Phoney secularism debate

In all these decades of Indian independence, there has been a calculated attempt by our socalled secular thinkers and commentators to attribute the success of our liberal democracy-with its flaws and imperfections-to the leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru-supposedly foremost secularists. India is, strangely, one country which seems to be obsessed with "secularism" with a clearly predominant tilt towards one minority community-Muslims. I worked and lived in several countries-US, southern Africa, West Asia, etc. but I never heard the word secularism-obviously, it was taken for granted. But, not in India. It is rubbed into you all the time-for all the wrong reasons.

Now, a serious controversy is raging around Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's "doubtful" secular credentials which essentially means for his critics that he is "anti-Muslim" because he had once refused a skull cap offered to him by a Muslim leader! The BJP ally in the National Democratic Alliance(NDA), the Janata Dal(United) and its Bihar leader Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who is currently heading the NDA govt in the State, has publicly announced at the national executive meeting in Delhi on April 13 and 14, and a press conference after the conclusion, that Narendra Modi, BJP's leader currently occupying the office the Chief Minister in Gujarat, is unacceptable to them as the major party's prime ministerial candidate for the next year's general elections because of his alleged role in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots. No case or any chargesheet is pending against him in any court. Yet, the JD(U) is using it to blackmail and threaten to walk out of the NDA coalition. The BJP has, rightly and quickly responded, firmly rejecting the "unfounded inferences" on Modi. One has to wait and watch how the crisis between the  two partners unfolds further.

However, the main purpose of this blog is to emphasise the mythical and hollow dimension of this phoney secularism debate. It is my firm belief that secular democracy is flourishing in India not because of MKGandhi or Nehru but because of the liberal, essentially tolerant ethos of the Hindu Dharma-the way of life followed by 82% Hindu majority of our Republic against the theocracy and Islamic bigotry and radicalism of Pakistan. Even its founder-Mohd Ali Jinnah's delayed preaching of secularism in his Islamic nation a little before his death, was frowned upon and rejected by his countrymen!          

Sonia Gandhi's disastrous policies

In a severest criticism, Surjit S.Bhalla, the Indian Express columnist who specialises on economic and financial issues, has indicted Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the President of the ruling Congress party and Chairperson of the UPA, for her "occult" policies which are proving disastrous for the country and the party. In his latest article:"Message to Sonia: reform or perish"(IE-March 30). Bhalla wrote that Sonia Gandhi's husband, Rajiv Gandhi had won three-fourth Lok Sabha seats in 1984 polls, for his prime-ministership. No Congress leader, including his grand father, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, had ever secured such a majority in the Lok Sabha; and , yet, Rajiv Gandhi lost the next elections in 1989, because of alleged corruption in the Bofors guns purchase, involving merely 64 crore rupees(40m dollars). In contrast, "the conservative assessment of cumulative corruption" associated with his wife Sonia Gandhi's "mistaken, misguided, misapplied, flagship MGNREGA(rural job guarantee scheme), is, at least, Rs.1,40,000 crores(out of Rs.1,70,000 crores) that went to non-poor". That is 14 billion dollars-or an amount 350 times of the Bofor amount, Bhalla added. As if this was not an enormous, unacceptable loss to the Indian exchequer, Mrs Sonia Gandhi is ready to impose another expensive project, similarly prone to huge corruption-Food Security Act.

However, my problem with Bhalla's critique is that while he is right in denouncing Mrs Sonia Gandhi's "authoritarian" policies, causing massive mess, he wrongly attributes her economic policies to "their origin in the creation of the Congress in 1885...founded by the occultist movement-Theosophical Society" of Annie Besant. In my view, Sonia's socialistic approach seemed to have been inspired by her grand father-in-law, Jawaharlal Nehru and her mother-in-law Mrs Indira Gandhi. Surjit Bhalla seems to have spared Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, supposedly an eminent economist, for his guilt to serve as an obedient bureaucrat-turned politician, and not asserting his supreme authority as the head of the govt. No wonder, he is  regarded as the weakest Prime Minister in the history of independent India who has destroyed the prestige and great status of PM's office, by acting as a second fiddle to Mrs Sonia Gandhi, his boss. What is the worth of such personal intergrity and honesty when the key constitutional office-holder where the buck stops, who is accountable to the Parliament and the nation, is weak-kneed and spineless to stand up to an un-constitutional authority, even when he realises that the country and the economy are going to the dogs? Is Manmohan Singh not equally culpable, hence unfit to continue in the august office?            

Pakistani scene in eyes of a London academic

Christophe Jaffrelot, a professor of Indian politics and the society at the King's India Institute, London, in an article in the Indian Express:"The missing democrats"(March 21), has done a great job in encapsulating the complex Pakistani scene with all its minuses and pluses. He has pertinently noted that the fact Pakistan completed its five years of uninterrupted democracy in its sixty-six years of existence, was a remarkable achievement. It was also unprecedented that politicians from all sides acted with restraint, and did not align with the army to dislodge an elected government of their rivals, as was the case in the past. They ensured that the  army did not engineer a coup in cooperation with a section of self-serving politicians, and stayed in the barracks.

However, Prof. Jaffrelot, in his assessment of different sets of players-the army top brass and top politicians, has pointed out that this achievement is not unqualified. Compromises, give-and-take have taken place. For example, Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani "vetoed" all attempts by Prime Minister Gilani and President Zardari, to bring the ISI under their control. Also, the civilian government accepted the supremacy of the army over a "huge" percentage of the nation's budget, as also Afghanistan and nuclear policies. They also shut their eyes to the money-making ventures of army bosses in real estate, etc. This apporoach to "rule and loot"without the risk of accountability and resultant "unpopularity", eminently suited the army. Hence, while politically, democracy was sustained, the economy was gasping, corruption remained rampant and the law and order situation was highly worrisome. Sectarianism: sunni-shia bloody conflict, Baloch insurgency, Taliban threat, Mohajir-Pashtun friction in Karachi-the biggest city, the minority persecution, etc, posed serious challenges. The top judiciary represented a single beacon of hope.

The fresh elections scheduled for May 11, 2013, may throw up a democratically elected political leadership of a much-needed enlightened and liberal kind. It is a big IF. I the Pakistani civil society rises above parochial, nationally-oriented political combination or party, to tackle the country's intractable problems, we may witness a new Pakistan. One has to wait and watch, keeping one's fingers crossed .      

Liberal Muslim writer turning communal

Javed Anand, co-editor of a journal called "Communalism Combat" alongwith his wife Teesta Setalvad, and general secretary of the outfit: Muslims for Secular Democracy, seems to be increasingly shedding his facade of secularism in favour of Muslim communalism. Otherwise, how is it that, of late, his press commentaries have greater stink of communal bigotry? With his parochial blinkers on, he is unable to distinguish "institutionalised discrimination". In his latest article in the Indian Express of February 28, he has chosen to ridicule Indian democracy as "the government of the majority, by the majority and for the majority" which he implicitly means the Hindu majority. In support of his reprehensible thesis, he approvingly quotes the Sachar Committee report for "abundant evidence of institutionalised discrimination against the country's Muslims".

Javed Anand has, clearly, neither the will nor the honesty to acknowledge how his minority community is fiercely wooed by most political parties for vote-bank considerations, almost to the extent of enjoying veto power against liberal policies. Hence, for example, liberal Muslim writers like Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie are not allowed to visit Kolkata to participate in a literature festival, and, even the Jaipur Literature Festival, because of the Muslim opposition. Himself a writer, did Javed Anand condemn this zealotry of his co-religionists? One has not heard or read Anand condemning Pakistan for persecuting Hindu minority which is now reduced to a single digit percentage in contrast to the large Indian Muslim minority taking strides in demography as well as economic well-being. But, unfortunately, intellectuals like Javed and others have no time for such uncomfortable facts. Had the majority community been communally-minded, it would have forced Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, to declare the post-partition India as a Hindu State on the lines of the theocracy of Pakistan-the Islamic republic. The tragedy of the break-up of the motherland, and the betrayal of the majority of Muslim brethren, supporting Jinnah's two-nation theory that Muslims and Hindus cannot live together, were sufficient grounds for the exchange of populations and the setting up two religious States. But, thanks to the broad-mindedness and generosity of the majority community, the communal/religious option was discarded.

But, instead, we got accusations of "institutionalised discriminations". In all fairness, why should the State favour one set of poor Indians-from a minority group, and deny others? Shouldn't the level of economic backwardness be the criterion for scholarships and not religion? Why should a poor student who happened to belong to the majority community be deprived of this govt help? Is this not discrimination disallowed in the Constitution? Javed Anand's support for Indian Express contributing editor Ashutosh Varshney's recent article displaying similar bias, was equally faulty. India has always been for diversity and not uniformity. Are Muslims being forced to abandon Muslim identity? Like Varshney, Narendra Modi is Javed's bete noire. He refuses to recognise that Gujarati Muslims voted for Modi in the recent elections in greater numbers-over 30%. As for 2002 riots, Javed never mentions the tragic sequence. Did the torching of the Sabarmati Express near Godhra, killing 58 pilgrims, men, women and children returning home from Ayodhya, not ignite the communal conflagration, the next day?     

Indian professor of US university misrepresents

At times, some Indians who leave the country for foreign shores for higher studies and a job afterwards, tend to develop dubious secular values while looking at India from a distant habitat. Their occasional visits to the mother country for a brief while, do not help them in deeper insight into the rapidly changing, evolving India. In some cases,  they become either more Indian than resident Indians or they take on their left-oriented, co-thinking compatriots' prejudices against the majority community. Mr Ashutosh Varshney, a Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences at Brown University of the US where he "directs the Indian Initiative at the Waston Institute, seems to belong to that tribe of Indians. Of late, he has been appointed as a contributing editor of the Indian Express.

Judging from his writings over a period of time even before his present status, Varshney seems to have imbibed the currently fashionable biases of a segment of Indian intellectuals against the socalled majority(Hindu) community's right wing that endear him to the socalled liberal, secular media. In his latest essay in the IE(February 13, 2013), captioned:"Why India must allow hyphens"-clearly American style-he has not only attacked Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his aspirations for national politics, he has criticised "Hindu nationalists" for seeking the European model of nationhood built on "uniformity" and not the US model of "integration of minorities via recognition of diversities". How can he forget that it is the Hindu majority-ruled India, even after the traumatic and tragic experience of the Partition on the basis of the separatist "two-nation theory" that Hindus and Muslims can't live together, gave the world the slogan of "unity in diversity"? While the minority Hindu community was persecuted and compelled to leave the newly-born theocratic, Islamic nation-Pakistan, a vast majority of Indian Muslims chose to stay back even though, in the pre-partition era, most of them had voted for Jinnah's vicious thesis; they multipled and flourished in their birthland. They became a favourite vote-bank of politicians, almost dictating terms.

Varshney talks about the White House celebrating Diwali but forgets about a large number of fast-breaking Iftar parties organised by major Indian politicians, including the Prime Minister, the BJP Leader of the Opposition and the BJP's Muslim MPs, during Ramazan, for their Muslim brethren. Being a Hindu himself, judging from his name, how can Varshney ignore the basic Hindu ethos of respect for all faiths-Sarva Dharam Sam Bhav? In fact, India is a classic example of a "salad bowl" or a flower garden and not "the melting pot" of the American variety. There is so much diversity even among Hindus themselves. The author's another sick remark related to Swami Vivekananda-and Modi's "three Bs":Beef, Biceps and Bhagwat Gita, his implication being that both favoured beef-eating to build biceps! It seemed a highly reprehensible and malicious lie.Can Varshney dare say "pork" for Muslims in the same vein?

Varshney's hints about Narendra Modi's hostility towards the Muslim minority are patently false and mischievous. He does not know how many Gujarati Muslims have appeared on TV shows lauding the Chief Minister's development policies. Does he know that 30% Muslims voted for the BJP in the recent elections as also the number of Muslims having been elected to local bodies on the BJP ticket? It is, indeed , astonishing that an academic of Varshney's standing, writing for an national daily, has such a closed mind!

Rahul Gandhi's formal elevation

On the last day of the Congress party's 3-day Chintan Shivir(Deliberation Camp) in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, from January 18-20, 2013, attended by 400 Congressmen and women from all over India, the long-awaited announcement for the heir-apparent Rahul Gandhi to take over the command of the dynastic party was made. Although the Congress Working Committee put its formal stamp on the elevation of Rahul as the Vice-President-number two in the line-up after the mother Sonia Gandhi as President, it is expected that given her advancing age and health issues, he will call the shots. There was  nothing surprising and earth-shaking about the development as he was practically virtually number two even as general secretary-though one of many in the heirarchy. However, the wave of jubilation and bursting of fire-crackers displayed by sycophants, including tearful senior leaders, seemed to suggest as if half the battle of the next general election of 2014 has already been won with the advent of Rahul.

Rahul Gandhi's own acceptance address had a high emotional quotient, devoid of any cohesive, clear vision. Some media comments called it "hollow rhetoric". His startling disclosure that when his mother came to his room in Jaipur after his appointment, she cried, saying "power is a poison"; one must beware of it. It is reported that she also  bitterly cried when her husband Rajiv Gandhi was about to assume the office of Prime Minister after the assassination of his mother, Mrs Indira Gandhi, then PM. Mrs Sonia Gandhi clearly did not want him to drink the "poison of power". However, if she genuinely, sincerely believes in the poisonous nature of power, why is she in it for so long? Is she not regarded as India's most powerful woman who wants to perpetuate her hold on it for the dynasty as long as possible? Doesn't she want her son Rahul Gandhi to be the next Prime Minister? What about the perks, privileges and pre-eminent position that power ensures? Are there any indications that she uses the power primarily for empowering the deprived, the dispossessed, the impoverished?

                   

Identity of Delhi bus gangrape victim

When the world knows the identity of the gangrape victim who was brutalised in a moving bus in Delhi on December 16, 2012 night, by six beastly men, including the driver and his brother, thanks to the victim's father himself revealing it in an interview to the London tabloid-the Sunday People, the Indian media is still unwilling to disclose it even though she died on December 29 in the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore  due to severe internal injuries. The relevant law in the Indian Criminal Procedure Code is quite clear that the identity of a rape victim cannot be revealed as long as the victim is alive; only the victim can do it. However, the law provides that it can be disclosed in the event of the rape victim's death by the next of kin. And, in this particular case, the father has given out the victim daughter's name:Jyoti Singh Pandey, in a recent interview in his UP village home, to Indian reporters of the British Sunday newspaper. He even showed them a family album, including her daughter's photographs. The newspaper has put the entire interview alongwith a few family pictures on its website with the exception of Jyoti on the specific request of the father.

But, amazingly and inexplicably, the Indian media continues to remain secretive, denying its readers the information the world, and those with access to internet, have already got. We want to perpetuate the brave 23-year-old woman's memory to inspire Indian women at large but, at the same time, we want to keep her nameless and a non-person, some people calling her "Nirbhaya" or "Damini". Why this charade? For how long? She is now dead. The stigma of rape haunts and traumatises the living. Shouldn't we honour the brave-heart-Jyoti-the eternal flame-by her name, as her father has done, to narrate her dreams and determination to lift her family from the pit of poverty through education of herself, her two younger brothers and her own physio-therapist job, even though the dreams had a sad end with her own premature, tragic death.