Usual Suspects

In giving the go-ahead to the Andhra Pradesh Government to proceed with its proposed four per cent reservations for ‘backward’ Muslims, the Supreme Court has, perhaps unwittingly, triggered a social upheaval whose consequences may prove to be far-reaching and not entirely beneficial to India. True, the entire issue of religion-based reservations that unsettles the 1950 consensus will be adjudicated by a full Constitution bench of the apex court. However, since it may be some time before the court settles the issue, the Andhra Pradesh clearance is certain to become the basis of a new reservations epidemic.

The stage for a new bout of social engineering has already been set. The Ranganath Mishra Commission report favouring 10 per cent reservation for Muslims and an additional quota for Dalit Christians has already become the focus of a Congress that is looking for ways to offset the fierce Muslim hostility to the Women’s Reservation Bill. Cynical strategists of the party have calculated that the emerging solidarity of the backward castes and Muslims can be disrupted by extracting a Muslim quota from the already existing OBC share. In short, since OBCs in North India, particularly Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have not shown any inclination to support the Congress since 1967, the best electoral strategy lies in tempting Muslim voters with the lure of reservations. In South India, the consolidation of Dalit Christian and Muslim votes behind the Congress will be additionally beneficial.

That implementation of the Ranganath Mishra report was not an article of faith for the Congress. Indeed, till the Women’s Reservation Bill unexpectedly threw up a new alignment of forces, the Congress was entirely willing to keep the issue on the backburner. Its hesitation was based on the belief that Muslim quotas would give the BJP a new lease of life and solidify its upper-caste support. The Congress felt that in the normal course the BJP hold over the upper and intermediate castes would slip, particularly if the Congress showed signs of resurgence.

It is interesting that the fear of the BJP was not shared by many Muslim organisations. They calculated that an internally-divided BJP was no longer in a position to whip up a Hindu backlash and that the Congress should be pressured to concede the principle of religion-based reservations. After the Women’s Reservation Bill and the Andhra Pradesh judgement, the Muslim organisations are certain to step up the pressure on the UPA, believing it to be more vulnerable than ever before. As for the BJP, the Muslim groups don’t appear to have revised their earlier assessment of long-term decline.

What emerges from this convoluted game of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres is a distinctly unappetising picture of India. The politics of entitlements which the UPA believes was the main factor behind its victory in May 2009 has gone completely berserk. If the Women’s Reservation Bill formalised an uneven gender-based faultline, the Ranganath Mishra Report will further compartmentalise the country into religious blocs — a situation we have not experienced since the 1950 Constitution put an end to communal electorates and other religion-based quotas.

The Constituent Assembly believed it was the institutionalisation of religious differences that was responsible for Partition and it was determined to never repeat the process. In a forthright speech opposing separate Muslim seats, Sardar Vallabbhai Patel told the remaining Muslim League members of the Constituent Assembly on August 28, 1947 to ‘forget the past’: “You have got what you wanted. You have got a separate state and remember, you are the people who were responsible for it, and not those who remain in Pakistan…You got the Partition and now again you tell me and ask me to say for the purpose of securing the affection of the younger brother that I must agree to the same thing again, to divide the country again in the divided part. For God’s sake understand that we have also got some sense…”

The unequivocal determination that was evident in the leadership of the Congress in August 1947 to not yield to sectarian pressure has wilted. The reason is not some sudden discovery of entitlements; it is far more basic: there is a solid Muslim vote bank capable of making a difference in anything between 75 and 120 Lok Sabha constituencies but there is no corresponding organised force to offset it. The day such a countervailing force emerges, the Congress will be far more circumspect bowing to sectarian pressure. In 1947, the Congress was a self-assured party and aware of its formidable electoral clout; in 2010 the Congress is merely a first among equals and unsure of a loyal vote that will endure.

This, in a sense, is the real tragedy of today’s India. The political fragmentation of the country has meant that a determined, well-organised minority is in a position to extract its pound of flesh, even if that involves turning the Constitution upside down. If the UPA chooses to travel down the road recommended by the Ranganath Mishra Report, it would be sending an alarming message to the whole country. It would, in effect, be telling voters that sectarian politics cannot be fought with normal politics but by a counter-mobilisation based on a real or imagined religious identity.

In 2009, many middle class voters rejected shrill politics and voted for what they considered a sober, moderate, modernist approach. If the Congress responds to this trust by resurrecting ghosts from an unfortunate past and bolstering religious faultlines, it will be mocking the verdict. Never mind nurturing a modern Indian identity, the ruling party will be telling us to be Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Some have heeded the advice. What if others follow suit? Or is it the belief that Hindu unity is an oxymoron?

Sunday Pioneer, March 28, 2010

By Swapan Dasgupta

March 23 was the 69th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh. Like most sarkari occasions, the commemoration was characteristically tokenistic and would have remained confined to telecasts of “Rang de Basanti” and “Legend of Bhagat Singh” had it not been for two contrived controversies. First, there was a protest by Leftists over an official ad showing Bhagat Singh with a turban rather than his hallmark trilby; and, second, a legal notice was sent to actress Preity Zinta for allegedly hurting “sentiments of the people” by depicting the freedom fighter in a Kings XI Punjab poster.

The great Indian penchant for tamasha has not spared its hero worship. The various commemorations of freedom fighters such as Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose is invariably followed by complaints that ‘official’ India has been woefully selective in projecting the freedom movement. Soap-box orators have even hinted at a ‘conspiracy’ to reduce India’s recent past to a family history.

Suggestions of a conspiracy may be hyperbolic but there is a basis for the perception that the grand narrative of the national movement doesn’t accord due recognition to the little struggles that either complemented the Congress’ battles or followed an entirely different course. Textbook history, which aims at turning the past into a manageable package, cannot accommodate the different strands and many loose ends. In the quest for simplicity and homogeneity, rich complexity is a casualty.

That Bhagat Singh and many others have been downsized by capsuled history is undeniable. However, there is a rash temptation by many, not least those who accept celluloid and comic book versions of the past as the hidden reality, to suggest that it was the revolutionary nationalists rather than the Mahatma and his followers who really brought about Independence. This was certainly the theme of many 140-syllable interventions on Twitter just days ago. Many tweets argued that nonviolence prompted a compromise with the British Raj and prevented India from disinheriting the entire colonial legacy.

Youthful impetuosity has invariably been at odds with the ethical quirkiness of Gandhi. As impressionable undergraduates, many of us internalized the British Stalinist R P Dutt’s catchy assessment of Gandhi as “mascot of the bourgeoisie”, “that general of unbroken disasters” and the “Jonah of Revolution”. The Mahatma’s abrupt withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement after the violence at Chauri Chaura, his initial prevarication over Purna Swaraj, his settlement with Lord Irwin, his unequivocal disavowal of “Bhagat Singh worship” and his spiteful campaign against Subhas Bose in 1939 were held out as examples of Gandhi’s unwillingness to release the full tide of anti-imperialist passion. The likes of Bhagat Singh with his fervent commitment to socialism were never similarly inhibited.

Rubbishing the Mahatma has become an unofficial national pastime. Militant Hindus charge him with betraying Hindu interests and facilitating Partition; Muslim separatists always perceived him as a wily Bania; radical Marxists see him as an upholder of the status quo; and a new breed of Dalit activists accuse him of social condescension towards the community. Compared to his passionate critics, the Mahatma’s defence seems piteously proforma. No eyebrows are even raised at his transformation into an icon for selling fountain pens and tabloid newspapers. The few remaining Gandhians have painted themselves into a faddist corner, obsessed with temperance, vegetarianism and naturopathy.

Gandhi is a victim of India’s impatience with historical rigour. It is casually assumed that India was forever ready for a grand anti-colonial explosion and that Gandhi used his moral standing to derail the process. It’s a romantic proposition which, unfortunately, cannot be historically sustained.

First, it was not until the late-1930s that self-rule became an accepted goal for all Indians. This realization was itself the culmination of the many campaigns waged by Gandhi since 1918. Bhagat Singh was a fierce patriot but his belief that a few exemplary acts of violent protests would trigger a revolution was wildly optimistic, if not naïve. The young Bengalis who raided the armoury in Chittagong in 1930 shouting, ironically, “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai” made a similar miscalculation. Their spark awed India but it didn’t light a prairie fire.

Gandhi realized better than many of his colleagues that the biggest impediment to India’s self-awakening was mass passivity, even fatalism. Unlike the revolutionaries, he shied away from grand proclamations and focused on creating awareness. He knew the human costs of armed liberation struggle and consciously chose the path of a moral struggle using India’s greatest strength — its sheer numbers. He turned adversity into advantage and spared India the bitterness and inhumanity of China’s revolutionary violence. Gandhi bequeathed to independent India a stable society, not one devastated by civil war.

There were many patriots in the freedom movement but Gandhi was perhaps the only visionary. He doesn’t deserve to be mocked.

 

Sunday Times of India, March 28, 2010

By Swapan Dasgupta

During the 2008 US presidential election there was a belief in New Delhi that a Barack Obama presidency would trigger the re-calibration of Indo-American relations. Translated into English, it implied concern that the new guy wouldn’t accord the same priority to Indian concerns as President George W Bush did. At that time we were assured by star-struck Indian reporters in Washington, DC, that this was poppycock and a function of the deranged Islamophobia of the Dick Cheney Fan Club. Obama, we were informed, saw Hanuman as his lucky mascot. The more sober interlocutors informed us that the Cold War was over, that India was no longer a hyphenated link with Pakistan and that the relationship was on auto-pilot.

It’s now 14 months since Obama assumed office and the special relationship forged by Bush shows distinct signs of wear and tear. I may be guilty of only a minor exaggeration in suggesting that the middle class euphoria that propelled the India-US nuclear accord (and played a role in the UPA’s undeserved re-election last May) has dissipated, if not disappeared. It has been replaced by a growing surge of anti-Americanism, not very dissimilar to the one being witnessed in Israel, another country where a strategic partnership was allegedly etched in stone.

As opposed to the civilisational anti-Americanism that binds the Marxist to the mullah, this wariness of Uncle Sam is entirely political and centred on the belief that the US doesn’t give a toss for Indian sensitivities. Worse, it has got entangled with the feeling that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is more concerned with obliging the US than doing what is right for India.

This new surge of anti-Americanism may not be adequately reflected in the mainstream media where editors and diplomatic correspondents are curiously circumspect in questioning US motives, but it is real and predates the kerfuffle over the alleged cover-up in the David Coleman Headley case.

The doubts over the Obama Administration’s bona fides are strongest in India’s ‘strategic community’, the charmed circle of diplomats, spooks, security experts and interested politicians. The Headley case has suggested a grey zone of complicity between US Intelligence and its asset who may have turned into a double agent. It is, after all, scarcely conceivable that Headley could have undergone five spells of training in a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba camp, from late-2005 to October 2009, without being on the radar of US counter-terrorism. Circumstantial evidence points to Headley undertaking his jihadi activities with the knowledge, and possibly consent, of US authorities. Till much after the Mumbai attacks, Headley wasn’t regarded as a rogue agent.

In 1940, Winston Churchill had advance warning that the Luftwaffe was planning a massive raid on Coventry. He wilfully shied away from ordering the RAF to repel the bombers because he didn't want to let on to the Germans that the British had cracked one of their most secure codes. Likewise, there is a theory that the US didn’t share its prior knowledge of the 26/11 attack because it wanted its asset to gain the full trust of the LeT leadership and be privy to information of future conspiracies.

If true, the implication is quite chilling. It suggests that a section of US Intelligence chose to sit on specific information of the Mumbai attacks because the target was India and its principal objective is to safeguard America and its citizens. In other words, Indian lives are always at a discount compared to American lives — a charming message in the context of the sharply discounted liability ceiling in the proposed Nuclear Liability Bill. Of course, six US citizens also died in the Mumbai attacks and, maybe, this proved to be Headley’s undoing.

There are many questions that Indian investigators have for Headley when the US prison authorities grant access to him — curiously, they have already given the Danish police access to him. However, there are an equal number of questions that India must ask the US authorities. The most important of these is a blunt query: Did you wilfully allow the massacre of 160 innocents in pursuance of a game that lacks a winning strategy?

The US can, of course, retort that it did warn India of maritime attacks. Indeed it did and this is a lapse that will haunt India’s counter-terrorism establishment. Yet, there is a difference between general warnings and ‘actionable intelligence’. Did the US deny India ‘actionable intelligence’ which it had? If so, the implications are grave.

In July 2008, the US had ‘actionable intelligence’ about the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul which killed 58 people. Rather than provide it to the Indian agencies in real time, it chose to route it through the Afghan authorities. The delay was callous.

If the US strategy lies in identifying the masterminds of terror and identifying the complete network, we can perhaps explain the deaths in Mumbai — just as Churchill could explain the destruction of Coventry to himself. Headley’s testimony is categorical on one count: The epicentre of terrorism is located in Pakistan. Headley has also removed all ambiguity over the LeT’s involvement.

What does the US propose to do with this information? So far it plans to outsource Afghanistan to Pakistan.

What Headley has so far left unsaid are two things. First, the identities of LeT terrorists, who are referred to as A, B, C and D. And, second, whether he provided his US handlers a full account of his jihadi activities at each stage.

If India had full access to Headley and the right to both extradite and waterboard him, he may have sung out of fear. In the light of his plea bargain and the knowledge that the extent of his punishment depends on following US orders, the chances of the horrible truth emerging in the natural course is zero. Unless, we too demonstrate that the lives of Indians matters to India.

Sunday Pioneer, March 21, 2010

[ Ashok Chowgule has taken the trouble of writing a considered response to my article in Sunday Times of India. I feel that this should be shared with a wider audience. Would love comments--Swapan Dasgupta]

By Ashok Chowgule

Swapan Dasgupta says that he has been disturbed, for quite some time, about "the marginalization of the Right from the liberal space."  I
think most of what can be termed as Hindutvavadis would agree with this concern fully.  They would also contend that this maginalisation is not something that has happened recently or without design.  They would then contend that the internet has allowed them to go around this censorship and are able to express their views to a larger audience in their own disparate ways.

Swapanji's article does not specifically state that he is talking about
Hindutvavadis alone.  He has peppered his articles with a few words on virtual jihadis belonging to the non-Hindu groups.  However, I do not think I would be wrong if I say that a reader, educated and intelligent but not so well-informed on the issues of media, etc., would think that he is talking about the Hindutvavadis primarily.  In giving specific examples (MF Husain, Prof Wedny Doniger) he has dealt with only those that the Hindutvavadis are concerned about.  It may well be that the space constraint would not have permitted him to deal with other issues.

But a lay reader may not understand this limitation.  And so I will deal
with this issue in the rest of my comments.  Even if I wrong about this
presumption, my comments would be valid as far as the Hindutvavadis are concerned.

A disclaimer.  I have not been appointed by other Hindutvavadis to be
their spokesman - I do not think such a post exists.  There may well be
many Hindutvavadis who disagree with what I say.  However, I do think
that there are many Hindutvavadis who would be agreeing with what I have to say.  Those who don't, can tell me which point they do not agree with me and why.

As I had said in the beginning, I am in sync with Swapanji about his
concern of the marginalization of the Hindu Right from the liberal
space.  According to me, this marginalization is a programme of those
presently occupying the position of establishment in the liberal space.
This space includes the academics and the journalists, particularly in
the English arena.  And it is not restricted to India alone.  My
experience of interaction with the academics and the journalists outside India convinces me that they are just as guilty of the exclusion programme as their Indian counterparts.

In stating the above, I am fully conscious of the exceptions to my
contention above.  And these exceptions are in India and also outside
India.  The rule, however, is exclusion, or at least an attempt to
exclude.  Articles would be primarily by those opposed, or
unsympathetic, to the Hindu tradition and culture.  Interpretations are imputed which a Hindu would find it difficult to understand or go
against what he/she has been brought up on.

Those who disagree would be immediately branded as a Hindutvavadi, as if that is a depraved term.  In the process, no explanation is offered why the logic of the arguments are wrong or inappropriate.  The strategy is a form of intellectual terrorism, whereby the proponent is intimidated into backing off from his views, irrespective of how strongly he/she feel that there is a logic in his/her argument.

I have also said that the internet has provided an excellent opportunity to the Hindutvavadis to bypass the censorship.  It has also enabled the Hindutvavadis to reach out to those who think in ways similar to what they think, and in the process of exchanging notes have honed their arguments in an idiom and intellect that does stand to the scrutiny of the modern standards of expression.  Internet has provided the community of Hindutvavadis to access information about the history and culture of Hinduism and India - information that the mainstream has hidden from them, and often set out in a perverted or factually incorrect way.

Thus, when the issue of MF Husain is taken up, the pictoral depiction of the objectionable paintings is presented by the Hindutvavadis, and a question asked if this does not go beyond the social norms of freedom of expression.  Also, the pictorial depictions of parallel subjects of other religious traditions are juxtaposed side-by-side to buttress the charge of hypocrisy.

Swapanji gives an impression that the Hindutvavadis have aggressively
stormed their way into the internet in a way that makes the authentic
Hindus feel most uncomfortable with, or has made the "normal guy, with no rigid views and no insider information, runs away from political
engagement".  He also thinks that in the process he feels that the
internet has been made "less appealing".  I have taken the liberty of
paraphrasing Swapanji here, because he has used the various terms in a context strictly other than the internet.  But I get a feeling that I am not too wrong in setting out what he feels on the subject.

The internet, by its very nature, an anarchic sector in the means of
communication.  People can post what they want and in the way they
want - particularly where the forums are not moderated.  Sometimes the comments are completely unrelated to the subject of the thread, and some use it to project their pet themes, which if dealt with would solve all the problems in the world.  For example, someone can well say that take care of the growth of the population in the world and Islamic terrorism would be a thing of the past.  Where the forum are moderated, one sees many posts which have been deleted by the moderator on account of fouling with the policy of preventing abuse - but the posts that are irrelevant are rarely deleted.  The task of the moderator is a most thankless one, in such cases.

But, for those occupying the authentic intellectual space, it is
necessary for them to deal with the message and not just the idiom and the language.  And in doing so, they should use the idiom and the
language that they say is the norm in civilized discussions.  They
should set out their arguments on the basis of facts and not on the
basis of labels, even if they think that their opponent on the internet
has used such tactics.

In this context, I would like to present to Swapanji statements about Dr Praveenbhain Togadia, the General Secretary of Vishwa Hindu Parishad, made by two different journalists.  One of them wrote: "Togadia who grew up in an Ahmedabad chawl may never get to play tennis at the Delhi Gymkhana but being in the VHP has guaranteed him a place in a television studio."  And the other wrote: "Should we allow (Dr Pravinbhai Togadia) to rush from studio to studio, fixed mongoose smile on face, semi-intelligible rhetoric already pre-rehearsed, and encourage him to make abusive statements?"

These are representative of the idiom used by many secularists who say that they are opposed to the ideology of Hindutva.  In the first case, the journalist seems to contend that to be an authentic secularist one has to be able to play tennis at the Delhi Gymkhana, and perhaps growing in an Ahmedabad chawl would make the transition very difficult.  In the second case, the use of an adjective like 'mongoose' is permitted if one is referring to a Hindutvavadi but not in other cases.

The use of such idioms has preceded the internet 'invasion' of
Hindutvavadis by a large period of time.  I feel that they have set out
the standards that are acceptable to the secularists, and so many of the Hindutvavadis see nothing wrong in conforming to the standards.  If this is correct, then surely it is wrong for the secularists to today
complain about the degeneration of the language and idiom.

The last sentence of Swapanji's article is: "Maybe the libertarianism of
the present will soon have to be replaced by an enlightened code of
conduct, and technology will enable the users of poison keyboards to be outed and shamed." 

What exactly is the definition of englightened code? Do the two quotes above conform to the definition?  And, most important,
who is to set out the code?  I wonder if those occupying the space
called 'libertainism' are finding themselves being questioned by the
people at large, and they realise that they do not have any logical
answers to provide.  And in the process, instead of dealing with the
issues raised by the internet Hindutvavadis, a new form of censorship is sought to be applied

By Swapan Dasgupta

On Sunday evening, i am scheduled to participate in a net debate on an issue that has disturbed me for some time: the marginalization of the Right from the liberal space.

The subject is undeniably abstruse and of interest to either those who perceive themselves on the Right of the political spectrum or those who have nothing better to do on a Sunday evening. Yet, it is not the topic alone that whets my appetite: it’s the novelty of a structured engagement with a bunch of disparate but motivated individuals who have — like the disrupters in the Rajya Sabha — made more noise in cyberspace than their numbers warrant.

It’s not a complaint based on personal experience alone. Conversations with other media professionals, particularly those who have a presence of social networking sites such as Twitter, suggest a growing exasperation with net activists hell bent on swamping the medium with venomous outpourings. It wouldn’t have really mattered if the ‘hweets’ (the name given to hate tweets) had stuck to obsessive political themes — for the past few weeks M F Husain has been the clear favourite and American academic Wendy Doniger a poor second. Unfortunately, it tends to descend into the realms of the personal, particularly if the target is a woman. A woman writer with liberal inclinations and a Muslim name was recently called “slut” for questioning some holy cows of certitude.

It is not that anyone really objects to the Internet Hindus or Internet Islamists having their say, decorously. Tolerating the obsessive is the price of an open society. The US, after all, is dotted with bores who accost the apparent non-believer with a Jesus-loves-you sermon. And, if the white Hare Krishna-types stuck to running vegetarian restaurants rather than prancing through Oxford Street each evening, the authentic Hindus would feel much more relieved. The problem arises when storm-troopers of different faiths vitiate the medium to such an astonishing extent that the normal guy, with no rigid views and no insider information, runs away from political engagement. They are either intimidated or disgusted by the preponderance of weirdos.

When it first arrived on the scene, the www was seen by many as the great liberator and democratic facilitator. It enlarged the reach of the media exponentially and at a nominal cost; it transcended national boundaries; it threatened media monopolies; it bypassed censorship; and it transformed passive readership into interactive engagement. The social networking sites built on this advantage and created alternative communities of the like-minded, ranging from stamp collectors and dog lovers to hypercondriacs. Repressive and totalitarian regimes feared that the net has made it almost impossible to suppress ideas and information.

China is fighting a battle against Google and Iran is hassled by the way Twitter and Facebook are used to bypass the thought police. But these are losing battles of dictatorships. Technology is also becoming a political liberator — a reason why China has also unleashed a parallel campaign to shout down its opponents using the same technology and leveraging its awesome numbers. Likewise, causes that perceive the mainstream media to be needlessly condescending, dismissive or even hostile have alternative channels of reaching out. At one time, every minuscule political group had its own print publications which harried members struggled to sustain. The net has provided them more viable alternatives, and at a fraction of the cost.

The www has triggered a revolution in communications and political discourse. The unevenness of development has meant that many of these opportunities haven’t been fully exploited in India. Those unfamiliar with the English language and those who emotionally identify with a village-centric Bharat (against a globalized India) continue to view the www with wariness, often as an alien intrusion. Among the 55-plus generation in public life too, the internet is at best a clippings library and an alternative dak  system. With the possible exception of Narendra Modi and, of late, L K  Advani, they have failed to grasp its tremendous outreach potential.

The www as a parallel political stage is still evolving in India. It has to be carefully nurtured and made appealing to those who have traditionally shied from either expressing their views or passively voting once every five years — and that too, if it doesn’t clash with a long weekend. If the same strong-arm tactics and the murky shrillness of the outside world are replicated on the net, it will reinforce the conviction that politics is by definition fractious, ugly — and best left to determined activists.

The danger of a democratic instrument being hijacked by virtual jihadis and bajrangis is real. Maybe the libertarianism of the present will soon have to be replaced by an enlightened code of conduct, and technology will enable the users of poison keyboards to be outed and shamed.

 

Sunday Times of India, March 14, 2010

Last Friday, Congress MP Manish Tiwari introduced a laudable Private Member’s Bill in the Lok Sabha seeking to free Parliament from the tyranny of the party whip. The Bill, which is yet to be debated, proposes to amend the 10th Schedule of the Constitution and make it possible for MPs to exercise free choice in all matters except confidence motions, money Bills and adjournment motions. Most important, the proposed amendment enables MPs to apply their minds and exercise independent judgement in the crucial area of law-making.

Unless I am very mistaken, it is unlikely that this Bill will endear Tiwari to the leadership of the political parties. An unintended consequence of the anti-defection legislation was the transformation of the backbench MP into either voting fodder by the Treasury or a disruptive mob by the Opposition. Whereas the sentiments of backbenchers are crucial to the calculations of party leaders in Westminster, these count for little in India and facilitate a peculiarly autocratic democracy. The draconian nature of anti-defection legislation has marred the vibrancy of Parliament and jeopardised internal democracy within the major political parties.

The fear of MPs sleep-walking their way to national disaster is not an academic one. The next week is certain to be dominated by the Government’s attempt to rush the Women’s Reservation Bill through both Houses of Parliament. The proposed Constitution Amendment reserving one-third of parliamentary and State Assembly seats for women is assured of overwhelming parliamentary endorsement with the Congress, BJP and CPI(M) having issued three-line whips to their MPs. The only opposition is likely to be from three caste-based parties which want a sub-quota for women OBCs. They, however, don’t have the requisite numbers to make any difference and may, at best, fall back on disruption.

Both the supporters and opponents of the Women’s Reservation Bill agree that it is a landmark, perhaps as significant as the introduction of communal electorates by the Government of India Act of 1909 and the Poona Pact of 1932 that reserved seats in the legislature for the “depressed classes”. The proposal, first mooted by the short-lived HD Deve Gowda Government in 1996, has gone through a parliamentary committee and, after 14 years, is ready to be made into law and put into effect with the next general election.

The Women’s Reservation Bill is calculated to change the basic character of representation to the highest law-making bodies in the land. It is a Bill aimed at restricting free choice to meet the imperatives of equity and social engineering. The issue is not so much the right of women to secure adequate representation in Parliament and the State Assemblies — such an unfettered right has been in existence since the Constitution came into being in 1950. Nor is the Bill aimed at making it obligatory for registered political parties to nominate enough women to contest elections. The legislation is centred on compulsion.

In the next general election, it will be compulsory for the voters of selected constituencies (chosen, presumably, by lottery) to select their MP or MLA from a slate of women candidates. In short, a citizen of India will be barred from contesting a particular seat on grounds of gender. Considering that there is already a caste/community-based restriction on individuals from contesting in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes seats, this legislation will impose an additional restriction on the principle of free choice, the basis of democratic governance. Since the laws of the land are made by Parliament and the State Assemblies, it naturally follows that all enacted legislation will in future suffer from an in-built distortion arising from flawed representation.
It is important to distinguish women’s reservation in the law-making bodies from the existing quotas in municipalities and panchayats. The organs of local Government don’t make laws; they raise local taxes, undertake limited welfare projects, and frame rules and guidelines relating to buildings, roads and sewage disposal. Nor should women’s reservation in the legislatures be equated with affirmative action in educational institutions and the bureaucracy. These are measures aimed at enhancing the quantum of opportunities for livelihood. And the bureaucracy implements and enforces Government programmes; it doesn’t make laws.

In making restricted choice an overriding principle of membership to law-making bodies, the women’s reservation legislation is hitting at the essence of democracy.

There is, undeniably, a strong case for increasing the representation of women to the legislatures. Political parties, even those who have piously issued three-line whips to their MPs, have been insufficiently attentive to the fact that not enough women are given winnable seats. If they had a better track record, they would have had the moral authority to resist compulsion. Yet, the question remains: Must iniquities always be rectified by radical social engineering that has baneful side effects? Or is it necessary to be fanatically committed to the fundamental principles governing democracy?

These are questions that Parliament has to address and in a spirit of openness. These are questions that civil society needs to think about. Unfortunately, parliamentary discussion is certain to be hamstrung by the three-line whip and an oppressive climate of political correctness that has gripped the media. And the pace of legislation is calculated to rule out any meaningful debate in civil society.

In private, many MPs are deeply disturbed by the Bill but they are helpless in the face of instructions from above. The absence of honest debate will facilitate this undemocratic legislation and pave the way for many unanticipated distortions in the political process.

Parliament has an inalienable right to pass any legislation, including crazy ones. There may be some redemption if MPs are at least allowed the liberty of a conscience vote. If only Tiwari’s Bill was law…

Sunday Pioneer, March 7, 2010

Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution Of Culture And Identity
By Pavan K. Varma/Allen Lane/Penguin | 275 pages | Rs 499

Pavan Varma’s inveighing against a baleful colonial influence is rooted in the Hindi sphere’s fragile ego

By Swapan Dasgupta

The cover of Pavan Varma’s charmingly polemical book is intended to be a photographic caricature. It portrays a man wearing a white silk kurta and red-bordered dhoti over a pair of black argyle socks and Oxford shoes. The apparent incongruity between the attire and the footwear encapsulates the book’s central thesis: Indian identity has been distorted and made ridiculous by colonialism.

It’s an old argument. From Franz Fanon to Edward Said and Ashis Nandy, and from Gandhi to Golwalkar, scholarship and politics has often damned the imperial inheritance as a hideous perversion that affected both the coloniser and the colonised.

For Varma, the colonial inheritance remains a curse. An obsessive preoccupation with the English language and western sensibilities has marginalised indigenous culture, warped intellectual development, sullied art and aesthetics, and transformed India into a nation of philistines. India is unworthy of a leadership role because the national psyche has been built on “borrowed plumes and transplanted paraphernalia”.

For 300 years, writes Varma with eloquence, “an entire nation and its people became the object of an external curiosity, brown fish swimming around in a bowl held in white hands”. He peppers this imagery with anecdotal evidence of passengers on the Shatabdi choosing to speak in indifferent English, the non-availability of Ghalib’s poetry in Delhi bookshops and the steady erosion in the popularity of Indian classical music.

Predictably, it all began with Macaulay. But what Varma finds most galling is that Macaulay’s project was accepted and internalised by Indians. Those selected by him for inquisition and denunciation include Raja Rammohan Roy, writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri, the Bengal School artists and, naturally, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Varma doesn’t admit of an ability to retain identity while taking from the West. Examples of India’s abject yielding is drawn from Delhi.

The Raja is berated for freezing his deep knowledge of Hindu philosophy in favour of endorsing Britain’s ‘civilising mission’. Niradbabu is debunked as “the most flamboyantly learned mimic of an alien civilisation”. “None of his books,” Varma writes with vicious inaccuracy, “sold more than 5,000 copies...despondent showing for a man who became the biggest apologist of British rule.” The Bengal School is critiqued for being a reaction to western sensibilities, rejecting anything that deviated from a depiction of India’s glorified past and “caricaturing their potential”. Nehru gets short shrift for speaking in English at the stroke of the midnight hour and imposing the questionable modernism of Le Corbusier on an unsuspecting Punjab.

Varma’s critique of the contrived modernism of Nehruvian aesthetics is compelling and should warn against the unilateral imposition of a leader’s personal preferences. On the two Bengali stalwarts, he tends to be more doctrinaire than historical. Like many “post-colonial” intellectuals, Varma underplays the quantum of bhadralok acceptance of British rule. This was partly due to its being an improvement over anarchy. Bengalis were also excited by the potentialities of new knowledge. The East-West encounter did not lead to natives forsaking their own: it witnessed a spectacular flowering of Bengali literature. Rammohan and Niradbabu personified Bengal’s breakout from provincialism.

Varma doesn’t admit this ability to retain self-respect and identity while imbibing from the West. His anecdotal evidence is drawn primarily from Delhi, a city yet to develop roots and where the self-esteem of many Hindi speakers is fragile. In Calcutta Club they speak Bengali, dhoti is encouraged, and a good steak served. In Madras Club, ladies elegantly sipping whisky are attired in kanjeevarams; its ambience one of rootedness. The problem of identity and the triumph of philistinism is mostly a problem of the Hindi sphere. These can be rationalised by history and politics: Hindi’s inferiority complex vis-a-vis Urdu and Persian; the relative lateness of its exposure to the ‘civilising mission’; the many outlanders in the political class.

False consciousness isn’t a pan-Indian problem. And does it matter that Lord Romsey mispronounces ‘Ahluwalia’ and we make a dog’s breakfast of Lord Cholmondley. For many decades I have tried to tell north Indians that my surname is Dasgupta and my first name isn’t Swapandas. One day I may even succeed.

Outlook, March 15, 2010

In the past decade, India’s threshold of tolerance has dipped

By Swapan Dasgupta

Earlier this week, a newspaper in Delhi published a telling cartoon that drew many a snigger: a figure fully veiled in black with the simple caption: “Qatar Mata by M.F. Husain”.

The apparent absurdity of India’s most famous artist relinquishing his Indian nationality for the citizenship of Qatar, a place where he claims “no one controls my freedom of expression”, has disappointed many of his ardent supporters who had faithfully backed him against militant and litigious groups. In turning his back on “my motherland” because “India doesn’t need me” and “no one came forward to speak for me”, Husain has handed out an unqualified victory to those who feel that free speech and expression cannot include the right to offend. That Husain abandoned India for an Emirate that is devoutly Islamic, conservative and doesn’t remotely qualify as a democracy has only compounded the problem. Lacking political perspicacity, Husain has unwittingly added a new adversary to his list of tormentors: Indian nationalism. The price of Husain’s paintings will not fall because of this new twist to the controversy, but it is possible that the next attack on an exhibition of his paintings in India will be greeted with indifference, not outrage.

The upholders of intolerant democracy have already drawn their own perverse conclusions from the successful hounding of Husain. Last Monday, there were violent demonstrations by militant Muslims in Karnataka against the publication of an article in a local newspaper attacking the veil by the exiled Bangladeshi author, Taslima Nasreen. The article, an unauthorized Kannada translation of an article that had been first published in the Outlook magazine three years ago, was subsequently deemed by the Karnataka government to be “provocative” and the newspaper regretted its publication. Like the Left Front government, which bundled Taslima out of Calcutta after an outbreak of sectarian hooliganism, Karnataka’s Bharatiya Janata Party government pursued the line of least resistance. It bought peace by capitulating to the intolerant.

From a media perspective, there was nothing wilfully provocative in a publication reprinting Taslima’s critique of the burqa. In the past few months, the issue has been debated globally in the context of the French ban on outward religious symbols, including the burqa. Earlier, Britain was drawn into controversy following the insistence of the then home secretary, Jack Straw, that the burqa should be discarded by those who wished to meet him at his constituency surgery. Last month, the Election Commission in India informed the Supreme Court that the burqa was a “religious custom” and not an integral part of Islam and, as such, Muslim women must have their faces photographed if they wanted to enrol as voters.

From a purely journalistic perspective, Kannada Prabha wasn’t being wilfully provocative in proffering Taslima’s feminist critique of Islamic theology to its readers. The issue was topical. The only lapse was a copyright violation, an offence that doesn’t warrant a riotous mob.

The issue, it would seem, wasn’t what Taslima actually wrote or whether she erred in her understanding of Islamic theology. In a television programme recently, the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen member of parliament for Hyderabad, Asaduddin Owaisi, went apoplectic over Taslima’s “blasphemy” and questioned her very right to be in India. Like the occasion when the MIM proudly disrupted a public meeting in Hyderabad where Taslima was present and even tried to assault her, the idea was to inform the government that any accommodation on her asylum application would invite Muslim fury.

There is an eerie similarity between the threats to and disruption of exhibitions of Husain’s paintings and the fury directed at Taslima. It didn’t require the exhibition of Husain’s so-called “obscene” and “offensive” paintings for the religious vigilantes to take offence; even his other paintings have been rendered objectionable. Nor did it require Taslima to start a fresh controversy. I am informed that even her non-proscribed books weren’t on offer in this year’s Calcutta Book Fair. The messages were common: neither Husain nor Taslima were acceptable in any form.

Salman Rushdie suffered a similar plight even after his Satanic Verses was peremptorily banned by Rajiv Gandhi’s government, a decision that triggered a chain of events that led to Ayatollah Khomeini’s murderous fatwa. He was denied a visa to visit India for nearly 12 years because the authorities feared that his mere presence would trigger violence.

Over the years, successive governments have fallen back on the plea that freedom of expression in India is not unfettered but circumscribed by concerns of morality and public order. In short, there is no automatic right to offend. India’s secularism, it has also been maintained, doesn’t imply indifference to faith but equal respect for all faiths. There is a corresponding, if somewhat over-simplistic belief, that the great religions are not in the business of offending non-believers.

In theory, there is nothing hideously objectionable to citizen’s rights being qualified by the realities of India. Even in the West, where personal freedoms tend to be more uninhibited, there have been concerns over paedophile literature and hate speeches. The Pope has made it his business to protest against a proposed Equality Act in Britain that makes homosexuality a legitimate lifestyle choice. A few years ago, the revisionist ‘historian’, David Irving, was jailed in Austria for his denial of the Holocaust. At present, a prominent Dutch politician is being prosecuted for allegedly making hate speeches against Islam.

Despite the periodic indignation over assaults on common decencies, it is worth stressing that the intellectual climate in the West is relatively unfettered. Though ‘moderate’ and ‘middle of the road’ views are often given top billing, there is enough space to accommodate both dissent and offence. Martin Rowson, a cartoonist for The Guardian, was recently in India lecturing on British humour. His audiences were quite stunned by the British success in ensuring that almost nothing remained sacred. This, it was generally agreed, would be completely unacceptable in India.

Indian society is innately reverential and is unduly cautious in challenging conventional wisdom. Yet 60 years of a democratic Constitution should have witnessed a steady expansion in the lakshman rekha of tolerance, and more so because the Hindu ethos is inherently accommodating and non-doctrinaire. The founding fathers who agreed on separate civil codes believed that an initial confidence-building gesture to India’s largest minority would make them more responsive to liberal and secular principles.

Precisely the opposite has happened. The growth of political Islam from the 1970s has seen a regression in Muslim social attitudes and the post-9/11 world has contributed to a back-to-basics radicalism. The attempt by liberals to accommodate minority concerns while simultaneously promoting Hindu liberalism didn’t yield the necessary results. Minority cussedness prompted a fierce Hindu political backlash that, in turn, hardened Muslim attitudes even further. The opening up of the economy and the rise in prosperity did help shift the focus from the overweening preoccupation with sectarian concerns, the defining hallmark of the 1990s, but there was no automatic drift to a more open society. In the past decade, the threshold of tolerance in India has been lowered considerably — thanks in no small degree to the takeover of the internet by competitive extremists. ‘Sensitivity to faith’ has come to mean accommodation of organized blackmail.

The successful anti-Husain and anti-Taslima protests have to be seen in the context of a progressive shrinking of the enlightened public space. India imagined it would be a world player on the strength of its ‘soft power’. Today, that power is being steadily undermined by the clash of rival ghettos. The nonsense has gone on far too long and has touched dangerous heights. It’s time the country extends democratic rights to those who offend fragile sensitivities.

The Telegraph, March 5, 2010