Memoirs of fifties Akividu or Akiveedu (ఆకివీడు), and neighbouring villages. Educational, geographical, historical, literary, philosophical, religious and social postings included. Copyright Raju (PD). (bondadaa@gmail.com)
Sunday, October 04, 2015
Dadri’s dire warning: If Modi fails to give India change, it’s because of enemies within his house
Akhlaq’s death was foretold from the moment Bharatiya Janata Party chief ministers started banning meat on the excuse of festivals during which it has never been banned before.
Written by Tavleen Singh | Updated: October 4, 2015 7:41 am
Akhlaq’s daughter and her cousin, in Bisara village Wednesday. Akhlaq was killed when a mob attacked his house following rumours that he and his family stored and ate beef. His son, severely injured in the attack, is in hospital. (Express Photo by: Prem Nath Pandey)
This week I would have written about the Foreign Minister’s excellent speech at the United Nations, but images from Dadri got in the way. Ever since the barbaric, senseless murder of Mohammed Akhlaq, I have been haunted by those images of a family with modern, middle-class aspirations destroyed by the savagery that lies so close to the surface of Indian modernity. Mohammed Akhlaq’s brutal murder gives the Prime Minister a chance to confront the reality that, if he fails to give India change, development and prosperity, it will be because of enemies inside his own house.
Akhlaq’s death was foretold from the moment Bharatiya Janata Party chief ministers started banning meat on the excuse of festivals during which it has never been banned before. They did this without concern for the jobs that would be lost and without noticing that Muslims would become an automatic target. Where better for this to be demonstrated than in a Hindu village with less Muslim families than you can count on the fingers of one hand? But Akhlaq’s cowardly murder raises other more serious questions.
When he was in Silicon Valley, the Prime Minister talked proudly about his plans to use digital technology to transform rural India. What use is this kind of talk when a murderous mob can gather in a village on the edge of Delhi without the police being able to do anything? The men who planned the murder of Akhlaq, and the attempted murder of his son Danish, used WhatsApp to spread lies about cow slaughter days in advance, but the police did not notice. What use is digital technology if it cannot improve basic policing? What use are cellphones in villages if the temple priest who made the announcement that caused Akhlaq’s death could not use it to alert the nearest police station? Even if the Prime Minister succeeds in spreading the use of digital technology to improve policing and governance, what is he going to do about the primitive mindset of members of his own party?
What will he do with the ex-MLA who said that if the meat found in Akhlaq’s fridge was beef, then the violence was justified? What will he do with BJP spokesmen who justified the murder in other ways? Some said that farmers in the area were relying on their cattle to survive because of the drought and in the village of Bisara a calf had disappeared. Others, including the local MP, dismissed the murder as an ‘accident’ and the result of a ‘misunderstanding’.
It was a shameful display of primitive, provincial thinking, and Mr Modi would do well to notice that, along with the ‘ghar wapasi’ nonsense that went on through his entire first year in office, it serves to distract from the reasons why he became prime minister. The vote was for change and development and not Hindutva. Anyone who tells him otherwise is lying. And yet he has done nothing to stop the theft of his mandate by people who would not have been ministers or members of Parliament if his slogan of ‘parivartan’ and ‘vikas’ had not found such resonance.
Akhlaq’s murder reminds us of how superficial India’s modernity is. The men who killed him and tried to kill his son would have all had cellphones in their pockets and colour television sets in their homes. Some may even have had access to computers and the Internet, and still all it took was a rumour for them to turn into savages. It is only savages who can turn so quickly into a killer mob. And in recent months a very ugly atmosphere has been created across the country by BJP chief ministers and Modi’s own ministers, and he has done nothing to stop them. Nor has he made the smallest effort to call a halt to the misguided ‘ghar wapasi’ (homecoming) campaign launched by his former comrades in the RSS. If the RSS is truly interested in serving India, and if they are true believers in the Sanatan Dharma, then they must concentrate their activities on more useful things like cleaning the Ganga and helping the Swachh Bharat campaign. Ghar wapasi is the antithesis of the idea of the Sanatan Dharma.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister must realise that the investors he woos on his travels in foreign lands halt in their tracks every time they see signs that beneath its new highways and shining malls, India remains a primitive country. Akhlaq was stoned to death in a village less than 50 kilometres away from Delhi and his young son, if he lives, could live with serious head injuries. Do we require more proof that we are going to need more than digital technology to make India into a country that truly belongs in the 21st century, instead of in some hideous, primordial time warp?
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter: @ tavleen_singh
Written by Tavleen Singh | Updated: October 4, 2015 7:41 am
This week I would have written about the Foreign Minister’s excellent speech at the United Nations, but images from Dadri got in the way. Ever since the barbaric, senseless murder of Mohammed Akhlaq, I have been haunted by those images of a family with modern, middle-class aspirations destroyed by the savagery that lies so close to the surface of Indian modernity. Mohammed Akhlaq’s brutal murder gives the Prime Minister a chance to confront the reality that, if he fails to give India change, development and prosperity, it will be because of enemies inside his own house.
Akhlaq’s death was foretold from the moment Bharatiya Janata Party chief ministers started banning meat on the excuse of festivals during which it has never been banned before. They did this without concern for the jobs that would be lost and without noticing that Muslims would become an automatic target. Where better for this to be demonstrated than in a Hindu village with less Muslim families than you can count on the fingers of one hand? But Akhlaq’s cowardly murder raises other more serious questions.
When he was in Silicon Valley, the Prime Minister talked proudly about his plans to use digital technology to transform rural India. What use is this kind of talk when a murderous mob can gather in a village on the edge of Delhi without the police being able to do anything? The men who planned the murder of Akhlaq, and the attempted murder of his son Danish, used WhatsApp to spread lies about cow slaughter days in advance, but the police did not notice. What use is digital technology if it cannot improve basic policing? What use are cellphones in villages if the temple priest who made the announcement that caused Akhlaq’s death could not use it to alert the nearest police station? Even if the Prime Minister succeeds in spreading the use of digital technology to improve policing and governance, what is he going to do about the primitive mindset of members of his own party?
What will he do with the ex-MLA who said that if the meat found in Akhlaq’s fridge was beef, then the violence was justified? What will he do with BJP spokesmen who justified the murder in other ways? Some said that farmers in the area were relying on their cattle to survive because of the drought and in the village of Bisara a calf had disappeared. Others, including the local MP, dismissed the murder as an ‘accident’ and the result of a ‘misunderstanding’.
It was a shameful display of primitive, provincial thinking, and Mr Modi would do well to notice that, along with the ‘ghar wapasi’ nonsense that went on through his entire first year in office, it serves to distract from the reasons why he became prime minister. The vote was for change and development and not Hindutva. Anyone who tells him otherwise is lying. And yet he has done nothing to stop the theft of his mandate by people who would not have been ministers or members of Parliament if his slogan of ‘parivartan’ and ‘vikas’ had not found such resonance.
Akhlaq’s murder reminds us of how superficial India’s modernity is. The men who killed him and tried to kill his son would have all had cellphones in their pockets and colour television sets in their homes. Some may even have had access to computers and the Internet, and still all it took was a rumour for them to turn into savages. It is only savages who can turn so quickly into a killer mob. And in recent months a very ugly atmosphere has been created across the country by BJP chief ministers and Modi’s own ministers, and he has done nothing to stop them. Nor has he made the smallest effort to call a halt to the misguided ‘ghar wapasi’ (homecoming) campaign launched by his former comrades in the RSS. If the RSS is truly interested in serving India, and if they are true believers in the Sanatan Dharma, then they must concentrate their activities on more useful things like cleaning the Ganga and helping the Swachh Bharat campaign. Ghar wapasi is the antithesis of the idea of the Sanatan Dharma.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister must realise that the investors he woos on his travels in foreign lands halt in their tracks every time they see signs that beneath its new highways and shining malls, India remains a primitive country. Akhlaq was stoned to death in a village less than 50 kilometres away from Delhi and his young son, if he lives, could live with serious head injuries. Do we require more proof that we are going to need more than digital technology to make India into a country that truly belongs in the 21st century, instead of in some hideous, primordial time warp?
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter: @ tavleen_singh
Source: indianexpress
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Panchayat undemocracy
In an unequal society, exclusions from the democratic process based on social indicators reflect elitist bias.
Written by Brinda Karat | Published:September 30, 2015 12:15 am
According to the perverted logic of these governments, it is perfectly acceptable to get elected by taking the votes of those who are educationally deprived, but when it is their right to contest elections in their own villages and blocks, they are deemed too ignorant.
Rules to sanction official snooping on WhatsApp, a state government circular that redefines sedition to prevent criticism of the administration, another state government’s defence of an extremist Hindutva organisation implicated in the murder of communist leader Govind Pansare and other progressive rationalists, meat bans in three states, a call to reconsider the issue of reservations — it would appear that a competition is on within the Sangh Parivar in achhe-din India on how best to reshape democracy, as ordained by the wise men in Nagpur.
Authoritarian moves by the right also have a clear elitist bias. It includes diluting the rights of the poor, minorities, oppressed castes and women. Recently, the BJP-led governments in Rajasthan and Haryana have made precisely such moves. The two governments have adopted the most outrageous amendments to their respective state panchayat acts in spite of the judgment of the Punjab and Haryana High Court that stayed the Haryana proposal.
According to these amendments, no one can contest elections for the post of sarpanch or member of the panchayat samiti or zilla parishad if they have not passed Class X. For women and Scheduled Castes, the literacy requirement is middle school. Going by Census 2011, if this is implemented in Haryana, it will mean more than half the population, 56.8 per cent, will be disqualified on the first count, and a shocking 79.76 per cent made ineligible because of the second condition. In Rajasthan, the exclusions are more extensive. Minimum literacy qualifications will disproportionately hit poorer sections.
An argument is advanced that such conditions will encourage people to go to school. This is rubbing salt in deep wounds. Was it Dalits who did not want knowledge when molten lead was poured in their ears? Was it women who chose to be enslaved in their homes by upper-caste patriarchal norms? The burden of historical injustice lies heavy in today’s India precisely because we have not only failed to eliminate injustices but have continued discriminatory practices, reflected in the statistics above. Without free education and the full implementation of the Right to Education Act, amendments such as these are nothing but punishing the poor for their poverty. It also means poor women, who have been denied education, will be excluded from the 50 per cent reservations meant for all women.
According to the perverted logic of these governments, it is perfectly acceptable to get elected by taking the votes of those who are educationally deprived, but when it is their right to contest elections in their own villages and blocks, they are deemed too ignorant. Even more bizarre, these very people who are ineligible to fight panchayat elections are eligible to fight assembly and parliamentary elections. The blatant elitist arrogance, that only those with educational qualifications can serve the people and fulfil their duties as elected representatives, comes at a time when corruption scandals of the rich and famous and highly qualified, including in Rajasthan, have brought shame to India. But the assault does not stop there.
It is common knowledge that farmers, particularly farmers with land under five acres, are caught in a terrible crisis of spiralling debt, driven not least by the increasing cost of farm inputs, while price support for crops remains abysmally low. The need is for a comprehensive package and sustained government intervention, including debt relief, to contain what is clearly an increasing trend in farmer suicides. Instead, these two governments have adopted amendments that disqualify a farmer from contesting if there are pending loan arrears to any banking institution, or if electricity bills are unpaid. By this amendment, only rich farmers or landlords can contest panchayat elections. Yet another condition is the need to have a fully functional toilet, at a time when it is calculated that over one-fourth of households do not have such a facility.
It means that a fundamental democratic right is being subordinated to the implementation of government policy, such as recovery of loans or building toilets. Earlier, some governments had adopted the two-child norm as a condition for contesting elections. It was later withdrawn in some states. In an economically and socially unequal society, exclusion from the democratic process on the basis of social indicators is tampering with the basic structure of the Constitution.
In Rajasthan, the panchayat elections that disqualified as candidates more than half of the population have already been held. If the disqualification had not been in operation, the results, which favoured the ruling party, may also have been different. In Haryana, the elections have been stayed by the Supreme Court, which is at present hearing a petition moved by three women, presently elected members, who will be disqualified as candidates if the amendments are upheld.
For Indian democracy, the implications of such amendments are ominous signs of a takeover of even panchayat institutions by those who have money. Panchayats have an important role to play in critical areas like village plans for development and consent for projects requiring land acquisition. If panchayats are packed with people who are better-off, it will severely impact the decision-making process. It is worth recalling that it was the unlettered Kondh tribal communities of Odisha, and their elected panchayat representatives and gram sabhas, who refused to give consent for a project to one of the most powerful mining companies.
We have seen the way corporations and their representatives are taking over Parliament and state assemblies. The amendments to the panchayat act will facilitate such a takeover in rural areas too. It will be just a matter of time before other BJP-ruled states introduce such anti-democratic measures to subvert panchayat institutions.
A century ago, in many countries, electoral franchise was limited to an exclusive section of male property owners. Citizens’ movements forced a reversal and introduced the concept of universal suffrage, which combines the universal right to vote with the universal right to contest elections. Independent India accepted this basic democratic norm. It is sought to be reversed today.
The writer is a member of the CPM politburo.
Written by Brinda Karat | Published:September 30, 2015 12:15 am
Rules to sanction official snooping on WhatsApp, a state government circular that redefines sedition to prevent criticism of the administration, another state government’s defence of an extremist Hindutva organisation implicated in the murder of communist leader Govind Pansare and other progressive rationalists, meat bans in three states, a call to reconsider the issue of reservations — it would appear that a competition is on within the Sangh Parivar in achhe-din India on how best to reshape democracy, as ordained by the wise men in Nagpur.
Authoritarian moves by the right also have a clear elitist bias. It includes diluting the rights of the poor, minorities, oppressed castes and women. Recently, the BJP-led governments in Rajasthan and Haryana have made precisely such moves. The two governments have adopted the most outrageous amendments to their respective state panchayat acts in spite of the judgment of the Punjab and Haryana High Court that stayed the Haryana proposal.
According to these amendments, no one can contest elections for the post of sarpanch or member of the panchayat samiti or zilla parishad if they have not passed Class X. For women and Scheduled Castes, the literacy requirement is middle school. Going by Census 2011, if this is implemented in Haryana, it will mean more than half the population, 56.8 per cent, will be disqualified on the first count, and a shocking 79.76 per cent made ineligible because of the second condition. In Rajasthan, the exclusions are more extensive. Minimum literacy qualifications will disproportionately hit poorer sections.
An argument is advanced that such conditions will encourage people to go to school. This is rubbing salt in deep wounds. Was it Dalits who did not want knowledge when molten lead was poured in their ears? Was it women who chose to be enslaved in their homes by upper-caste patriarchal norms? The burden of historical injustice lies heavy in today’s India precisely because we have not only failed to eliminate injustices but have continued discriminatory practices, reflected in the statistics above. Without free education and the full implementation of the Right to Education Act, amendments such as these are nothing but punishing the poor for their poverty. It also means poor women, who have been denied education, will be excluded from the 50 per cent reservations meant for all women.
According to the perverted logic of these governments, it is perfectly acceptable to get elected by taking the votes of those who are educationally deprived, but when it is their right to contest elections in their own villages and blocks, they are deemed too ignorant. Even more bizarre, these very people who are ineligible to fight panchayat elections are eligible to fight assembly and parliamentary elections. The blatant elitist arrogance, that only those with educational qualifications can serve the people and fulfil their duties as elected representatives, comes at a time when corruption scandals of the rich and famous and highly qualified, including in Rajasthan, have brought shame to India. But the assault does not stop there.
It is common knowledge that farmers, particularly farmers with land under five acres, are caught in a terrible crisis of spiralling debt, driven not least by the increasing cost of farm inputs, while price support for crops remains abysmally low. The need is for a comprehensive package and sustained government intervention, including debt relief, to contain what is clearly an increasing trend in farmer suicides. Instead, these two governments have adopted amendments that disqualify a farmer from contesting if there are pending loan arrears to any banking institution, or if electricity bills are unpaid. By this amendment, only rich farmers or landlords can contest panchayat elections. Yet another condition is the need to have a fully functional toilet, at a time when it is calculated that over one-fourth of households do not have such a facility.
It means that a fundamental democratic right is being subordinated to the implementation of government policy, such as recovery of loans or building toilets. Earlier, some governments had adopted the two-child norm as a condition for contesting elections. It was later withdrawn in some states. In an economically and socially unequal society, exclusion from the democratic process on the basis of social indicators is tampering with the basic structure of the Constitution.
In Rajasthan, the panchayat elections that disqualified as candidates more than half of the population have already been held. If the disqualification had not been in operation, the results, which favoured the ruling party, may also have been different. In Haryana, the elections have been stayed by the Supreme Court, which is at present hearing a petition moved by three women, presently elected members, who will be disqualified as candidates if the amendments are upheld.
For Indian democracy, the implications of such amendments are ominous signs of a takeover of even panchayat institutions by those who have money. Panchayats have an important role to play in critical areas like village plans for development and consent for projects requiring land acquisition. If panchayats are packed with people who are better-off, it will severely impact the decision-making process. It is worth recalling that it was the unlettered Kondh tribal communities of Odisha, and their elected panchayat representatives and gram sabhas, who refused to give consent for a project to one of the most powerful mining companies.
We have seen the way corporations and their representatives are taking over Parliament and state assemblies. The amendments to the panchayat act will facilitate such a takeover in rural areas too. It will be just a matter of time before other BJP-ruled states introduce such anti-democratic measures to subvert panchayat institutions.
A century ago, in many countries, electoral franchise was limited to an exclusive section of male property owners. Citizens’ movements forced a reversal and introduced the concept of universal suffrage, which combines the universal right to vote with the universal right to contest elections. Independent India accepted this basic democratic norm. It is sought to be reversed today.
The writer is a member of the CPM politburo.
Source: indianexpress
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Tipu Sultan: a secular internationalist, not a bigot
September 27, 2015
Muzaffar Assadi
Tipu Sultan cannot be reduced to a singular narrative or tradition of intolerance or bigotry as he represented multiple traditions. Photo: M.A. Sriram
The recent offer made by a film producer to Tamil superstar Rajinikanth to act in a movie on the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, Tipu Sultan, has yet again opened up a Pandora’s Box. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some Hindutva groups have demanded that Rajinikanth refuse the offer. This argument is made on the grounds that Tipu, the 18th century ruler of Mysore state, was a “tyrant” who killed thousands of Hindus as they refused to convert to Islam.
This is not the first time that Tipu’s name has been dragged into a controversy. It began some years back when Sanjay Khan made a tele-serial based on Bhagwan S. Gidwani’s book, The Sword of Tipu Sultan. His name was once again dragged into a controversy when the Congress government intended to celebrate his birth anniversary in 2014. There was opposition when a proposal was made to establish a university named after him.
Tipu’s very name has become contentious for two reasons: first, his controversial steps in dealing with different communities and people who rose against him. Second, different perspectives through which history was constructed and his image built.
Colonial historians have projected Tipu as a “religious bigot”, who was instrumental in killing and converting to Islam thousands of Nayars of Kerala, Catholics of Dakshina Kannada and Coorgis of Kodagu. Even Kannada chauvinists have projected him as anti-Kannadiga as he was instrumental in changing the local names of places and introducing Persian vocabulary into administration. Marxist historians, on the other hand, have viewed him as “one of the foremost commanders of independence struggle” and a “harbinger of new productive forces”.
History is unkind to Tipu Sultan. The fact is that Tipu cannot be reduced to a singular narrative or tradition of intolerance or bigotry as he represented multiple traditions. He combined tolerant inter-religious traditions, liberal and secular traditions, anti-colonialism and internationalism. He could do this as he had strong roots in Sufism, which is not explored much by historians. He belonged to the Chisti/Bande Nawaz tradition of Sufism.
In fact, Tipu was radical in more than one sense. He was the first to ban consumption of alcohol in the entire State, not on religious grounds, but on moral and health grounds. He went to the extent of saying: “A total prohibition is very near to my heart.” He is credited with introducing missile or rocket technology in war. He was the first to introduce sericulture to the then Mysore state. He was the first to confiscate the property of upper castes, including Mutts, and distribute it among the Shudras. He is also credited with sowing the seeds of capitalist development at a time when the country was completely feudal. He thought about constructing a dam across the Cauvery in the present-day location of Krishnaraja Sagar. He completed the task of establishing a biodiversity garden named Lal Bagh.
His tolerance is reflected in his annual grants to no less than 156 temples, which included land deeds and jewellery. His army was largely composed of Shudras. When the famed Sringeri Mutt, established by Shankaracharya, was invaded by the Maratha army, he issued a firman to provide financial assistance for reinstallation of the holy idol and restoring the tradition of worship at the Mutt. His donation to the famous Srikanteshwara temple at Nanjangud; the donation of 10,000 gold coins to complete temple work at Kanchi; settling the disputes between two sects of priests at the Melkote temple; and gifts to Lakshmikanta temple at Kalale are all well-known. Interestingly, Srirangapatna, a temple town, remained his permanent capital till the end of his rule. He was also instrumental in constructing the first-ever church in Mysuru. Incidentally, well-known historian B.A. Saletore calls him “defender of Hindu Dharma”.
The allegation of forcible conversions has to be seen in the background of political exigencies — either they were with the colonialists such as in the case of Christians of Dakshina Kannada, or were waging a protracted guerrilla war as in the case of Coorg. Here, historians have distorted the facts by reducing political exigencies to the “communal ideology” of Tipu.
A ruler, who once identified himself with the American and French Revolution and Jacobinism, has remained an enigma to many. That a man who ruled for just 16 years continues to haunt Hindutva groups obviously means that Tipu continues to exist in the political discourses, political narratives as well as in the imagination of nation-building. This is where the irony of history lies — one cannot just bury Tipu in the annals of history.
(The writer is chairman, department of political science at the University of Mysore. muzaffar.assadi@gmail.com.)
Muzaffar Assadi
Tipu Sultan cannot be reduced to a singular narrative or tradition of intolerance or bigotry as he represented multiple traditions. Photo: M.A. Sriram
The recent offer made by a film producer to Tamil superstar Rajinikanth to act in a movie on the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, Tipu Sultan, has yet again opened up a Pandora’s Box. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some Hindutva groups have demanded that Rajinikanth refuse the offer. This argument is made on the grounds that Tipu, the 18th century ruler of Mysore state, was a “tyrant” who killed thousands of Hindus as they refused to convert to Islam.
This is not the first time that Tipu’s name has been dragged into a controversy. It began some years back when Sanjay Khan made a tele-serial based on Bhagwan S. Gidwani’s book, The Sword of Tipu Sultan. His name was once again dragged into a controversy when the Congress government intended to celebrate his birth anniversary in 2014. There was opposition when a proposal was made to establish a university named after him.
Tipu’s very name has become contentious for two reasons: first, his controversial steps in dealing with different communities and people who rose against him. Second, different perspectives through which history was constructed and his image built.
Colonial historians have projected Tipu as a “religious bigot”, who was instrumental in killing and converting to Islam thousands of Nayars of Kerala, Catholics of Dakshina Kannada and Coorgis of Kodagu. Even Kannada chauvinists have projected him as anti-Kannadiga as he was instrumental in changing the local names of places and introducing Persian vocabulary into administration. Marxist historians, on the other hand, have viewed him as “one of the foremost commanders of independence struggle” and a “harbinger of new productive forces”.
History is unkind to Tipu Sultan. The fact is that Tipu cannot be reduced to a singular narrative or tradition of intolerance or bigotry as he represented multiple traditions. He combined tolerant inter-religious traditions, liberal and secular traditions, anti-colonialism and internationalism. He could do this as he had strong roots in Sufism, which is not explored much by historians. He belonged to the Chisti/Bande Nawaz tradition of Sufism.
In fact, Tipu was radical in more than one sense. He was the first to ban consumption of alcohol in the entire State, not on religious grounds, but on moral and health grounds. He went to the extent of saying: “A total prohibition is very near to my heart.” He is credited with introducing missile or rocket technology in war. He was the first to introduce sericulture to the then Mysore state. He was the first to confiscate the property of upper castes, including Mutts, and distribute it among the Shudras. He is also credited with sowing the seeds of capitalist development at a time when the country was completely feudal. He thought about constructing a dam across the Cauvery in the present-day location of Krishnaraja Sagar. He completed the task of establishing a biodiversity garden named Lal Bagh.
His tolerance is reflected in his annual grants to no less than 156 temples, which included land deeds and jewellery. His army was largely composed of Shudras. When the famed Sringeri Mutt, established by Shankaracharya, was invaded by the Maratha army, he issued a firman to provide financial assistance for reinstallation of the holy idol and restoring the tradition of worship at the Mutt. His donation to the famous Srikanteshwara temple at Nanjangud; the donation of 10,000 gold coins to complete temple work at Kanchi; settling the disputes between two sects of priests at the Melkote temple; and gifts to Lakshmikanta temple at Kalale are all well-known. Interestingly, Srirangapatna, a temple town, remained his permanent capital till the end of his rule. He was also instrumental in constructing the first-ever church in Mysuru. Incidentally, well-known historian B.A. Saletore calls him “defender of Hindu Dharma”.
The allegation of forcible conversions has to be seen in the background of political exigencies — either they were with the colonialists such as in the case of Christians of Dakshina Kannada, or were waging a protracted guerrilla war as in the case of Coorg. Here, historians have distorted the facts by reducing political exigencies to the “communal ideology” of Tipu.
A ruler, who once identified himself with the American and French Revolution and Jacobinism, has remained an enigma to many. That a man who ruled for just 16 years continues to haunt Hindutva groups obviously means that Tipu continues to exist in the political discourses, political narratives as well as in the imagination of nation-building. This is where the irony of history lies — one cannot just bury Tipu in the annals of history.
(The writer is chairman, department of political science at the University of Mysore. muzaffar.assadi@gmail.com.)
Source: thehindu
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
National Health Profile highlights poor doctor-patient ratio
NEW DELHI, September 22, 2015 | Updated: September 22, 2015 23:34 IST
Rukmini S.
‘India spends less of its GDP on health than some of the world’s poorest countries’
Every government hospital serves an estimated 61,000 people in India, with one bed for every 1833 people, new official data shows. In undivided Andhra Pradesh, every government hospital serves over 3 lakh patients while in Bihar, there is only one bed for every 8800 people.
Union Minister for Health J.P. Nadda released the National Health Profile 2015 prepared by the Central Bureau for Health Intelligence (CBHI) on Tuesday along with officials of the Ministry, the Directorate General of Health Services and the CBHI.
Every government allopathic doctor serves a population of over 11,000 people, with Bihar and Maharashtra having the worst ratios. The number of qualified allopathic doctors registered with medical councils fell in 2014 to 16,000, or less than half the previous year’s number; the data was however provisional, CBHI officials said. India now has cumulatively 9.4 lakh allopathic doctors, 1.54 lakh dental surgeons, and 7.37 lakh AYUSH doctors of whom more than half are Ayurvedic doctors. India’s 400 medical colleges admit an estimated 47,000 students annually.
The Centre’s share of total public expenditure on health has fallen over the last two years, and India spends less of its GDP on health than some of the world’s poorest countries. Among all States, undivided Andhra Pradesh had the highest public expenditure on health in 2012-13. Goa and the north-eastern States spent the most on health per capita while Bihar and Jharkhand spent the least.
Out-of-pocket private expenditure on health has risen steadily over the years, with the cost of medicines, followed by that of hospitalisation accounting for the largest share of the household expenditure. Absolute spending, as well as its share in total non-food expenditure, rises with income levels. Kerala spends the most privately on health.
Communicable diseases
Deaths from most communicable diseases have been falling steadily in India. Despite recording over 10 lakh cases, deaths from malaria are officially down to just over 500 annually; Odisha accounted for over one in three cases of malaria in 2014. The number of recorded chikungunya cases has fallen since a 2010 outbreak, but Maharashtra accounts for nearly half of all cases. Just over 40,000 cases of dengue were officially reported in 2014 and 131 deaths. While the number of cases of Acute Diarrhoeal Disease has risen every year to 1.16 crore in 2014, mortality from the disease has been steadily declining.
However, 2014 saw a sharp spike in cases and deaths due to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome, a disease concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal. Japanese Encephalitis, concentrated in Assam and Uttar Pradesh also rose last year. Pulmonary tuberculosis remains the biggest communicable disease killer in India, accounting for over 63,000 deaths in 2014. Since disease data is largely reported from government health facilities only, it is likely to be heavily underestimated, CBHI officials said.
Non-communicable diseases are on the rise with cardiovascular diseases according for a quarter of deaths from non-communicable diseases and cancer accounting for six per cent.
Rukmini S.
‘India spends less of its GDP on health than some of the world’s poorest countries’
Every government hospital serves an estimated 61,000 people in India, with one bed for every 1833 people, new official data shows. In undivided Andhra Pradesh, every government hospital serves over 3 lakh patients while in Bihar, there is only one bed for every 8800 people.
Union Minister for Health J.P. Nadda released the National Health Profile 2015 prepared by the Central Bureau for Health Intelligence (CBHI) on Tuesday along with officials of the Ministry, the Directorate General of Health Services and the CBHI.
Every government allopathic doctor serves a population of over 11,000 people, with Bihar and Maharashtra having the worst ratios. The number of qualified allopathic doctors registered with medical councils fell in 2014 to 16,000, or less than half the previous year’s number; the data was however provisional, CBHI officials said. India now has cumulatively 9.4 lakh allopathic doctors, 1.54 lakh dental surgeons, and 7.37 lakh AYUSH doctors of whom more than half are Ayurvedic doctors. India’s 400 medical colleges admit an estimated 47,000 students annually.
The Centre’s share of total public expenditure on health has fallen over the last two years, and India spends less of its GDP on health than some of the world’s poorest countries. Among all States, undivided Andhra Pradesh had the highest public expenditure on health in 2012-13. Goa and the north-eastern States spent the most on health per capita while Bihar and Jharkhand spent the least.
Out-of-pocket private expenditure on health has risen steadily over the years, with the cost of medicines, followed by that of hospitalisation accounting for the largest share of the household expenditure. Absolute spending, as well as its share in total non-food expenditure, rises with income levels. Kerala spends the most privately on health.
Communicable diseases
Deaths from most communicable diseases have been falling steadily in India. Despite recording over 10 lakh cases, deaths from malaria are officially down to just over 500 annually; Odisha accounted for over one in three cases of malaria in 2014. The number of recorded chikungunya cases has fallen since a 2010 outbreak, but Maharashtra accounts for nearly half of all cases. Just over 40,000 cases of dengue were officially reported in 2014 and 131 deaths. While the number of cases of Acute Diarrhoeal Disease has risen every year to 1.16 crore in 2014, mortality from the disease has been steadily declining.
However, 2014 saw a sharp spike in cases and deaths due to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome, a disease concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal. Japanese Encephalitis, concentrated in Assam and Uttar Pradesh also rose last year. Pulmonary tuberculosis remains the biggest communicable disease killer in India, accounting for over 63,000 deaths in 2014. Since disease data is largely reported from government health facilities only, it is likely to be heavily underestimated, CBHI officials said.
Non-communicable diseases are on the rise with cardiovascular diseases according for a quarter of deaths from non-communicable diseases and cancer accounting for six per cent.
Source: the hindu
Saturday, September 12, 2015
A new cosy arrangement
September 13, 2015
Nistula Hebbar
File photo shows RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat, Mr. Gadkari and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Vrindavan.
The rise in comfort levels in the relations between the RSS and the Modi government at the Centre is an important change from the previous, slightly fraught relationship between the Sangh and the Vajpayee government.
The three day Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Samanvay Baithak or co-ordination meeting held in Delhi between September 3 and 5 was important in both form and content in informing the country of the structure of organisations which now greatly influence its government. The RSS ended the meet with a ringing endorsement of the government, and government ministers were volubly unapologetic at having presented themselves at the meet for a seeming “performance appraisal.”
It was a performance that, in the words of professor Walter Anderson, co-author of the seminal work on the RSS, The Brotherhood in Saffron, sought to establish not just the commonality of policy goals, but “signalling that the RSS aims to speak out more openly on policy issues of importance, rather than just being a mediator of differences and a supplier of workers, and that the Modi government is comfortable with it doing so.”
This comfort between the RSS and the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre is an important change from the previous, slightly fraught relationship between the Sangh (RSS) and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. It is a sign of increasing confidence in the RSS, with growing numbers of enrolment and mainstream support but also owes a lot to a conscious effort by the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to learn from the lessons of the past.
This is NDA 2.0
What are the contours of this new relationship? The first clue that most people got about this new communicative exchange was in September 2014, when Prime Minister Modi was informed, during a meeting at his residence 7 Race Course Road, that the RSS would be replacing Suresh Soni with RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal as the office bearer responsible for co-ordinating affairs between the RSS and the BJP. Mr. Gopal, from Mathura, is of a cohort group closer to the age of the current leadership in the party and shares Mr. Bhagwat’s rather pragmatic approach to things. The official announcement of this change was made in October that year, a full month’s grace period given to the party to adjust to it.
Indeed, the machinery of the relationship in its rivets has taken into account the likes and preferences of Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. “As soon as the elections were over, people more in tune with the new dispensation, both in age and inclination, like Ram Madhav, Shiv Prakash and Sunil Bansal (in the Uttar Pradesh unit) were seconded to the party,” said a senior BJP office bearer. When the ‘Ghar Wapsi’ agitation derailed an entire Parliament session, a key RSS office bearer heading the programme was asked to stand down, after Prime Minister Modi and Mr. Bhagwat got talking.
"For the government, it has been 15 months of filial endorsement by the RSS." Photo: AP
In 2008, the RSS had decided to crystallise some of its ideological preoccupations into viable policy documents and work, and had set up a string of think tanks such as the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) and the India Foundation. In 2014, the two think tanks provided a rich hunting ground for appointment of ministers (Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, and Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha are from the India Foundation) and also important officials (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Nripendra Misra were associated with the VIF). This created seamlessness in policy thinking, which was lacking earlier.
According to professor Pralay Kanungo, author of the well-regarded book, RSS’ Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan, the generational change in the BJP and the RSS cannot be over emphasised in explaining the new cosy arrangement. “During the Vajpayee premiership, he and L. K. Advani were like colossus on the Sangh stage, outflanking the sarsanghchalak K. S. Sudarshan. There was, in my opinion, a confidence deficit in the Sangh due to this, which manifested itself in a sharper tussle for control and dominance,” he said. “The new lot who are involved in mediating affairs — Krishna Gopal, Ram Madhav and Union Minister for Roads and Highways Nitin Gadkari are of a different ilk. Mostly there is a realisation that the mandate of 282 seats cannot be frittered away,” he adds.
The new rivets
BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who handles many sensitive assignments for the party, pooh poohs suggestions that things were really bad between the RSS and the BJP in the Vajpayee era, but concedes that communication is better now.
“It’s not as if there was no ideological proximity then. There were many members of the NDA government then who were very close to the organisation. In 2002, in fact, we had a similar exercise between the RSS and the NDA government and then Prime Minister Vajpayeeji had also attended, albeit not with such a brouhaha being made about it,” he said. He added, however, that “mechanisms for co-ordination are better now, both formally and informally.”
An example of the formal mechanism is the recently held meet between education and culture ministers of BJP-ruled States, where the party’s office bearers and Union Ministers of those departments were present. “We prepared a lot for the meeting and we intend to meet at least twice a year,” said Union Minister for Culture Mahesh Sharma. The informal mechanism was at work on the issue of One Rank One Pension (OROP) where a gentle nudge from RSS second in command Suresh “Bhaiyyaji” Joshi sealed matters and within 48 hours an acceptable draft of the OROP settlement was announced to the country.
A senior BJP member who was part of the Vajpayee government and the current one says that the change is visible. “If you look at what RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabele said after the baithak on the Ram Temple issue—that they would not hand over a time table to the government on this, despite efforts by VHP leader Praveen Togadia—and contrast it with Dattopant Thengdi of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) offering dharna against the Vajpayee government on economic reforms, the picture will be clear.”
Individual ministers, he says, are encouraged to meet with Sangh affiliate organisations, on their issues. For example, the SJM met with environment minister Prakash Javadekar on field trials for Genetically Modified (GM) crops. The SJM was successful in getting the trials stopped despite recommendations to the contrary by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), advising the ministry. On issues relating to the economy and agriculture, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari frequently mediates between the Sangh affiliates and the government.
The GM crops victory, in fact, was balanced by the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) pulling out of the nationwide trade unions strike on September 2. “Therefore there is give and take, and the Sangh retains its role as the final arbitrator in any given dispute,” he adds.
Fraying accord
When the government was first sworn in, there was widespread talk of how the RSS has given it a free pass for at least a year to get things into shape. It has been 15 months of filial endorsement by the RSS. And yet, there are issues, analysts feel, the resolution of which will test the mettle of the new Pax Bhagwat.
Many say that clashes within the Parivar could emerge on three issues. The first is on the question of Indianisation of science and research. The RSS is promoting it but the government may be eager to retain the credibility of India abroad. The second is the economy, where the Swadeshi agenda may contradict ‘Make in India’, the Modi government’s manufacturing outreach, and finally, the question of appointments to institutions.
The government will have to assess how far it can go in getting appointments done without affecting institutions. Prof. Kanungo, in fact, says that the question of appointments has the most potential in creating rifts between various wings of the Sangh and the government. The fire over the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the head of the Film and Television Institute of India hasn’t been doused yet.
Heads of various educational institutions including Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University are yet to be appointed.
A senior BJP leader from Gujarat, who has observed Prime Minister Modi since his days as Chief Minister, says that more than anything, the sidelining of people like Mr. Togadia from the mainstream of Sangh affairs to fringe will be a hidden danger. “On the question of the Ram Temple and even on the religious census data, Togadia was asked to pipe down and a more middle path was to be taken. After being reduced to the fringe in Modi’s Gujarat, he is risking that in Modi’s India. The phenomenon of Hardik Patel is a sign of this restlessness of those marginalised to the fringes of the discourse,” he said.
“No government is in a position to tolerate political violence. Sangh affiliates who may have to accommodate government concerns on key issues may revolt. Ultimately that will be the true test of this new found arrangement,” he said.
Nistula Hebbar
File photo shows RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat, Mr. Gadkari and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Vrindavan.
The rise in comfort levels in the relations between the RSS and the Modi government at the Centre is an important change from the previous, slightly fraught relationship between the Sangh and the Vajpayee government.
The three day Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Samanvay Baithak or co-ordination meeting held in Delhi between September 3 and 5 was important in both form and content in informing the country of the structure of organisations which now greatly influence its government. The RSS ended the meet with a ringing endorsement of the government, and government ministers were volubly unapologetic at having presented themselves at the meet for a seeming “performance appraisal.”
It was a performance that, in the words of professor Walter Anderson, co-author of the seminal work on the RSS, The Brotherhood in Saffron, sought to establish not just the commonality of policy goals, but “signalling that the RSS aims to speak out more openly on policy issues of importance, rather than just being a mediator of differences and a supplier of workers, and that the Modi government is comfortable with it doing so.”
This comfort between the RSS and the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre is an important change from the previous, slightly fraught relationship between the Sangh (RSS) and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. It is a sign of increasing confidence in the RSS, with growing numbers of enrolment and mainstream support but also owes a lot to a conscious effort by the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to learn from the lessons of the past.
This is NDA 2.0
What are the contours of this new relationship? The first clue that most people got about this new communicative exchange was in September 2014, when Prime Minister Modi was informed, during a meeting at his residence 7 Race Course Road, that the RSS would be replacing Suresh Soni with RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal as the office bearer responsible for co-ordinating affairs between the RSS and the BJP. Mr. Gopal, from Mathura, is of a cohort group closer to the age of the current leadership in the party and shares Mr. Bhagwat’s rather pragmatic approach to things. The official announcement of this change was made in October that year, a full month’s grace period given to the party to adjust to it.
Indeed, the machinery of the relationship in its rivets has taken into account the likes and preferences of Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. “As soon as the elections were over, people more in tune with the new dispensation, both in age and inclination, like Ram Madhav, Shiv Prakash and Sunil Bansal (in the Uttar Pradesh unit) were seconded to the party,” said a senior BJP office bearer. When the ‘Ghar Wapsi’ agitation derailed an entire Parliament session, a key RSS office bearer heading the programme was asked to stand down, after Prime Minister Modi and Mr. Bhagwat got talking.
"For the government, it has been 15 months of filial endorsement by the RSS." Photo: AP
In 2008, the RSS had decided to crystallise some of its ideological preoccupations into viable policy documents and work, and had set up a string of think tanks such as the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) and the India Foundation. In 2014, the two think tanks provided a rich hunting ground for appointment of ministers (Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, and Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha are from the India Foundation) and also important officials (National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Nripendra Misra were associated with the VIF). This created seamlessness in policy thinking, which was lacking earlier.
According to professor Pralay Kanungo, author of the well-regarded book, RSS’ Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan, the generational change in the BJP and the RSS cannot be over emphasised in explaining the new cosy arrangement. “During the Vajpayee premiership, he and L. K. Advani were like colossus on the Sangh stage, outflanking the sarsanghchalak K. S. Sudarshan. There was, in my opinion, a confidence deficit in the Sangh due to this, which manifested itself in a sharper tussle for control and dominance,” he said. “The new lot who are involved in mediating affairs — Krishna Gopal, Ram Madhav and Union Minister for Roads and Highways Nitin Gadkari are of a different ilk. Mostly there is a realisation that the mandate of 282 seats cannot be frittered away,” he adds.
The new rivets
BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who handles many sensitive assignments for the party, pooh poohs suggestions that things were really bad between the RSS and the BJP in the Vajpayee era, but concedes that communication is better now.
“It’s not as if there was no ideological proximity then. There were many members of the NDA government then who were very close to the organisation. In 2002, in fact, we had a similar exercise between the RSS and the NDA government and then Prime Minister Vajpayeeji had also attended, albeit not with such a brouhaha being made about it,” he said. He added, however, that “mechanisms for co-ordination are better now, both formally and informally.”
An example of the formal mechanism is the recently held meet between education and culture ministers of BJP-ruled States, where the party’s office bearers and Union Ministers of those departments were present. “We prepared a lot for the meeting and we intend to meet at least twice a year,” said Union Minister for Culture Mahesh Sharma. The informal mechanism was at work on the issue of One Rank One Pension (OROP) where a gentle nudge from RSS second in command Suresh “Bhaiyyaji” Joshi sealed matters and within 48 hours an acceptable draft of the OROP settlement was announced to the country.
A senior BJP member who was part of the Vajpayee government and the current one says that the change is visible. “If you look at what RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabele said after the baithak on the Ram Temple issue—that they would not hand over a time table to the government on this, despite efforts by VHP leader Praveen Togadia—and contrast it with Dattopant Thengdi of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM) offering dharna against the Vajpayee government on economic reforms, the picture will be clear.”
Individual ministers, he says, are encouraged to meet with Sangh affiliate organisations, on their issues. For example, the SJM met with environment minister Prakash Javadekar on field trials for Genetically Modified (GM) crops. The SJM was successful in getting the trials stopped despite recommendations to the contrary by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), advising the ministry. On issues relating to the economy and agriculture, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari frequently mediates between the Sangh affiliates and the government.
The GM crops victory, in fact, was balanced by the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) pulling out of the nationwide trade unions strike on September 2. “Therefore there is give and take, and the Sangh retains its role as the final arbitrator in any given dispute,” he adds.
Fraying accord
When the government was first sworn in, there was widespread talk of how the RSS has given it a free pass for at least a year to get things into shape. It has been 15 months of filial endorsement by the RSS. And yet, there are issues, analysts feel, the resolution of which will test the mettle of the new Pax Bhagwat.
Many say that clashes within the Parivar could emerge on three issues. The first is on the question of Indianisation of science and research. The RSS is promoting it but the government may be eager to retain the credibility of India abroad. The second is the economy, where the Swadeshi agenda may contradict ‘Make in India’, the Modi government’s manufacturing outreach, and finally, the question of appointments to institutions.
The government will have to assess how far it can go in getting appointments done without affecting institutions. Prof. Kanungo, in fact, says that the question of appointments has the most potential in creating rifts between various wings of the Sangh and the government. The fire over the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan as the head of the Film and Television Institute of India hasn’t been doused yet.
Heads of various educational institutions including Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University are yet to be appointed.
A senior BJP leader from Gujarat, who has observed Prime Minister Modi since his days as Chief Minister, says that more than anything, the sidelining of people like Mr. Togadia from the mainstream of Sangh affairs to fringe will be a hidden danger. “On the question of the Ram Temple and even on the religious census data, Togadia was asked to pipe down and a more middle path was to be taken. After being reduced to the fringe in Modi’s Gujarat, he is risking that in Modi’s India. The phenomenon of Hardik Patel is a sign of this restlessness of those marginalised to the fringes of the discourse,” he said.
“No government is in a position to tolerate political violence. Sangh affiliates who may have to accommodate government concerns on key issues may revolt. Ultimately that will be the true test of this new found arrangement,” he said.
Source: thehindu
Dear BJP, I’m a Hindu and I reject Hindutva
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
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
Menstruation Innovation: Lessons from India
By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf September 1, 2015 3:20 pm
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, right, with Annie Lascoe and Arunachalam Muruganantham
at his factory in Coimbatore, India.Credit
In recent months, a wave of period-positivity has captured headlines – from Kiran Gandhi’s bold free-bleeding run of the London Marathon, to the successful repeal of Canada’s national “tampon tax.” Donald Trump catapulted menstruation smack into the middle of the Republican presidential debate when he ridiculed Megyn Kelly’s inquiry about his prior sexist rants, telling CNN she had “blood coming out of her wherever.”
This spike in media attention has helped promote a dialogue about eradicating the stigma around menstruation in the United States, as well as addressing the financial burden it often poses. Visible progress has ensued, including: introduction of legislation to eliminate sales tax on feminine hygiene products in Ohio and New York, two of the 40 states that impose it; convening of New York City’s first-ever roundtable on menstrual health, with a forthcoming pilot project in the public schools; a proliferation of creative donation and “buy one-give one” initiatives; and an array of savvy hashtag campaigns, including #TheHomelessPeriod and #JustATampon (both gone viral after starting in the U.K.).
In the quest to address issues of menstrual health and hygiene, however, most of the ingenuity and innovation has been spearheaded in the developing world, where millions can’t access sanitary products, often resorting to dirt, leaves and bark to absorb menstrual blood. Lack of plumbing and access to toilets further exacerbate the problem, and superstition and religious tradition leave countless women isolated and ashamed. In fact, India — where only 12 percent of women in India use sanitary products — offers many lessons that can be adapted here in the United States.
This summer I had the opportunity to join Annie Lascoe, founder of Conscious., an organic tampon business that will partner with Los Angeles-based community organizations and shelters to help low-income and homeless women meet menstrual needs, on a trip to India. We went directly to the source: Arunachalam Muruganantham, the creator of a menstrual micro-enterprise model that is nothing short of revolutionary. A school dropout from a poor family in southern India, Muruganantham first became aware of the issue in 1998; newly married, he was shocked to witness his wife’s struggle to manage (and hide) her monthly bleeding. At great personal cost – financial and social – he dedicated himself to inventing a machine to make low-cost sanitary pads out of pulverized wood fiber. Today he supplies machines to more than 400 production sites serving 1,300 villages in the poorest and most under-developed regions of India. All are managed and staffed by women, who make and sell the pads at minimal cost (approximately 2.5 rupees per pad, mere pennies in U.S. currency).
Muruganantham’s work has been celebrated by world leaders and philanthropists, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and last year he was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.
Amitaben, owner of a Sakhi production site based in Vadodara, India.Credit Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
Appreciating the vast and desperate need for sanitary products, Muruganantham is refreshingly open to allowing others to build on his model. One such innovator is Swati Bedekar, a former science and math teacher in the western state of Gujarat. After observing that girls missed school several days every month due to menstruation, Bedeker sought to help. She started with Muruganantham’s machines – but went on to simplify the production process, and also created a slimmer, more modern pad with “wings,” beloved by Indian women who adore the American touch. Shes since launched 40 production sites, run by women who are paid per pad they produce – which are sold in packages of ten for 20 rupees (around 35 cents) under the name “Sakhi” (Hindi for “generous). The workers also receive training in menstruation education – which they impart to women and girls, men and boys alike – as well as in basic financial management.
Bedekar’s husband, Shyam, a textile engineer and farmer, invented a special incinerator to dispose of the pads. Made from terracotta or cement and resembling a flower pot, the incinerator is brilliant in its simplicity: Because it doesn’t require electricity, it can be operated discreetly, burning the used pads and turning them into ash without spreading smoke and eliminating odor. Other benefits: production of the incinerators has become a source of livelihood for local potters; and the ash that is produced, when mixed with soil, is beneficial to locally grown plants.
One of Aakar Innovations’ production sites, based in the Dharavi slum of Mumbai.Credit Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
Aakar Innovations, a Mumbai- and Delhi-based hybrid social enterprise founded by Jaydeep Mandal, employs a similar model – and has created pads that are 100 percent compostable and biodegradable, meeting a higher environmental standard than much of what is on the commercial market. Aakar’s 40 women-run and women-staffed production sites are often established in partnership with local NGOs, which provide a full array of social and educational services. The NGO partnership also enables women to be paid a regular, reliable stipend, rather than on a per pad basis. Each site employs 15 to 30 women who produce 1,600 to 2,000 pads per day, enough to meet the needs of 5,000 women each month. Aakar is being recognized by the United Nations next month for its socially responsible and sustainable programs that empower women.
The work happening in India and elsewhere in the developing world provides lessons for us here at home:
Collaboration: we must aspire to be as forward-thinking and generous as Muruganantham in sharing a winning model and letting others improve upon it.
Education: we must be as holistic as all three of these innovators, linking dialogue and information to any product, whether purchased or donated.
Ownership: we must think about charity not just as a way to provide for those in need, but also to enable them to participate and take the reins of their own destiny.
The slew of period-focused news spiraling the Internet – what I’ve come to refer to as 2015’s Menstruation Sensation – stands in contrast to how little is being done to meet the menstrual needs of poor women here at home. Those who are homeless or incarcerated in the United States face similar health risks when they can’t access or afford sanitary products. Our current public benefits system often leads women to trade food stamps for tampons. Are a handful of sales tax reform bills – saving women eight cents on the dollar – and community donation drives the very best we can do? I hope not. Women in America, and around the globe, deserve a comprehensive and innovative policy agenda that addresses the very real crisis of menstrual hygiene management.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf (@jweisswolf) is vice president for development for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
at his factory in Coimbatore, India.Credit
In recent months, a wave of period-positivity has captured headlines – from Kiran Gandhi’s bold free-bleeding run of the London Marathon, to the successful repeal of Canada’s national “tampon tax.” Donald Trump catapulted menstruation smack into the middle of the Republican presidential debate when he ridiculed Megyn Kelly’s inquiry about his prior sexist rants, telling CNN she had “blood coming out of her wherever.”
This spike in media attention has helped promote a dialogue about eradicating the stigma around menstruation in the United States, as well as addressing the financial burden it often poses. Visible progress has ensued, including: introduction of legislation to eliminate sales tax on feminine hygiene products in Ohio and New York, two of the 40 states that impose it; convening of New York City’s first-ever roundtable on menstrual health, with a forthcoming pilot project in the public schools; a proliferation of creative donation and “buy one-give one” initiatives; and an array of savvy hashtag campaigns, including #TheHomelessPeriod and #JustATampon (both gone viral after starting in the U.K.).
In the quest to address issues of menstrual health and hygiene, however, most of the ingenuity and innovation has been spearheaded in the developing world, where millions can’t access sanitary products, often resorting to dirt, leaves and bark to absorb menstrual blood. Lack of plumbing and access to toilets further exacerbate the problem, and superstition and religious tradition leave countless women isolated and ashamed. In fact, India — where only 12 percent of women in India use sanitary products — offers many lessons that can be adapted here in the United States.
This summer I had the opportunity to join Annie Lascoe, founder of Conscious., an organic tampon business that will partner with Los Angeles-based community organizations and shelters to help low-income and homeless women meet menstrual needs, on a trip to India. We went directly to the source: Arunachalam Muruganantham, the creator of a menstrual micro-enterprise model that is nothing short of revolutionary. A school dropout from a poor family in southern India, Muruganantham first became aware of the issue in 1998; newly married, he was shocked to witness his wife’s struggle to manage (and hide) her monthly bleeding. At great personal cost – financial and social – he dedicated himself to inventing a machine to make low-cost sanitary pads out of pulverized wood fiber. Today he supplies machines to more than 400 production sites serving 1,300 villages in the poorest and most under-developed regions of India. All are managed and staffed by women, who make and sell the pads at minimal cost (approximately 2.5 rupees per pad, mere pennies in U.S. currency).
Muruganantham’s work has been celebrated by world leaders and philanthropists, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and last year he was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.
Appreciating the vast and desperate need for sanitary products, Muruganantham is refreshingly open to allowing others to build on his model. One such innovator is Swati Bedekar, a former science and math teacher in the western state of Gujarat. After observing that girls missed school several days every month due to menstruation, Bedeker sought to help. She started with Muruganantham’s machines – but went on to simplify the production process, and also created a slimmer, more modern pad with “wings,” beloved by Indian women who adore the American touch. Shes since launched 40 production sites, run by women who are paid per pad they produce – which are sold in packages of ten for 20 rupees (around 35 cents) under the name “Sakhi” (Hindi for “generous). The workers also receive training in menstruation education – which they impart to women and girls, men and boys alike – as well as in basic financial management.
Bedekar’s husband, Shyam, a textile engineer and farmer, invented a special incinerator to dispose of the pads. Made from terracotta or cement and resembling a flower pot, the incinerator is brilliant in its simplicity: Because it doesn’t require electricity, it can be operated discreetly, burning the used pads and turning them into ash without spreading smoke and eliminating odor. Other benefits: production of the incinerators has become a source of livelihood for local potters; and the ash that is produced, when mixed with soil, is beneficial to locally grown plants.
Aakar Innovations, a Mumbai- and Delhi-based hybrid social enterprise founded by Jaydeep Mandal, employs a similar model – and has created pads that are 100 percent compostable and biodegradable, meeting a higher environmental standard than much of what is on the commercial market. Aakar’s 40 women-run and women-staffed production sites are often established in partnership with local NGOs, which provide a full array of social and educational services. The NGO partnership also enables women to be paid a regular, reliable stipend, rather than on a per pad basis. Each site employs 15 to 30 women who produce 1,600 to 2,000 pads per day, enough to meet the needs of 5,000 women each month. Aakar is being recognized by the United Nations next month for its socially responsible and sustainable programs that empower women.
The work happening in India and elsewhere in the developing world provides lessons for us here at home:
Collaboration: we must aspire to be as forward-thinking and generous as Muruganantham in sharing a winning model and letting others improve upon it.
Education: we must be as holistic as all three of these innovators, linking dialogue and information to any product, whether purchased or donated.
Ownership: we must think about charity not just as a way to provide for those in need, but also to enable them to participate and take the reins of their own destiny.
The slew of period-focused news spiraling the Internet – what I’ve come to refer to as 2015’s Menstruation Sensation – stands in contrast to how little is being done to meet the menstrual needs of poor women here at home. Those who are homeless or incarcerated in the United States face similar health risks when they can’t access or afford sanitary products. Our current public benefits system often leads women to trade food stamps for tampons. Are a handful of sales tax reform bills – saving women eight cents on the dollar – and community donation drives the very best we can do? I hope not. Women in America, and around the globe, deserve a comprehensive and innovative policy agenda that addresses the very real crisis of menstrual hygiene management.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf (@jweisswolf) is vice president for development for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
Source: The New York Times
Sunday, August 30, 2015
What poetry has to do with math
We stand to gain much from developing an understanding of ancient India, its deep and diverse ideas.
Written by Rohan Murty | Published:August 31, 2015 12:06 am
Illustration by C R Sasikumar
Over the past year, I have heard my friend, mathematician Manjul Bhargava, give several public lectures on the deep connections between poetry, Sanskrit and mathematics. Like many other mathematicians before him who have written or spoken on this topic, Manjul gave an array of examples that demonstrate the tremendous depth and contributions made by ancient Indian (for the purposes of exposition, stretching perhaps from present day Afghanistan to Burma) philosophers and poets to mathematics, often before their counterparts in Western societies did the same. Manjul’s quintessential example is from roughly 11th century India, when Gopala and Hemachandra discovered a delightful connection between the number of syllables in Sanskrit poetry and mathematics. The answer, it turns out, is what we now call the Fibonacci series (also appears in the number of petals in certain flowers in nature), which was eventually rediscovered by Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, about 50-80 years later.
That there should be an inherent connection between the number of syllables in Sanskrit poetry, a product of human thought, and the number of petals in flowers in nature must startle any reasonable person. Another extraordinary example that Manjul highlights is the discovery of the binomial structure hidden in Sanskrit poetry, as discovered by the ancient Indian poet Pingala, roughly in 200 BC. This was about 1,800 years prior to the French mathematician Pascal’s Traité du triangle arithmétique, which we today learn as Pascal’s triangle. Other examples include the use of techniques that resemble modern error-correcting codes, synchronisation, and formal language definition in Sanskrit poetry and prose. These are all modern inventions (or reinventions, in some cases) that impact almost every aspect of our lives, from computer languages to wireless communications.
It would, of course, be foolhardy to claim the ancients invented or knew of computer languages or wireless communications. That would be like claiming Copernicus built space ships to fly to the moon. Rather, what these examples do highlight is that a long time ago, in or near the region we live in today, there existed a thriving civilisation that produced extraordinary intellectual thought and ideas which continue to have fundamental connections with the way we live today. We appear to have lost knowledge of this ancient past through the vicissitudes and vagaries of time. And with it, a significant source of pride and the ability to influence modern Indian identity. Few people of my generation appear to be aware of these facts.
Part of our ongoing ignorance of the past appears to be structural. Case in point: At my high school in Bangalore, as part of the ICSE syllabus, we read Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, works by Wordsworth, Tennyson, James Joyce, Dickens, etc. We even read Walt Whitman wax eloquent about the end of the American Civil War and Abe Lincoln’s death in “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”. Never mind the fact that none of us in class knew what a civil war was at the time, or that America had one, or how or why Lincoln died. We read the tremendously uplifting lines from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, all while lacking the context of ancient Greece or even knowing how to say “Ithaca” (we learnt it as EYE-THA-KA). We had little or no context for these strange ideas, words, phrases, stories, heroes and worlds.
And yet, we read these poems, short stories, novels, and wrote essays about them to pass our school exams. This was an enjoyable experience and I would do it again. However, such an educational experience and exposure was severely stunted in its diversity of thought and ideas. What strikes me as odd is that we students never read any classics that originated in this part of the world — that is, ancient India — despite having a cultural advantage of perhaps being able to understand the context better. We knew of no texts, poems, plays, great prose, science, mathematics, civics, political life or philosophy from 2,000-plus years ago from ancient India. My friends and I, stereotypes of the urban educated populace, remained entirely unaware of the intellectual contributions of this past. The most we seemed to know were a couple of random dates and trinkets of information on the Indus Valley civilisation, Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya, all of which seemed almost perfunctory and without any depth in the manner we read them in school.
As students, we were well versed with Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Copernicus, Newton, Leibniz, Pascal, Galois, Euler, etc, and their tremendous contributions to mankind. And yet, most of us had never read about Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Pingala, Kalidasa, Hemachandra, Madhava, the Nyaya or Mimimsa Sutras, or the Therigatha.
But why bother with any of this? After all, we were never part of these accomplishments and they were so long ago, by a people so far removed from today’s reality, that attempting to create any link to the past is surely irrelevant. But I would argue this discovery of the past is no less relevant than what we already study and acknowledge in the earlier cited examples in our schools and colleges. Besides, these sources of knowledge from ancient India are products of creative human thought and hold genuine value for the world, irrespective of where they come from, or geographic affinities. For example, any child on this planet will find mathematics far more amenable when learning parts of it through poetry, as opposed to the dry, dull methods espoused by most mathematics pedagogy today.
While national identity is a complex phenomenon, perhaps in some proportion it relates to the intellectual contributions made by societies to help advance knowledge and improve the human condition. Newton is a hero to many like me, who read in wonder about how he unravelled the basic laws of the universe. Great literature and philosophy from Western societies have helped us reflect on the human condition. Such examples from the Western world have magnified our respect for societies that could harbour, enable and encourage such curiosity. In the same vein, we stand to gain much from developing an understanding of ancient India, its deep and diverse ideas, which are no less extraordinary than those we have come to marvel in Western civilisations. I am not suggesting we lose respect for contributions made by other societies or civilisations, or that everything of note was discovered in this part of the world. Rather, we ourselves have much to gain when we dispassionately discover, examine and acknowledge the intellectual history of ancient India. We may be surprised to find it was perhaps a more open, tolerant and diverse society than even the one we have lived in since Independence. If you need more convincing or inspiration, look up Manjul’s talk on YouTube. Or try reading the Therigatha.
The writer, junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, is founder, Murty Classical Library of India.
Written by Rohan Murty | Published:August 31, 2015 12:06 am
Over the past year, I have heard my friend, mathematician Manjul Bhargava, give several public lectures on the deep connections between poetry, Sanskrit and mathematics. Like many other mathematicians before him who have written or spoken on this topic, Manjul gave an array of examples that demonstrate the tremendous depth and contributions made by ancient Indian (for the purposes of exposition, stretching perhaps from present day Afghanistan to Burma) philosophers and poets to mathematics, often before their counterparts in Western societies did the same. Manjul’s quintessential example is from roughly 11th century India, when Gopala and Hemachandra discovered a delightful connection between the number of syllables in Sanskrit poetry and mathematics. The answer, it turns out, is what we now call the Fibonacci series (also appears in the number of petals in certain flowers in nature), which was eventually rediscovered by Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, about 50-80 years later.
That there should be an inherent connection between the number of syllables in Sanskrit poetry, a product of human thought, and the number of petals in flowers in nature must startle any reasonable person. Another extraordinary example that Manjul highlights is the discovery of the binomial structure hidden in Sanskrit poetry, as discovered by the ancient Indian poet Pingala, roughly in 200 BC. This was about 1,800 years prior to the French mathematician Pascal’s Traité du triangle arithmétique, which we today learn as Pascal’s triangle. Other examples include the use of techniques that resemble modern error-correcting codes, synchronisation, and formal language definition in Sanskrit poetry and prose. These are all modern inventions (or reinventions, in some cases) that impact almost every aspect of our lives, from computer languages to wireless communications.
It would, of course, be foolhardy to claim the ancients invented or knew of computer languages or wireless communications. That would be like claiming Copernicus built space ships to fly to the moon. Rather, what these examples do highlight is that a long time ago, in or near the region we live in today, there existed a thriving civilisation that produced extraordinary intellectual thought and ideas which continue to have fundamental connections with the way we live today. We appear to have lost knowledge of this ancient past through the vicissitudes and vagaries of time. And with it, a significant source of pride and the ability to influence modern Indian identity. Few people of my generation appear to be aware of these facts.
Part of our ongoing ignorance of the past appears to be structural. Case in point: At my high school in Bangalore, as part of the ICSE syllabus, we read Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, works by Wordsworth, Tennyson, James Joyce, Dickens, etc. We even read Walt Whitman wax eloquent about the end of the American Civil War and Abe Lincoln’s death in “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”. Never mind the fact that none of us in class knew what a civil war was at the time, or that America had one, or how or why Lincoln died. We read the tremendously uplifting lines from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, all while lacking the context of ancient Greece or even knowing how to say “Ithaca” (we learnt it as EYE-THA-KA). We had little or no context for these strange ideas, words, phrases, stories, heroes and worlds.
And yet, we read these poems, short stories, novels, and wrote essays about them to pass our school exams. This was an enjoyable experience and I would do it again. However, such an educational experience and exposure was severely stunted in its diversity of thought and ideas. What strikes me as odd is that we students never read any classics that originated in this part of the world — that is, ancient India — despite having a cultural advantage of perhaps being able to understand the context better. We knew of no texts, poems, plays, great prose, science, mathematics, civics, political life or philosophy from 2,000-plus years ago from ancient India. My friends and I, stereotypes of the urban educated populace, remained entirely unaware of the intellectual contributions of this past. The most we seemed to know were a couple of random dates and trinkets of information on the Indus Valley civilisation, Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya, all of which seemed almost perfunctory and without any depth in the manner we read them in school.
As students, we were well versed with Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Copernicus, Newton, Leibniz, Pascal, Galois, Euler, etc, and their tremendous contributions to mankind. And yet, most of us had never read about Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Pingala, Kalidasa, Hemachandra, Madhava, the Nyaya or Mimimsa Sutras, or the Therigatha.
But why bother with any of this? After all, we were never part of these accomplishments and they were so long ago, by a people so far removed from today’s reality, that attempting to create any link to the past is surely irrelevant. But I would argue this discovery of the past is no less relevant than what we already study and acknowledge in the earlier cited examples in our schools and colleges. Besides, these sources of knowledge from ancient India are products of creative human thought and hold genuine value for the world, irrespective of where they come from, or geographic affinities. For example, any child on this planet will find mathematics far more amenable when learning parts of it through poetry, as opposed to the dry, dull methods espoused by most mathematics pedagogy today.
While national identity is a complex phenomenon, perhaps in some proportion it relates to the intellectual contributions made by societies to help advance knowledge and improve the human condition. Newton is a hero to many like me, who read in wonder about how he unravelled the basic laws of the universe. Great literature and philosophy from Western societies have helped us reflect on the human condition. Such examples from the Western world have magnified our respect for societies that could harbour, enable and encourage such curiosity. In the same vein, we stand to gain much from developing an understanding of ancient India, its deep and diverse ideas, which are no less extraordinary than those we have come to marvel in Western civilisations. I am not suggesting we lose respect for contributions made by other societies or civilisations, or that everything of note was discovered in this part of the world. Rather, we ourselves have much to gain when we dispassionately discover, examine and acknowledge the intellectual history of ancient India. We may be surprised to find it was perhaps a more open, tolerant and diverse society than even the one we have lived in since Independence. If you need more convincing or inspiration, look up Manjul’s talk on YouTube. Or try reading the Therigatha.
The writer, junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, is founder, Murty Classical Library of India.
Source: indianexpress
Sunday, August 09, 2015
Girl loses way, walkers fly her to Coimbatore for admission
CHENNAI/COIMBATORE, August 10, 2015
Vipasha Sinha
Karthik Madhavan
Swathi and her mother Thangaponnu at Anna University in Chennai on Saturday.
Instead of TNAU, Coimbatore, the girl and her mother reached Anna University in Chennai by mistake.
For a group of walkers in Anna University, Saturday morning was no less than a page out of a movie script.
Around 6.30 a.m., they saw a woman and a young girl asking people for directions. Curious, some of them approached the duo to offer help.
R. Swathi, who had scored 1,017 marks in her Plus Two, came with her mother Thangaponnu, a shepherd from their hometown of Musiri in Tiruchi. “They were asked to come to Anna Arangam, Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Coimbatore, but they reached Anna University by mistake,” said M. Saravanan, a former student of College of Engineering, Guindy and a member of a walking group called Twalkers.
Counselling was to start at 8.30 a.m. in Coimbatore. Both mother and daughter had lost hope. One of the walkers brought them breakfast, another went to book and print out the flight tickets, while another was speaking to TNAU staff in Coimbatore. Tickets were confirmed and Twalkers’ members decided to share the cost of Rs. 10,500. Some of the walkers, who are teaching at Anna University, spoke to TNAU registrar C.R. Ananda Kumar, explained the problem and asked for extra time.
“We took off at 10.05 a.m., landed at 11.28 a.m. and in the next hour we had the admission letter on our hands,” Ms. Swathi said. She will now pursue B.Tech. Biotechnology at the Coimbatore campus. “It looks like a miracle now,” she says. The Twalkers did not stop there. They called up Thangaponnu to confirm if they had secured the admission. “It was very kind of them to do so. They came around like an angel when we had lost hope,” Swathi said.
After getting the seat and back in their hometown in Musiri, the mother-daughter are now planning to visit Chennai again. “We want to return the money they spent to buy our flight tickets. How else can we say thank them,” Ms. Thangaponnu said.
Vipasha Sinha
Karthik Madhavan
Instead of TNAU, Coimbatore, the girl and her mother reached Anna University in Chennai by mistake.
For a group of walkers in Anna University, Saturday morning was no less than a page out of a movie script.
Around 6.30 a.m., they saw a woman and a young girl asking people for directions. Curious, some of them approached the duo to offer help.
R. Swathi, who had scored 1,017 marks in her Plus Two, came with her mother Thangaponnu, a shepherd from their hometown of Musiri in Tiruchi. “They were asked to come to Anna Arangam, Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Coimbatore, but they reached Anna University by mistake,” said M. Saravanan, a former student of College of Engineering, Guindy and a member of a walking group called Twalkers.
Counselling was to start at 8.30 a.m. in Coimbatore. Both mother and daughter had lost hope. One of the walkers brought them breakfast, another went to book and print out the flight tickets, while another was speaking to TNAU staff in Coimbatore. Tickets were confirmed and Twalkers’ members decided to share the cost of Rs. 10,500. Some of the walkers, who are teaching at Anna University, spoke to TNAU registrar C.R. Ananda Kumar, explained the problem and asked for extra time.
“We took off at 10.05 a.m., landed at 11.28 a.m. and in the next hour we had the admission letter on our hands,” Ms. Swathi said. She will now pursue B.Tech. Biotechnology at the Coimbatore campus. “It looks like a miracle now,” she says. The Twalkers did not stop there. They called up Thangaponnu to confirm if they had secured the admission. “It was very kind of them to do so. They came around like an angel when we had lost hope,” Swathi said.
After getting the seat and back in their hometown in Musiri, the mother-daughter are now planning to visit Chennai again. “We want to return the money they spent to buy our flight tickets. How else can we say thank them,” Ms. Thangaponnu said.
Source: thehindu
Saturday, August 08, 2015
Revealing the secret behind Gayatri mantra
Most probably, the first god that humans recognised and worshipped was the sun.
LIFE | Commonsense Karma | 07-08-2015
Hari Ravikumar @hari_ravikumar
Which is the oldest religion in the world? Nobody knows. Ask the foremost historian or the greatest saint but they will not have an answer. We know so little about the earliest humans who inhabited our planet. But we can take an educated guess about the first god. Keep aside for a moment the view that god created the universe and just consider how humans visualise god. Most probably, the first god that humans recognised and worshipped was the sun.
Also read: How I became a sun worshipper
There are many reasons for this. The sun is the most magnificent object in nature. The sun gives us light and energy. Without the sun, there would be no life on earth. Our existence depends on the sun. Also, the sun was considered the master of time. The sun creates days and nights, thus making us grow old. So the ancient people treated the sun as a god. Most of the ancient cultures that we still know about have a reference to the sun god. (George Carlin uses the same idea in one of his brilliant sketches on religion.)
George Carlin --- Religion is Bulshit
From the limited information available about our past, we know that Hinduism is the oldest religion (or "way of life", as some people prefer to call it) and in this tradition, the Rigveda Samhita is the oldest work. The Rigveda Samhita is divided into ten sections (known as maṇḍalas) and each section has several poems (called sūktas). Each poem is further made up of verses (known as ṛks). Perhaps the most famous verse from the Rigveda is the savitā gāyatrī mantra.
The Gayatri mantra is a 6,000-year-old verse recited by millions of Hindus every day all over the world. This mantra – Rigveda Samhita 3.62.10 – was composed by sage Vishwamitra. He composed most of the poems in the third section of the Rigveda.
This verse is called the Gayatri mantra possibly because it is composed in the poetic meter called Gayatri. A verse written in this poetic meter should have three lines and each line must have eight syllables. It is interesting to note that the etymology of the word Gayatri is gāyantaṃ trāyate iti gāyatrī, "Gayatri is that which protects the person who recites it."
Therefore, although there are thousands of verses composed in the Gayatri metre, when we say Gayatri mantra, it specifically denotes this verse:
tat saviturvareṇyam |
bhargo devasya dhīmahi |
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt ||
In Sanskrit, every word has several meanings. So it’s important for us to understand the context in which a certain word is used. Let us take a look at what each word in this mantra means:
tat = that
savituḥ = the sun; literalley "one who permits", "one who stimulates", "one who vivifies"
vareṇyam = best, excellent, worthy of the highest respect
bhargaḥ = light, lustre, radiance
devasya = of god, of the lord, of the deity
dhīmahi = (we) meditate, contemplate
dhiyaḥ = intellect, wisdom, mind, consciousness
yaḥ = the one who, he who
naḥ = to us, for us
pracodayāt = (one who) inspires, motivates, stimulates, empowers
(An astute observer will find that the first line has only seven syllables instead of eight: tat-sa-vi-tu-rva-re-ṇyam; therefore while recitation, we add the syllable om in the beginning or we say tat-sa-vi-tu-rva-re-ṇi-yam).
Let us try to arrange this in the form of a sentence. One who (yaḥ) stimulates (pracodayāt) our (naḥ) mind (dhiyaḥ) – we meditate (dhīmahi) on that (tat) excellent (vareṇyaṃ) radiance (bhargaḥ) of the lord (devasya), the sun (savituḥ).
A simple English translation would give us:
We meditate on
the wonderful radiance of the sun god,
who stimulates our mind.
The same Gayatri mantra also appears in the Yajurveda but with an additional line in the beginning:
oṃ bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ |
om = the single-syllable word that represents brahman, the Supreme Being
bhūḥ = earth
bhuvaḥ = atmosphere
suvaḥ = sky, heaven
With this line, we bring our awareness to the three spheres of existence, thus connecting with something bigger than our tiny selves.
In the Hindu tradition, we believe that there is only one Supreme Being (brahman) but there are several gods. These gods may be realized in any form.
The forces of nature – wind, lightning, thunder, fire – are deified. The animate and inanimate beings – animals, plants, rivers, mountains – are deified. The celestial objects – sun, moon, planets, stars – are deified. We may also see god in a sculpture, a painting, or even in a song.
Among all these various possibilities, the sun is the most magnificent. Of course, an astrophysicist might tell us that the sun in our solar system is a veritable pygmy in front of some of the other stars in the universe. Even so, the sun remains the most brilliant object we can see with our naked eyes. Not only do we see it but we also feel its presence. It removes darkness and brings light. It removes the cold and brings warmth. The radiance of the Supreme represents Knowledge (which removes the darkness of ignorance) and Vitality (which removes the coldness of lethargy).
So the Gayatri mantra is a prayer to the Supreme, in the form of the sun, which stimulates our mind and empowers us. Just like the sun wakes us up every morning, we pray that the Supreme light wakes up our intellect. It is indeed a prayer for internal strength.
In the 1990s cartoon series Captain Planet, there is a beautiful symbolism for this – whenever Captain Planet is on the verge of defeat, he draws energy from the sun. He gets revitalized. He’s ready to face his enemies – those trying to pollute the earth. The Gayatri mantra does something similar, but within.
(In preparing this article, I have drawn heavily from the lectures of HH Sri Rangapriya Swami; my discussions with Shatavadhani Dr R Ganesh; Dr Koti Sreekrishna’s article on the Gayatri mantra; and Vol 17 of the 36-volume Rigveda Samhita translation in Kannada brought out by the Maharaja of Mysore, Sri Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar during 1948-62.)
LIFE | Commonsense Karma | 07-08-2015
Hari Ravikumar @hari_ravikumar
Which is the oldest religion in the world? Nobody knows. Ask the foremost historian or the greatest saint but they will not have an answer. We know so little about the earliest humans who inhabited our planet. But we can take an educated guess about the first god. Keep aside for a moment the view that god created the universe and just consider how humans visualise god. Most probably, the first god that humans recognised and worshipped was the sun.
Also read: How I became a sun worshipper
There are many reasons for this. The sun is the most magnificent object in nature. The sun gives us light and energy. Without the sun, there would be no life on earth. Our existence depends on the sun. Also, the sun was considered the master of time. The sun creates days and nights, thus making us grow old. So the ancient people treated the sun as a god. Most of the ancient cultures that we still know about have a reference to the sun god. (George Carlin uses the same idea in one of his brilliant sketches on religion.)
George Carlin --- Religion is Bulshit
From the limited information available about our past, we know that Hinduism is the oldest religion (or "way of life", as some people prefer to call it) and in this tradition, the Rigveda Samhita is the oldest work. The Rigveda Samhita is divided into ten sections (known as maṇḍalas) and each section has several poems (called sūktas). Each poem is further made up of verses (known as ṛks). Perhaps the most famous verse from the Rigveda is the savitā gāyatrī mantra.
The Gayatri mantra is a 6,000-year-old verse recited by millions of Hindus every day all over the world. This mantra – Rigveda Samhita 3.62.10 – was composed by sage Vishwamitra. He composed most of the poems in the third section of the Rigveda.
This verse is called the Gayatri mantra possibly because it is composed in the poetic meter called Gayatri. A verse written in this poetic meter should have three lines and each line must have eight syllables. It is interesting to note that the etymology of the word Gayatri is gāyantaṃ trāyate iti gāyatrī, "Gayatri is that which protects the person who recites it."
Therefore, although there are thousands of verses composed in the Gayatri metre, when we say Gayatri mantra, it specifically denotes this verse:
tat saviturvareṇyam |
bhargo devasya dhīmahi |
dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt ||
In Sanskrit, every word has several meanings. So it’s important for us to understand the context in which a certain word is used. Let us take a look at what each word in this mantra means:
tat = that
savituḥ = the sun; literalley "one who permits", "one who stimulates", "one who vivifies"
vareṇyam = best, excellent, worthy of the highest respect
bhargaḥ = light, lustre, radiance
devasya = of god, of the lord, of the deity
dhīmahi = (we) meditate, contemplate
dhiyaḥ = intellect, wisdom, mind, consciousness
yaḥ = the one who, he who
naḥ = to us, for us
pracodayāt = (one who) inspires, motivates, stimulates, empowers
(An astute observer will find that the first line has only seven syllables instead of eight: tat-sa-vi-tu-rva-re-ṇyam; therefore while recitation, we add the syllable om in the beginning or we say tat-sa-vi-tu-rva-re-ṇi-yam).
Let us try to arrange this in the form of a sentence. One who (yaḥ) stimulates (pracodayāt) our (naḥ) mind (dhiyaḥ) – we meditate (dhīmahi) on that (tat) excellent (vareṇyaṃ) radiance (bhargaḥ) of the lord (devasya), the sun (savituḥ).
A simple English translation would give us:
We meditate on
the wonderful radiance of the sun god,
who stimulates our mind.
The same Gayatri mantra also appears in the Yajurveda but with an additional line in the beginning:
oṃ bhūrbhuvassuvaḥ |
om = the single-syllable word that represents brahman, the Supreme Being
bhūḥ = earth
bhuvaḥ = atmosphere
suvaḥ = sky, heaven
With this line, we bring our awareness to the three spheres of existence, thus connecting with something bigger than our tiny selves.
In the Hindu tradition, we believe that there is only one Supreme Being (brahman) but there are several gods. These gods may be realized in any form.
The forces of nature – wind, lightning, thunder, fire – are deified. The animate and inanimate beings – animals, plants, rivers, mountains – are deified. The celestial objects – sun, moon, planets, stars – are deified. We may also see god in a sculpture, a painting, or even in a song.
Among all these various possibilities, the sun is the most magnificent. Of course, an astrophysicist might tell us that the sun in our solar system is a veritable pygmy in front of some of the other stars in the universe. Even so, the sun remains the most brilliant object we can see with our naked eyes. Not only do we see it but we also feel its presence. It removes darkness and brings light. It removes the cold and brings warmth. The radiance of the Supreme represents Knowledge (which removes the darkness of ignorance) and Vitality (which removes the coldness of lethargy).
So the Gayatri mantra is a prayer to the Supreme, in the form of the sun, which stimulates our mind and empowers us. Just like the sun wakes us up every morning, we pray that the Supreme light wakes up our intellect. It is indeed a prayer for internal strength.
In the 1990s cartoon series Captain Planet, there is a beautiful symbolism for this – whenever Captain Planet is on the verge of defeat, he draws energy from the sun. He gets revitalized. He’s ready to face his enemies – those trying to pollute the earth. The Gayatri mantra does something similar, but within.
(In preparing this article, I have drawn heavily from the lectures of HH Sri Rangapriya Swami; my discussions with Shatavadhani Dr R Ganesh; Dr Koti Sreekrishna’s article on the Gayatri mantra; and Vol 17 of the 36-volume Rigveda Samhita translation in Kannada brought out by the Maharaja of Mysore, Sri Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar during 1948-62.)
Source: dailyo
Friday, August 07, 2015
Benevolence Vs Malevolent: Stories of opposite ending
Besides throwing out a lavish lunch, Phoolchand and his family members also gave gifts to the newly wed at the time of `Vidai.
Rajat Rai | Mail Today | Lucknow, August 7, 2015 |
It could well be a perfect script for a Bollywood romance block buster but for Phoolchand it was sort of a heart break when he performed the marriage and `vidai' of his wife with smiles on his face.
Chanda, a resident of Bikapur village of Faizabad district, had an affair with a youth Suraj of the same village. However, bowing to the wishes of her parents, she married Phoolchand in 2012. Phoolchand, a native of the adjacent village Palipoorab, happily took his bribe to his house.
However, as fate could have it, he had to leave for Jalandhar immediately to earn money. Though the husband wife talked to each other frequently on phone, Chanda's and Suraj's love further blossomed as Suraj used to visit his relative in the Palipoorad village. His relative's house is close to Chanda's house and to ensure a meeting, Chanda used to visit his house on one pretext or the other.
Meanwhile, Phoolchand returned back on August 4 only to get a shocker. Chanda, not only returned the jewelery, clothes and other items that Phoolchand gave her at the time of marriage, but also told her the truth.
"I was happy that she relied on me and told me the truth. I got angry and sad for some time but decided to take out a solution", Phoolchand said.
After discussing the matter with his father, Phoolchand reached Chanda's village along with his father and confronted the village panchayat. "I kept forward my suggestion that Chanda and sooraj whould be allowed to marry and I have no objections", Phoolchand said.
After a long discussion, the Panchayat agreed to Phoolchand's offer and Sooraj and his family were also summoned. Sooraj and his family members agreed with in no time and the marriage was performed at the village's shiv mandir on Thursday.
"This shows the mental level and strength of our youths these days and we salute Phoolchand for this brave step. It is better to accept the truth and act accordingly than to linger on with a forced relationship throughout life", Ravindra Yadav, the village head of Bikapur said.
Besides throwing out a lavish lunch, Phoolchand and his family members also gave gifts to the newly wed at the time of `Vidai' with blessings of a happy married life.
Source: indiatoday
In Modi's Varanasi, lover's head tonsured
The head of a lover-pair were tonsured and they were paraded all over in village Koirajpur under Bargawan police station in Varanasi on Sunday night.
Piyush Srivastava | Mail Today | Lucknow, August 4, 2015 |
Much against the belief that the west UP is brutal towards lovers, this time a similar incident took place in east UP. The head of a lover-pair were tonsured and they were paraded all over in village Koirajpur under Bargawan police station in Varanasi on Sunday night. When the father of the youth, who has run away with a girl, rushed to the police station for help, the cops allegedly said: "Go and make a complaint with Prime Minister Narendra Modi."
Incidentally, Varanasi is Parliamentary constituency of Modi.
The villagers were angry because the lovers eloped from the village last month when they were prevented from marriage. However, they had returned back four days ago.
"They tonsured our head and thrashed us while forcing us to parade in the village. This happened against the wish of our parents. Although our parents were against our marriage, they had accepted us two days ago", said Lalji Kumar, 19, the youth.
"When we went police station, the policemen rebuked us and asked to make a complaint with Modi, because he is our MP", said Shyamji Singh, a relative of the youth.
Source: indiatoday
Tuesday, August 04, 2015
Govt. job portal lists manual scavenging as ‘career option’
BENGALURU, August 4, 2015
a place in the National Career Services portal.
The job profile of a “Safai Karamchari” and a “scavenger” is listed as being “mildly hazardous or dangerous” – putting them in the same category as “astrologer”
What was conceived by the Narendra Modi-led NDA government as bringing employers and job seekers on a single platform, seems to now promote and allow the hiring of the prohibited act of manual scavenging at the click of a button.
Cleaning of sewers, descending into manholes, removing night-soil (human excreta) using a broom find a place in the National Career Services portal that was launched recently as a part of Skill India.
For instance, under the ‘unorganised sector’ panel of the website, a “Sweeper, Sewer” is “expected to” clean sewage systems by “using various cleaning instruments,” including bamboo or iron rod, and collecting debris and refuse in a bucket using a spade and handing this bucket to “helper outside manhole.”
Similarly, the “Sweeper, Wet” description lists a “key competency” of removing “night soil using spade and broom.”
On its launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 20, the portal was to link two crore job seekers with nearly nine lakh establishments. Mr. Modi had then said: “…it is essential for Indian society to develop a consciousness towards ‘dignity of labour’.”
However, advocates Clifton D’ Rozario and Maitreyi Krishnan — who had taken the issue of manual scavenging to the Karnataka High Court — say: “These dehumanising [definitions] are the very practice due to which the manual scavenging community has been stigmatised, ostracised and discriminated. [It] is now being proudly promoted as a ‘career option’.”
Furthermore, employing persons under these definitions have been made punishable with imprisonment under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, the advocates say.
‘Inhuman practice’
They also point to the Supreme Court order (dated March 27, 2014) in the Safai Karamchari Andolan vs. Union of India case, where the court observes that handling human excrements with bare hands, brooms or metal scrappers or in baskets is an “inhuman practice,” while in November 2008, the Chennai High Court had directed that the cleaning of sewage could only be through mobile mechanical pumps or other devices.
Acknowledging that the description did indeed become promotion of manual scavenging, M. Shivanna, Chairperson, National Safai Karamchari Commission, said, “This is definitely wrong, and amounts to promoting such activities. Though we have been insisting that Sucking and Jetting Machines should be used, the website implies that descending into manholes is also a part of the job.”
The commission will issue a notice seeking clarification on Wednesday, he told The Hindu.
In same league as astrologers
Incredibly, the job profile of a “Safai Karamchari” and a “scavenger” is listed as being “mildly hazardous or dangerous” — putting them in the same category as “astrologer” and “palmist” that come under unorganised sector careers.
While the risks for “Safai Karamchari” include “lung, respiratory, neurological diseases, infection, biological diseases, suffocation, fatigue,” for an astrologer or palmist or money lender, the dangers include “heart diseases, depression and anxiety, fatigue, stress.”
The website similarly contains unfortunate, now antiquated phrases for describing jobs. “Domestic Servant” is described as “performing the general house-hold duties and attending to the personal comforts of master or employer” — terms that show “underlying feudalism,” say advocates Clifton D’ Rozario and Maitreyi Krishnan.
Source: thehindu
Thursday, July 30, 2015
The politics of the execution of Yakub Memon
Thursday, 30 July 2015
Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
There is need for the right-wingers to be less belligerent in their attacks on their liberal opponents. In a similar manner, those who had pleaded for the commutation of Yakub’s death sentence will have to accept that the Indian legal system is not vindictive, and that Yakub was given a fair opportunity at all stages of the judicial process.
The sentiment across the jingoistic media, whipping up the emotion of people, is that the execution of Yakub Memon, the first accused (A1), in the 1993 Bombay Blasts Case, brings closure to the trauma of the victims – the families of the 257 dead and the 750 injured -- of the terror blasts on March 12, 1993. There was also the corollary that anyone who talked of commuting the death sentence of Yakub to a life term is unpatriotic. Both the views are misplaced.
It has to be understood that the closure to the families of the victims came the day Judge P.D. Kode of the TADA Court delivered the verdict in 2006. He sentenced the more than 100 accused different periods of imprisonment, and he gave the death sentence to Yakub Memon and 10 others. The Supreme Court had commuted the death sentence of the 10 to a life term, and upheld the death sentence of Yakub Memon. If in due legal course of review and curative appeals, the Supreme Court had reversed the death sentence of Yakub as it did in the case of 10 others, it would not have meant that there has been no closure. What brought closure to the blasts case was the legal verdict of the TADA court. Death sentence was not a necessary part of the closure.
In the meanwhile, there came to light an article by former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief B.Raman, who had expressed the opinion that Yakub Memon had returned to India voluntarily and that he had cooperated with the prosecution and he had passed on crucial information about the location of the masterminds of the blasts – Dawood Ibrahim and Yakub’s elder-brother, Tiger Memon – in Karachi. This information was collaborated by senior journalist Maseeh Rehman, who had talked to Yakub in 1994. The family members of Yakub had also said that the investigation agencies had promised that they he would be dealt with leniently because of his cooperation. The point made by Raman and Rehman was that Yakub had come back voluntarily because he realised his folly, he was willing to face the punishment for his crime and he expected that he would be given a fair chance by the Indian legal system and his cooperation would be given due weight when fixing his punishment.
It is based on this information that Yakub had surrendered, that he had cooperated with the prosecution that many eminent persons and civil society activists came out pleading that Yakub’s death should be commuted to a life term. Some of them based their appeal on their belief that death sentence is a barbaric practice and that states should give up death sentence altogether. This is a principled plea. It is not necessary to agree with this view. But it does not follow that these people were supporting Yakub’s crime or that they are condoning terrorism.
There are others in the group who were of the view that there is need to include the information about his surrender and cooperation, and that these should form part of the extenuating or mitigating circumstances for the crime committed by Yakub. It is questionable that if this part could have ever been weighed as legal evidence because India does not follow the convention of ‘plea bargain’, where the prosecution pleads for a lesser sentence. It is a common practice in the United Stated legal system but it is not as yet part of Indian legal conventions. In the present case, the prosecution did not disclose that Yakub has turned an approver. Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had said that he did not know that there was any tacit understanding between Yakub and the investigating agencies. The question is as to why the investigation agencies did not take the prosecution into confidence, and as to why Yakub’s lawyers did not reveal this information about Yakub’s surrender and cooperation with the investigation agencies. It appears that the prosecution did not want to weaken its case in any way, and the defence team too believed that it would not be right to concede to Yakub’s guilt right at the beginning. But we will not know the truth unless Yakub’s family or lawyers reveal the facts. There is reason to doubt the versions of Raman and Rehman. What we need to know is as to why the investigators changed their mind as they prepared the case along with the legal team.
We turn now to the politics of it. Unfortunately, there is the political dimension to the issue. The political right-wingers, though majority of them belong to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, the hardliners are to be found in all political parties, and they all believe that the hanging of Yakub Memon is necessary and that it will send out a strong message that India is not a soft state. There are the far-right supporters who hold the view that the death of Yakub Memon will bring a sense of justice to the victims of the blasts. The far-right activists are infuriated by the gesture of the civil rights activists who sought a life term for Yakub. They are interpreting it as an anti-national gesture and of sympathising with terrorists who had killed innocent civilians.
The people who had argued for commuting Yakub’s death to a life sentence were not condoning the terror act of Yakub and they are not soft on terrorism. And to be sure, they are not unpatriotic or anti-national. There is need for the right-wingers to be less belligerent in their attacks on their liberal opponents. In a similar manner, those who had pleaded for the commutation of Yakub’s death sentence will have to accept that the Indian legal system is not vindictive, and that Yakub was given a fair opportunity at all stages of the judicial process.
It is also very important to note the fact that Yakub had been sent to the gallows under Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which is being a conspirator. It is also necessary to remember that the Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act 1987 does not prescribe death sentence. Yaakub had been sentenced to death of conspiring to cause death of people. He was not condemned for treason. Yakub and his family are Indians and they hold on to their Indian nationality. Yakub had died for his crime and he died as an Indian. He had not renounced his national identity.
As it was a terrifying fact that hundreds of people had died or were injured on March 12, 1993, the hanging of Yakub Memon will remain a grim act. The death of even a convict cannot bring cheer to even the families of the victims. This should indeed be the civil and humane way of dealing with each other. Yakub Memon’s family cannot be treated with either suspicion or hostility after this. It is cessation of bitterness on all sides that is the real closure. There is no room for triumphalism. Justice is not revenge.
Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr
There is need for the right-wingers to be less belligerent in their attacks on their liberal opponents. In a similar manner, those who had pleaded for the commutation of Yakub’s death sentence will have to accept that the Indian legal system is not vindictive, and that Yakub was given a fair opportunity at all stages of the judicial process.
The sentiment across the jingoistic media, whipping up the emotion of people, is that the execution of Yakub Memon, the first accused (A1), in the 1993 Bombay Blasts Case, brings closure to the trauma of the victims – the families of the 257 dead and the 750 injured -- of the terror blasts on March 12, 1993. There was also the corollary that anyone who talked of commuting the death sentence of Yakub to a life term is unpatriotic. Both the views are misplaced.
It has to be understood that the closure to the families of the victims came the day Judge P.D. Kode of the TADA Court delivered the verdict in 2006. He sentenced the more than 100 accused different periods of imprisonment, and he gave the death sentence to Yakub Memon and 10 others. The Supreme Court had commuted the death sentence of the 10 to a life term, and upheld the death sentence of Yakub Memon. If in due legal course of review and curative appeals, the Supreme Court had reversed the death sentence of Yakub as it did in the case of 10 others, it would not have meant that there has been no closure. What brought closure to the blasts case was the legal verdict of the TADA court. Death sentence was not a necessary part of the closure.
In the meanwhile, there came to light an article by former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief B.Raman, who had expressed the opinion that Yakub Memon had returned to India voluntarily and that he had cooperated with the prosecution and he had passed on crucial information about the location of the masterminds of the blasts – Dawood Ibrahim and Yakub’s elder-brother, Tiger Memon – in Karachi. This information was collaborated by senior journalist Maseeh Rehman, who had talked to Yakub in 1994. The family members of Yakub had also said that the investigation agencies had promised that they he would be dealt with leniently because of his cooperation. The point made by Raman and Rehman was that Yakub had come back voluntarily because he realised his folly, he was willing to face the punishment for his crime and he expected that he would be given a fair chance by the Indian legal system and his cooperation would be given due weight when fixing his punishment.
It is based on this information that Yakub had surrendered, that he had cooperated with the prosecution that many eminent persons and civil society activists came out pleading that Yakub’s death should be commuted to a life term. Some of them based their appeal on their belief that death sentence is a barbaric practice and that states should give up death sentence altogether. This is a principled plea. It is not necessary to agree with this view. But it does not follow that these people were supporting Yakub’s crime or that they are condoning terrorism.
There are others in the group who were of the view that there is need to include the information about his surrender and cooperation, and that these should form part of the extenuating or mitigating circumstances for the crime committed by Yakub. It is questionable that if this part could have ever been weighed as legal evidence because India does not follow the convention of ‘plea bargain’, where the prosecution pleads for a lesser sentence. It is a common practice in the United Stated legal system but it is not as yet part of Indian legal conventions. In the present case, the prosecution did not disclose that Yakub has turned an approver. Public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam had said that he did not know that there was any tacit understanding between Yakub and the investigating agencies. The question is as to why the investigation agencies did not take the prosecution into confidence, and as to why Yakub’s lawyers did not reveal this information about Yakub’s surrender and cooperation with the investigation agencies. It appears that the prosecution did not want to weaken its case in any way, and the defence team too believed that it would not be right to concede to Yakub’s guilt right at the beginning. But we will not know the truth unless Yakub’s family or lawyers reveal the facts. There is reason to doubt the versions of Raman and Rehman. What we need to know is as to why the investigators changed their mind as they prepared the case along with the legal team.
We turn now to the politics of it. Unfortunately, there is the political dimension to the issue. The political right-wingers, though majority of them belong to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, the hardliners are to be found in all political parties, and they all believe that the hanging of Yakub Memon is necessary and that it will send out a strong message that India is not a soft state. There are the far-right supporters who hold the view that the death of Yakub Memon will bring a sense of justice to the victims of the blasts. The far-right activists are infuriated by the gesture of the civil rights activists who sought a life term for Yakub. They are interpreting it as an anti-national gesture and of sympathising with terrorists who had killed innocent civilians.
The people who had argued for commuting Yakub’s death to a life sentence were not condoning the terror act of Yakub and they are not soft on terrorism. And to be sure, they are not unpatriotic or anti-national. There is need for the right-wingers to be less belligerent in their attacks on their liberal opponents. In a similar manner, those who had pleaded for the commutation of Yakub’s death sentence will have to accept that the Indian legal system is not vindictive, and that Yakub was given a fair opportunity at all stages of the judicial process.
It is also very important to note the fact that Yakub had been sent to the gallows under Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which is being a conspirator. It is also necessary to remember that the Terrorist And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act 1987 does not prescribe death sentence. Yaakub had been sentenced to death of conspiring to cause death of people. He was not condemned for treason. Yakub and his family are Indians and they hold on to their Indian nationality. Yakub had died for his crime and he died as an Indian. He had not renounced his national identity.
As it was a terrifying fact that hundreds of people had died or were injured on March 12, 1993, the hanging of Yakub Memon will remain a grim act. The death of even a convict cannot bring cheer to even the families of the victims. This should indeed be the civil and humane way of dealing with each other. Yakub Memon’s family cannot be treated with either suspicion or hostility after this. It is cessation of bitterness on all sides that is the real closure. There is no room for triumphalism. Justice is not revenge.
Source: dnaindia
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