Controversy on Ramanujan's Essay on Ramayana

A long essay on Ramayana writtten by a linguist, late AK Ramanujan, nearly two decades ago when he was working at a leading US university, titled: "Three Hundred Ramayanas":Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation", has suddenly become a subject of heated debate in the media. According to press reports, this clearly controversial Essay was included in the syllabus of the Delhi University's BA 2nd year history course, in 2006. Presumably, the Essay came under adverse notice of a section of students and teachers. Recently, the Delhi University Academic Council, in a majority decision of 141 members against 9, removed the Essay from the syllabus.

This democratic decision by the most important body of the DU has triggered a vociferous protest  by "Marxist" and "Left-liberal" teachers and student unions. Some of them even came out in a protest demonstration in the DU's north campus, calling the Academic Council's decision as "wanton philistinism" and an assault on "academic freedom". One lady history teacher of Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU), prof. Mridula Mukherjee went to the outrageous extent of condemning it as "goondagardi"(goondaism). "Hindutva" groups who had favoured the removal, were accused of bigotry and "taking one view of history".

Strong views of the critics of the Essay that some versions of the "retellings" of the epic in Ramanujan's collection were incredibly perverse, even obscene, in their projection of the iconic figures like Ram, Lakshman, Hanuman and Indra, and deeply hurt the religious feelings of  the vast numbers of the majority community, were totally dismissed. Their argument that there were no demands for banning the book and that it was only excluded from the syllabus of the history course of undergraduate students still in their teens, also had no relevance to these "Marxists". Strangely, even some leading intellectuals belonging to the Capital's think tanks, wittingly ignored this limited restriction.

Here are a few examples of some of these offensive "tellings": Ravana and Lakshman seduced Sita; Sita was unfaithful to Rama; Hanuman was ladies' man; Indra, king of devas, was debased; his testicles fell down because of ...a curse and animal testicles were implanted; Indra's body was covered with vaginas of thousands of women! When such evil and malicious "tellings" are part of the Ramanujan's essay , is it improper for the DU Academic Council to remove it from the syllabus of college freshers?

Will these history teachers show similar enthusiasm to recommend Salman Rushdie's novel "Satanic Verses" for the English syllabus at the DU, or the JNU  as it makes derogatory references to Prophet Mohammed's wives? Did they come out on the streets to shout against the ban on the book? And what about the Bangladeshi writer Tasleema Nasreen's book that was banned? Why hurting the sentiments of the Hindu majority community seems easy meat to these psuedo-secular thinkers and teachers? 
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Defence of Mayawati's Statue-mania

UP Chief Minister Mayawati's obsession with building a series of memorial parks in the State with statues of Dalit leaders like Dr BR Ambdkar and the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) founder Kanshi Ram-the latest one was recently inaugurated in NOIDA, costing close to seven hundred crores of rupees-has been widely condemned as a huge waste of public funds. The critics point out that Uttar Pradesh(UP), the most populous State in the country, is the poorest and most backward in all parameters of growth such as illiteracy, malnourishment, health, medicare,etc., Instead of using valuable financial resources which are always inadequate for the heavy needs of the State, to the eradication of poverty, improving infrastructure, education, health care, rural road connectivity, etc., Mayawati has the perverted priority:To erect a large number of statues not only of dalit icons who are no more but of her own in her life time; even of the party symbol-Elephant! One can understand one or two but she does them in dozens with zero regard for budgetary constraints!

Yet, we have a non-dalit columnist like Jaithirth Rao of the Indian Express who has joined Dalit ideologues and apologists, to justify Mayawati's statue-mania! In his article in the IE(October 18), Rao ridicules "media pundits" for having "a great time taking swipes at the building projects" of Mayawati. He also pooh-poohs "self-appointed fiscal hawks" and "self-appointed defenders of the poor" for criticising "the waste of tax-payers' money" which "could have been spent on education or medical facilities for the poor". One can easily turn around Rao's arguments to question him as to why he is acting as a"self-appointed" defender of one of the most corrupt, dictatorial, Chief Minister, supposedly a "poor dalit ki beti" who has become one of the wealthiest politicians, in a decade or so?

Rao has used an extremely curious justification for Mayawati's mania, as "a central theme in human affairs" where "all architecture is political". He mindlessly compares her statues to the Red Fort and the Parliament House, forgetting that both these structures were functional as centres of governance, although built by foreign rulers. They had no parochial or narcissist symbolism.  

Attack on Prashant Bhushan for his anti-Indian views on Kashmir

The attack on senior Supreme Court advocate, human rights and anti-corruption activist, Prashant Bhushan, in his chamber in the court premises, by three youngmen reportedly belonging to Ram Sena and Bhagat Singh Sena, on October 12 afternoon, has been widely condemned. He was beaten up and kicked for his recent remarks made in Varanasi supporting plebiscite in J&K. There can be no two opinions that violence is unaccepetable in a democratic society to settle differences of opinion.

It is true that Prashant Bhushan, who is a leading member of the Team Anna in its anti-corruption campaign, has a dubious record of advocating the cause of Maoist terrorists, terrorism convicts like Afzal Guru and being in the league of anti-national activists like Arundhati Roy; his statement supporting the Kashmiri separatists' and Pakistani call for a referendum which amounts to championing the breaking away of J&K from being an integral part of India, had outraged a vast majority of Indians, including Anna's adherents. No wonder, the Ralegan Sidhi nationalist leader Anna Hazare who had started his movement with the slogans of "Bharat Mata ki Jai" and "Vande Matram", has distanced himself from his associate's anti-Indian obervations on Kashmir. He told Bhushan that he did not approve of his views on Kashmir which he regarded as an indivisible part of India. Prashant may hold any opinions as an individual but he cannot express them at Anna Hazare's platforms. His movement is confined to the anti-corruption issue and the Lokpal bill.

But, it is clear that taking law into one's  hands is not the right method to show disapproval or indignation. Peaceful protests could have been staged to challenge Bhushan's viewpoint; there are social networking websites to air one's opposition to Bhushan's statement. However, while unequivocally condemning the fringe group of hotheads who beat up  Bhushan, one has to remind left-liberal human rightists-the Arundhati Roy-type anti-Indians-to look within for their provocative postures on Maoist violence, terrorist convicts and treacherous Kashmiri separatists and Azadiwalas.  

Planning Commission's "clarification" on BPL benchmark

When the Planning Commission, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an economist, submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court recently, specifying a benchmark of Rs.32 and Rs 26,  per day expenditure on food items, in urban and rural areas respectively, to determine Indians above the poverty line, it could not have imagined a nation-wide furore against this bizarre line of thinking. All sections, including politicians,  media, thinkers were aghast and furious at the utter insensitivity of the Planning Commission whose CEO is Prime Minister Singh's crony and colleague of his World Bank days, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Two leading members of Mrs Sonia Gandhi's National Advisory Council(NAC), Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, in an open letter, angrily asked Dr Ahluwalia to withdraw the affidavit or quit his office. He was told how can he mock the poor when he is drawing a salary without perks nearly 2000 times of Rs 32?  Maybe more? Clearly, the economist has lost touch with Indian reality as he seems to be living in an ivory tower! Aruna and Mander are right in insisting that if he cannot withdraw the affidavit, Montek Singh must go.

Unfortunately, while clarifying the Commission's approach under pressure from the ruling party, the opposition and the people at large, that the govt's schemes aimed at uplifting the deprived will not be confined  only to those falling under the BPL category, Dr Ahluwalia, in a public appearance, however, defended the benchmark as "factually correct" which was based on the Suresh Tendulkar committee recommendations. His contention was that it was fixed in 1973. If so, how could nearly a four-decade-old "rock bottom level of existence" be relevant today? Was Tendulkar's the last word in judging the lowest level of poverty? Have our economic experts remained static in their thinking and ideas in these years? Then, why is Ahluwalia promoting crazy benchmarks? If poverty-alleviation programmes are meant to help all deprived Indians irrespective of the cap of Rs 32 and Rs 26, then what is so sacrosanct about these ridiculous figures?  Why can't the panel experts conceive of some more relevant, innovative method to calculate the percentage of Indians living below the poverty line year after year and tell us when we can expect to get rid of this curse of poverty substantially, if not fully?      

PM accused of "distancing" himself from govt in 2G

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Cambridge-educated economist who served the World Bank before ending up as an economist-bureaucrat in the govt of India, has a dubious distinction of effecting a major reform in India's official socialistic policy in 1991, serving as Finance Minister under the Congress Prime Minister, PV Narsimha Rao. In fact,  the loosening of the stranglehold of Licence-Inspector Raj was forced on the govt. by the IMF-World Bank as a precondition for much-needed international loan. However, Manmohan Singh's supporters in the media and elsewhere, never tire of giving him a major share of the credit. They never answer the charge that if Singh was so committed to basic economic reforms, why did he shy away from taking any further initiative in that respect when he became the Prime Minister in 2004 and renominated to the post even in 2009 without fighting the Lok Sabha elections and again getting elected to the Rajya Sabha?

On the contrary, he proved to be a disaster as the weakest, laissez-faire-ist, largely mute, uncommunicative head of govt in the history of independent India. The bitter reality was, as commentd by the London weekly Economist, that Manmohan Singh was in office but not in power. The power was held by the super Prime Minister, Mrs Sonia Maino Gandhi, president of the Congress party and chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance(UPA). He essentially played the second fiddle, merrily. In scam after scam, and crisis after crisis-Prime Minister Singh was hardly in the picture. In the latest 2G spectrum allocation scandal, even when he was informed in writing about the 2G policy his Telecom Minister A.Raja was going to adopt, causing huge losses to the public exchequer, the PM chose not to intervene or stop him! Thanks to the apex court's monitoring, Raja  is now in jail and under trial for corruption and irregularities, allocating the spectrum arbitrarily to his alleged favourites.

According to some new revelations in public domain, made in a Finance Ministry document sent to the PMO on 25 March, 20ll, the then Finance Minister P.Chidambaram could have stopped A.Raja from following the non-auction route if he had wanted, but he chose to go along with his DMK colleague's decision! Following a huge furore in the media and the opposition, the govt., Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the party spokesmen are busy frantically dousing the fires to lessen the damage to their already terribly dented image. After his return from New York, Dr Singh is trying hard to counter the opposition  attack by accusing them of political motives to destabilise the govt and hasten mid-term poll. But, the worst news for Dr Singh is that even his former sympathisers and supporters are abandoning him; they are seeing the ground reality of the PM being a poor, unethical leader who is more interested in "defending" himself  by "distancing" from taking crucial decisions. Writing in the Indian Express(September 28), its respected columnist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, a think-tank, has severely indicted the PM for "distancing the entire structure of ministerial politics by not frontally owning and defending the decision not to auction 2G". He has tried to play "the avoidance game implausibly distancing himself from his own govt". And then, defending Chidambaram and other cabinet colleagues! Is it not hypocritical and duplicitous? Neither here,  nor there?  

Chidambaram's role in 2G and govt's new BPL norm

The UPA government, in its second tenure, starting from May 2009, again under Dr Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, has been a veritable disaster with one scam after another virtually paralysing it. It has caused tremendous damage to India's image. There is hardly any sign of governance; it is mostly fire-fighting-to defend the indefensible. The latest Minister-a senior one-P.Chidambaram who is currently in the line of  fire, was earlier Finance Minister in UPA-1 when the 2G spectrum allocation scandal hit the headlines. No less than the senior-most Minister-Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, No.2 in the Cabinet, has endorsed his Ministry's note to the PMO on March 25, 2011, that his predecessor P.Chidambaram did not assert his authority to scuttle the then Telecom Minister A.Raja's decision to allot the spectrum at 2001 price and not auction it against the advice of the then Finance Secretary, resulting in huge losses to the public exchequer. This note has been submitted to the Supreme Court for examination and action.

In the meanwhile, in the light of this revelation confirming the opposition charge against Chidambaram for the dereliction of duty and failure to stop Raja's manipulative method of spectrum allocation, the demand for his resignation from the Cabinet  has been  reinforced to facilitate a proper probe into his conduct. Yet, in a typically characteristic Manmohanesque style, the PM pleads ignorance to Pranab Mukherjee's note to his office, on the non-application of his predecessor's mind to the crucial matter. He stated this with straight face to a media question on this note during his flight to New York, on September 22.  At the same time, he and his govt. has vociferously come out in defence of Home Minister Chidambaram and his integrity, forgetting the fact that his critics were not doubting his integrity; the questions were being raised about his competence, alertness and serious application of mind. The PM has asked him to keep quiet until the former returns home from New York, and tries to sort out the crisis. In other words, the PM is again indirectly defending himself, because in our democratic system of collective responsibility of the Cabinet, the buck finally stops with the head of the govt; hence, Manmohan Singh cannot escape  his own lack of alertness and intervention to stop the loot of public money!

To add to the misery of the Indian people,  who have yet to emerge from the current crisis of a series of scams,  and the resultant chaos, drift and disarray,  Manmohan Singh-headed Planning Commission has submitted to the Supreme Court a new bench mark of poverty in rural and urban India: Any Indian earning Rs.26 and Rs 32 per day, respectively, is above the poverty line, hence, not entitled to poverty alleviation programmes of the govt! These incredible norms of determining the people below the poverty line (BPL) in these days of stunningly spiralling prices of essential commodities, have been widely condemned as sheer lunacy and insensitivty of the govt, supposedly headed by a world-known economist! Perhaps, the idea seems to be to project a healthy, happy picture of lower  percentage of millions of Indians living below the poverty line!     

Sonia Gandhi's surgery

The Congress President Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the chairman of the ruling United Progressive Alliance(UPA), has returned home a few days ago after a surgery in New York that necessitated her absence from the Capital for nearly two months. It was presumably a major surgery requiring long recovery period. But, the most mystifying fact of her ailment was that there was not even a whisper about its nature. The nation was informed only after she had quietly flown to the USA alongwith her son Rahul  and the daughter Priyanka Vadra and admitted to a New York hospital. It was reported in one or two newspapers that Mrs Gandhi was undergoing treatment in a well-known cancer hospital. Even that news later disappeared from the media. Thus, it seemed a well-planned, well-orchestrated strategy to wrap her illness in total secrecy. Amazingly, the Indian media that normally asserts its right of free expression, specially with regard to public leaders, their activities, their health, etc., acted in a coy, conniving and obedient manner.

I privately heard here as well as from a source in Singapore that Mrs Gandhi's ailment was cancerous. The fact that she was in a cancer hospital in New York, although not acknowledged or confirmed officially, was clear enough indication. Yet, the party, the govt., opposition parties and the media, all played the game of secrecy as if it was some rare, unheard of, utterly embarrassing, disgraceful occurence that can't be aired publicly! The media, even now, when Mrs Gandhi has come back, obviously hale and hearty, and, yesterday, presided over the first core committee meeting of his party to approve the second list of Congress candidates for the UP elections scheduled early next year, continued the facade of her "undisclosed" ailment!

Well-being and health of major public leaders is a major concern of  the people everywhere. In a democracy, citizens have the right to know this and the media have the primary duty to inform the public about it. Hence, the conspiracy of silence that was on display is a serious blot on the ruling party, its govt and the national media.