Wake up, BJP! Admit how intolerance is settling in

Just get out and eavesdrop on a conversation at your local teashop or on a bus: you will know how anti-Muslim hysteria spreads.

POLITICS | Long-form | 07-11-2015

Rishi Majumder @RishiMajumder

Mr X: “You girls speak your mind. If this were a Muslim country this wouldn’t have been tolerated.”

Ms A: “Even those leaving Syria are going to Europe, not other Muslim nations.”

Ms B: “That’s true.”

Mr X: “They don’t want to educate their children.”

Ms A: “They only want to send them to madrassas.”

Ms B: “True.”

Mr X: “We Hindus have only one or two children. But Muslims keep having so many.”

What better to interrupt you from a reading of Chris Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class on a train journey?

Here is a conversation you’ve probably heard before. If you follow the thread you’ll notice how an unsubstantiated set of beliefs and an apparent concern for women’s rights and education begins to teeter on Islamophobia.

The last month could easily be termed the “Month of the Indian Intolerance Debate”. Almost everyone has weighed in and they continue doing so. After the writers came artists and musicians, scientists, filmmakers, historians and other academics — some of India’s most eminent names. Awards have been returned, positions resigned, statements made. The RBI governor has spoken. So have two well-known entrepreneurs and philanthropists. The most recent voices have been an international research and ratings agency, one of India’s biggest film stars, a Booker-winning writer and another group of acclaimed filmmakers. Like those before, powerful voices that say, ‘Yes there is intolerance. Yes, it is increasing.’

This is being contested by some, including members of the central government and ruling party. Their standpoint, to put it simply, is: ‘Intolerance isn’t on the rise’.

But you needn’t listen to the country’s intellectual giants, industry leaders, icons or the government to resolve this. Just get out and eavesdrop on a conversation at your local teashop or a bus. Or, as in my case, a train compartment of people traveling from Jodhpur to Delhi.

I didn’t interview my co-travellers, nor ask them their names, but here are brief profiles gleaned:

Mr X is a heavy set man with silver hair. He wears a plain shirt, trousers and sandals. He appears to be in his late fifties or early sixties. He used to manufacture and trade in silver vessels but then that stopped being profitable so his new business is taking sick factories on contract from the government, breaking them up and selling parts for a profit. He lives in North West Delhi’s Model Town. He says he has always been a BJP voter, except for the 2013 Delhi elections when he voted AAP, got disappointed and then went back to voting for the BJP. He hails from Churu originally, the station from where he boarded. Back in Churu, many of his family members are either actually affiliated with the BJP or its voters. He is proud that his family has, in an incremental way, done away with following Rajasthan’s ghunghat tradition. “I told my wife she doesn’t have to wear the ghunghat,” he says. “And then I told my daughter-in-law she can wear jeans if she wishes to.”

This conversation began because Mr X and Ms B got into an argument about what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done for the country.

Ms B, dressed in a salwaar kameez looks as if she is in her late twenties. She is a PhD student, studying in Rajasthan currently, but born and brought up in East Delhi’s Karkardooma. She argued that, though she had voted for Modi in 2014, he has hardly implemented any new policies, instead merely rebranded older ones. Mr X said that schemes like Swachch Bharat and the Jan Dhan Yojana would lead to a sea change in attitude upon which Ms B replied, “Maybe, but let them show results first.”

Ms A, another PhD student born and bred in Rajasthan wears a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She is researching the persecution of women for alleged witchcraft. She and Ms B are Jains. We know this because Mr X asked them their caste, then stated he was a “banya”. Ms A backed Mr X in his support for Modi and, with Ms B questioning their claims, the conversation may have delved deeper into their perception of governance but at some point Mr X said, “80 per cent of Indian Muslims don’t like Modi.”

No one asked Mr X where he obtained this random statistic. It seems to be something he has arrived at arbitrarily, upon noticing: “most of my Muslim friends aren’t Modi voters”. This was how the conversation turned to Muslims.

Now, let’s come to the crux of it. Here is what Mr X said at the end of the conversation: “Since Modi became Chief Minister in 2002, there have been no riots in Gujarat. This is because the Muslims wouldn’t dare to do anything after 2002. When you have a majority and a minority in the country, the majority must suppress the minority. Otherwise the minority will eat it up.”

He went from speculation to rhetoric. And the rhetoric isn’t new. “I warn the Hindus that the Mohameddans are likely to prove dangerous to our Hindu nation,” VD Savarkar had said while presiding over the 1937 session of the Hindu Mahasabha. “Let us not be stone blind to the fact that they as a community continue to cherish fanatical designs to establish a Muslim rule in India.” Also: “India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogenous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the Moslems in India.”

What was new is embedded in what followed. Uncomfortable silences began to fill the conversation as the speakers noticed I wasn’t joining in. Finally, Mr X asked me, “Aap Mohameddan toh naheen hain naa (I hope you are not a Muslim)?”

“What if I were?” I asked.

“It makes no difference,” he said. “Nowadays I say all of this to my Mohameddan friends as well. I say: I know you hate Modi, but this is how things are, how things should be.”

“Nowadays”.

Those who claim intolerance is not on the rise today make two points mostly.

One, statistics.

“The number of incidents of communal violence hasn’t increased,” they say. As if intolerance can only be gauged by the number of communal clashes or killings. In fact, intolerance, like any other intangible noun can never really be calculated, only indicated. As stated many times over by those protesting its rise, it is a culture. As implied in the writings and speeches of Savarkar, it’s an ideology.

Read Savarkar on the establishment of the Indian nation state, for instance, and it will be difficult to pinpoint immediately where the intolerance lies.

“The Moslem minority in India will have the right to be treated as equal citizens, enjoying equal protection and civic rights in proportion to their population. The Hindu majority will not encroach on the legitimate rights of any non-Hindu minority… The Moslem minority in particular has not obliged the Hindus by remaining in minority and therefore, they must remain satisfied with the status they occupy and with the legitimate share of civic and political rights that is their proportionate due… The Hindus do not want a change of masters, are not going to struggle and fight and die only to replace an Edward by an Aurangzeb simply because the latter happens to be born within Indian borders, but they want henceforth to be masters themselves in their own house, in their own Land.”

To discover the intolerance in between these lines, read Dr BR Ambedkar’s critique of the above:

“It must be said that Mr Savarkar's attitude is illogical, if not queer… If he claims a national home for the Hindu nation, how can he refuse the claim of the Muslim nation for a national home?”

And,

“One can justify this attitude only if the two nations were to live as partners in friendly intercourse with mutual respect and accord. But that is not to be, because Mr Savarkar will not allow the Muslim nation to be co-equal in authority with the Hindu nation. He wants the Hindu nation to be the dominant nation and the Muslim nation to be the servient nation.”

Coming back to the present, Mr X’s intolerance seems to have “increased” only in terms of him now being comfortable in letting “Muslim friends” know that they are the “minority” which “must be suppressed”. And while sticks and stones may break your bones, words will never harm you.

But this isn’t always the case. Mohammad Akhlaq’s family in Dadri witnessed more than words on September 28. There, intolerance resulted in murder. Communalism culminated in criminality. Likewise, most likely, with the killing of Prof MM Kalburgi on August 30. Definitely so with the Gujarat riots in 2004 and the Babri riots of 1992. And, yes, with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 as well.

These incidents have been the biggest blemishes on our nation’s recent past. To prevent more of the same, what indicators should we look for to determine whether intolerance is on the rise?

For starters, since we’re speaking of a “culture” of intolerance, let’s examine what the official mascot of Indian culture – our Culture Minister – has to say.

On Dadri, a complete dismissal: “This (incident) should be considered as an accident without giving any communal colour to it.”

On APJ Abdul Kalam, “Aurangzeb Road has been named after such a great man who, despite being a Muslim, was a nationalist and a humanist”.

On holy books: “I respect Bible and Quran but they are not central to soul of India in the way as Gita and Ramayana are. As India's cultural minister, I recommend that Ramayana and Gita should be part of our school curriculum and I am working extensively with HRD minister Smriti Irani towards this.”

What about the party ruling our nation currently? Here is a list of some of the outrageous things other members of the BJP said immediately after the Dadri episode.

Among them:

“Why responsibility to keep peace and maintain calm is always put on the Hindus alone? Be a victim and maintain silence in face of assaults!!!” —BJP MP Tarun Vijay.

“The police have arrested innocent people. We also demand legal action against those people, who are engaged in cow slaughter as it is hurting Hindu sentiments,” —BJP leader Vichitra Tomar.

More was to follow:

“Agar nirdoshon ke khilaaf karyawaahi ki gayee, to munh-tod jawaab humne pehle bhi diyaa hai aur abh bhi denaa jaante hain (If action is taken against ‘innocents’, we have given a befitting reply earlier and know how to do so again).” —BJP MLA Sangeet Som, who was an accused in the Muzaffarnagar riots, commenting on people being arrested after the lynching at Dadri.

Words which may not harm anyone directly, but which, coming from representatives of the party and the state, can easily be interpreted as signal for what goes.

It is for this reason that politicians from the BJP often recount Rajiv Gandhi’s reprehensible words – “When a big tree falls, the earth shakes” – in the aftermath of the Sikh riots.

Rajiv Gandhi is not with us today but how, pray, are the same speakers – who never tire of accusing opponents of “selective amnesia” – not appalled at similar statements by serving ministers, MPs and members from their own party?

There has been many an appeal, by now, for the prime minister to speak strongly and decisively on the issue. But, the question to ask is: Has he done so already?

Watch Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution and you will come across a clip of an 2002 election speech by Modi after the Gujarat Riots, around 50 minutes into the film. 

“Who are the culprits of Godhra? You tell me!” he says, in response to criticism of the riots that shook the nation after a train compartment was torched in Godhra. “If nothing had happened at Godhra, would anyone have hurled even one stone?”

During the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Modi refrained from making any statements insinuating a Hindutva agenda. Yet, if you examine the speeches made by others at his rallies before he spoke, especially those in UP and Bihar, you will find them full of such references.

Now, read what Sharma said to the Times of India in a recent interview:

“I am a soldier of the Modi government. I cannot go beyond the Prime Minister's line of action. I only remark within my capacity and on those matters that are related to my ministries.”

Also: “From time to time, we receive directions from the party high command about commenting on political issues. I do not cross boundaries drawn by the high command.”

Do you still believe you don’t have the PM’s views on rising intolerance in the country?

Truth is, there was no need for many BJP party men who did so to make a statement after the killing at Dadri in the first place. The primary responsibility to react fell upon the state government, run by the Samajwadi Party. Similarly, the initial responsibility of reacting to the murder of Kalburgi fell upon the Congress government in Karnataka. Yet BJP politicos rushed to make themselves heard.

And now for the second flawed argument by those claiming there has been no increase in intolerance. At the centre of whataboutery surrounding the debate lies the question: What about the Sikh riots?

Here’s the thing. The Congress wants to shake off the ghost of 1984, but it can’t do so without successfully prosecuting the guilty who are alive.

Still, a question we need to ask is: Does the Congress conduct its campaigns on a majoritarian agenda that would make Sikhs uncomfortable today? Secondly, Manmohan Singh has been a Congress prime minister as well as prime ministerial candidate. Can we imagine the BJP, in the foreseeable future, having a Muslim as their prime ministerial candidate?

The BJP, rather, seems to want to wear the ghosts of 1992 and 2002 as badges of honour. The protection of Hindu cultural identity wasn’t a cornerstone for the foundation of the Congress party, but it was so for the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the BJP’s predecessor. And while the BJP tried to be more inclusive in its early years as a new party, moderating its Hindutva stance and emphasizing its links to the socialism of the Janata Party instead, it has reverted to a clear majoritarian agenda since the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Any hope for this agenda to be whittled down with the arrival of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was dashed with the Gujarat riots of 2002. 

Hence, despite what the Union finance minister Arun Jaitley believes, Modi has not been a “victim” of “ideological intolerance” “since 2002”. He is more likely to have been either the victim —  or merely an ambitious adopter — of an intolerant ideology.

No one underlines this better than the Prime Minister Modi’s prime confidante. BJP national president Amit Shah wrote his maiden blog on September 26, two days before the incident at Dadri. Here is a translated excerpt:

“If the leading political leaders in independent India had drawn from Savarkar's life and philosophy to build the nation, then the country would not be passing through such difficult times. Come and pledge with me that we will be partners in making an India of his dreams.”

Once again, read between the lines. Intolerance is rising, most definitely. But it’s also beginning to settle in.

Source: dailyo

Blogger's Comment: An EXCELLENT MUST READ article!!

Dear BJP, I’m a Hindu and I reject Hindutva

Don’t teach me about my own religion. Who I should worship. How I should dress or what I should eat.

POLITICS |  Long-form | 12-09-2015

Suchitra Krishnamoorthi @suchitrak

I am like most other urban Indians. Apolitical. Or non political. A novice. An outsider. But a well wisher. Because I love my India.

And like most other urban Indians, other than election time, when we dutifully go and cast our votes silently, politics has no impact on our lives. Yes we gasp over scams and purported stories, but just as quickly dust the sand off our feet and move on. Politics never enters our homes - certainly not our bedrooms and kitchens. Yes we cursed much when Shiv Sena changed our beloved Bombay’s name to Mumbai when they came to power in 1995, but quickly saw the rationale behind the move. Desi euphoria and jingoism bloomed. With the luxury of life digested with a silver spoon, it was easy to see the virtue behind a Shivaji statue.

Even when vehicles were set ablaze in Marathi Manoos prejudice and Biharis asked to return to their home state, we ignored them with the hope that sense would soon prevail. It didn’t. Sadly. Hindutva ideology had started to seep in. To even the most neutral amongst us, it was unacceptable.

Never mind the disappointment. Manmohan Singh is a brilliant economist and will herald a new India we were told. After all as India’s finance minister in the 90’s, he had introduced to us the concept of India shining. But his failure as prime minister that he was ushered into in 2004 was soon apparent - what was the power Sonia Gandhi wielded over him? OMG and why? What on earth for? Why did he look like a deer trapped under the headlights?

Sycophancy was the giant ogre in this Congress government - everybody was getting swallowed and the whole country was dying. An Italian accent became the most despised sound in the Indian psyche - even senior leaders like Digvijaya Singh had fallen into the Gandhi scion brainwash. Rahul Gandhi? Really? But Pappu can’t dance saala. Oh and not to forget that Vadra boy. What did Priyanka see in him ya? Looks like a total goonda and how did his whole family die so mysteriously ya? OMG? What? Forbes has listed Sonia Gandhi as the third richest woman in the world? Baapre! And she still wears those cheap cotton sarees?  What an actress ya. Better than Shabana Azmi!

Uff India and its Bollywood fixation. Anyway to cut a long story short, when it was time to re-elect a new government in 2014, I, like most other urban Indians reeling under the corruption of dynastic politics and a failed Congress government, was filled with hope. Hope for a new India. Hope for change. Hope that things will finally get  better.

Arvind Kejriwal and his Gandhi delusion (remember how he went on a fast every time and for anything and tried to project that he is a Mahatma Gandhi reincarnate while trying to hide the fact that he is CIA (Ford Foundation) funded? Of course, his common man phonyism gave away his own opportunistic game way too soon and he fell by the wayside. Phew! He was India’s first anti-corruption hope dashed. Who could we turn to?

Narendra Modi-led BJP seemed like the only hope in April-May 2014. Were we wrong to expect?

India was desperate. We needed a leader. Badly. We needed progress. We needed a semblance of honesty. We desperately needed hope again. It came in the form of Narendra Modi. Brilliantly packaged. Karmachari. Brahmachari. Sanskaari.

So well was the Gujarat model marketed that Modi became the one man capable of delivering us – India – into the future. A future built on the foundation of tradition. Indian tradition. As anti-Italian as one could get.

The fact that the only other prior perception the public had of BJP as a party was its Karnataka ministers – CC Patil and Laxman Savadi watching porn in Assembly in 2012, or the ban on women wearing jeans in the state and being beaten for consuming alcohol,  but all that was soon obliterated by Modi’s own five-star charisma and his PR machinery. If anybody deserves an Oscar for PR, it is indeed Sri Narendra Modi’s team.

So, swayed by a desperate hope as we were, longing pleading and begging for a better India as we were, I, like every other urban Indian, even went out on a limb urging my friends and family to vote for Narendra Modi. Stated on social media that Narendra Modi’s greatest ally was Rahul Gandhi. And I wasn’t wrong.

The BJP government won because we Indians had become so soooo Gandhi family intolerant - any alternative seemed like manna from heaven in comparison.

Had the Congress propped some other leader of calibre other than the gora chitta Rahul Gandhi or his Maa, the votes would have been divided. But Rahul sealed it. BJP owes him a lot for their victory.

But what have they done with their victory? It’s been disappointing to say the least. Not just disappointing. Annoying. Frightening. Unacceptable. Totally. Totally, totally unacceptable. Despicable really.

I remember whilst urging my friends to vote for Narendra Modi, a Muslim friend had joked that if BJP comes to power he will have to get on a boat to Karachi. So real loomed the spectre of the Godhra riots in everyone’s head, and so real the feeling of Muslim persecution. Was he wrong?

At that point I had reprimanded my Muslim friend that his fear rose from the fact that his allegiance was with the Islamic state in the first place; so he shouldn’t use the minority card to gain undeserved rights and privileges. If Karachi is emotionally a boatride away, surely it’s where he belonged? "You don’t understand SK,” he sighed. In retrospect I think he might have been right.

Reservation and minority status for the Muslims in my view was nothing but vote bank politics. The Congress party policy of divide and rule. But hey... I admit, I don’t really understand everything. Like I said I’m a novice. But hey.. I’m also an artist enough to understand that even a novice is entitled to her worldview and I’m common enough to understand that I express what a large number of people feel but are unable to elucidate. So, here goes.

It’s been barely over a year of the BJP government and just how disappointed are we? God OMG - more than disappointed, I believe. We are shocked and hoping it’s still all a mistake. Did we ever imagine we are voting for a despotic fascist regime? What exactly is going on? WTF!

*Beef Ban* – Dear BJP! Can u please explain what wrong did the chicken or the goat do that they deserve to be killed and not the cow? Yes, yes, Congress imposed it before you, but how come they didn’t bombard it on us as much as you? Why am I suddenly feeling embarrassed about being a Hindu?

*Meat Ban* – Yes, you want revenge and oneupmanship on your Congress counterparts and distract us from the fact that you are failing completely in governance. Farmer suicides, rape, children dying by falling into potholes, Gajendra Chauhan ... need I say more!

Meat ban looks like a cheap shot at making us forget about the governance failure on all counts.

Did you say sedition charges were to be slapped against those who dare to speak up!!! I mean really? I dare you, seriously.

And what was that drivel about eliminating western culture and reclaiming Indian culture?

What exactly do you mean by that dear education minister (HRD), Smriti Irani, you who is not even sure of what education degree you have acquired yourself or in what language? For someone, who doesn’t herself know if she is a BA by correspondence or a BCom by imagination, is not likely to know the difference between Hinduism and Hindutva, is she now?

Hinduism is a philosophy. The doctrine of which allows me the choice of acceptance or rejection. Ram or Ganpati or even atheism. Upanishads or Gita or tantra or mantra. Hindutva, on the other hand, is militant imposition of wrongly interpreted tenets of Hinduism. Hindutva is a political tool - nothing to do with the religion itself.

I’m not showing off or being patronising, I promise you. My grandfather and my ancestors were temple priests - my father still recites the Vedas verbatim. My sister recites them without having ever studied them - it is so in my bloodline. That’s how Hindu my lineage is.

So do not teach me about my own religion, dear BJP. Don’t tell me how I should think. Who I should worship. How I should dress or what I should eat.

I am a Hindu - by definition purer and a higher form than you can ever b e- and I reject your Hindutva. Just as Islam must reject the Taliban or Isis.

To be a Hindu is to be tolerant. It’s why we have survived as a race in spite of invasion, conversion and unimaginable attempted destruction. If you do not understand that tolerance or exercise that compassion so intrinsic to our religion, you do not deserve to call yourself Hindu. Or a leader of a democratic nation.

So dear BJP. I reject your Hindutva.  I reject your fascism. I reject your despotism.

Dare me if you will. For I speak for all of India.

Mind it! :-)

Source: dailyo

Sad, sorry state of Indian liberals under Modi sarkar

The need of the hour is to save the Indian liberalism from its Left-liberal elite.

POLITICS  |   Long-form |   05-12-2014

Shekhar Gupta  @ShekharGupta

National interest

By the time this week's India Today hits the stands, one thing would have become clearer: whether Narendra Modi is essentially an old-style politician under an extroverted modern gloss or a game changer. Because an old-timer would be a partisan to the core, defending the indefensible to the very logical end, that is, the loss of an argument and some political capital. If he is an original new phenomenon, one of a kind, or sui generis as the more scholarly people prefer to say (my venerable first news editor, late DN Singh, had banned the use of "foreign" words), he would have fired Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti. Earlier she is sent back to prayer and penance, rather than waste public money in the ministry of food processing, making a pickle of the BJP's image, the better it will be.

But really? Think again, and think hard. Do we, the currently besieged and cornered minority of Indian liberals, even want the story to end that way, and this soon? Do we want it to end at all? A sadhvi in the BJP ministry, even if a junior minister in charge of achar and chutney, while I presume her senior, Harsimrat Kaur of the Akali Dal, takes care of jams and juices, brings such solace to us liberals. It is living proof that we are intellectually right and morally superior. And most importantly, that we are losing. Poor us. Is there any future left for the Indian liberal with the rise of Narendra Modi? Why isn't the rest of the world feeling sorry for us? How can we, such a small, brave but increasingly disenfranchised community of liberals, be expected to rectify the consequence of the stupidity of crores of voters? The future is lost, a mythical past is upon us, the barbarians are at the gates. Where is my ticket to a genuinely liberal American East Coast campus or think tank?

Even for a bout of self-flagellation, this sounds harsh. If Modi lacks the political wisdom to cut his losses early enough, it is his problem and not that of his critics. In fact, the longer he perpetuates this, the more the Indian Left-liberal, will say, I told you so. From Niranjan Jyoti to Adityanath, the new saffron-robes are welcome evidence of all our warnings gone unheeded. Just as Sadhvi Rithambhara and Ashok Singhal were in the early 1990s, and Praveen Togadia and Pramod Muthalik of Sri Ram Sene in the interregnum. It would be such disappointment if Modi did the right thing now and sent Sadhvi Jyoti home. He can't deny us this living, walking and talking evidence for our unheeded warnings.

Credit must be given where it's duly deserved. In this case to American liberal academic Steve Almond, whose June 8, 2012 article ("Liberals are ruining America, I know because I am one") in the New York Times triggered this week's central thought of liberal masochism, self-isolation, mourning or, in the more apt Indian usage, rona-dhona, or even better, in Punjabi, syapa. Almond talked of how he briefly acquired liberal martyrdom in 2006 by resigning his teaching job at Boston College to protest the selection of then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice as commencement speaker. His biggest reward, he said, was an invitation to appear on an abusive Right-wing chat show on Fox News, and he thought then that he had paid his liberal dues by standing up to sour-mouthed, shouty anchor Sean Hannity. By 2012, he said, he saw that action as less heroic. "I hadn't spoken truth to power or caused anyone to reassess secretary Rice's record. I merely provided a few minutes of gladiatorial stimulation for Fox News. In seeking to assert my moral superiority, I enabled Hannity."

If you recall 2012 America, the Right-Left polarisation cut across American society. But in 2014, six months into Modi's reign, India sounds quite similar. Almond's self-diagnosis seems to fit us too now: "This, to be blunt, is the tragic flaw of the American liberal," he said. "We choose to see ourselves as innocent victims of an escalating Right-wing fanaticism. But too often we serve as willing accomplices... and to the resulting degradation of our civic discourse." Then, turning the sword into his own belly he said: "We do this, without even meaning to, by consuming conservative folly as mass entertainment."

It is challenging for me to delve deeper into the marginalisation of the liberal in western democracies because I do not know those societies enough. But in India, the issue is compounded by the deeprooted, terminal elitism of the liberal. I have fretted for years that politically our liberal constituency is shrinking because it had become, post-independence, hyphenated with the word Left. Our national ideology emerged from the freedom movement, which was very liberal. The Congress then was a political umbrella wide enough to give room to liberals of the Left as well as the Right, and also intellectual space for them to argue. Remember, Syama Prasad Mookerjee was even a member of Nehru's cabinet, and Sardar Patel his deputy. But over the next two decades, the right was purged, artfully by Nehru and then crudely by his daughter. India's only truly liberal party therefore morphed into a Left-liberal party. You need to read Ramachandra Guha to learn more about it. But people of my generation do remember the "star" symbol of C Rajagopalachari's Swatantra Party, where much of the old Congress right collected and which once was a formidable opposition force, netting 44 Lok Sabha seats in 1967. Indira Gandhi destroyed it, and thereby India's liberal right, with her post-1969 "revolutionary" push.

This reduced liberalism to a Left monopoly as the right merged into saffron. It lasted as long as Indian politics and popular mind were dominated by old, anti-imperialist, non-aligned, West-phobic ideas of the Cold War. But it did not have the flexibility to change with new realities as the Cold War ended, global power and economic equations were rewritten and successive generations of aspirational, ambitious, impatient and post-ideological Indians rose. I am not sure Dr Manmohan Singh quite looked at it this way, but post-1991, he was probably the only famous liberal of old who thought it was time to delete the hyphenated left. By the middle of 2009, with a bigger second mandate, he was winning this campaign of ideological correction. But he was defeated by the party's embedded pinko immune system.

Pop sociology has its hazards, but I have got away with it often enough in the past, so here we go again. While Singh had the intellectual honesty to acknowledge, or to borrow the words of his political mentor Narasimha Rao, do "what to do when the ground under your feet is moving", he failed to see the very formidable elitism underpinning this left-liberalism. To be liberal, you had to be left, and to be left-liberal, your parents should have done very well, given you Doon-Stephen's-Oxbridge education, a Delhi Golf Club membership and definitely a home in the capital's Little Kremlins, Diplomatic Enclave and couple more neighbourhoods to its immediate south, in bequest. Singh and Rao didn't check out on this, and failed. That is why the liberals are back in their lefty, but also elitist, hole, or rather their ivory bunker. Why bunker, not tower, we will just get to.

It is now an uch-koti (superior) brahminical club (I use that purely in its intellectual manifestation, not a Manuwadi one). "Outsiders" are rejected. And so what if its ranks continue to shrink. A reminder was served on me very recently in a very exhaustive profile of me in a self-avowedly liberal publication that traced my apparent success over four decades and marvelled that I could get here despite being the son of a "minor bureaucrat from Haryana" and "lacking the eloquence" of my Oxbridge peers. Now, the second is a fact, but the first an exaggeration. My late father, in fact, would have been quite flattered to be described as a minor bureaucrat. He slogged all his life to rise to become one, a gazetted officer, even if a day before his retirement, so he would also have the "power" to attest somebody's certificates. He was mostly a clerk, or rather an assistant, despite his relatively high education. He struggled with money, with his tiny salary sent his children mostly to sarkari Hindi medium schools and colleges, but still made sure we bought two English and Hindi newspapers, three magazines and listened to cricket commentary on BBC regularly in English.

I say all this not to praise him, or to write belatedly an obit he was not famous, powerful or rich enough to deserve when he passed away in 1998, but to provide the sociological point of this week's National Interest.

I say this because I now believe that my parents' generation (my father would have been 85 today) was not atypical of post-independence liberal Indians, mostly Congress voters, who were willing to challenge earlier acceptance of elite domination with "Bhagwan teri maya, kahin dhoop kahin chhaya" resignation. They believed early enough that education would bring equality. Economic reform brought opportunity and then suddenly, it was no longer so life-and-death, that your parents should have done very well for you to be taken seriously. That is the reality India's elite liberals have failed to understand or embrace. In defining liberalism as an exclusive "brahminical" value of the intellectual, economic and academic upper crust, they have closed their doors to the enormously more numerous rest, as our ancestors had shut them out of Sanskrit scholarship and even science. If Mahabharata is a reality, so is the legend of Eklavya.

One of the most stirring speeches in defence of Indian secularism was once made by Ram Vilas Paswan when Vajpayee's short-lived government was seeking a confidence vote. How many Muslims came with Babur, he asked, and then answered, only 40. So how did they swell to crores? Because "people like us", he said, Dalits and lower castes, were not allowed entry in the temples, "so we went to the mosques". This is precisely what today's liberal elites have done to the tens of crores of rising, aspirational, we-don't-owe-nobody-nothing Indians, children of poorer parents like mine who beg, steal, borrow, scrounge, starve, deny themselves that pack of cigarettes to give them opportunity, if not houses in Shanti Niketan or Kautilya Marg or Golf Club memberships. Instead, Modi has embraced them and now enjoys power that no Indian prime minister has since Indira in 1971. They are now coming, smashing the defences of the elite liberal ivory, well, bunker.

Source: dailyo

Don't shame item girls: Bharat, our country is named after an item girl's grandson

If crypto-Wahabis are trying to turn Bharatvarsh into a fiefdom of ISIS or the Taliban, it's time they're reminded of such facts.

POLITICS  |   3-minute read |   03-12-2014

Renuka Narayanan


Bah, what a reek of rancid ghee today in Bharatvarsh of once-upon-a-time "malayaja-sheetalam" ("cool winds of delight", in Vande Mataram). Another foul gust just blew our way from Navin Tyagi, general secretary of the UP unit of the Hindu Mahasabha, the nationalist organisation that once had adherents like Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, founder of Banares Hindu University.

Navin Tyagi, who does not sound like he paid attention to the nolej in kolej, wants to brand under-clad actresses who dance item numbers “prostitutes”. He also wants a khap-style ban on skirts, jeans and mobile phones for schoolgirls.

This self-declared authority on Indian culture, manners and morals (for women) reportedly said: “The girls who perform item numbers in films and remove clothes should be declared prostitutes. We feel the women who earn money by indulging in obscenity are prostitutes. They are spreading filth in society”. He apparently plans to take the matter to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the very law he plans to supplicate has taken a dim view of Akil Malik (who sounds like Tyagi’s blood-brother lost in childhood at the mela) for slapping actress Gauahar Khan. And why did he do that? When he slapped Gauahar, he told her it was because she, a Muslim woman, was dancing in “short dress”. And when the police took him away, he told them that it was because he was attracted to Gauahar, whom he saw dancing in public that he slapped her - for dancing in public.

Well, I have something to say meanwhile to this crypto-Wahabi, Tyagi, who’s trying to call the shots for women in India and I hope he falls off his buffalo hearing it.

Our country, "Bharat", is named after the valiant king Bharata of myth, right? So, get this, Tyagi and all Ram Sainiks and Rahim Sainiks: King Bharata’s granny, our Desh ki nani, no less, was an item girl, the apsara Menaka. Our country is named after an item girl’s grandson... and his mother, Shakuntala, was technically illegitimate.

It’s never bothered me because I’m a Hindu, not a crypto-Wahabi. Consequently, I’m proud of these vivid and fascinating heroes and heroines of our myth and legend and do not think judgmentally of modern women who dance for a living.

But if crypto-Wahabis are trying to turn Bharatvarsh into a fiefdom of ISIS or the Taliban, it's time they're reminded of such facts.

Perhaps the BJP is learning from how that "sadhvi" of theirs just united the Opposition with her uncultured rant on "Ramzadas".

Certainly, Swami Chakrapani, national secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha and Lalitha Kumaramangalam, newly-appointed chair of the National Commission for Women (NCW) did not hand out a swarna-kamal to Tyagi. Even BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra reportedly distanced himself from this caballero and said the party was “…proud to have a culture where women have led from the front.” 

We’ll see what the BJP actually does to curb its Tyagis and bogeys.

As for us, let’s remember how, at the stroke of the midnight on August 15, 1947, when India finally attained "her" freedom from slavery, it was Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya’s son, Govind Malaviya, who reportedly blew the conch thrice to announce India’s Independence.

January 26 will soon be upon us. The women of India, and their supporters, should blow a loud raspberry that day at the hostile "men" of India, these Ram-Rahim Sainiks, who are united in being horrible to Indian women, if nothing else.

Source: dailyo

Sadhvi Niranjan and almost all Indians are not Ramzaadas

If only those who are born of Ram are to rule, the Raghuvanshi kshatriyas will lord over Lutyens’ Delhi

POLITICS  |  BREAKING NEWS INTO PIECES  |   4-minute read |   03-12-2014

Kamlesh Singh @kamleshksingh

You must give credit to people when it’s due. After 10 years of Congress spokespersons playing cute in the face of evidence, we now have their BJP counterparts trying hard to look cute. I have been watching them defend the beautiful Persian-laced Sanskrit expletives from the holy chops of a Sadhvi of no less than the ministerial order. While they admit she was way out of line, they also pretend that the media hasn’t got the gist of it. According to them, to get a metaphor is beyond our collective mental capacity. Incredibly sweet. But let us go meta on the metaphor and the defence.

She said: “Dilli mein yaa to Ramzaadon ki sarkar banegi, ya haraamzaadon ki (Delhi will have a government of either those born of Ram or those born in illegitimacy).”

 The Opposition says, she has not only abused non-BJP leaders but also used communal politics to divide people by invoking Lord Ram. The accusation is that the statement was aimed at othering non-Hindus, primarily Muslims, Christians and so on.

The BJP’s defence is that she may have used an inappropriate word, Haraamzaadon, but by Ramzaadon she meant all Indians —since Ram is our common ancestor. After all, even Allama Iqbal called him Imam-e-Hind. We are all Ram’s sons and daughters. Period.

How captivating an idea for communal harmony. The trouble is, it isn’t so. Since we are all going medieval on facts, let me go technical on them.

Even if we believe that all Indians were at one point Hindus, the Sadhvi’s statement doesn’t hold water. Critics say by Ramzaadon she meant BJP supporters, because at one time the party led a movement to build a temple where Lord Ram is assumed to have been born. That movement gave birth to the new, aggressive, powerful BJP. The rathyatra man has since gone to the backstage as the Gujarat man has taken centerstage. But the party owes a lot to Ram and occasionally invokes the lord. Like the Sadhvi did, presuming she is a Ramzaadi. Is she?

Ram, according to the books, was a Kshatriya. Now try telling a Brahmin that sons of Ram spawned Brahmins. They will never ever accept that because they are proud of their “superiority” and “purity”. It’s likely that they would take that as an affront. That keeps the Brahmins out.

The other large support group, the trading communities often referred to as baniyas, cannot claim being Ramzaadas because Kshatriyas will not take that lying down. Vaishyas do not claim to be born of Ram but have for ages wished well for the most just man to walk the earth. Vaishyas have eternally needed just kings because the unjust ones would tax them heavily and make doing business difficult. A lack of rule of law would make them vulnerable to thugs and plunderers. They also needed guarantee of peace and safety that only kings could provide. Who better a king than Raja Ram? So Vaishyas believe Ram to be the ideal idol to worship, but do not consider born of him.

Since Ram was the pinnacle of justice and equanimity, his people loved him. When in exile, the Maryada Purushottam shared berries with Shabri, a Dalit in modern parlance, she was overwhelmed by the gesture. This also makes it clear that she didn’t expect a man born in a higher caste to share her food even in adversity.

Since caste is a hallmark of Hindu mythology and the lords of Dwapar and Treta Yuga have castes well marked, the chance of anybody but Kshatriyas claiming to be Ramzaadas is invalid.

It can’t be all Kshatriyas, too, because Ram was a Raghuvanshi Kshatriya. So only Raghuvanshis can claim that status. Here we must consider that Ram wasn’t the only Raghuvanshi. He had uncles and brothers, who had children. They can’t be Ramzaadas either. So much so that even Lakshman’s sons and daughters are out.

The later Kshatriyas, Rajputs, Jats and Gujjars, weren’t even living in India in the period assumed to be Treta Yuga.

Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti is a Dalit and a devotee of Ram but the books that she reveres are pretty clear about lineage. If not all, most Hindus worship Ram as the moral guiding light and consider sacred everything associated with him. They are Rambhakt, not Ramzaade. Only some of the Raghuvanshis are born of Ram or Ramzaade. What does it make you and the rest of us then, Sadhviji?

Source: dailyo