on that list. In the final paragraph -

"It is surely significant that there has evolved no “Bengal School” of architecture worth speaking of, apart from the still-born Tagorean whimsies in Santiniketan. So that beautifying Calcutta is merely an exercise in conserving its colonial buildings — architecturally, the only good things to have happened to it."

Err, as anyone who's lived in North Calcutta would attest, there are some beautiful houses there, as also schools, University buildings and the like, which could do with some government upkeep, and are just as deserving of praise as the "colonial buildings". Perhaps the author should get out more often?

A Giant Falls

2006-05-01T19:39:00.000-04:00

John Kenneth Galbraith is dead. Some of the best obituaries I found honouring him are here -

a. The NY Times' highly comprehensive account of his life
b. A students' perspective
c. A view from inside the Beltway
d. A look back at Galbraith's life
e. The Express on a "good man"

And to get a glimpse into his wonderful mind, see the KSG Forum's "The World According to Galbraith", recorded when he was 93.

The Devil in Delhi

2006-04-23T08:36:00.000-04:00

Anjali Puri indulges in some very middle-class soul-searching (assuming middle incomers do have such things as souls) about Delhi in the latest Outlook.

"Political mecca, consumerist haven, now Metro chic... Delhi's all that. But it's also crass, crude and callous, a city sans a soul."

The arguments for this are based on oft-repeated standards -

1. The "maleness" inherent in Delhi's attitude to life, reflected in the treatment of the disabled, and of women
2. The power-hunger which plays out at every level in the city, and the culture of power agglomeration which everyone hates and indugles in at the same time -

"This world revolves on who you know and where you fit, and the disease has long spread to the rest of the capital, where name-dropping is both art form and survival skill. From chowkidars to builders, the city is adept at sorting out its occupants by income, social status and professional standing—to work out how they can be used. Yesterday's objects of desire are taken off guest lists within a day. (Ask Natwar Singh or Brajesh Mishra.) Name plates and visiting cards displaying self-generated titles such as Former Minister, Former MP, Former Principal, Former Chief Justice of India and Retired Ambassador abound. Loss of status is the Delhiite's ultimate nightmare, and he'll hang on to it with bleeding nails, if required"

3. The lack of "cultural manners" among Delhi-ites, and the general lack of sensitivity displayed to fellow users of common spaces

4. All this, combined with its nightmareish urban planning, make it a uniquely unliveable destination for most

"But the lasting image of the Delhi neighbourhood is not the park, but the street, clogged with the signs of the city's growing numbers and affluence...cars, chauffeurs, security guards baking under a summer sun...says writer Mukul Kesavan..."Delhi sometimes feels like a crude boom town—like Topsy, it has 'just growed', but with no settled norms for urban living." Would its citizens help each other, you wonder, if the city was submerged, Mumbai-like, by floods, or run for safety while their neighbours drowned?

The comparisons with other Indian cities are fascinating, of course. Compared to Bombay's significant slum population, for example, how many of Delhi's residents have to live above malfunctioning drains and drink contaminated water every day of their lives? Compared to Bangalore's "invisible" poor, how many Delhi-ites have to live a migrant shifting lifestyle, moving from construction site to site with their families in order to make a living? How many of the South's metropolises can lay claim to accommodating people from all over the country, each to his own greed, with equal opportunity? Once established in Delhi, how many inhabitants are in a mad rush to get out, like Calcutta, where only the dogs aren't potential exiles?

Having spent a significant portion of my life in the city of gin-drinkers, I can vouch for how difficult it all seems to the thresholder of India's elite, with our most valuable izzat being threatened and challenged at every stage. Yet, how much worse is Delhi than other Indian cities its size? Bombay, Chennai, Calcutta and Bangalore have spawned and inspired generations of homegrown creative elites, whose imagery has influenced our perception of these cities. Delhi, a city of permanent migrants, on the other hand has rarely been effectively chronicled by anyone native to it in the recent past. Is it fair to judge Delhi this harshly on our own ignorant biases, then?

A tale of two Indias

2006-04-14T11:41:00.000-04:00

Randeep Ramesh manages, on the whole, an excellent brief analysis of the impact of globalisation on India in this article in the Guardian. It is effective when he resorts to data to back up his conclusions

"Globalisation in India has been a broad and brutal process, creating a country in vital and vulgar flux. The bigger the gains in India from open markets, the bigger the disorientating changes. And the Indians who count themselves among the losers from this process easily outnumber the winners. More than 400 million farm workers each earn India just $375 (£230) a year in output. The comparable amount made by the million or so software engineers is $25,000 (£16,000)."

As also a comparison between the fate of the residents of Amby Valley and its surrounding villages

"Just a few hundred kilometres from Aamby Valley, in Vidarbha, the farming belt in eastern Maharashtra, are fields of black soil that once reaped a rich harvest of "white gold", as cotton was known. But the crop has lost its lustre in recent years. The arrival of new pesticides, genetically modified seeds and swanky tractors that soak up increasingly expensive petrol has pushed up the cost of the production. At the same time, India dismantled the wall of duties that kept out foreign cotton as part of its liberalisation drive.

Vidarbha's farmers, unprotected by market controls and tariffs, have to compete with growers from the European Union and US who are subsidised to the tune of billions of dollars a year. The last vestiges of Indian government support were withdrawn a few months ago. The result is that Indian cotton farmers have become impoverished in a few short years. Many have borrowed to stay alive - first from banks and then from usurious moneylenders. Chained in poverty by debts they cannot pay, farmers began to sell first their carts, then their cattle, followed by land and homes. Some offer their kidneys for 100,000 rupees (£1,300).

Others have put up entire villages for sale. The 800 acres of Dorli village in Wardha district, complete with accommodation for 46 families, can be yours for 200m rupees (£2.5m), about the same as three plots in Aamby Valley. "I can negotiate," says Sujata Halule, the 27-year-old elected member of the village council who senses a sale in my questions. "We have no food, no clothes ... dogs live better here now." On the front page of the local newspaper there is a grisly running tally of farmers' suicides in the area: the six-month total on the day I arrive is 348."

Though it is perhaps less effective when it resorts to Arundhati Roy as an authority for its claims

"Roy likens the country's progress to two convoys of trucks: a small group that is on its way to a "glittering destination near the top of world", and a more massive pack that "melts into the darkness and disappears". "A section of India has seceded from the nation," she says. "This project of corporate globalisation has created a constituency of very rich people who are very thrilled about it. They do not care about the hawkers being cleared from the streets or the slums that are disappeared overnight." As she sees it, India is not coming together but coming apart because liberalisation has convulsed the country at an unprecedented, unacceptable velocity. In the cities, the hammer and bulldozer are, often, noisily demolishing slum block after slum block, making way for shiny new apartments. Nowhere is this shift more profoundly felt than in the country's villages where, Roy says, "India does not live. It dies"."

On the whole, definitely worth a read and a few comments.

Forget about Ganguly, Save All India Radio

2006-03-04T21:08:00.000-05:00

The true scandal in this Test series is not the omission of Sourav Ganguly, it is the exclusion of All India Radio from broadcasting cricket across the country. As David Hopps points out

'Briefly, the situation is this. When the Indian government allowed commercial radio stations, it gave All India Radio exclusive rights to news coverage. Cricket commentary is classified - dubiously - as news, so only All India Radio can bid for the rights. Nimbus wanted £10m over four years, All India Radio offered much less, so Nimbus has decided the airwaves must remain silent. "It is very sad," said Pradeep, "that the history of the first Sikh to play cricket for England cannot be aired to the far corners of the Punjab."'

'But in Nagpur, All India Radio has been reduced to occasional mock commentary because of a commercial dispute with Nimbus, holder of the rights to cricket in India. Rights-issue disputes are dusty affairs, but this is what the Indian parliament should have been debating yesterday instead of posturing over the comments of Greg Chappell, India's coach, about the former captain Sourav Ganguly in the Guardian.'

And not a word of this in the Indian press...

On the India-US Nuclear Deal

2006-03-04T20:41:00.000-05:00

I was feeling quite ambivalent about the India-US nuclear deal. While a part of me was proud at America's recognition of India's unique position in the world, and the generally acceptable way in which we've conducted our foreign affairs, the other part of me wondered if encouraging India to make more use of nuclear energy was the right way to go about doing this. Rep Ed Markey's (D- MA) entry on Huffington Post has convinced me of the folly of the deal. The two most pertinent points of his article are that -

a. India does not need nuclear energy as a reward for good behaviour:

"There is absolutely no need for us to start exempting India from nuclear nonproliferation controls - and sell them nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel that can be made into bombs - under the guise of reducing their energy shortfalls when there are much better alternatives available."

I would agree with this, creating the nuclear option for energy production in India may not be the best way to meet our rising energy needs, especially since there has been so little debate and investigation about the feasibility of safe widespread nuclear power in India, and the efficiency of the production methods available to us.

b. While it may be tempting to reward India with this, violating the internationally recognised goal of non-proliferation, though in an ostensible good cause, may lead to far more chaotic results:

"We cannot expect countries like Iran and North Korea to comply with the rules when we help India break them. If we adopt special rules for our friends, we can expect Russia and China to adopt special rules for their friends. "Bilateral Special Exemptions" will replace the standards of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and a nuclear chaos of no rules at all will be the end result."

This too is true. The reason why we have certain international rules (and non-proliferation is not just a treaty-based rule, but also a customary norm in international law) is that a certain order be maintained. Violating these rules, even for a good cause, would lead to unintended disorder (Iraq, anyone?)

Go read it here.

Goan Sunset

2006-02-21T17:41:00.000-05:00

Probably the best holiday I ever took was a family trip to Goa in late 2002. The bridge to the north had opened just a couple of months before we visited, so it was really easy for us to cross over to visit Arambol and Tiracol since we no longer had to take the ferry. This bridge was built ostensibly to provide access for the villagers of North Goa to the mainland, and also to help tourism in this part.

David Jenkins touches a bit upon the effects of easy access to north Goa's beaches in the Travel Guardian -

"Well, in Morjim, there's an eyesore of a resort, and the Russian presence is large and rowdy - two sad-eyed ladies from Norway, who were seemingly born to tolerate, told me they found the noise intolerable. (The Russian mafia, incidentally, is said to be moving in on western-owned businesses in Goa; one restaurateur is alleged to have been slapped around; another had a gun shown to him on his premises. Let's hope they don't target the 3rd Eye, whose sign declares its owners to be Shiva and Sharon.) As for Arambol - for all the romance of its lagoon, it has a touch of the Costas about it."

Later -

"most people go to Goa for a two-week holiday. And all of them want (like Alex Garland) to find The Beach. That concept doesn't exist in Goa any more - not at Mandrem, nor even at Kerim in the far north, where a blank-eyed ex-roadie sat in a lean-to cafe, chugging Kingfisher beer after Kingfisher beer as two gaunt Russians chopped onions and tomatoes to make their lunch."

Jenkins does find one pristine spot, what would have once been called the "Real Goa". Where? Go read the article to find out.

The Cartoon Riots: Premodernism or Postcolonialism?

2006-02-15T13:26:00.000-05:00

Neely Tucker at the WaPo makes an interesting point in this piece about the history of blasphemy law in America, and attempts to put the reactions to the cartoons in the Islamic world in perspective. Quoting Sayyid M Syeed, Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America, the article notes that -

"While millions of Muslims may think of America as a pro-Israeli invader of Iraq, it is still true that much of that knowledge is not based on personal experience. European affronts, through a long history of colonialism and exploitation, are more visceral. They've left scars. They've created a different psychological relationship.

"European countries were colonial masters of several Muslim lands, and the psychological aspects of that relationship have lived on and on," Syeed says. "It's difficult for the Belgians, the Danes, the French -- it's difficult for them to believe that these former colonies have a religion that is of consequence. They get a kick out of insulting them." '

The point is subsequently emphasised by Yvonne Haddad, professor of the history of Islam and of Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University, who says -

"Of the 57 nations that belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, 54 have been colonized by Europe," she says. "That history is well known in Islamic countries, you've got the current war in Iraq. . . . Those things form the context for this sort of response. Devout Muslims are offended by the cartoons, but this is not just a religious affront. It's also political."

This puts an interesting spin on the controversy, and pushes it beyond the scope of the traditional debate on free speech. Assuming that the reaction is motivated not just by religious reasons, but also by patriotic, nationalistic reasons, are we still right to condemn it the way we would if it were purely a religious reaction? Analogising to the 1857 revolt, which many claim was sparked off by the grease used on the Enfield cartridges, does the affront caused to the religious feelings de-legitimise the action finally undertaken?

Hope to hear more about this.

Let's please talk about sex...

2005-12-01T06:34:00.000-05:00

Following on the Khushboo saga, the Prime Minister has spoken out about the need to talk openly about safe sex, to prevent an AIDS epidemic in India. So far no legal action has been threatened against him for defaming members of his community or of the country at large.

But if this gives cause for hope, there are more depressing indicators that things continue to be more of the same with our dynamic and proactive babus at the Ministry of Health. According to NACO's latest figures, there are 5.1 million HIV positive persons in India, which is a decline in the rate of infections from last year. This figure has been slammed by almost every other agency involved in AIDS relief in India, most put the figure at upwards of 6 million infections (see here, here and here), which makes India the country with the largest number of HIV positive persons in the world. The Health Minister himself conceded that data may have been faulty, especially with regard to the Northeast and Bihar, and NACO's analysis reveals another significant problem - that the epidemic is spreading quickly into rural areas.

It is estimated that over 80% of infections arise through unsafe sex, most of this heterosexual. While the patriarchal nature of sexual practices in India may well have something to do with this, what is unescapable is the low rate of awareness about sexual health in India. And the only way we can do anything about this is to talk about AIDS. It's free, it's easy and it saves lives. So please let's talk about it.

The Stinky Politics of the Khushboo Saga

2005-11-20T19:44:00.000-05:00

For those of you seriously concerned about the bizarre reactions to the safe premarital sex comment, the Indian Express runs an analysis of the politics behind the anti-Khushboo madness here.

Kyunki Dilli Dur Hai

2005-11-16T11:48:00.000-05:00

Rakesh Sinha has a very sensible column in the Express today, in response to the Jehanabad jail break. His argument is that the Red Menace can be combatted most effectively by an efficient police network with local intelligence, rather than by Central efforts to send in troops with no ground coordination. A must read for those interested in the strategic aspects of counter-terrorism in India.

More of the Same?

2005-10-14T03:53:00.000-04:00

Just when reports of Pakistan's acceptance of Indian aid made you think that this was an epochal moment in the relationship between the countries, here's indication that it's back to business for our new found friends (see also BBC's Why the Dispute over Indian army help)

Wisely, though, the Indian army is seeking to downplay the incident after initially publicising it, thereby avoiding some responsibility for the squandering of goodwill generated by Indian assistance towards the general relief effort.

There also appears to be some controversy over the Indian relief effort in Kashmir. While the BBC calls it a "cruel joke", Indian news sources appear to give the Army high points for its efforts to bring relief to the devastated regions (see this and this). Given that this is an opportunity to show the people of Kashmir that the rest of India cares about them, it would be a shame if apathy and the usual approach to disaster relief were allowed to prevail.

Quake Relief

2005-10-13T21:13:00.000-04:00

There appears to have been a massive spike in visits to this blog in the last 2 or 3 days, the total number of visits is more than a thousand now. Let me take this opportunity to mention that for those seeking updated information on the quake relief efforts, or wondering which organisations to donate to, the erstwhile tsunami relief blog is now the Quake Help blog and provides details on both.

Also I'd be interested in knowing how you're making contributions to quake relief, and how you contributed to the tsunami relief effort. I had a quirky system during the tsunami - I desisted from drinking for a whole term and instead donated the money I would have spent on drinking to Oxfam's tsunami appeal at the end of term. I'm planning to do the same for the quake, but I'm not sure this is the most efficient way of achieving the relief objective so I'm hoping to get some better ideas for this from your comments.

Is India free?

2005-10-12T20:29:00.000-04:00

I'm often in a minority of one when I tell friends that I believe free speech is too easily restricted in India, and our expressive civil liberties are too often taken for granted by the system and by citizens. The latest controversy to hit the Indian blogosphere just strengthens my conviction - see this and this for the lowdown on the IIPM-Gaurav Sabnis-JAM Mag face-off. The post which was targetted is here, linking to an article in JAM Magazine here.

Here's the irony - a man comments on what appears to be a scam, and is threatened by an institution for doing this. Rather than having his speech rights protected, he loses his job, and no action is taken against the institution. Too much free speech?

Happiness Olympics

2005-10-05T16:26:00.000-04:00

Apparently Indians are the world's 4th happiest people. Australia, the US and Egypt take the podium positions. We beat out Canada and Britain which share 5th place, and Hungarians are the world's most miserable people (perhaps because they're always hung(a)ry...)

Is there something I'm missing here?

Prithvi.

Bloggers without Borders

2005-09-22T12:48:00.000-04:00

This deserves publicity. Please pick it up and feel free to run it on your blogs. Also check out the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "How to Blog Safely" Guide.

Prithvi.

The Two Indias and the Politics of Protest

2005-09-22T00:10:00.000-04:00

Got this from Frontline - in Delhi, a protest led by Resident Welfare Associations resulted in a rollback of fares imposed by the Delhi government; whereas in Orissa, the cabinet and the legislative assembly fail to take action on the Fishing in Chilika Regulation Bill inspite of regular protests at the local and State level, and the Supreme Court's recognition of the rights of the fisherfolk.

What's going on?

International Voice of the People Survey

2005-09-15T11:39:00.000-04:00

Here are the very interesting results of Gallup's International Voice of the People Survey for South Asia (thanks T). The survey is a mix of the predictable and the surprising, for e.g -

1. While only 1% of Indians surveyed trusted politicians, 61% trusted the police and the army. Given media and cultural representations of the police (and increasingly, the army) this is a surprising finding indeed.
2. Perhaps even more surprisingly, 77% of Indians surveyed do not believe that India is democratically governed. This in spite of all our talk about being the world's greatest/largest/most successful democracy. Can we call a nation democratic if its people do not believe it is being democratically governed?
3. And finally, while 18% of the Pakistanis surveyed said they were most influenced by their religious leaders, no statistically significant percentage of surveyed Indians did so.

Do you find the results of the survey contrary to your assumptions too?

An Alternative to Reservations

2005-08-29T17:43:00.000-04:00

The recent flap over the Supreme Court’s decision on reservations for admissions to private educational institutions and the government’s reactions to it has put the question of reservations back on the front-burner. This is, in my opinion, where the reservation debate rightfully belongs. Merely because the political consensus in the country says something, does not necessarily mean that it is the correct view; and the Supreme Court’s intervention has brought to the fore the need for an impartial judiciary willing to act as a counter-majoritarian check on exactly such consensuses.
But that bit of hyperbole is not what I’m really concerned about discussing here. What I do plan to deal with is why I believe there is no need for reservations in India, and how the social problems which are ostensibly being corrected by reservations can actually be addressed far less problematically with other methods. Justifications for (and against) reservations can be broadly divided into two categories – consequentialist and moralist justifications. Consequentialist justifications for reservations look at the consequences of reservations as their merits, consequentialist opposition to reservation looks at the consequences as demerit. Similarly, moralist justifications look at reservations as being imperative because of the morality of ensuring social justice, substantive justice etc., whereas moralist opposition looks at reservations being immoral (or unacceptable) because of the essential immorality of the State privileging one community over another. I’m leaving out of the loop here that form of opposition which asserts that reservations (and affirmative action) are immoral because of the inherent superiority of upper castes. While there may well be many people who hold this opinion, I would believe (and hope) that such arguments would not gain much ground in public debate today.
Before I go any further, a distinction must be made between affirmative action and reservations, because this is essential to the argument which follows. Not all forms of affirmative action involve reservations. Affirmative action is a substantive equality enhancing measure which aims at annulling the effects of historical discrimination in a given society. There are thus many forms of affirmative action, many of which do not involve the prescription of quotas, or even legal intervention. There is nothing prima facie inconsistent in supporting affirmative action in principle and yet opposing reservations, something which I am about to do.
Now affirmative action is usually to be justified on a moral ground – that there is a moral right of those who are historically discriminated against to reach a situation where the effects of such discrimination are removed. Hence, arguments against affirmative action must also counter it on the moral ground, that mere formal equality (ensuring non-discrimination by law, for example) is sufficient. I do not intend to go into this debate; I believe that the moral imperatives of affirmative action are strong enough. On the other hand, reservations as a means of affirmative action are often (though admittedly not always) justified on consequential grounds – that given our political systems and the predominance of upper castes in administration and education and public life, it is the most effective means of ensuring affirmative action. This may or may not be true, but I would like to offer a moral argument against reservations, without seeking to present a moral argument against the principle of affirmative action.

There are two levels of argument based on morality against the system of reservations in India today. The first level is an argument from merit, the second is an argument from multiple equality. The merit argument has a simple and a complex merit aspect - the simple merit argument is that merit alone can be the basis for selection by the State, as an offshoot of its commitment to neutrality. This is of course not a meaningful argument in light of our Constitution's providing the State with a socialist mandate, the State can well act in favour of the underprivileged at the expense of the privileged. The complex merit argument is that while the State can privilege certain deprived communities over others, it should not do so in certain fields (e.g. employment, education and so on) because these are fields which either depend wholly on merit for their importance (as it would be in the case of education) or because these are fields which the State does not have the moral authority to determine membership of (e.g. employment). The complex merit view does have some "merit" in it, but the problem with this view is that it could be taken to deny all affirmative action on the same basis.

The multiple equality argument is more convincing. This argument puts forth the view that equality and discrimination occur at many levels. Deprivation and discrimination on the basis of social status, for historical reasons or due to a lack of political empowerment are one form of inequality which requires to be addressed. There are also other forms of inequality which deserve to be addressed - predominantly economic inequality, but also gender and sexual equality. Many advocates of reservations today would recoil from providing reservations purely to those below the poverty line, and perhaps a lesser majority to women and sexual minorities. By providing for reservations for one segment of persons, the State is privileging one form of discrimination over another. Have women, the historically poor and gays faced lesser discrimination than lower castes?

This problem of privileging would not occur in a non-quota based affirmative action system, for example as in a diversity based system. In such systems, those with a higher likelihood of historical discrimination (e.g. the daughter of Dalit farmers in rural AP) are higher placed to gain access than those without such a likelihood of discrimination (e.g. Oxford-educated Brahmin from Calcutta). Such diversity based systems would also go a long way in answering merit-based criticisms of affirmative action (though not always, a diversity based system could provide for "points" to be allotted on different criteria, some of which could relate to historical discrimination).

But a significant problem still remains. Undeniably, SCs/STs/OBCs have been historically wronged in India. Reservations are not only a means of ensuring them a means of overcoming access deprivation, but also a significant measure of the State's owning up to its responsibility for the discrimination suffered by them. This may not be done through non-quota based affirmative action, because such action does not deliver the "sorry" message to targetted communities. What is the solution in these cases of historical discrimination? I would argue that a Truth and Reconciliation process akin to that of South Africa, followed by a national apology and symbolic reparations on the German model would be the appropriate means to acknowledge responsibility for the wrongs committed to SCs/STs/OBCs in particular. The method of distribution of compensation could be through tribunals, to a designated agency, or through programmes for the upliftment and welfare of the underprivileged communities.

Is Islam a "Problem"?

2005-08-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of stuff happening on the listserv. First, there was a war on multiculturalism (how strange that sounds) which started with one assertion that multiculturalism would never work because strong cultures trump the weak, ergo the values of post-Enlightenment Christendom could never co-exist with the umma. Predictably this sparked a lot of outraged posting, at which point I referred to Naomi Klein's latest article in the Nation - Terror's Greatest Recruitment Tool. Klein's argument is that extremism is prompted not by Muslims, but by Western reactions to Muslims, which results in a fomenting of religious hatred in reaction to racism. Klein takes two test cases - Hussain Osman and Sayyid Qutb - to show that merely being Muslim was not what made them take to terror, the perceived (in Osman's case) and real (in Qutub's) mistreatment of fellow Muslims is also responsible for pushing people into extremism. In sum, Klein believes that the problem is "not too much multiculturalism but too little".

This led to an email which critiqued Klein's argument on the ground that Islam per se was the problem, not the treatment of Muslims by non-Muslims, and in order to prevent extremism, Islam necessarily had to change. There were two strands of responses to this -

a. American high-handedness, not some "problem" with Islam, was responsible for extremism (following from Arundati Roy's Come September article). I personally feel this goes too far, Roy does not offer a single word in condemnation of the violence adopted by Islamic extremists, she seems to believe that it's a perfectly natural consequence of Western treatment of the East. A corollary of this argument was that Indian Muslims did not commit acts of extremism in the West because Indian Muslims were not mistreated in a similar way as those who do commit acts of extremism.
b. A more moderate strand, the essence of which was that the problem is not with Islam per se, but with certain forms of Islam, and with some Muslims, not all of them. This is my response, which falls into the second category -

(Note - in a prior email, I argued that in order to say that Islam as a whole was a problem, one would need to show that there is something fundamental to Islam - i.e. in the Qu'ran or the Haadith-which could uncontroversially be regarded as promoting extremism. Where this was not demonstrated, one could not argue that all of Islam was extremist and fundamentalist. The counter was that in order to criticise a religion, how it was practised is all that mattered, not what the religious text said. A comparison was drawn between British Hindus and British Muslims to buttress the point that only Muslims take to extremism as a response measure, not others. I've tried to respond to this as well in what follows)

1. From what I gather, the Klein's point is that the reason some Muslims turn to terrorism is because of factors other than their religion, and its conflict with our supposed tolerance for persons of different faiths and cultures. The counterpoint appears to be that this is not so, because there are problems inherent in the way Islam is practised today which make it easy for terrorism to flourish in Islamic contexts.

2. Here is my first problem with the simplistic assessment in the counter-Klein position. Islam is not the world's first religion which has been used for extremism in its name. Much as we may like not to think about it, Hindus have had a pretty pathetic record of tolerance in the last half century (and even before that). British and American Hindus are large funders of Hindu extremist organisations, whose target is admittedly not the countries of the West, but fellow Indian citizens. Assuming that terrorists are not only Muslims who kill non-Muslims, and that financial and moral support for extremism is also extremism, Hindus have much to account for. Further, there is a large amount of support for Hindu extremist reactions to the perceived "Muslim problem" among Hindus (in India and elsewhere), and as Thariel points out, Lakshman Kadirgamar was assassinated by suspected Hindu extremists. Does this mean that Hinduism is a problem? Of course not, because any interpretation of Hindu texts and values which could be used to justify extremism would be an unquestioned perversion. A religion's significance cannot be separated from its core texts, though the texts of a religion may be misinterpreted by those hostile to the religion to criticise it. So it's perfectly valid to say there is a problem with "some Muslims", or with "extremist forms of Islam", but how can one say there is a problem with "Islam" without detailing what the problematic aspects of the Qu'ran and/or hadit are? Are peaceful Muslims followers of the Church of Scientology? Or is a secular Muslim a bad Muslim?

3. I would disagree with the assertion that no Indian muslim has carried out suicide bombings, or with the broader argument that Islamic extremism in India is absent, yet would use this to further Klein's argument. Most Indian muslims and the majority of Indian Muslim scholars, priests and leaders (like Muslims in Britain and America) condemn acts of terror committed by extremists in the name of Islam. Those who do take to extremism (or organised crime) in India are by and large socio-economically underprivileged youth for whom terrorism/crime is a real option of gaining things they would never else have access to. Political power-players (Hindus and Muslims) also provide tacit support to extremist elements and stand to gain by pulling out the terror card at the elections. Hence, the problem of extremism in India is not a problem of Islam, but a political problem. And given that India has more serious incidents of terrorism a year than Israel and Iraq combined, nowhere is the flaw with the "Islam as a problem" argument proved better.

4. A consequentialist point - even if one were to accept that those who argue that there exists a problem with Islam do not apply the same yardstick to all Muslims (I'm not even going into the legal fictions involved here because it would keep me awake for the next year), this lumping of Islam with genuine ideologies of terror(such as Fascism-an abhorrent analogy if I ever saw one) can be abused by others without such pure motives as a mask for Islamophobia (even perhaps racism). By giving currency to a spurious claim (i.e that all forms of Islam are problematic), we run the risk of validating several other evils in the name of confronting the aforesaid (false) problem.

The long and short of it was that in order to prove that most Muslims are potential extremists, or that all forms of Islam facilitate extremism, one would have to show that there was something fundamental to Islam, or something common to most Muslims. This was not done on the listserv, can it ever be done?

Prithvi.

PS. Robert Pape, Professor of Politics at Chicago University, argues here that the Al Qaeda's acts of extremism are "less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries."

PPS. This pretty much blew away the blissful apolitical euphoria I've been feeling for the past couple of weeks. All good things must end, I suppose...

Should we restrict hate speech?

2005-08-15T18:42:00.000-04:00

One of the tricky questions of human rights law is how to approach the regulation of hate speech. There is a spectrum of hate speech regulation, swinging from the extremely libertarian US Supreme Court approach to hate speech (which I'll summarise shortly) to the aggressively restrictive German approach (for obvious historical reasons). Most countries fall somewhere in the middle here, regarding free speech as a highly important and valuable right, but preventing the right from being exercised where it was likely to cause harm, or infringe on other rights of groups or individuals (hence, the denial of the Holocaust has been restricted in different countries on grounds of fomenting hatred for Jews, infringing religious freedom and denying dignity to Jewish people).

Before moving onto hate speech in the Indian context, a brief mention of the American practice. The First Amendment to the US constitution codifies what appears to be an absolute right to free speech - "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech". This right has generally been interpreted so as to exclude certain devalued forms of expression from the definition of "speech" under the US constitution (obscenity, "fighting words" which incite people to violence and libel are good examples) but to protect all which falls under the classification of speech. Even in the case of incitement to hatred, however, the courts have struck down legislation which has restricted hate speech on the grounds of it being hate speech. So, for example, the court has allowed members of the American Nazi Party to march through neighbourhoods with a high concentration of Jewish persons (because the injunction was granted against them solely because they were Nazis planning to march in a neighbourhood of Holocaust survivors- Smith v Collin, 439 U.S. 916 (1978) and Collin v Smith, 578 F.2d 1197 (1978). In order to be constitutionally valid restriction on speech, therefore, a restriction on hate speech in the US can probably never discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint of the State in relation to the content of the speech. The US Constitution is unique, however, in not using any form of balancing justifications for analysing freedom of speech restrictions (the Indian constitution, does provide for "reasonable" restrictions on freedom of speech). Some authors are of the opinion that this is done because it is presumed that an absolute guarantee of the freedom of speech ensures equality as it ensures governmental neutrality in the regulation of speech.

The Indian constitution does not contain an absolute restriction on the freedom of speech. Like most other common law former colonies, Art. 19 (2) of the constitution permits for "reasonable restrictions on [the freedom of speech and expression] ... in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order,
decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence". In addition to the constitutional provisions, the IPC also allows for restrictions on speech and expression where similar interests are affected (Ss. 153-A/B, 295, 295 -A, 296, 297, 298, 505 are some examples). Clearly, therefore, the Indian constitution (and statutory law) allow for far wider restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression than the US Constitution does. Particularly, unlike in the US, the requirements for valid hate speech regulation are not very stringent, in the sense that the discriminatory treatment of ideas by Indian law is tolerated under the Indian constitution.

I will argue however, that the courts in India (and the statutes as they exist) ought to import the American practice, rather than continue to regulate hate speech in the current manner. The practice of hate speech regulation in India has been highly arbitrary. Depending on the political groups (or the dominant ideology) in power at a given time in the country, regulation of Hindu extremist speech (see the facts of Dr. Ramesh Yeshwant Prabhoo v Shri Prabhakar Kashinath Kunte and Others, AIR 1996 SC 1113 which deals with the legislative and executive action taken against Bal Thackeray and Manohar Joshi), of Muslim extremist organisations (see for e.g. the SIMI ban) and so on indicates clearly that the state restricts speech in a selective and non-uniform manner. Arbitrariness, in this context, leads to inequality because these groups (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh etc) have their speech rights restricted on the basis of their religion rather than merely because of the content of their speech; and this substantially undermines the equal treatment guarantee available to people across the country.

Additionally, I would argue that deregulation of hate speech will enhance equality among religions and communities in India. A pluralistic society can only grow when there is free and frank discourse in the public sphere, and restrictions on one group's right to access this sphere creates inequalities. This not only flows from the previous point that this gives the State the potential to abuse its powers in an arbitrary manner, but also because exercising a free speech right is empowering for minorities. Let me illustrate - if a religious extremist organisation publishes statements hatefully directed at another religion, we have 2 situations which may arise -

a. The State bans the publication and/or the group

b. The other members of the community react to the publication and/or the group (both positively and negatively)

In situation b. the community assumes agency, and forges a sense of community identity within (or in relation to) the national (or larger group) identity, which, if nurtured, could lead to the beginnings of a process of integration (because it is a process of empowerment through discussion). In situation a. before any of this arises, the State acts to deprive the community of agency and contextual identity. This could, if exploited improperly, lead to resentment and subsequent conflict.

This would work just as well for majority as well as minority groups, there will be equal and non-regulated (i.e. non arbitrarily regulated) discussions among all groups in a pluralistic society, which will define their relations with each other, and also with the nation-State. Where the State steps in to regulate hate speech, it breaches the equality which ought to exist in the public sphere, and this leads to one community being privileged over the other.

What do you think?

And Now for Something Completely Different...

2005-08-12T00:58:00.000-04:00

Till I get over my "I'm in the World's Greatest City" high, and begin to feel cranky and upset with the world again, I'm not going to be able to post on anything critical. Here are some photos instead. Larger versions are available here - unlike this blog, the photos will be regularly updated.

Feel free to tell me what you think of them,

Prithvi.

The Woolworth Building

Three Generations of Broadway

Looking Uptown from Astor Place

Empire State Building from Times Square

Ugly Brooklyn!

City Hall Park

Life in Manhattan

Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges from Staten Island Ferry Station

Rickshaws (!) on 49th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues

Empire State Building from 5th Avenue

On Central Plaza and Broadway

2005-08-11T23:43:00.000-04:00

On Central Plaza and Broadway

Are Indians insensitive?

2005-08-07T01:07:00.000-04:00

Marriages Made in Hell

Everyone in Delhi is talking about Vivaha 2005, an annual marriage exhibition. This year's exhibition seems to have wowed more people than last year's edition, mainly because of the higher prices and more outrageous items on display (including a Ganesh worth Rs. 1,60,000, and edible body paint for couples for Rs. 2,400), and the prospect of higher returns for the exhibitors and organisers ($ 16 million this year as opposed to $ 12 million in the last one). Here's what upsets me most about this event and the media coverage of it -

1. None of the articles covering Vivaha 2005 which I have come across as of 07/08/05 comment on the propriety of holding such an event in light of the losses in Mumbai. Perhaps the socialite segments don't have much to do with the real-life segments of our media?
2. The organisers are moving this event to Mumbai after the Delhi show, and yet there's still no mention of the poor taste displayed by hosting such an event in that city right now.
3. There is no indication in these reports about whether any part of the proceeds from the event (or from the exhibitors' revenues) will go towards relief or charity.

This inspite of the Maharashtra CM's appeal for more relief resources.

Please let me know if any of this changes in the next few days.

Prithvi.

A Little Comparison

2005-07-08T18:07:00.000-04:00

Being in the ethno-religious minority in the UK, I've been watching the news closely for signs of a fallout from the London blasts. While Muslims are understandably jittery, and there have been sporadic incidents targetting Muslim symbols, the police have been taking steps to prevent any large-scale attempts to breach the peace. In addition, religious organisations have been stepping in to emphasise the need to maintain comity, and it doesn't seem likely that any large-scale violent incidents will erupt as a result of the blasts.

Yet, there have no calls for bandhs, no calls for revenge, and very little chances of being able to create large-scale death and destruction. No one wants to attack Muslims because they had it coming, and there are no mainstream apologists for Islamophobia who want Muslims chucked out of the UK. 427 people had died 4 days after the Godhra carnage, no serious attacks have been reported against British Muslims almost two days after the London blasts.

I'm feeling ashamed. Are you?

Putting the Dead to Good Use

2005-07-07T16:08:00.000-04:00

I'm breaking from my self-imposed hibernation to blog about this disturbing piece by Tom Hayden which wastes no time in using the casualties in London to make a case for withdrawal in Iraq. Let me make my point clearer -

a. I am not in favour of the Iraq war, and am all in favour of those who make sensible and clear cases against the war.

b. I am, however, against using victims of terrorist attacks as some sort of a justification for my stance in opposition to the war (which is essentially what Hayden is doing). These were innocent men and women and I'm shocked that they're being used as mere tokens in a political game. My fear is that making them purely instrumental in a debate of concern not only demeans the fact that these were human beings who died, who had valuable lives and contributed value to the community in which they lived, but also loses those of us against the war the moral highground. Hayden's argument is the Terry Schiavo case of the left - it uses individuals purely as political ends, and denies them dignity and humanity in death.

c. Interestingly, Hayden's post doesn't even once mention the terrorists who were responsible for the attacks, or the general moral illegimitacy of terrorist movements which target innocent civilians (whether in Baghdad or London). It is a diatribe against regimes which "forcibly occupy Muslim lands in the oil-driven search for dominance", but no mention of the forcible occupation of our public space and lives by a hate-driven lust for terror...

Well, that's my point of view. What do you think? Also, Andrew Sullivan gets it so much better.

Prithvi.

Must NRIs Return Home?

2005-05-22T20:41:00.000-04:00

Last week, I sparked off an email war on the listserv (and off it as well). This particular battle was on whether citizens of the developing world can contribute more by returning home than they would if they stayed away from home. Here's what I had to say -

I feel that the assertion that returning to one's home country will make things better there is a simplistic one (atleast so far as my home country, India, is concerned), and there's someone far more eminent who agrees with me, see The Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second-Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain by Binod Khadria (Sage, 1999). Prof Khadria is Professor of Economics at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

His basic argument is that while the first generation of immigrants from India did cause a net loss to the Indian economy (i.e. net remittances were less than the amount invested in their education and training in India), the second generation of Indian emigrants (those who left after economic reforms in 1991) is pumping huge amounts of money (in the form of investment in infrastructure, the stock markets, purchase of government bonds etc.) into the system. Also, a large amount of investment in non-profit sectors and charitable organisations comes from persons of Indian origin living outside India. It may also be argued (and I diverge from Khadria here) that the presence of highly trained Indians abroad contributes to a greater international awareness of India, and the emergence of Indian political groups in the US, the UK and Canada may be evidence of this heightened political awareness. Finally, Indians abroad have a significant voice in the governance of India as well, perhaps as a result of the money they're pumping into the economy. The government seems to be making a special effort to appease non-resident Indians with a slew of policy changes designed just for Indians living abroad (for eg, there is a newly formed Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, currently considering a serious proposal for providing tax breaks on investments made by Indians living abroad). Clearly Indians abroad wield a lot of influence with Indians back home (probably more than they would have if they stayed home. I had an interesting conversation with a fellow member of this list last term which went something like this - "Before I got here, home was the place I would eat, sleep and chase my dog around. In the past 9 months, I've received 8 wedding invitations, 3 marriage proposals and an invitation to guest lecture in about half a dozen universities. Suddenly home is a lot cooler").

Concerns have been raised about whether this position I am taking denigrates and devalues the position of those who wish to return to India. I strongly feel that it does not. I believe that one's choice to return to India is a personal one, and should not be externally imposed on others. Hence, while this personal choice is necessarily individual specific, I think there is no systemic, institutional or public obligation to return to one's country.

This is without prejudice to the broader question of whether one should contribute to one's home state at all. I believe I should, but someone who has a more cosmopolitan (or more communist) world view than I do may well disagree. I just think that it is totally possible to enjoy the academic freedoms and research benefits which institutions in this country offer and still give back to the people of one's home country, perhaps more than one could by being back home.

Prithvi.

Taking over the ad world?

2005-05-15T13:07:00.000-04:00

I was recently looking for some Indian ads which I was very fond of on the Internet (because a friend had forwarded me the unusual "Manno Bhabhi" ad). In the process, I discovered an incredibly interesting cultural revolution which seems to be taking place in the West - the use of Indian themes (and in several cases, Indian professionals) to market products which have nothing to do with India. There are several examples of this -

By far the best of the lot, Absolut's "Mulit" ad. This is an ad featuring an all Indian cast, but is a pseudo history of the mullet (as in the hairstyle), shot in a Bollywood-spoof style by a European film director. Mulit has spawned an underground fan following, but the funny thing is that it is an ad film intended for Western audiences, not for Indians.
The Cobra beer ads. I think these are the ones which started the whole trend. It makes sense that Cobra advertise their beers in this manner, given the origins of Cobra as the beer which goes with curry, and their India launch(see here for a brief write-up on Cobra beer). In addition to this, they're really funny. I would put the Tennent's beer ad in the same category.
The Coke Spanish Bollywood spoof. This is clearly not intended for Indian audiences, it uses a sort of Bollywood asereje, and is in Spanish. It is interesting however to see how wildly popular this ad has become, and the awards which have been heaped on it.
The Peugeot 209 ad. This ad has no non-Indian aspect to it - it's shot in Rajasthan (you can see from the buildings, the clothes the people are wearing and the car registration plates), features an Ambassador, a man talking to an elephant in Hindi/local dialect ("baitho, baitho"), a poster of Pukar on the wall and so much more. The soundtrack is Bhangra Knights v. Husan, which while incredibly popular in Europe, is an Urdu song. So here's the funny part - this ad has never been released in India (because Peugeot has pulled out of the Indian car market). This ad is made for the European market (maybe even the American one), and is incredibly popular, but it has no European symbolism.

What's interesting here is that with the exception of the beer ads, there is no ostensible connection between these ads, the product being sold, and the market in which they're being advertised. In spite of this, they've grown wildly popular (though I have no exact figures about how they've influenced sales). Why is this? Is the much anticipated Indian cultural summer finally here in Europe? Or is it just another form of product placement through cultural stereotyping (like the Cable & Wireless ads on Caribbean cellphones)? If it is the latter, given the poor consumer visibility of South Asians in Europe, is it just more economic sense to stereotype Indians rather than Eastern Europeans, the French, the English, the Germans etc?

Prithvi.

PS. Thanks to Manish Vij and Sepia Mutiny for the links.

The Pope's Legacy

2005-04-13T22:24:00.000-04:00

I recently found an editorial by Polly Toynbee, who's writing I admire though often disagree with, as a reaction to the international adulation being heaped on the Pope upon his passing away. The rest of the post will only make sense if you read the article, and it is quite thought provoking though presenting an extremely controversial point of view.

I want to concentrate on one particular aspect of the Pope's legacy, I'll come back to whether we ought to be analysing his legacy at all in a subsequent post. This would relate to the impact the Pope's insistence on the unacceptability of birth control had on AIDS cases in the developing world. As Toynbee has pointed out in the article, the Catholic church (hereinafter "Church") has maintained a rigidly conservative line on the church's acceptance of birth control. I am inclined to believe, along with Toynbee, that this has resulted in a lot of deaths from AIDS in developing states (and perhaps even developed ones). This article formed the basis for an extremely informative discussion with a group of friends recently, some of whom were progressive Catholics. The most important points of difference which came up were:-

I. The Actual Impact Argument. One of the main points of difference which arose was about the actual impact which the Church's insistence on the unacceptability of birth control had on instances of HIV in Catholics. My argument basically ran as follows - by insisting that birth control was contrary to the tenets of the Catholic faith, the Pope failed to prevent several deaths from AIDS which could arguably have been prevented where the Pope to have (a) encouraged or (b) not discouraged birth control (though there would be a variation in numbers depending on whether the Pope adopted method (a) or (b). The first rebuttal was that the Church also advocated abstinence prior to marriage, and if this rule were to be followed, there would be no need to take a different line on birth control, since the rule on abstinence would be sufficient to ensure that AIDS did not spread as rapidly. My counter to this argument is that it is not part of the human condition to abstain, and/or to participate in monogamous relationships. Monogamy and abstinence are to be enforced, either by the imposition of external norms or as a result of an internal moral code. This is not the case with the purchase of birth control devices - it is not natural for human beings to practice birth control or to purchase birth control devices. Besides, the stigma attached to birth control as a result of the Church's sanction on them attaches a social deterrent to the purchase and use of these devices, which is not present in the case of the Church's sanction on extra-marital relationships (at least most often not in cases where males indulge in extra-marital relationships).

II. The "You can't Teach an Old Dogma New Tricks" Argument. The second rebuttal to my original argument was that Roman Catholicism was an essentially faith based religion, which had certain dogmatic cardinal principles which were central to the faith. To expect the Pope to change one of the central tenets of the faith, one of the most respected and highly regarded tenets was to expect too much of him, for then it would mean a betrayal of the Church's beliefs which he is expected to uphold. I'm not sure how convinced I am by this argument. Protecting human life is also one of the most central tenets of the Catholic faith, and in cases of conflict which have arisen between this tenet and others, the Church has preferred to respect the right to life of the corporeal existing human being (as in the application of double effect to abortions). Why can't this be done in the case of birth control for persons facing a very high risk of AIDS?

III. The "Papal is Bull" Argument. The final rebuttal is that the Pope has limited influence over the decisions which people make in their reproductive lives. The choice of whether to use condoms or other AIDS-preventive devices is an expression of social relationships between partners, and there is little the Pope could have done to change that, even if he were to have declared contraception and birth control acceptable. I disagree with this argument because it denies the social impact which the Church has on procreative choice. By outlawing birth control, the Church denigrates condoms, and imposes a social cost on their use. This social cost then can easily translate into non-use in relationships of dominance (as between sexually active men and women, for example). If the Pope were to have encouraged the use of birth control, it would go a long way in reducing the social costs associated with condom use, and therefore perhaps have saved many more lives. An ancillary point in support of this rebuttal is that several Catholics, and some churches, use birth control anyway. While I agree with this, the fact remains that this is occurring in spite of the Church's stance. Those Catholics and churches, which allow for this are indeed deserving of praise, but does this excuse the Church for it's failure to preach what right-minded followers of its faith are practising?

The Modi Shindig

2005-03-27T10:27:00.000-05:00

I An Introduction

For those who aren't clued into it, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, was recently denied a visa (both diplomatic and tourist) to the US for delivering a speech to a congregation of Non Resident Indians. The ostensible reason for this was the indictment by the National Human Rights Commission of India of his participation in the Gujarat riots of 2001, though the Indian press has been quick to offer many conspiracy theories about the "real reason" behind the denial of the visa. The Hindu nationalist elements in India have gone to town about the perceived "insult" to Indian pride, while the rabid segment of secular-liberal civil society can scarcely hide their glee at what they regard as just desert for Modi. Like most other political situations which create ideological faultlines (see Terry Schiavo's case in the US, the screening of Jerry Springer - The Musical on national TV in the UK etc.), the extremist nature of discourse surrounding the Modi visa denial tends to overshadow the less divisive aspects of the matter, aspects which are probably as relevant as the broader ideological debate.

This post, therefore, is an attempt to explain why I'm slightly more agnostic about taking pleasure from Modi's visa denial than some extremist liberals. I propose to look at this from two points of view - (i) the arbitrariness of the decision to deny Modi a visa (ii) the seeming insignificance of the matter from the US' perspective.

II Spot the odd one out

In the recent past, Pervez Musharraf, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Gerry Adams have all been granted visas to visit the USA. President Musharraf has been severely criticised by several international organisations for suppressing democracy in Pakistan (doh) and also for promoting religious discrimination in that country (or continuing to tolerate it); Chandrika Kumaratunga has been accused of the most horrendous human rights atrocities being committed against suspected Tamil militants in custody in Sri Lankan jails and Gerry Adams we all know about. Like Modi, none of these persons have been convicted for the commission of any of these offences, and yet all of them have been accused by some human rights organisation. Clearly then, the issue is not one of meeting certain criteria, because the criteria laid down in the International Religious Freedom Act applies to all of them. This arbitrariness also seems to be reflected in the recent denial of permission to Ram Guha for entry into the US.

However, regardless of what the actual reason for refusing Modi a visa is, every State has the right to determine who it allows onto its territory, and who it should grant a visa to. Few legal procedures exist to allow for review of these sorts of decisions, and very rarely is much political capital expended in seeking to right a perceived wrong which arises from decisions of this nature. There isn't much India can do to protest the US' decision, and arguably there are more important aspects to Indo-US relations to sort out than this. To talk of just desert for Modi, though, is to take a long leap - we have no idea of knowing why Modi was denied a visa, and given the sort of people who have been granted the visa, it's unclear why a random and arbitrary denial of a visa should be taken as a means of vindication in lieu of a properly adjudicated process of justice delivery (unless of course mere denial of a visa is regarded as sufficient punishment for the acts Modi is alleged to have committed). This is why I believe that there's little to rejoice in Modi's denial of a visa - it has little to do with providing justice to the victims of Gujarat, it is unlikely to make Modi feel repentant for what he's been accused of doing(or provide sufficient punishment for it) and it has just provided the Hindu Right with a cause to revive itself around.

III They Don't Really Care About Us

The core of the right-wing argument protesting the denial of Modi's visa is to claim it to be a sign of "disrespect" towards India. This may well be the case, but even if it is, it is not just a problem with the US government's stance towards India, but a reflection of the general lack of interest about Indian affairs in American society. Preliminary support for this can be gathered from the attention given to this denial by the American media - the NY Times carries a 129 word report on column A3 of page 4 of the edition of 19 March, the Washington Post does slightly better by giving it newspace on page A21 of the edition of the 19th, and A18 of the 20th. Other than the Indian community in the US (which seems divided on the propriety of the denial of the visa), few Americans are aware of the whole incident. By raising the "national insult" flag, the Hindu Right is drawing attention away from the important lesson which lies behind the denial of a visa to Modi - that for the US government, as well as for members of civil society, it doesn't matter if this constitutes a national insult or not. In such a situation, it is quite pointless to agitate on the basis of the disrespect being caused by the denial of the visa because it is not likely to result in Modi obtaining a visa (since the US government has no interest in doing so), pressurising the Indian government is unlikely to have any results (because issuing of visas is a purely internal matter for any State in the world) and the feelings of offended Indians don't count for much internationally.

IV The Way Forward

What this incident should be utilised for, therefore, is to introspect about why it is that India has such low presence in the context of the US' internal politics. Why is it that certain leaders would not be denied a visa into the US, but certain Indian leaders would? Why don't Americans care about this apparent discrimination? Why is the supposedly powerful and influential Indian lobby in the US unable to bring about a change in the perception of India there? Ideology-based arguments merely obfuscate this most central concern which arises from the whole visa denial incident.

Secularism in India

2005-02-05T13:43:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is a topic which started off much debate on one of the lists I'm on. I posted two articles from a recent edition of the Indian newsmagazine Outlook, which seemed to reflect two different positions on the notion of secularism as it was understood in the Indian and South Asian context. These articles are part of a debate between Ashis Nandy and Kuldip Nayar. Nandy's article, titled "A Billion Gandhis", essentially argued that secularism as understood by Nehru in its Western sense (i.e. separation of Church and State) was a "dry import" which was artificially imposed upon India. According to him, India has traditionally always had a multicultural ethos premised upon tolerance (a sort of "Hindu secularism"), and hence Western secularism was a pretty needless imposition. Nayar criticises this identification of Indian multiculturalism with Hinduism, and believes that such a notion could be powerful ammunition for proponents of communalism in India. I got an interesting response from a friend to this debate, which was:

First a question of definition and context - in India, no other word is bandied around so much as secularism - the press discusses it, politicians make a living out of it, and almost every Indian has an opinion on it. Our constitution mandates India to be a secular state, but Indian secularism is not a strict separation of church and state - it would be closer to what in the Western context has now been understood as 'multiculturalism' (this itself should be enough to refute Nandy's claim - the fact that the Indian variety was so different from how secularism has been understood in the West). Nandy's post-colonialism makes him blame almost everything on the colonial state. While it is true that the British policies led to the concretisation of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' identities in the popular psyche, crediting them with running a secular administration is what they certainly did not do. A number of colonial British policies were clearly designed to drive a wedge between the two communities, their oft-quoted 'divide and rule' policy. But secularism was certainly a reaction of the then Indian elite (led by Nehru) to the problem of increasing tensions between the two communities in the aftermath of partition of the country based on religious lines. That Pakistan chose to become an Islamic state made it still difficult for Nehru to justify why India was not becoming a Hindu state, since that was the 'logic' of partition.
Anyway, that much history aside, the main problem of Nandy is that he comes from a romanticisation of everything traditional, and while he claims to be a non-believer, the Hindu colour of his ideas is unescapable. At another place, Nandy claims that 'Hindutva' (that is political militant hinduism) is the death of 'hinduism' (the traditional, rural, tolerance-based religion). A lot of his love for rural tolerance is mostly, for him, Hindu tolerance. His tolerant India is surely hindu India, because he sees the essence of hinduism as tolerance (I am not disputing or affirming the truth of this claim, but the fact is that this does exclude other religions as fundamentally tolerant). He, actually, says that the Hindu Right in India is actually christianising/islamising hinduism.
He gives himself away when he says:
> These ideas of tolerance in ordinary people and everyday life are
> tinged
> with popular religious beliefs, however superstitious, irrational and
> primitive they may seem to progressive, secular Indians. Modern India,
till
> today, has not produced a single hero of secularism except for that
> fading
> star, Jawaharlal Nehru.
He is more direct in his other writings as to which 'popular' religious beliefs he is referring to. Of course, the above question may not necessarily be a critique, and is open to demonstration that in fact the basic belief in hinduim is tolerance. (that still does not prove that the same is not true with other religions - and even if it was, it does not discredit secularism, which teaches tolerance irrespective of religion). However, one very crucial aspect that Nandy almost entirely ignores is the context of caste - his tolerant rural India continues to discriminate on the basis of caste, and only the modern, urban (western) secular state has considered it worth to intervene and disrupt the massive caste infrastructure (with whatever digree of success or failure).
The only point that Nandy gets right is his claim to Gandhi's legacy - this much is true - Gandhi did employ religion to fight religious hatred, and employed religious symbols for his political struggle. Indian secularism truly owes its debt only to Nehru.

And I responded by saying:

I don't necessarily agree that the notion of secularism as understood in India can so easily be equated with multiculturalism. The point Nandy has made in the past is that it is not clear what secularism is meant to be in India, for some it is separation of State from religion, and for some it is a more pluralist recognition of the rights of all religions. This is reflected in constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court on the content of the notion of 'secularism' in the constitution, for instance. Nandy's critique is of one such stream of thought - that of purely Western secularism, symbolised by the separation of State and church, which he believes is impossible to recreate successfully in Indian socio-political discourse. ('If secularism only means the traditional tolerance of South Asia, why do we need an imported idea to talk about that local tolerance?') Nandy is essentially contrasting two modes of achieving amity (Gandhi's religion-based method with Nehru's Occidental secular method) and nominating his preference between them. By declaring Nehru to be the only advocate of secularism in India, Nandy is implying that the current practice of secularism in India (i.e. as among the people of India) is closer to Gandhi than Nehru (who represents the political class in India), and for him this is a desirable outcome (ergo the title 'A Billion Gandhis'). Hence, according to Nandy, the traditional (Hindu/Gandhian) notion of communal amity which is prevalent in South Asian multicultural communities is a workable alternative to Western notions of secularism (which is what is sought to be imposed on them by the political elite). One possible criticism of Nandy could be that he errs in believing that the entire ruling class in India takes one view of secularism (in the Nehruvian sense), whereas in reality even the ruling class is more fragmented than that. This would not detract from the essence of Nandy's argument, that in a struggle between traditional notions of secularism and the Western one, it is the traditional which should prevail, atleast in the South Asian context.
The point about traditional notions of religion reinforcing caste structures is a valid one, but some also appear to believe that the 'modern, urban, secular State' is replacing caste structures with class ones. Is this necessarily a positive step?
Also I believe Nandy's romanticising of other traditional Indian concepts (including that of 'sati' - widow immolation) should not influence analysis of his notions on secularism, as each has its own context.

What do you think?

Prithvi.

Introductions

2005-02-05T13:25:00.000-05:00

There are so many media blogs out there, what's so special about this one? Why does it have such a boring title? Why does it exist?

Well, to answer the easy questions first - there's nothing special about this blog, and I couldn't think of a clever enough title for it which would convey what the blog's about, so that takes care of concerns (1) and (2). There are several reasons for why I've decided to waste webspace by putting this blog up:

1. Ever so often, I come across interesting articles on the Net which I post to friends and listserves of which I am a member. However, given the limited membership of the listserves (and the very limited patience of my friends), I rarely get feedback or comment on these articles. This blog is therefore, primarily, a means of promoting interaction and discussion on certain issues which interest me.

2. Blogs have taken off in a big way, and blogger.com seems to be going very strong. I have no backups for the stuff I send, and write, and they exist solely on my computer. Posting to this blog is some sort of insurance against computer-related disasters.

So I look forward to comments, questions, suggestions and further posts from people out there, I promise to post all comments which are not "offensive", whether or not I agree with the content in them.

Happy blogging to me!

Prithvi.