Introspecting Aloud

I really like the eloquence of B. R. Ambedkar.

61 years ago, on November 26, 1949, he gave his concluding speech as the Chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee on the floor of the Constituent Assembly. From all accounts of those days, I could feel that those were days of excitement, where there was a great deal of expectant enthusiasm about how the country was shaping out. But even as his team submitted the draft of the constitution, he tempered the enthusiasm with caution in his speech.

Pragati carries an excerpt of this speech this month, which as always, was a fascinating read. And if I dare say so, a must read for all Indians who are old enough to understand what he is talking about.

61 years since, i am afraid, I am not entirely enthusiastic about the direction the nation is headed. You might say that Ambedkar had foreseen this issues, but that would be an incorrect thing to say, because a lot of the issues of today, were prevalent even then. Religious, casteist, linguistic strife were all then as well. Sad that not much has changed in this time.

I remember the days when politically-minded Indians, resented the expression “the people of India”. They preferred the expression “the Indian nation.” I am of opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are cherishing a great delusion.

How can people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? The sooner we realise that we are not as yet a nation in the social and psychological sense of the world, the better for us. For then only we shall realise the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means of realising the goal. The realisation of this goal is going to be very difficult…The castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life. They are anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste. But we must overcome all these difficulties if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity can be a fact only when there is a nation. Without fraternity, equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.

Of course, in my opinion, some things have changed in this while. While social (especially caste) inequality are still very much there in the rural side of India, in the urban side the tables have turned for a while in the last decade and half with the help of enforced reservations on one hand, and (at least in my opinion) the near absence of caste issues in the booming private sector.

We must observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not “to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions.”

There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. As has been well said by the Irish Patriot Daniel O’Connel, no man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty.

This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.

(all emphasis mine)

If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do?

The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha.

When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

We all know the above, of course, but that still leaves a lot of unanswered questions that we face today. e.g.

• What do you do, if the powers that be, is unaffected by the constitutional methods of protest that you go through? Has anyone ever gone beyond what Irom has done? Today, the only institution that we think can cure our problems is the Judicial system, but they are not always flawless either. And in many cases, they have to make do with moronic laws drafted by our incompetent politicians in the first place.
• What do you think will happen, when the demands of a section of our population goes against the wishes of the rest of the country. So this section can feel that all constitutional ways have failed and their only course is what Ambedkar has asked us to give up.

Of course, these are not questions specific to our country, but to any democracy in general. And they are definitely questions that experts have debated about. I think I need to read up more on these debates.

Would you have a good readable reference on such questions plaguing democracies? Let me know in your comments or by mail.

They call the past years as more primitive, and the present as modern, a more advanced time. But am curious, exactly which aspect of your life is getting better with time?

Is it about you getting to buy newer more advanced gadgets? But going through more and more powercuts which make it impossible to use any of these?

Is it about getting to buy a more powerful car? And then getting it stuck in worsening traffic?

Or the current generation getting more advanced education? And getting into a worsening job market and worsening competion in qualifying examinations?

Or getting more advanced medical procedures? And newer fatal lifestyle diseases creeping up to younger and younger people?

Or maybe it is about getting to buy better houses? With reality prices shooting up faster than your income, and regardless of the taxes that you pay an incompetent government unable to give you the basics like water, good roads, power?

So again. which aspect of your life is getting better with time, really, to call it advanced? Or am I at fault for being overtly pessimistic and refusing to board the train of optimism about our future?

Or … am I getting old? And grumpy?

When I initially started this blog, my intention was to separate my rants against the religious-political situation in the country, from my tech related blogs. It was the time before elections, and a time with a lot of rabble rousing going around the country. A new government is in place now. It has been almost an year since the pub attacks in Mangalore, the new government which, while not right-leaning has started showing its own seedy side. Most probably this comes from the lack of insecurity that has plagued coalition governments in the past decade or so.

Nevertheless, much has happened with me as well over time. While socio-political issues still interest me, I am lesser and lesser worked up by issues nowadays. One can call it being more cynic, or simply growing older, or even growing “wiser”. Or it could be because of the various other interests which let me let off some steam. Perhaps it has got a lot to do with family issues that I have been going through over the last few months, which while being very relevant to the topic of this blog, is something one would like to keep to themselves as much as one can.

So, if I keep this blog relevant to its original purpose, it would hardly see any activity from my side. Given that, I think it is best that I devote this blog to whatever topics which don’t fit my other two blogs – the tech oriented blog.sandipb.net and the food oriented foodie.sandipb.net. In other words, this would be a sort of catch-all for all non-tech and non-food posts that I have.

I have a lot of trash to dish out. So be aware!

Like many people, I also had the perception that increased security can in most cases only be achieved at the cost of privacy and liberty. I have since started reconsidering that line of thought after I recently came across this article by Bruce Schneier written way back on September 30 2001 just after 9/11, which argued that “this association is simplistic and largely fallacious“.

Security and privacy are not two sides of a teeter-totter. This association is simplistic and largely fallacious. It’s easy and fast, but less effective, to increase security by taking away liberty. However, the best ways to increase security are not at the expense of privacy and liberty.

It’s easy to refute the notion that all security comes at the expense of liberty. Arming pilots, reinforcing cockpit doors, and teaching flight attendants karate are all examples of security measures that have no effect on individual privacy or liberties. So are better authentication of airport maintenance workers, or dead-man switches that force planes to automatically land at the closest airport, or armed air marshals traveling on flights.

Liberty-depriving security measures are most often found when system designers failed to take security into account from the beginning. They’re Band-aids, and evidence of bad security planning. When security is designed into a system, it can work without forcing people to give up their freedoms.

Schneier goes on to give some very good examples in the article which demonstrates his point. I find this other section of this article very true, and especially relevant to India at this point.

People are willing to give up liberties for vague promises of security because they think they have no choice. What they’re not being told is that they can have both. It would require people to say no to the FBI’s power grab. It would require us to discard the easy answers in favor of thoughtful answers. It would require structuring incentives to improve overall security rather than simply decreasing its costs. Designing security into systems from the beginning, instead of tacking it on at the end, would give us the security we need, while preserving the civil liberties we hold dear.

For example, take a look at our National Unique Identification (NUID) project. The government and Mr. Nilekani is selling us the argument that it is the panacea to all our national and internal security problems. Illegal migration will be stopped, benefits of social programs will reach the intended recipient, etc. As Nilekani said recently in an interview with Karan Thapar,

On being asked on the investment of money in this project be invested in some other project as is better used for education, health for women and children and sanitation programmes, he replied “We certainly don’t want to take away money from important social programmes but remember that as we expand our social programmes, the efficiency of the social programme depends on the fact that they reach the right people and that there are no duplicates who are taking away the benefits which are meant for the poor. We need to make them more efficient. So you need the infrastructure at the bottom to make that happen. The investment of money in this project will actually make all those other money’s be spent more efficiently. Think of it as an infrastructure for enabling you to spend money more effectively.”

Of course, he conveniently doesn’t mention that there is another way to deal with the “efficiency” (an euphemism for corruption) of social programs. Tackle the systematic corruption in the PDS and other government doles to the poor.

Instead of targeting only the relatively few people involved in the system, Nilekani and GoI  would rather spend thousands of crores every year on this scheme asking each and every billions plus Indians to meekly surrender whatever anonymity that they have against government (and the inevitable corporate) surveillance of everything that they do. This is apart from causing additional sufferings for the misgoverned citizens when they try to be compliant with this authority for every change they do in their lives. If people felt irritated with the need for quoting PAN numbers and voters ID card in many places right now, I cannot but imagine how they would feel when they will have to quote the NUID in everything they do – while seeking employment,renting a house, using a cyber cafe, filing any government application, etc.

Of course, if instead they had just tried to confront the real problem, we don’t have to do that. But again, who cares about the real problems? This country is just about tokenisms like NUID.

How are we ever going to get out of this mess? The government is best equipped to understand all the threats we face. The government security agencies specialize on knowing all the possible solutions to our problems. These people who are best placed do not  disclose to us all the possibilities of tackling security problems that they have considered and how they have reached the best possible solution. So how will us ordinary citizens ever know that we could have had a better solution which is more effective but required more work from the government. The government has a vested interest in not letting us know that – they are part of the problem in most cases, they are the interested party in others and in most cases it is political expediency – the results of the right way would take longer than one election tterm to show.

The deputy Israeli Health minister wants to rename swine flu to Mexican flu as swine is too filthy for them to even mention in daily conversation. Ophelia’s response made me burst out laughing:

Oh right, so they do! Therefore it’s a hell of a good idea to name a scary lethal disease after a set of people instead of after an animal that one isn’t allowed to eat by one’s whimsical deity. Yes indeedy. Sure you don’t want to name it Perez flu? Juan and Maria flu? Spic flu? Funny little brown people on the far side of the world flu? They don’t wash their hands in Mexico flu? In deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork and everything?

I just read Sujai’s post on the possibile turn that Pakistan might take due to the onslaught of the Talibans. None of the possibilities sound very encouraging for Pakistan.

An amusing thought crossed my mind. It is kind of dark humour, really.

Don’t you find it amusing and ironical that a country like Pakistan (which means “The purest land” literally) which was formed on the premise of building the perfect Islamic state (it has that dream even today), is today facing the biggest threat to its survival (bigger than any of the wars since it’s inception) not from a non-Muslim country like India, but from a muslim group which believes that the country is not pure enough?

In fact, the message that Pakistanis are having to convince themselves is that they don’t exactly want the state envisioned by the leader of the religion of the state. The arguments that are going on, are less of patriotism (as is the case of a threat to survival of a nation) and more theological. They are actually discussing how Islam should be interpreted into a modern country.

Just found out from this post about the report on Cultural Policing in Dakshin Kannada(PDF) just released by The People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka (PUCL-K). An interesting excerpt mentioned in the blog post:

As one observer, who has been covering the events in Dakshina Kannada, put it, “Today saffron is the colour of power. You just walk around with a big red tilak and see how people treat you. Right from the shop keeper to the bus conductor to the policeman, everybody gives you respect. Without the tilak you are nothing, with the tilak you become a power structure.” Munir Kattipalya of the DYFI echoes this sentiment when he says, “This district is not only communalized but also progressively criminalized.”

What is indicated by such statements is that there is a strong link between communalization and criminalization. It is precisely because the state has chosen not to act when criminal activities are perpetrated under the garb of religion that criminal elements now feel that they have the sanction to perpetrate violence and Cultural Policing in Dakshina Kannada other forms of intimidation by using the garb of religion. This possibly explains the proliferation of vigilante groups in Dakshina Kannada.

Sanjukta’s post alerted me to an event that slipped my notice. Apparently, the supreme court had quashed an appeal by a Muslim student against his convent school disallowing him to sport a beard. While disagreeing with the student’s counsel, one of the judges was allegedly heard making a remark “We don’t want to have Talibans in the country“. This has understandably caused quite a furor among part of the Muslim community who have been pointing this remark as a display of injustice or an insult against Muslims. Amusingly, the Muslim counsel appearing on behalf of the student and asserting that the beard was an essential part of the Muslim identity was pointed out by the judge to be not sporting a beard himself!

Now while I agree that the Talibanisation sentence was unnecessary in such a case, I essentially agree with the court’s assessment, especially the rest of that comment that is attributed to that judge: “…Tomorrow a girl student may come and say that she wants to wear a burqa, can we allow it“. This is an issue which Britain faced not too long ago, and I consider Britain handled it not as well as they should have. Every society has a few fundamental principles that they should live by and others attempting to join the society can ask for understanding and accommodation as long as they don’t compromise with these principles of the society. I expected the Britishers to say more forcefully that their society is based on respect and dignity for women and wearing the veil does anything but that. Instead they cloaked their objection in euphemism of security etc. which was regrettable.

India is a different case. While we too claim that our society should ideally be based on similar principles, the truth is that the majority religion Hinduism is still battling perceptions of Sati and child marriage. Punjab has one of the highest incidents of female infanticide and one of the most skewed sex ratios. Girls are still considered a burden in less than progressive families, dowry is a common malpractice. In such a situation, where none of the communities can claim to be morally at a high ground with caring for women, Indian courts would probably face a tougher case when something like what happened in Britain, happens here.

Coming back to the “beard means Talibanisation” case, an Outlook blog post by Sundeep Duggal cuts through some of the misinformation about the case – read his “FAQ: The Supreme Court’s Beard Judgement“. One relevant part is:

4.1 What are the legal ramifications of Justice Katju’s remarks?

None whatsover. It should be borne in mind that there is routinely a lot of give and take between judges and counsel in the supreme court, especially given that counsel in this case was an ex-colleague on the (HC) bench. Most significantly, the order of the Supreme Court does not consist of “the reported remark about Taliban”. Therefore it cannot even be considered as obiter dicta.

In other words, these remarks mostly came about in conversation on the case, and is not part of the judgement.

To those claiming that the right of Freedom to practice your religion has been violated, Telegraph has an interesting precedent to offer:

Experts point out that although our Constitution guarantees one’s freedom to practise one’s religion, there are reasonable restrictions to Article 25 imposed by the state on such grounds as public order, morality, health and other provisions. We can perhaps refer to the Commissioner of Police & Others vs Acharya Jagadishwarananda Avadhuta & Another case where Ananda Margis argued that their tandava dance with tridents and other objects was part of their religion and it should be allowed in public.

Deciding on the case, the apex court ruled, “Though the freedom of conscience and religious belief are absolute, the right to act in exercise of a man’s freedom of religion cannot override public interest and morals of the society and in that view it is competent for the State to suppress such religious activities which are prejudicial to public interest.” The court also found that the tandava dance was not an absolute requirement of their faith.

Another great point has been made by Sherwani Mustafa on Khabrein.info:

…

As such, ‘The Muslim Women ( Protection of Rights on Divorce ) Act was in fact the destruction of ‘ Muslim women’, and a glaring fraud on ‘shariat’ played by the ‘mullaiyat’. Similarly, instead of tracing the essence of ‘ Islam’ in  a foolish student’s attempt to sport beard and making all this humbug, if a vehement movement is launched in India for the enforcement of  ‘Islamic Criminal Law’ for Muslims, I will be the first person to support it whole-heartedly. Let the community and its intellectuals come forward with a strong demand that if a Muslim commits theft, his hands must be chopped off, if he is guilty of murder, he must be beheaded in full public view, if he is found guilty of fornication, adultery or rape, he must be stoned to death, and so on. I am sure the entire country will support such a demand.

Sounds fair to me. Instead of picking and choosing which aspect of their religion should be applied to their lives, why not go the whole hog and add the rest of the barbarian punishments also into the mix? You can’t on one hand use religion to justify special treatment for part of your social life, and then whenever inconvenient, use the other laws of the country to govern aspects of life where the rules of the religion are too tough to swallow.

There is a very interesting debate going on at talkislam.info after an Islamic Cleric in Harvard, no less, claimed how capital punishment is the right punishment for people deserting the Islamic faith.

The common premise of those defending the cleric in the comments of that post, is that for a theocratic state apostasy is like treason. While I can’t completely agree with that notion – it has to be an extremely insecure and intolerant theocracy to have such a position, I can’t but help see the convenience of such a rule. Convenient for the masters of such a theocracy, that is. These masters are likely to be de-facto leaders of the state religion, and like any autocracy (I look at all theocracies as a form of autocracy) they would rather use any means necessary to hang on to their positions rather than be secure in a faith which survives by conviction alone. For faith and thought can seldom be peaceful co-dwellers.

In fact, I couldn’t help putting such a situation in India’s scenario today. We now have a major political party, really close to gaining power in the country, which is philosophically almost completely in disagreement with the premise on this country was formed. One easy way to finding it out, is to go through their manifesto and see the number of times they talk about modifying the constitution (you know, repeal this, overturn that, enact this, etc.). The party is backed by a sinister pan-india organisation which has been at work to overturn the premise of this country from the day that we became independent.

So what happens if this prominent political party eventually manages to convert this country to a theocratic state as has been their quite public fundamental aim all this while? Will we see people being executed for leaving their religion? Well, we already see a bit of their vision in what they are doing in Orissa. Will we stop debating religion as other Islamic theocracies have done? And by the way, unlike the Muslims, we Hindus do not have an equivalent of Qu’ran or Hadith or Sharia to run this country. Oh yes, I forgot, maybe the 2000+ years oldManusmriti – the document being quoted by this party to provide justification for all their social policies? Or maybe, the Gita, which regrettably far being a reference of wisdom is now quoted by people of this party as a justification for chopping off hands of people from other religions.

In an article in Guardian, Julian Baggini wrote:

Intelligent atheism rejects what is false in religion, but should retain an interest in what is true about it. I don’t think many of my fellow atheists would disagree.

In response, I found Ophelia’s reply to be so well articulated and to the point.

I would – depending on what is meant by ‘what is true about it.’ I don’t think anything is true about it, if we mean factually true. If we mean something much looser by ‘true’ such as ‘having some good things to say about compassion or peace’ then I don’t think religion has anything to offer that is inherent to religion as opposed to simply widely-shared moral intuitions, so again, I don’t really think there is anything true about it (about it alone, to the exclusion of other ways of thinking). If I want wisdom about morality or justice I don’t turn to clerics. There are other sources, who are less encumbered by beliefs that need to be protected.