Introspecting Aloud

After 61 years, Ambedkar's Fears for India Are Still Valid

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.

The irony in Pakistan's dilemma

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.

The controversy over beards

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.

Of theocratic states,treason and capital punishments

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.

Is anger the best response to Mumbai?

I am not sure whether this is because of the subliminal mass indoctrination done by certain sections of the political class of this country, but I seriously disagree with the notion that Mumbai happened because India is "soft on terror". If being "hard on terror" is like behaving like Israel or USA, then I am sorry, but we have the wrong role models. Wouldn't it be more correct to call India incompetent in handling terror? It might sound similar but there is a big difference in our approach to the problem if we look at it differently. After all most citizens are convinced that our political leadership is incompetent, the bureaucracy is incompetent, the police and intelligence is incompetent. Wouldn't a mass incompetency of our entire political-police setup of the country have the same result when faced with such acts of terrorism? Why turn incidents like the Mumbai attacks a juvenile question of virility? That doesn't sound like a mature country! Why not grow up and just demand better and principled administrators of this country from now on? Question yourself. Why do we have only three pathetic major political parties in India? One, the Congress, which has no idea what it stands for and just prefers to "go with the flow". Two, the BJP who would rather make the entire country go in flames to achieve their 80 year old thinly disguised agenda of turning India into a Hindu equivalent of Pakistan. And three, the BSP who shamelessly exploits the image of a great man(Ambedkar) and has a leader who acts like a medieval queen. Have you ever thought why we haven't had a single political leader since Nehru (that also in his early days), who we have unquestionably admired and respected? Anger is justifiably the first response to what happened in Mumbai. But decisions taken in anger has rarely ever provided the best response. Why am I not seeing a single discussion, whether in the media or in the web, where people have sat down calmly and thought "why did these terrorists do this? What was their agenda?" After all these terrorists are not murderous psychopaths who kill because they like to kill. These are highly ideologically motivated people, and their leadership always have an agenda for every act that they do. They practice a form of politics in which the instruments are not speeches, lies and horse-trading like our politicians. Rather their instruments are acts of terror. But their aims are similar to politicians - to achieve a political goal. Political and security idiots from around the country are dismissing the whole act as merely "an act of destabilizing the country". While that might be true, it seems to me a dangerous over-simplification. Dangerous, because it is making the rest of India to stop thinking. They think they have got their answer to "why" and then keep raising the familiar ruckus of blaming the political class. Over the next few days, we would probably see the real reason of this attack come out in the open. Some say that it is already coming out in the open. As reports emerge of Pakistan considering moving a large part of its troops from the Afghan border to the Indian border in anticipation of a belligerent Indian response like after our parliament attack, the consequent results should be clear. The LeT and other terrorist leadership which organized the Mumbai attack were getting a lot of  heat from the combined US-Pakistani operations in Afghanistan border recently. The Indo-Pak escalations will take this heat off and help them consolidate their grip in that region. This theory might be proven wrong with information that we get in the coming days and months, but if this is the real agenda, then by irrational response to the Mumbai attack, we would only prove ourselves to be mere puppets in the hand of terrorists. For those eager to put labels on our country, being such a puppet would be a much better reason to call ourselves a soft state. I still prefer the term incompetent state though, even though idiot might be a better choice if it had not been so inflammatory. :) So the call I would like to make out to my country men, is to first defeat the terrorist's agenda (the real one, not the one which the political idiots have been mouthing), and then go ahead to discuss how to fix the country so as to prevent it from being so vulnerable and so easily manipulated.

Don't make the wrong resolutions

We will no longer remain passive. We should stand up against terrorism once and for all.

Enough is enough

I say no to getting used to terrorism.

Too many similar resolutions being made by people all around. And my take is that they are all the wrong ones. This incident of unimaginable proportions came about because of our acceptance of medicority everywhere in our country. We are ok with mediocre politicians, mediocre bureaucrats, mediocre sportspeople, mediocre (rather pathetic) standard of education, mediocre(rather pathetic) police and intelligence. The whole country is just a huge celebration of mediocrity. Questioning mediocrity on the other hand is considered the act of a traitor. If a person dies he is a martyr and automatically a hero (like this time). No matter if there is a possibility of incompetency which could have caused the death. Just mere questioning of the circumstances of death can get you lynched. That is the mediocre level of pitiful mediocre nationalism that things have come down to. Instead of terrorism, why can't we instead say no to "mediocrity"? Why can't we stop being passive about the sheer incompetency of the government in every sphere - not just terrorism which is but the flavor of the day? Why don't we ever say "enough is enough. I am tired of being passive about the pitiful state of roads and drainage every year"? Why don't we ever say "I am tired of parochialism and irrelevant issues raised by politicians". Why don't we get angry about the state of our education? Every years, lakhs pass out of schools and colleges, after having spent years studying in a terribly lacking system. But so few of them, resolve that "enough is enough. this is not how school/college should be. it can be better". Security/anti-terrorism measures don't exist in a vacuum. How can we demand excellence from our police and intelligence, when all around them mediocrity is what defines their environment. Whether it is mediocre politicians, mediocre bureaucrats or a  mediocre and unjust work environment. None of all these resolutions is going to make a difference to our internal security. If anything, ham handed security experts and politicians will only make life worse for all of us, and we ,being used to our pathetic existence at their hands will just accept our even more humiliating daily lives - the one which involves more symbolic security checks everywhere and effectively no additional increase in our security. It is clear what we really need to resolve. We should resolve that we should demand excellence from everybody out there - the police, the politician, the bureaucrat ... and even each others and oneself! It is only in such an environment where excellence is but a normal expectation, can our security forces be actually effective. Otherwise all these resolutions are a load of ...

The chasm between two Indias

This sobering video shows, very simply and beautifully, the vast difference between the visible shining India we are a part of, and the much larger part of India that we choose not to see everywhere around us. A must see for everybody to keep our feet firmly on the ground. [youtube]M0XTPSYdP08[/youtube] (Ref credit: Anuradha Bakshi, Project Why)