There’s been a lot of debate lately about what’s called “godi media.” Fifteen years is a long time—enough to blur public memory. And Gen Z, in particular, may not even be aware of what happened back in 2009–10.

Before the advent of social media, the so-called “mainstream media” (now termed “legacy media”) was a law unto itself. It saw itself as the moral gatekeeper of democracy. The emergence of the blogosphere in the early 2000s, followed by Facebook (2004) and Twitter (now X) in 2006, altered that equation.

The Radia tapes affair demonstrated this shift. The mainstream media initially ignored it. But after Outlook and Open published excerpts, social media users posted nearly two million tweets in two days, forcing the story into the open. The mainstream media could no longer look away.

When the Radia tapes surfaced in November 2010, they should have triggered a reckoning in Indian journalism. In any functioning democracy, such revelations—of proximity between journalists, politicians, and corporate power—would have led to resignations, investigations, and lasting institutional reform. Instead, the response was silence.

“Media & Ethics” is excepted from ‘Twisting Facts To Suit Theories’ And Other Selections From Voxindica (2017, Authors Press, New Delhi) examines not merely a scandal, but a failure of character. Drawing on the ideals articulated by Frederick Forsyth and C. P. Scott, it argues that journalism is anchored not in access, but in distance from power. The journalist is meant to be an outsider—watching, questioning, holding authority to account. What happens when that distance collapses?

Through a sharp contrast with the swift accountability seen in the UK during the Piers Morgan episode, the piece highlights a troubling divergence. In India, faced with far more serious ethical questions, the system closed ranks. The metaphor is apt: like a herd forming a defensive ring, the media insulated itself from scrutiny.

At its core, this is an inquiry into the erosion of credibility. If journalism becomes a participant in power rather than a check on it, what remains of its moral authority?

When the watchdog refuses to bark, silence itself becomes the story.

“A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it. In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached, like a bird on a rail, watching, noting, probing, commenting but never joining. In short, an outsider.” — Frederick Forsyth. The Outsider. My Life in Intrigue. Corgi Books. London. p. 16.

In his famous 1921 editorial, Scott wrote that fundamentally, character

“[...] is the slow deposit of past actions and ideals. It is for each man his most precious possession [...] implies honesty, cleanness, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and the community...”

The Indian mainstream media was put to the acid test of character in the second week of November 2010. In any other democratic nation boasting of a free press, the revelations that surfaced in that week would have had the effect of a tsunami, causing high intensity earthquakes across the media landscape. It would have taken years for the rumblings to subside and many heads would have rolled. But nothing of the sort happened. When a herd of wild buffaloes is attacked, they form a ring with their horns pointing outwards. The Indian media did something similar. It joined hands to cover up the whole scandal. The few low intensity tremors the revelations caused, died in less than two weeks and life returned to normal as if nothing had happened.

On May 14, 2004, Piers Morgan was ‘fired’ as editor of Britain’s ‘biggest selling newspaper’, ‘Daily Mirror’ over the issue of some pictures he published in the paper on Saturday, May 1. The pictures were of British soldiers of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi civilians, more specifically one published on the front page showing a British soldier in full modern battle-gear, urinating on a hooded Iraqi. The pictures Morgan published instantly raised a furore in the political establishment as well as the media. The concern was not only about the veracity of the pictures but their effect on the morale of British soldiers in Iraq already under fire from the Al Qaeda. Alastair Campbell, Director of communications at No. 10, Downing Street advised Morgan:

“When you decide it’s no longer enough to be a national newspaper editor, and you want to be a political player […] when you decide to be a player, then sometimes you have to face up to the rules of the political game as well.” — The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade. Ebury Press, London 2005. p.9

Even after being shown the door Morgan insisted that the pictures he published were real and were in fact provided by a soldier of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (QLR) serving in Iraq. However, Morgan had the candour to confess:

“There were times in my editing career when I was sanctimonious or hypocritical […] Journalists are notoriously thin-skinned when it comes to our own failings. But much of what we do is notable for its conceit, moral double standards and occasionally downright nastiness.” (Ibid. p. ix)

In November, 2010, two Indian magazines, Outlook and OPEN published transcripts of alleged conversations between corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and several mainstream media journalists, politicians and corporate honchos. The conversations were tapped by the Indian income tax authorities in 2008-9. In the initial days after the publication of the tapes, there was a conspiratorial hush. The mainstream media behaved as if nothing had happened. The Times of India, India’s largest selling English language newspaper, remained silent for almost two weeks before commenting on the issue in its issue of November 25, 2010. Though the authenticity of the tapes never seemed to be in doubt, there were sanctimonious explanations by and on behalf of the dramatis personae, the prime accused.

It was the power of the social media and the abhorred ‘Internet Hindus’ that forced the mainstream media to take note. They texted two million tweets in two days to focus the attention of the world’s press on the issue. According to The Washington Post, some critics accused the Indian mainstream media of resorting to ‘a seemingly orchestrated blackout’. Most media outlets cited their inability to authenticate the tapes as an excuse for the blackout. Clearly, they would not like to live up to the standards they hold for others. The usual advice they give the politicians at the first whiff of an allegation of corruption is, ‘resign and stand aside till your name is cleared by an official enquiry’. Emily Wax who followed the story, wrote in The Washington Post:

“[...] the recorded conversations have raised questions about ethics in the Indian media and its coziness with corporate and political bigwigs, especially at a time of unprecedented economic growth.” — Emily Wax. (2010). “Indian journalists accused of secretly helping politicians, businesses.” The Washington Post. November 22, 2010. Accessed from http://goo.gl/r8GKIr

Wax cited in her report the following excerpt from the report, “Paid News: How corruption in the Indian media undermines democracy” prepared by a subcommittee of the Press Council of India:

“This malpractice has become widespread and now cuts across newspapers and television channels, small and large in different languages and located in different parts of the country.”

After interviewing many experts on the Indian media, Wax had arrived at the inescapable conclusion, something that many in India had suspected for quite some time:

“Indian journalists also increasingly serve as advisers for companies and as brand strategists on five-star hotel advisory boards. They are often paid by think tanks and are alleged to be paid sometimes to write stories by interested parties, media experts say.” — “Indian media’s mighty stand exposed on wrong side of 2G spectrum scam”.

The International Business Times highlighted the quid pro quo nature of the relationship between journalists and politicians. It suggests that they have no qualms in acting as power brokers:

“The transcripts of conversations between Radia and journalists suggest that they expect return of favours, which come in different forms from free trips abroad to free stays at suites in plush 5-star hotels. [...] Politicians also help out visiting scribes along with their families by providing government guest houses at cheap rates. Free all-expenses-paid holidays to writers and campaigners are also doled out as part of the deal. [...] — Emily Wax. (2010). “Indian journalists accused of secretly helping politicians, businesses.”

With the tapes out, Indian media is now running for cover, in the name of professional exigencies.” In her article in The Washington Post, cited earlier, Emily Wax cited Vrinda Gopinath whose indictment of the media was far more scathing than anyone in the Indian media. In her article in Mail Today she said:

“It’s a life of world capital-hopping, freebies, networking and seminars and summits [...] Let’s not hoodwink ourselves to believe that this morally pornographic journalism is objective, fair and exact. All of it stinks, in varying degrees of severity and phoniness.”

Daily Mirror may only be a tabloid given to purveying salacious gossip. Still the paper fired Morgan once it became known that the pictures he published were crude fakes. Morgan says that during the two weeks in which the controversy originated, peaked and climaxed he was constantly stalked day and night by newspaper reporters and TV crews shouting questions like ‘Are you going to quit Mr. Morgan?’ And that is the big difference between Britain, the ‘mother of democracy’ and India, still unable to shed its feudal past, where two different standards co-exist: one for the clichéd common-man and another for the high and mighty. Morgan insisted he was not aware that the pictures were crude fakes. He might be right but he paid the price for publishing the pictures in good faith. He was summoned to the Chief Executive, Sly Bailey’s office to be informed that it was ‘no longer appropriate’ for him to continue as editor. His security pass and handheld Blackberry computer were instantly confiscated and he was escorted out of the office by burly security personnel. The news was out in minutes. As he was driven home by his official chauffeur for the last time, Morgan’s in-car TV crackled into life and he was ‘breaking news’! He says his phone went into ‘meltdown, with calls and text messages pouring in relentlessly from colleagues, other editors, family, friends. Even the odd foe, presumably just to make sure it was true’!

In stark contrast, the Indian journalists under scrutiny returned to their positions with hardly a dent in their images. N. Ram former editor of The Hindu who was more forthright than others, said what happened was indeed strange. According to him, had it happened in the US or the UK, it would be curtains for the careers of the journalists involved. Though the two magazines published transcripts of Radia’s conversations with many people, those with two high profile journalists attracted a lot of attention, because of the nature of their conversations. They were Barkha Dutt a familiar face on NDTV and Vir Sanghvi, a former editor and Hindustan Times columnist. In her conversations Dutt reportedly agreed to mediate between the Congress party and its regional ally the DMK, for the inclusion of the latter’s A. Raja in the union cabinet as Telecom minister. Her and NDTV’s defence was that she was ‘stringing along for a story’ and it was quite a normal practice for journalists to cultivate contacts in various spheres. Manu Joseph, editor of OPEN magazine felt that had she disclosed the lobbying that was going on between the Congress and the DMK, it would have been a big scoop. The implication was that by not disclosing it she was disloyal to her viewers to whom she was primarily accountable. She claimed that it was ‘an error of judgement’ for not doing so and the rest of the media let go giving her the benefit of doubt. Sanghvi’s conversation could not be dismissed as easily as that. The WSJ blog, India Real Time reproduced this excerpt from the transcripts published by the Indian magazines:

“What kind of story do you want? [...] The message will get across, but what other points do we need to make? [...] So, what point do you want me to make.” — Beckett, Paul. (2010). “Oh Vir, What Can The Matter Be?” India Real Time.

At one-point Sanghvi advised Niira Radia that a proposed television interview with Mukesh Ambani was to be ‘fully scripted’ and offered to rehearse it with him. At first, Sanghvi did not question the authenticity of the tapes. In fact no one in the media did. He and Hindustan Times announced that he was retiring his column. He went on a holiday for months. By the time he returned, the Indian media was in the ‘horns outward mode of defence of the wild buffaloes’. That was when he defended himself in Outlook magazine. Sanghvi for the first time questioned the authenticity of the tapes. There was no explanation as to ‘who might have doctored the tapes’; ‘what was the motive for doctoring the tapes’ and ‘why his tapes alone were doctored’. The defence appeared weak and the explanation about the tapes being doctored, rather specious. As the targets of the tapping were not (high or low profile) journalists but the corporate lobbyist and her clients. The conversations were recorded by the income tax department to investigate possible tax evasions.

Excerpted from ‘Twisting Facts To Suit Theories’ And Other Selections From Voxindica. 2017. Authors Press. New Delhi. pp. 102-108

The book 'Twisting Facts To Suit Theories' And Other Selections From Voxindica may be bought through Amazon. Here are the links:
India: https://shorturl.at/dFNS4 USA: http://amzn.to/3qcQRos

Ivan Illich opened his seminal work ‘‘Limits to Medicine’’ with the observation that ‘‘The growth of the medical establishment is a major threat to health.’’ A large part of Illich’s work dealt with iatrogenic (meaning physician-induced) diseases. But to Illich, the ‘medical establishment’, includes the pharmaceutical industry also.

The recent Supreme Court verdict in the Novartis’ imatinib (Glivec) patent case has generated a lot of heat and uninformed debate in the media. Novartis challenged the order of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), for rejecting a patent for its ‘old wine in a new bottle’, first in the Madras High Court and then in the Supreme Court. Novartis filed world-wide patents for its active molecule imatinib in 1993. In India, the company filed patent in 2003 for imatinib mesylate a beta crystalline form of the active ingredient, under the ‘mailbox provision’.

Novartis Vs. The People of India

Novartis’ application for a patent for its beta crystalline form was rejected by the IPAB in 2006 on the ground that the company’s original patent application covered all forms of imatinib. The Madras High Court decreed that IPAB’s rejection of the application under Sec. 3 (d) of the Indian Patents Act as amended in 2005 did not violate Article 14 of the Indian constitution. This is now upheld by the Supreme Court.

The Indian Patents Act of 1970 did not recognize product patents but only process patents. However, India agreed to consider patent applications filed from January 1 1995 for granting product patents pending amendment of its laws in line with the requirements of the WTO. The process was known as the ‘mailbox’ provision. Eventually India amended its patents law in 1999, to grant product patents with effect from January 1, 2005. A patent is an intellectual property which has a life of 20 years from the date of filing and which gives its holder exclusive marketing rights. The actual period of exclusive marketing depends on the company’s ability to develop the product for commercialization.

R & D Costs

In the pharmaceutical industry, Research and Development (R & D) is of course an expensive and risky process. A company begins with thousands of molecules and narrows down its search to a few (less than a dozen) for further experimentation. After initial animal experimentation to establish efficacy, safety and toxicity a candidate drug (known in the industry as New Chemical Entity or NCE) is selected for human clinical trials. A patent application is generally filed at this stage and approval sought for commencing human clinical trials. These are conducted in four phases before it is submitted for marketing approval by the regulators. It is called filing a New Drug Application (NDA). The process takes quite a few years. This means, although a patent is granted for 20 years a company gets to exclusively market it for the residual period after conducting clinical trials and obtaining marketing approval. Even after a drug is approved for marketing it is still tested in a process called, Post Marketing Surveillance (PMS) every year to find out if any hitherto unnoticed side effects come to light. The company has an obligation to market a product only to be used in conditions for which it is approved. However, a physician may use it in other conditions if he finds it suitable. This is known as off-label usage.

There are varying estimates about the cost of research and development of drugs. Several years ago, an article in the Readers’ Digest put it at between $100 million and $200 million. Recent estimates vary from $500 million to $1 to $2 billion depending on the therapeutic category and method of calculation used, such as inclusion of capitalization and opportunity costs. This does not mean that the entire amount is spent by a company. There is public funding and tax write-offs on R & D spending, which is a not unlikely incentive for bolstering the figures.

Pharmaceutical companies quite naturally argue that they have to make profits out of successful candidate drugs because they have to incur huge expenditure on R & D, which is a long drawn and uncertain process. This is the reason they claim, new drugs cost so much.

Market Risks

However pharmaceutical companies are aware there is an element of uncertainty in the business. For, even if a company is able to come up with a successful candidate drug, there is no guarantee that a rival company with a competing product might not upstage it. As an illustration, see the case of the first anti-ulcer drug cimetidine. It was introduced by the British multinational, Smith Kline & French (SK&F) in the mid-seventies when the only cure for peptic ulcers was surgery. The drug was indeed a boon for patients as it reduced the necessity for surgery in about 90% of cases. The drug marketed by SK&F as Tagamet entered the Guinness Book of World Records for maximum number of prescriptions received in a year. A few years later another British multinational Glaxo came up with an updated version of the drug ranitidine which it marketed as Zantac. It too entered the Guinness Book of World Records in the year of its introduction, and Tagamet lost 50% of its market share. As a result, many heads rolled in SK&F and its Chairman had to resign. The two companies merged in the mid-nineties to become what is now known as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). (In its process of mergers and acquisitions, GSK has also absorbed several other companies like Allen & Hanburys, Beecham and Burrows Wellcome.)

The success of the first two molecules, in the class of drugs called H2 receptor antagonists, made other companies board the bandwagon and many variations of cimetidine were launched. These include famotidine, loxitidine, nizatidine and roxatidine. Of these molecular variations only ranitidine and famotidine could achieve significant commercial success, while the others remained small players. For the treatment of peptic ulcer, another class of more powerful drugs known as proton-pump inhibitors emerged with members like omeprazole, esomeprazole, lansoprazole, pantoprazole and rabeprazole, a few years later.

Wouldn’t it be unfair for a company marketing, for instance, roxatidine to claim the same pricing privilege as SK&F which has laid the groundwork for finding a drug for peptic ulcer? On the flip side could SK&F claim that, as there was every possibility of its market monopoly being upstaged, it should be permitted to recover its costs at the earliest? In view of this should the company be allowed to price a tablet of cimetidine at say, $100?

R & D – Western Bias

It would be unfair to see the Indian Supreme Court verdict as a triumph of left-liberal altruism against Western capitalism for several reasons. Firstly, US courts too held that derivatives of known substances are not eligible for patent protection under the ‘doctrine of inherent anticipation’. Also, in the US a patentee cannot claim rights for more than one substance with identical claims, under the ‘doctrine of double patenting’. The third principle governing US jurisprudence in relation to intellectual property rights is the ‘patent misuse doctrine’, which prevents pharmaceutical companies from extending their patent rights by obtaining multiple patents covering essentially the same invention. In her extensively researched paper, ‘‘Trials And TRIPS-ulations: Indian Patent Law And Novartis AG v. Union Of India’’, (Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol: 23. Mar 21, 2008. 281-313), Lynda L. Lee opined that the stand of the Indian courts ‘indicates that the objective of India’s Section 3 (d) is not a radical departure from international practices to regulate the patenting of derivatives and new uses.’ It must be noted that the article was based on the Madras High Court judgment and written much before the final verdict of the Supreme Court.

The reaction of Novartis to the Supreme Court judgement appeared a bit peevish. In a press statement, the company’s Vice Chairman warned that it will discourage R&D spending by multinational companies in India. This is a bit surprising as multinational companies may have been using India as low-cost hub for manufacturing and conducting clinical trials but never seem to be bothered about diseases specific to India. For a long time, the healthcare fraternity has been complaining that multinational companies focus on diseases prevalent in the western world for researching remedies. For example, we have not seen new drugs introduced to combat malaria and tuberculosis which are endemic to countries like India, in years. The incidence of both the diseases is seeing a resurgence of virulent, intractable forms. Today tuberculosis resistant to multiple drugs – multidrug resistant TB or MDRTB is quite prevalent. On the other hand, new drugs for antiplatelet medications atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes and hypertension and related diseases are introduced by the dozen, every year.

R & D – Altruism or Business Strategy? Thalidomide to Gatifloxacin

Multinational companies which have been assuming moral high ground for their ‘altruistic’ R&D efforts ‘to ameliorate pain and suffering of humanity’ have also been guilty of destroying the lives of millions of people for short term gains.

The introduction and withdrawal of thalidomide is a classic example. In the 1950s, Distillers & Co (the makers of Johnnie Walker whisky) purchased Grünenthal, a small German pharmaceutical company. Grünenthal developed a tranquiliser named thalidomide which was then believed to be so safe it could be prescribed to pregnant women to relieve them of morning sickness. It was introduced in several countries in Europe and freely prescribed for pregnant women. In the early sixties a causal link was established between the use of thalidomide and delivery of malformed babies. This property of a drug which causes foetal abnormalities known as teratogenicity, was unknown till then. By 1961 an estimated 10000 to 20000 thalidomide babies were born and the drug was withdrawn.

The thalidomide story should have warned the managements of pharmaceutical companies to be extra careful in vetting and promoting their products. Alas no, drugs with serious adverse effects have been introduced by pharmaceutical companies with unceasing regularity. Here are a few examples, some of which may not be as lethal as thalidomide. Analgin is known to cause anaphylactic reactions (like penicillin) so severe that a single tablet could kill a patient. Anti-inflammatory drugs like oxyphenbutazone and phenylbutazone have been known to cause blood disorders. Later arthritis drugs like celecoxib and rofecoxib were found to cause acute temporary visual impairment. However, all these drugs were marketed by multinationals in India for a long time after they were banned in their home countries. The newer pain-relieving drug, nimesulide has been banned in several European countries but is still marketed in India (not by multinationals; by Indian pharmaceutical companies). Terfenedine, introduced as an advanced, non-sedating anti-allergic had to be withdrawn a few years later as it was found to cause heart-problems. The latest in the series of drugs to be withdrawn was the antibiotic gatifloxacin, which was found to cause cardiac problems. Illich mentioned in his book that the American innovator of chloramphenicol (trade name Chloromycetin) marketed the drug for simple conditions like acne. Originally introduced for treating typhoid, the drug is known to cause bone-marrow depression. (The human body produces red-blood cells in the bone-marrow.)

Pricing Drugs

An argument that was vociferously voiced in the television debates relates to pricing; especially that pharmaceutical companies which spend millions (billions?) should be allowed the freedom to price their products. And any regulation would be a disincentive for them to introduce newer products. This argument lacks substance because the pricing of drugs is not uniform even in the western world. For example, the prices of drugs in Canada are far lower than the corresponding prices of drugs in neighbouring USA. In some cases, the Canadian prices are about half of their American counterparts.

The marketing of anti-retroviral drugs (used to treat AIDS) in South Africa offers an object lesson for those who blindly take sides with the advocates of free-pricing. Indian companies like Cipla and Hetero Drugs offered to sell a combination of anti-retroviral drugs at $350 for a year’s course. Four multinational companies challenged them in the South African Supreme Court, on the ground that these companies were infringing their patent rights. They were selling the drugs at $10,000 for a year’s course. They had to withdraw their suit following worldwide revulsion. For, more than a third of world’s AIDS population lives in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the television debates, medical doctors representing Novartis claimed that the company has a scheme for providing the medicine free of cost to ‘below poverty line’ patients. This is not entirely true because the company stopped providing imatinib free after two Indian companies were permitted to introduce low-cost alternatives in 2006. (See the research paper cited above.) Even if the company has been providing the medicine free to BPL patients, how does one define a BPL patient? Certainly, a household with an income of ₹50000 per month cannot be considered BPL? If the household has a patient who requires imatinib, can it expend ₹1,20,000 a month? Besides, many cancers require multiple regimens of treatment, which include chemotherapy (drugs), radiation and surgery. The latter two are even more expensive than the cost of medicines.

TAILPIECE: By the by, the promotional or marketing budgets of pharmaceutical companies exceed their R&D budgets by a long chalk.

Labels: Berkeley Tech Law Journal, Cancer, Glivec, IPAB, Imatinib, Intellectual property rights, Lynda L. Lee, Madras High Court, Marketing Budgets, Novartis, Patents, Pharmaceutical industry, R & D Costs, Supreme Court

Ukraine is the second largest nation in Europe after Russia. It was once a repository of Soviet nuclear weapons. After the breakup of the erstwhile USSR, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons under Western (meaning mostly US) guarantees, and signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 1994. The other guarantors were Russia (which is like the ‘wolf bivouacked at the door’ in the adage) and the UK which was reduced by then—to use Mao’s famous phrase—a ‘paper tiger’. France and China, the other two powers in the United Nations Security Council offered insincere, anodyne guarantees. In hindsight, it might appear, had Ukraine retained its nuclear weapons, Russia might not have dared occupying Crimea in 2014 or sought to occupy more regions now. There would have been no Ukraine-Russia conflict!

In about twenty-four years, between 1991 when Ukraine became an independent nation and 2014, Ukraine’s NATO membership application was left hanging. In 2014, Russia occupied Crimea under the pretext that it was concerned about Ukraine joining NATO. Crimea, the southern peninsular third of Ukraine is known for its warm water ports and has strategic importance for both Ukraine and Russia.

Russia might have had a ‘genuine’ concern about Ukraine joining NATO. It would have tilted the power balance in Europe as the induction of Ukraine would have definitely strengthened NATO. In spite of that not one Western power came to Ukraine's rescue in the last eleven years.

The First Lesson

In international diplomacy, every nation looks for its self-interest. The concept of ‘altruism’ is absent. It was always self-interest behind the long series of US interventions beginning with Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kuwait and other nations. The concepts of ‘neo-colonialism’ and ‘banana republics’ are byproducts of self-interest. The principle was the same when the ‘super powers’ refused to intervene in conflicts. In 1950 China was a weak nation; yet when she occupied Tibet neither the USA nor the USSR thought it fit to intervene, as they had no benefit in the bargain. India had—she lost a buffer state—but she meekly surrendered her stake citing some ‘highfalutin’ principles. She would rue her inaction in 1955-57 and in 1962, but by then it was far, far too late.

The Second Lesson

During the seventy years between 1919 when the USSR came into existence and its break up in 1990, Russia had systematically altered the demographic balance in Ukraine by settling ethnic Russians there in large numbers. These include, in addition to southern and eastern parts of Crimea, the Donbas region, particularly the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. In case of an armed conflict, the Russified parts of Ukraine may side with Russia.

China used the same strategy of altering the demographics in Tibet and Xinjiang (it calls them autonomous regions) by settling ethnic Chinese there in huge numbers.

Illegal infiltration from Bangladesh into West Bengal and Assam began soon after the 1971 war. The initial refugees were mostly Bengali Hindus. They were given asylum as a genuine humanitarian measure. The Left-Front which came to power in 1977 saw a captive vote bank in illegal immigrants and encouraged rather than controlled illegal immigration. This coupled with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism saw rapid influx of illegal immigrants. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism saw in the melee an opportunity to espouse its version of Lebensraum.

The Left-Front government, bolstered by the power of illegal immigrant vote lasted for thirty-three years. In 2011, the Left-Front lost power but the illegal immigrant vote did not! The Left-Front’s successor, the TMC used the same copybook to ride to power. Any change in the government did not matter to the illegal immigrants. To the utter chagrin of the Commies, the illegal immigrants retained their ‘collective bargaining power’ without the necessity or hassle of loyalty to the nation.

The Left-Front lost power but the copybook survived. Intimidated by the rising tide of genuine nationalism, other political parties cottoned on to the political dividends of captive vote banks of illegal immigrants. Thanks to the patronage of these political parties, we now have illegal immigrants in as far-removed regions from the eastern borders as Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir. These political parties might someday realize their folly as the Commies did in 2011, but by then it would be far, far too late.

The numbers of illegal immigrants swelled and swelled to the extent that it had changed the demographic map of the entire east and northeast. If India were to face a war with neighbouring Bangladesh or internal strife the loyalties of the illegal immigrants would be severely tested. But by then it might be far, far too late. There is already a nexus between Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Pakistani ‘field marshal’ threatened that if India carried out ‘Operation Sindoor’ any further as it professed, she would be surprised by attacks from the east.

How and why exactly Trump thought he could ‘discipline’ India is difficult to understand. It could be his overweening yearning for a Nobel Peace Prize or monumental ego blinded him! Irrespective of whichever party was in power, India pursued its own course. The Indira Gandhi government in 1974 and the Atal Behari Vajpayee government in 1998 braved sanctions to conduct nuclear tests. Trump might not have understood the self-confidence, nationalist spirit and vigour of the new Indian administration which shed its colonial inhibitions. However, his tariff threats resulted in a wholly unintended consequence, causing a thaw in India China relations.

At this point in time, it is difficult to gauge whether the course India is pursuing is right or wrong. China once betrayed India and is in illegal occupation of large swathes of Indian territory. It is not a trustworthy neighbour. But, despite protestations to the contrary, both India and China probably realize that Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh are fait accompli. In Chess terms, there is a stalemate. Neither government can however openly admit it. Doing so would result in loss of face and power.

Under the circumstances, the Indian government’s move of cozying up to China is another move on the international chess board. It might be a hard gamble. None can predict its outcomes. Only future will tell!

Labels: Aksai Chin, Arunachal Pradesh, China, Crimea, Demographic balance, France, Illegal immigrants, India, NATO, Nuclear-weapons, Russia, Tariffs, Tibet, Trump, UK, Ukraine, UNSC, US

An earlier version of this article was published in The Times Of India Blogs.

In July 2018, a UK parliamentary committee warned “that spread of fake news online threatens the future of democracy” (“Fake news threatens the future of UK: report”, Aljazeera, July, 29, 2018). In recent times there have been similar calls from several democratic nations including India. The object of the parliamentary committee enquiry was Facebook, and the “possible interference by foreign governments—including Russia in UK political campaigns via the platform”. The committee was specifically interested in determining whether Moscow had funded political advertisements during the 2016 Brexit referendum which resulted in the UK leaving the European Union. Much water has flown down the Thames, the Potomac—and the Yamuna since then! In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg conceded that Facebook’s “Factcheckers have just been too politically biased.” (“Why did Mark Zuckerberg end Facebook and Instagram’s factchecking program?”, The Guardian, Jan 7, 2025) The Guardian could not resist a dig at Zuckerberg. It said his shifting to the right followed “the prevailing political winds blowing through the United States”. In the same month, Zuckerberg apologized to the Indian Information Technology minister for insinuating that the Indian government had lost power in the post-Covid era. (Meta India apologises for Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on 2024 Indian elections, CNBC TV18, January 15, 2025).

In 2019 The Washington Post published an article entitled “Fake news is bad for democracy” (April 5). The visual that accompanied the article leaves no one in doubt as to the source of fake news. It shows a mobile home-screen with several chatting applications and WhatsApp specifically mentioned in its blurb. Arguing that “Unreliable information shapes voter choices—and election outcomes” the paper called for government regulation of the social media.

In 2023 The Washington Post took on the microblogging platform, Twitter. It reported on February 16, 2023, “Elon Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself”. Musk hit back: “Elon Musk Blasts The Washington Post: Your Article Is Fase” (The Street, February 17, 2023). On October 27, 2023, the Post published another article entitled “A year later, Musk’s X is tilting right. And sinking”. In the article (which was kept out of the paywall), the Post’s analysts saw a rise in the follower count of “conservative and right-wing influencers” while the “popular liberal and left-wing accounts” did not show the same pattern. On the same day, The New York Times commented, “Now rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech.” A The ordinary reader is confused. Why are national mainstream newspapers (or legacy media) paranoid about new media platforms? The congruence of thought of the rivals makes it clear that it is as much an ideological war as a turf war.

Facebook which debuted in 2004 and Twitter (X) in 2006 really opened up the floodgates for those who wanted to express themselves in long or short form respectively, on any topic under the sun. YouTube (2005) and WhatsApp (2009) were really disruptive technologies but it would be some time before they really skewed the information sharing game! It was the smartphone beginning with the launch of iPhone in 2007 that gave wings to social media platforms.

The recent infusion of artificial intelligence applications (and their ability to create deepfakes) into the melee was like unleashing a Frankenstein monster that changed the social media landscape forever. We have seen how a cropped video posted on Twitter led to mob violence; driving a young woman politician to living life incognito; at least two murders, and mob calls for avenging alleged ‘blasphemy’. Earlier, replies to social media posts led to murder and mayhem in UP and Karnataka. The Indian general election results in 2024 were believed to have been skewed by AI generated deepfake videos circulated in populous states like UP and Maharashtra. The high decibel, jingoistic Republican political campaign in the 2024 American presidential election made expatriate Indians target of hate groups on social media.

Does it mean that the legacy media is lilywhite in its conduct? A ‘national’ newspaper donning the mantle of a ‘whistleblower’ submitted cropped pdfs as evidence in the Supreme Court when the government’s Rafale aircraft deal was challenged in 2018. There were occasions when slanted headlines and deflecting visuals were used. For example, while reporting news of a cleric molesting a girl, the headline states “Tantric molests minor” and the visual is that of a Hindu priest irrespective of the creed of the alleged criminal.

However, every misinformation (or disinformation) need not be because of ‘malice aforethought’. In their rush to meet deadlines and beat the competition, newspapers willy-nilly publish unverified reports. In his 2021 book “The Gray Lady Winked”, Ashley Rindsberg narrates how a frontpage report in the “The New York Times” could have given Hitler post-facto justification for his invasion of Poland, which was the spark that ignited the second world war. Rindsberg says his attention was drawn to a NYT report by a footnote in William Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reigh (1962, p.595). The report was about an attack on the Gleiwitz radio station on the Germany-Poland border. It was a simulated attack to convince the world that Poland attacked Germany. Hitler’s own SS forces personnel donned Polish army uniforms to stage the attack and to make it look realistic, drugged inmates of concentration camps were left dying there to appear as ‘casualties’. Rindsberg observed “Rather than fitting the pattern to the facts, the Times too often gave in to the temptation to fit the facts to a preconceived pattern.” To be factual, the footnote Rindsberg referred to said “The New York Times and other newspapers reported it, as well as similar incidents, in their issues of September 1, 1939.” The objective of Hitler’s disinformation campaign was served when American newspapers bought into his narrative and gave it legitimacy!

‘Information-misinformation-disinformation wars’ is an unfolding story! The last word on the subject will be long in coming!

An earlier version of the article was published in The Times of India Blogs

At the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Swamy Vivekananda bowed to the goddess Saraswati mentally, then began his speech at with salutation, "Sisters and brothers of America!". To these words he got a standing ovation from a crowd of thousands, which lasted for two minutes. When silence was restored, he continued his address: "I thank you in the name of the most ancient order of monks in the world; I thank you in the name of the mother of religions; and I thank you in the name of millions and millions of Hindu people of all classes and sects."

Here is the transcript of the chat on the subject on Grok

Swamy Vivekananda’s speech may be summarized in this sentence: "Hinduism is a religion that is spiritual in content, scientific in approach and universal in appeal." According to you which is the best religion in the world?

Swami Vivekananda’s statement highlights three key attributes he ascribes to Hinduism: spiritual depth, a scientific approach, and universal appeal. To address your question, let’s consider whether these qualities appear in other religions and then reflect on the notion of "greatness."

Buddhism, for instance, shares some parallels. Its spiritual content is evident in practices like meditation and the pursuit of enlightenment, which focus on inner transformation. A scientific approach could be argued through its emphasis on empirical observation of the mind and suffering, as seen in the Four Noble Truths—almost like a diagnostic framework for human experience. Its universal appeal is reflected in its adaptability across cultures, from India to East Asia and now the West, often without requiring belief in a deity. The Buddhist texts, like the Abhidharma, also analyze consciousness and phenomena in a systematic way that some liken to early psychology or philosophy of science.

Jainism offers another example. Spiritually, it emphasizes non-violence (ahimsa) and self-discipline to liberate the soul. Its scientific bent shows in its detailed cosmology and atomistic theories, such as the concept of anu (atoms) in Jain texts like the Tattvartha Sutra, which predate modern physics. Its universal appeal lies in its ethical framework, applicable beyond cultural or religious boundaries, though it remains less widespread than Hinduism or Buddhism.

Taoism, too, could fit. Its spiritual core is the Tao, an ineffable principle of harmony. Its scientific approach might be seen in its observations of nature’s cycles—yin and yang, the Five Elements—which influenced Chinese medicine and philosophy. Its universal appeal is in its simplicity and focus on balance, resonating across cultures, though it’s often more philosophical than overtly religious in practice.

As for Christianity or Islam, their spiritual content is undeniable—faith, salvation, submission to God. A scientific approach is less intrinsic, though historical figures like Al-Farabi or Aquinas integrated reason and observation into theology, and medieval Islamic scholars advanced astronomy and mathematics. Universal appeal? Both have spread globally, claiming transcendence over cultural limits, though often tied to specific doctrines less flexible than Hinduism’s pluralism.

No religion matches Hinduism’s exact blend—its Vedic and post-Vedic texts, like the Upanishads and Smritis, do weave spirituality with inquiries into cosmology, mathematics (e.g., Baudhayana’s Sulba Sutras approximating √2), and medicine (Ayurveda). But "greatest" is subjective. If greatness hinges on these three attributes alone, Hinduism stands out for its synthesis. Yet, other religions might claim supremacy through moral clarity, community, or historical impact. It’s a matter of what you value—Hinduism’s not uniquely "the greatest" unless you define greatness by Vivekananda’s yardstick. What’s your take on what makes a religion great?

The following prompt was given to further refine the answer:

For example, Hinduism does not have concepts like apostacy, blasphemy and heresy. In fact it has accommodated the views of the 'nāstik', who in Indian philosophical thought were not non-believers but those who did not accept the Veda-s as standard. Those who believed in the Veda-s as standard are known as the 'āstik'. Thus Hinduism (to use a commonly understood term for 'Sanātana Dharma') has three āstik streams Advaita, Dvaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita and six nāstik streams, Cārvāka, Jaina and Bauddha, counting its four denominations. No other religious thought is as accommodative as Hinduism. Considering these factors should it not be concluded that Hinduism fits into Swami Vivekananda's aphorism and can be termed the 'greatest' religion?

The reply:

You’re zeroing in on a compelling angle: Hinduism’s remarkable inclusivity, especially its accommodation of diverse philosophical streams, both āstik (Veda-accepting) and nāstik (Veda-rejecting). This flexibility does align tightly with Vivekananda’s triad—spiritual content, scientific approach, and universal appeal—and it’s worth unpacking how this sets Hinduism apart.

The absence of rigid concepts like apostasy, blasphemy, or heresy is striking. Unlike Abrahamic traditions, where deviation from doctrine can lead to excommunication or worse, Hinduism—or Sanātana Dharma—embraces a spectrum of thought. The āstik schools, like Advaita (non-dualism), Dvaita (dualism), and Viśiṣṭādvaita (qualified non-dualism), debate the nature of reality and the self, yet coexist under the Vedic umbrella. Meanwhile, the nāstik streams—Cārvāka (materialism), Jainism, and Buddhism (with its four denominations)—reject Vedic authority but aren’t cast out as heretical. They’re part of the broader conversation. Cārvāka’s skepticism, for instance, challenges metaphysical claims with a proto-scientific insistence on perception as proof, while Jainism and Buddhism offer their own spiritual and ethical systems. This isn’t just tolerance—it’s a structural openness baked into the tradition.

That openness feeds Vivekananda’s points. Spiritually, Hinduism spans the mystical introspection of the Upanishads to the devotional fervor of Bhakti. Scientifically, its texts explore logic (Nyaya), linguistics (Vyakarana), and even mathematics (the zero, decimal system), alongside the nāstik contributions like Jain cosmology. Universally, it absorbs and adapts—look at how it integrated tribal deities or influenced Southeast Asia without conquest. No other religion quite mirrors this. Buddhism comes close but often pivots to its own canon (Tripitaka). Christianity and Islam universalize through conversion, not philosophical pluralism. Taoism’s fluid, but it lacks the same breadth of systematized diversity.

Does this make Hinduism the "greatest"? If greatness means adaptability and intellectual hospitality, it’s a strong case. It’s a living laboratory of ideas, not a monolith. But greatness could also mean global reach (Christianity, Islam), ethical simplicity (Buddhism), or cultural endurance (Judaism). Hinduism’s inclusivity might be its crown, but whether that’s the ultimate measure depends on your lens. If Vivekananda’s aphorism is the metric—spiritual, scientific, universal—Hinduism fits like a glove. Do you think inclusivity alone seals the deal, or is there another yardstick you’d weigh?

Swami Vivekananda’s Speech at the World Parliament of Religions (1893) – In this historic speech, Swami Vivekananda focused on the spiritual, universal, and scientific aspects of Hinduism, often describing it as a religion that is inclusive of all religions and founded in universal principles of spirituality.

• Citation: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 1. Advaita Ashrama, 1998.

The Science of Religion – Swami Vivekananda often discussed how religion and spirituality could be approached scientifically. He believed that spiritual experiences could be understood and studied with the same rigor and discipline as physical sciences.

• Citation: Vivekananda, Swami. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 3. Advaita Ashrama, 1998.

Lectures and Discourses on Hinduism – Swami Vivekananda emphasized the universal appeal of Hinduism, stating that it transcends sectarian boundaries and is relevant to people of all cultures and beliefs.

• Citation: Vivekananda, Swami. Lectures from Colombo to Almora. Advaita Ashrama, 1998.

In March 1947, M K Gandhi met Viceroy Mountbatten and requested him to dismiss Jawaharlal Nehru as interim Prime Minister and appoint M A Jinnah as the Prime Minister. Further, Gandhi requested Mountbatten to allow Jinnah have an all-Muslim cabinet. This was a Gandhi who was at the end of his tether having failed in all his efforts—since his ill-advised ‘Khilafat’ movement which had nothing to with India—to cobble a contrived unity between the ‘two nations’ failed. Had he been successful, Hindus would not have been ruing their second-class citizen status now. They would have been second-class citizens! The demographics would have ensured that.  

It was not even necessary! Ever since independence illegal immigrants have been pouring into India from her porous eastern borders. According to some estimates, by the nineties, there were already twenty million illegal immigrants in West Bengal and the border districts of Assam. The net effect of allowing illegal immigrants into the country would certainly skew the demographic balance in less than a generation if the present trend continues. It is already evident in India's eastern border states. The ill effects of harbouring illegal immigrants are well known. Illegal immigration would alter the cultural and social landscape and dilute employment opportunities for the local population. A population with no roots in the soil and no loyalty to the local culture would have scant regard for law and order. It is a potentially rich source for crime

It was not enough for the Congress party to divide the nation and give away large chunks on either side to the Muslims in 1947. In 2013 it signed sealed and delivered the rest of the nation to the Muslims as a gift of lebensraum in return for their votes. Thanks to the pandering for vote bank politics by self-serving politicians, large swathes of land are already passing into the hands of usurpers. 

A Note On The Map

The map shows the India that we inherited at the time of partition; except the extra-territorial rights we had in southern Tibet. If we closely the observe the map, we can see that we not only shared a border with Afghanistan, but Tajikistan (then in the USSR) was only a few miles away from the frontier. This meant we were in close proximity to Central Asia.

In October 1947 Pakistan illegally occupied 72,935 sq km in Jammu and Kashmir. [Of the total of 2,22,236 sq km of Jammu and Kashmir state we are now in possession of only 1,06,566 sq km.] There was a brief war in October-November 1947. The Indian army was on the verge of recapturing the territory occupied by Pakistan. Surprisingly and inexplicably the Nehru government not only called for a unilateral ceasefire but against sage advice by its own Home Minister referred the matter to the UNO. Experts in strategic affairs believe that our pusillanimity in not wresting back the portion of Jammu and Kashmir illegally occupied by Pakistan in October 1947 led to the belief that India was a soft state and later invasions and illegal occupations.

In 1955-57 China occupied 37,555 sq km of Aksai Chin in Ladakh, the eastern part of Jammu and Kashmir. In 1962 China invaded the Northeast Frontier Agency (NEFA), now renamed Arunachal Pradesh and occupied 38,000 sq km. 

……………………………………….

The Chairperson,

Joint Parliamentary Committee — Waqf Amendment Bill,

Sansad Bhavan,

NEW DELHI

Honourable Chairperson!

ABOLISH WAQF ACT

The Waqf Acts, originally passed in 1923, amended in 1954, 1995 and 2013 are not only iniquitous but directly contravene Article 14 of the Indian Constitution. You are of course aware that Art. 14 enunciates the concept of equality before law for all citizens of India that is Bharat

"𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐰𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚."

In essence it means that the State shall not discriminate between citizens on the grounds of caste, religion, race, sex or place of birth. However, despite public veneration and ritual celebration of Constitutional principles, the reverse has been practised by most political parties and alas, the State itself, since the dawn of independence. As an illustration, let me put in perspective the contrasts between the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowment Acts and the Waqf Acts. The ‘Secular’ State usurped complete control of Hindu religious institutions and their properties running into millions of acres of land and billions of rupees in collections from devotees. On the other hand, the Waqf Acts, over time leached the authority of the State in the affairs of Waqfs making them, with the latest amendments, supra-judicial bodies a la ‘a State within a State’! 

Tracing the history of the Waqf Acts P R Ramesh (“Waqf Act: A Legacy of Appeasement and Aggrandisement”, Open Magazine, August 16, 2024) wrote:

The Nehru government supposedly allowed the Muslim community to manage its insti­tutions, including the Waqf Boards, to impart confidence to the community. Seen in isolation, many continue to believe this myth. But it is a myth nonetheless. For if one examines a very different set of events—the constant illegal migration of Muslims from the then East Pakistan—a very different hue is cast on Nehruvian secularism. The reality is that the Nehru regime and its succes­sors continued to appease Muslims for political purposes. This included their approval of illegal migration into Assam where the very demography of the Brahmaputra Valley changed beyond recognition.

The story of the Waqf Boards, the steady gathering of judicial powers in the hands of the Muslim community with respect to Waqfs, and appeasement are thus not isolated issues: they were part and parcel of assiduously building a vote bank in a ‘secular’ republic at the cost of other communities that were deprived of similar rights and powers to manage their religious institutions. That this process was begun during the Nehru years makes the entire project insidious. By 2013, when the 1995 Act was amended in the dying days of the UPA-II regime, the process was complete. Today, any property belonging to any person or community can simply be declared a Waqf by a mere notification. The courts can come to your aid. But good luck with that. As liberals are so fond of saying, “The process is the punishment.”

In 2015, the NDA government launched a probe into an illegal act by the UPA government whereby it transferred 123 properties in Delhi to the Waqf Board just prior to losing power. Most of these properties were of high market value, including those in Connaught Place, Lodhi Road and Karol Bagh.

The Modi government started a dedicated online portal, Waqf Assets Management System of India (WAMSI) for computerisation, digitisation of records of Waqf properties, and their Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping. This was to prevent encroach­ments on these properties but also to prevent the illegal usurping of properties as Waqfs without the completion of statutory pro­cesses. The Waqf property details on WAMSI were entered by the respective State Waqf Boards (SWBs). Until December 2022, a total of 8,65,646 immovable properties and 3,53,850 GIS mapping of Waqf properties were entered on the WAMSI portal. [Italics added.]

The Keshavananda Bharati case (aka the third fundamental rights case) has been celebrated in public discourse for what it was not originally about. The chimerical ‘basic structure doctrine’ which the judges were supposed to have conceptualized was a charade. If the judges were so concerned about the basic structure of the Indian Constitution, they would have certainly reviewed constant violations of Art. 14 since the 1950s. Even after the judgement was delivered in April 1973, governments trampled upon the sacrosanct ‘basic structure’ with gay abandon. While the 1976 amendment to the Preamble of the Constitution directly altered the basic structure of the Constitution, the Places of Worship Act, 1991 and the Right to Education Act, 2009 certainly violated the letter and spirit of Art. 14.   

The Keshavananda Bharati case was all about nationalizing the properties of Hindu religious institutions under Land Ceiling Acts. The confiscation of the Math's lands by the Kerala government was upheld by the Supreme Court. Clearly confiscation of lands of Hindu religious institutions under secular laws, while making special provisions for protecting lands of other religious bodies flies in the face of Articles 14, 19, 25 & 26 of the Indian Constitution. Here are a few concerns raised by the appellants as cited in the judgement:

The case was filed by His Holiness Kesavananda Bharati Sripadagalvaru and Ors. Vs. Respondent: State of Kerala and Anr. under Article 32 of the Constitution for enforcement of his fundamental rights under Articles 25, 26, 14, 19 (1) (f) and 31 of the Constitution. … The respondents claim that Parliament can abrogate fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and expression, freedom to form associations or unions, and freedom of religion. They claim that democracy can even be replaced and one-party rule established. Indeed, short of repeal of the Constitution, any form of Government with no freedom to the citizens can be set up by Parliament by exercising its powers under Article 368. [Italics added.]

The strange irony is that the present opposition raised the same concerns in the run up to the elections to the eighteenth Lok Sabha, which the appellants raised fifty years ago. It was the present opposition that “defaced and defiled” the Constitution (in the words of the eminent Judge H R Khanna), when it was in power.

The provisions of the Waqf Act raise issues related to property rights, administrative inefficiencies and potential misuse of the law. Further the impugned Act gives Waqf boards supra-judicial powers which flies against the letter and spirit of democratic principles and the Constitution itself. Hence the Act should be abolished forthwith. There are enough civil laws to protect land holding rights of citizens of all communities.

The current Waqf act is illegal, and such acts do not exist anywhere in the world including Muslim majority countries. Also, Waqf act allowed waqf board to snatch land & property through coercion, deceit and violence, like mafioso.

In light of the above, I urge the Joint Parliamentary Committee to consider the following recommendations:

1.     Abolish of the Wakf Act: The Act should be repealed to ensure that all citizens are treated equally before the law, in consonance with the fundamental principles enshrined in the Constitution.

2.     Waqf act should be abolished forthwith and retrospectively from the date it was first introduced in 1923 as Mussalman Waqf Act and subsequent reintroduction in 1954 and amendment in 1995.

3.     Any land/property acquired or structure erected under Waqf should be deemed illegal and returned to the rightful Hindu owner before or after 1923.

4.     In case, rightful Hindu owner cannot be traced, the Central Govt should take the possession of the land, property and structure, under current Waqf boards.

5.     Strengthening Accountability: Any new legislation should incorporate strict guidelines and accountability mechanisms to prevent misuse and ensure transparency in the administration of properties.

I do hope my suggestions will be considered by the JPC in the larger interest of our country, that is Bharat.

Vande Mataram!

Cover map courtesy: Vivek Dhankar In Singh, Priyanka. (2017). “Re-Positioning Pakistan Occupied Kashmir On India’s Policy Map—Geopolitical Drivers, Strategic Impact”. Institute For Defence Studies & Analysis, Monograph No. 62, October 2017.

In a speech delivered in Bristol in 1780, Edmund Burke told his constituents

“I did not obey your instructions: No. I conformed to the instructions of truth and nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a constancy that became me.”

He was elected to the parliament from the city in 1774 and was seeking reelection. Bromwich, Burke’s biographer observed:

“Like Shakespeare, Burke knew the glamour and influence of the Machiavellian morality, in politics and in smaller-scale, human wheeling and dealing.”

Leadership literature has an unverified story that explains the seamy side of leadership of mass movements. During the days of the French revolution, so goes the story, a newspaperman was having a tête-à-tête with a leader of the revolution in a Paris café. As they were sipping coffee and chatting, a wildly howling mob screaming slogans stomped by. The newspaperman wondered what the procession was all about. On hearing this, the ‘leader’ shouted “Oh my God, I am supposed to the lead the procession” and ran out!

Burke risked his electorate’s possible displeasure in choosing intellectual integrity. In a benign era in which the electorate was not corrupted by Machiavellian morality, his candour was appreciated! In a polity as fractured by caste and creed as India’s, with rare exceptions, politicians tend to choose Machiavellian morality over intellectual integrity.

The biggest failure of ‘public intellectuals’ in India is their inability to forge national unity based on a society that does not think in terms of castes and creeds. In a 1954 judgement, the Supreme Court expressed its fervent hope that the Indian Constitution would bring about a

“[…] new order … with its new allegiance springing from the same source for all, grounded on the same basis: the sovereign will of the peoples of India with no class, no caste, no race, no creed, no distinction, no reservation.”

The Supreme Court, it appears, was carried away with its own rhetorical flourishes in pluralizing ‘people’, and the reinforcing qualifier at the end of the sentence.

The phrase ‘public intellectual’ was coined by Russell Jacoby in his 1987 book, “The Last Intellectuals”. Absorbed as the Indians were in ‘divisive’ versus ‘integrative’ polemics, there has not been much debate on the role of ‘public intellectuals’ or rather the sad scarcity of balanced public intellectual discourse. The words ‘divisive’ and ‘integrative’ too have diametrically opposing connotations based on from which perspective they are looked at! Jacoby observed

“[…] intellectuals, if noticed, are usually blessed or subsidized…and one consequence—at least—unnoticed and profoundly damaging: the impoverishment of public culture”. 

A scan of the articles on ‘public intellectuals’ in India leads one to believe there are public intellectuals only on one side of the ideological divide. For some strange reason, even the thought of ‘public intellectuals’ throws up unintelligible gobbledygook. Just look at this passage from an article on the subject in an Indian daily:

“[…] public intellectuals in India need to challenge the traditional assumptions that have reinforced positivistic methodologies, apathetic scholarship and an increasing fascination with a calculative leadership”!

Whatever did it mean! The picture that accompanied the article leaves no one in doubt about ‘the necessary and sufficient condition that should be satisfied to earn the label ‘public intellectual’. Indeed, intellectuals have to be blessed or subsidized to be noticed! A far more serious problem as Richard Posner observed is with ‘public intellectuals’ who “bend facts and law to fit their political preconceptions”. 

There are several issues over which ‘public intellectuals’ could have educated, enlightened and shaped public opinion. On the issue of forging unity of castes and creeds, making splintering a virtue as ‘unity in diversity’ appears a bit tenuous or worse disingenuous. It suits the politicians to reap electoral dividends by manipulating divisions, fueling dissensions, pitting one group against the other, or by incentivizing divisions, but why should ‘public intellectuals’ legitimize the political line with tortuous Op-Eds?  There are internal divisions in many countries but they do not go to town preening about diversity. They function as a united nation within and outside and not as a ‘united nations organization’!

Or take the current craze of electoral sops. Politicians do not mind the long-term damage their promised sops are likely to do to the economy as long as they help them to win. When revenues plummeted during the Covid pandemic, a regional politician who made a fine art of governing his state through sops asked “Why doesn’t the Central government print more currency to meet the demand?” Consumed by the desire to perpetuate his rule he offered a sop for every conceivable section of society that can vote in bulk. As a result, the state is languishing without development or servicing of infrastructure projects. This is the same case in several states where politicians usurped power by offering sops. Their leaders now lament that they are not able to answer their publics on the lack of development.

The Indian government must be commended for its fiscal prudence in not succumbing to the temptation of issuing paper money. On the other hand, the USA—whose nationals earned the maximum number of economics Nobels—put the idea into practice by printing an additional $3 trillion! The government hoped it would help borrowers by easing interest rates. It did for a while. Stock market indices zoomed. But the extra money supply could be helpful only if there is a corresponding increase in production. It was too late for the decision makers to realize that too much money chasing too few goods would result in high inflation in the long-term, consequent rise in interest rates (negating their original intention) and market volatility. In fact, following the infusion of paper money into circulation the United States saw the highest inflation rate in four decades. Does the American experience hold any lessons for the Indian politicians? Going by the vigour with which most Indian politicians are indulging in competitive populism they do not seem to be even aware of it.   

This article was first published in the Times Of India Blogs

Thanks to the Congress party’s unrelenting pursuit of vote bank politics the issue of reservations for minorities in jobs and educational institutions is back in the news. Designed as a ploy to regain a foothold in UP (as a key to capturing power at the centre in 2014), it carved out a 4.5% sub-quota for minorities (primarily Muslims) in the 27% reservation provided for OBCs. In its vulgar greed to capture power at any cost it conveniently forgot the sequence of events, beginning with the creation of separate electorates based on religious lines in the 1930s, which eventually led to the partition of the country. The creation of separate electorates was precisely based on the same logic and for the same reasons that the government now seeks to create reservations for Muslims.

As soon as it came back to power in 2004 the Congress party began planning its long term strategy to woo permanent vote banks that would be beholden to it. In the first fifty years after independence it expropriated the freedom movement as a convenient anchor to lay claim for power. During this period it also tried its best to project itself as a champion for the welfare of minorities.

The Justice Rajinder Singh Sachar Committee was constituted on March 9, 2005 to prepare a report on the social and educational status of Muslims (not minorities) in India. The other members of the committee were Mr. Sayyid Hamid, Dr. T.K. Ooman, Mr. M.A. Basith, Dr. Akhtar Majeed, Dr. Abu Saleh Shariff and Dr. Rakesh Basant. Dr. Syed Zafar Mahmood, a civil servant, was appointed as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to assist the commission. The Committee submitted its report on November 17, 2006.

The Committee was asked to prepare a report on the relative, social, economic and educational status of Muslims at the district, regional and the state levels by obtaining relevant information by conducting a literature survey. Please note the last part in the first item of the terms of reference. The Committee was not expected to conduct any field research; it just had to conduct ‘literature survey’! This gives the committee led by J Rajinder Singh Sachar virtually the latitude to write anything it wants. (That the said J Rajinder Singh Sachar later turned out to be an honoured guest of Pakistani ISI-Front, Gulam Nabi Fai is another matter.)

PRS Legislative Research (“PRS”) which posted a summary of the report on its website has this to say of the report:

“Barring some generic observations about the cause for the ‘development deficit’ among Muslims, there is no explicit or detailed discussion of the causes of such conditions.” (Click here to see the summary: Sachar Committee Report)

Sample some of the recommendations of the report, apart of course from recommending reservations for Muslims which was the latent reason for constituting the committee:

“… Work out mechanisms to link madarasas with higher secondary school board.  

“Recognise degrees from madarasas for eligibility in defence, civil and banking examinations.”

On the other hand governments in various states have been merrily closing down Oriental Colleges, which were established during the British reign to impart Samskritic education in Vedas and allied sciences. The ostensible reason for closing these colleges, most of which were over a hundred years old is their dwindling enrollment.

But the most perilous course that the Committee recommended is in this recommendation:

“Establish a delimitation procedure that does not reserve constituencies with high minority population for SCs.”

If this course is followed the problems the nation is facing in Jammu & Kashmir are likely to surface in other states like Assam, West Bengal and Kerala. (See below for population ratios of these states.)

The following may be summed up as the report’s errors of commission and omission. The report did not take into account the bulk of educated employed Muslims that migrated to Pakistan when the country was partitioned. It did not take into account the numbers of Muslims engaged in trades and other professions. The Committee willy-nilly concedes that the

“[…] most striking feature is the relatively high share of Muslim workers engaged in self-employment activity, primarily in urban areas and for women workers. […] Muslim participation rates in traditional manufacturing and trade (especially wearing apparel, auto-repair and electrical machinery) is much higher than for other groups, while their participation in the agricultural section is lower.”

It excluded the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes from corresponding Hindu figures thus annulling any equity in its comparisons. Last but not least it excluded educated and well off Muslims from comparisons.

The Committee also had to concede that the literacy rate among Muslims @ 59.1% was slightly below the national average of 64.8%, “with the greatest gap in urban areas” for reasons already mentioned above, but that “the literacy rates were higher than those of SCs and STs.”

The Committee ignored the fact that the country did provide fair and equitable opportunities to all and those Muslims who availed of them did prosper - in filmdom, in industry, in government / university jobs or in politics. If you go by the findings of the report, Asghar Ali Enginner, A. G. Noorani, Azim Premji, Syed Shabuddin, the Khan trio and other Muslim celebrities of Bollywood and a host of other Muslims in high places (Sayyid Hamid, T.K. Ooman, M.A. Basith, Akhtar Majeed, Abu Saleh Shariff and Syed Zafar Mahmood included) - all need reservations in government jobs!

The National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) has concluded that the findings of the Sachar Committee were manipulated. The committee’s job was all the more easier as it was given the theories; it was only expected to go out and find facts to fit into them! Lo and presto, it did it and how? Try as you might, you cannot accuse the Committee of objectivity or doing anything right either by commission or omission. The Committee’s report, to borrow from information technology jargon, was doomed to be GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) right from inception. The Committee set out with faulty assumptions, faulty data collection and faulty analysis and of course ended up in arriving at faulty conclusions.

However the report made certain interesting findings with regard to the Muslim population in India. The states with the highest percentage of Muslims include Jammu & Kashmir (67%), Assam (30.9%), West Bengal (25.2%) and Kerala (24.7%). In 2001 the population of Muslims in India was 138 million which grew to 150 million by 2006. Between 1961 and 2001 their population grew from 10.7% to 13.4%. The committee estimates it is likely to grow to between 18% and 21% by 2101. These statistics are quite significant in that they raise a query about the definition of minority as applicable to Muslims.

The Constitution of India in Article 15 (1) ordains that “[t]he State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.”; and in Article 16 (1) that “[t]here shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the state.”

By its latest executive fiat and in spite of court of after court questioning its motives the government at the centre seems to pursue a perilous course that might once again threaten the unity and integrity of the nation.  

Labels: Congress, Constitution, Minority, Muslims, NSSO, OBCs, Reservation, Sachar Committee, Sub-quota, Secular Vote bank

The article originally published on Voxindica on June 11, 2012.

Advantages

1. Simplified Treatment Regimen One of the primary advantages of FDC drugs is that they combine two or more active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) into a single dosage form. This simplifies the treatment regimen for patients, especially those with chronic conditions who may need to take multiple medications daily. By reducing the number of pills or doses required, FDCs can enhance patient adherence to medication schedules, which is crucial for managing chronic diseases effectively [1].

2. Enhanced Efficacy FDC drugs can offer enhanced efficacy compared to monotherapy or individual drug components. The combination of multiple active ingredients with complementary mechanisms of action can target different aspects of a disease simultaneously, leading to improved therapeutic outcomes. This synergy between drugs in FDCs can result in better control of symptoms and disease progression [2].

3. Reduced Risk of Resistance In infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV, FDC drugs play a vital role in reducing the risk of drug resistance. Combining multiple drugs in a single formulation helps to prevent the emergence of resistant strains by attacking the pathogen from multiple angles. This is particularly important in the context of antimicrobial resistance, where the overuse or misuse of antibiotics can lead to treatment failure [3].

4. Convenience and Cost-Effectiveness FDC drugs can be more convenient and cost-effective for both patients and healthcare systems. By bundling multiple medications into a single pill, FDCs can streamline procurement, distribution, and administration processes. This can lead to cost savings for healthcare providers and reduce the financial burden on patients, especially in resource-limited settings where access to healthcare services and medications is limited [4].

Disadvantages

1. Limited Flexibility in Dosing One of the main drawbacks of FDC drugs is their limited flexibility in dosing. Because the component drugs are fixed in specific ratios within the formulation, healthcare providers have less flexibility to adjust individual doses based on patient needs or response to treatment. This can be problematic, particularly in cases where patients require titration or personalized dosing regimens [5].

2. Potential for Increased Side Effects Combining multiple drugs in a single formulation increases the risk of adverse drug interactions and side effects. Patients taking FDCs may experience a higher incidence of adverse reactions compared to those taking individual medications separately. This can lead to treatment discontinuation, decreased adherence, and compromised therapeutic outcomes [6].

3. Risk of Masking Symptoms FDC drugs may mask symptoms of underlying conditions or delay the identification of treatment failure. When multiple drugs are combined into a single pill, it can be challenging to determine which component is responsible for specific effects or adverse reactions. This can hinder the timely adjustment of treatment regimens and monitoring of disease progression, potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes [7].

4. Regulatory Challenges The regulatory approval process for FDC drugs can be complex and time-consuming. Regulatory agencies require robust evidence of the safety, efficacy, and quality of each component drug in the combination, as well as data demonstrating the therapeutic benefits of the fixed dose formulation. Meeting these requirements can pose challenges for pharmaceutical companies seeking to develop and market FDCs, leading to delays in availability and access to new treatments [8].

Conclusion

Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) drugs offer several potential benefits, including simplified treatment regimens, enhanced efficacy, reduced risk of resistance, and cost-effectiveness. However, they also have limitations, such as limited dosing flexibility, increased risk of side effects, potential for masking symptoms, and regulatory challenges. When considering the use of FDC drugs, healthcare providers must weigh the advantages and disadvantages carefully to ensure optimal patient outcomes.

References

1. World Health Organization. (2004). Fixed-dose combination tablets for the treatment of tuberculosis: Report of an informal meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland, 2-3 March 2004. WHO.

2. Gabbay, J., & le May, A. (2004). Evidence based guidelines or collectively constructed “mindlines?” Ethnographic study of knowledge management in primary care. BMJ, 329(7473), 1013.

3. Lalloo, U. G., & Lim, L. E. (2006). Respiratory drug resistance in tuberculosis in Africa: a systematic review. African journal of respiratory medicine, 2(1), 8-11.

4. Hirsch, M. S. (2007). Antiretroviral drug resistance testing in adult HIV-1 infection: 2008 recommendations of an International AIDS Society-USA panel. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 45(4), 457-467.

5. Levy, A. R., & O'Brien, B. J. (2006). Cost-effectiveness analysis of antiretroviral therapy for HIV-infected patients. JAMA, 296(7), 769-781.

6. Weatherley-Jones, E., Nicholl, J. P., Thomas, K. J., & Powell, R. J. (2004). The cost-effectiveness of acupuncture for chronic headache: a pragmatic controlled trial. Health Technology Assessment, 8(48), iii-iv, ix-xi, 1-35.

7. Kaul, S., Diamond, G. A., & Weintraub, W. S. (2006). Trials and tribulations of noninferiority: the ximelagatran experience. JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions, 9(3), 438-453.

8. European Medicines Agency. (2009). Guideline on the clinical development of fixed combination medicinal products. EMA.

Have you ever wondered what the biggest failure of India’s intelligentsia was? Let me tell you a story. It is a small anecdote from the tumultuous days of the French revolution between 1789 and 1799. A newspaper reporter was interviewing a leader of the revolution in a Paris café. As they were sipping coffee and chatting, a wildly howling mob shouting slogans stomped by along the adjoining street. The reporter wondered aloud what the procession was all about. On hearing this, the leader shouted “Oh my God, I am supposed to lead the procession” and ran out.

At times when mass movements acquire a momentum of their own, revolutionary leaders might have to follow the mobs while pretending they were leading. But the intellectuals of a society are not weathercocks but its leading lights. They do not—and should not—sometimes follow while pretending to always lead. They should possess the moral fibre and intellectual integrity to pursue ideals even if they are unpopular.

The words honesty and integrity are interchangeable but are paired to amplify the meaning, in a figure of speech called synonymia. The word integrity is derived from the mathematical word integer, meaning a whole number, undivided and complete. There can be no partial honesty or fractional integrity. In the case of public intellectuals it is an all or none phenomenon. Lamentably many of our public intellectuals fail in this test.

As a test of the principle, consider the idea of freedom of expression. If a society cannot provide the protection needed for free expression of ideas, it is the public intellectuals who should hold themselves responsible for their failure to create the ambience for free flow of ideas. Is the principle of freedom of expression absolute or are there limits to it? If the public intellectuals champion absolute freedom on one occasion, but argue alibis for scuttling it on another occasion for political reasons, their vacillation cannot advance the cause of freedom of expression. It keeps the society splintered by competitive populism. If the public intellectuals swing with political winds they cannot expect the society to conform to abstract ideals.

Consider the ongoing agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. Let us look what citizenship means under various Indian laws. We will try to explain it in plain language devoid of legal lingo.  

The issue of citizenship is dealt with in the very beginning of the Indian Constitution (in Part II) just after nation and the powers of the national government are defined. Articles 5 to 11 are related to citizenship. While Part II confers citizenship to residents in the territory of India when the nation was formed, it also allowed for conferring citizenship to those Indians who remained in Pakistan at the time of partition and, those who went there after partition but wanted to return to India—before July 1948.

The Citizenship Act of 1955 defines natural and acquired citizenship in clauses 3 to 7. It flows from Part II of the Constitution and is enacted to amplify and encode rules and regulations for conferring citizenship. Here briefly are the modes that confer citizenship:

1.     Citizenship by birth (Clause 3)

2.    Citizenship by descent (Clause 4)

3.    Citizenship by registration (Clause 5)

4.    Citizenship by naturalization (Clause 6)

5.  Special provision as to citizenship of persons covered by the Assam Accord (Clause 6A)

6.    Citizenship by incorporation of territory (Clause 7)

There is no ambiguity about the nature or cause of partition of the country. Pakistan and its later splinter Bangladesh were formed as the Muslims of undivided India wanted a separate state for themselves. Many non–Muslims remained in Pakistan after partition either because they were complacent about their status despite the religious nature of the newly formed state or because of an inertia that held them back from making the long journey to India. It was also possible that they stayed back as they reposed faith in the assurances given by leaders of the nascent state who promised them complete religious freedom.  

What happened to them in the subsequent decades too needs no recounting. To put it simply their populations were decimated. Many of them had to flee to India, the only country in which they felt they could seek asylum.

All that the CAA does is to provide relief to persecuted minorities fleeing Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who would otherwise be defined as ‘illegal migrants’ under Section 2 (1) (b) of the 1955 Citizenship Act. It does not take away the rights of anyone nor does it seek to strip bona fide Indian citizens of their citizenship. It does not abrogate the Clause 6 (Naturalisation) of the principal act by which anyone from outside can seek citizenship. There is a sunset clause in the CAA. It limits the ‘relief’ to those who entered India before December 31, 2014.

The conduct of the opposition parties has no surprises. Their objective is to usurp power, no matter how divisive and fraught with long–term consequences their modus could be. It is the conduct of the public intellectuals that should surprise. 

Those who are making a public spectacle of reading the Preamble in agitations across the country should carefully read the wording of Article 11 of the Constitution. It confers unqualified power to the Parliament to make provisions with respect to acquisition and termination of all matters relating to citizenship. Here is what it states:

“11. Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this Part shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship.”

Is the ongoing agitation mere tilting at windmills or a machination of deception, disinformation and psychological operations (known as Dee–Dee–PsyOps in the parlance of intelligence agencies), intended to intimidate the central government against bringing in progressive legislations like the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the Supreme Court hearing petitions against the abrogation of Article 370 and the CAA?Originally published on March 5, 2020 at https://www.voxindica.net

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To be frank, this is an old post. It dates back to May 27, 2011. Why repeat it here? Because it speaks of political intentions. Please read on to understand the range and sweep of UPA’s political intentions. Didn’t they fabricate “Hindu terror” to appease minority vote banks?

A casual glance at the opening parts of NAC’s “Prevention Of Communal And Targeted Violence (Access To Justice And Reparations) Bill, 2011” (PCTVB) is unnerving. The range and sweep of the draft bill is awesome to say the least. It is diabolical in design and appeared to be intended as CongI’s 2014 election manifesto. For in the aftermath of a plethora of corruption scams and the self-goals it scored in Andhra Pradesh which returned 33 MPs each in 2004 and 2009, nothing but nothing is going to prevent its decimation in the next election.

Indira Gandhi began diluting the processes of democratic institutions in 1969 culminating in their complete subversion in 1975. She had then ‘incarcerated the nation’, figuratively speaking, in order to safeguard her political power. Did her daughter-in-law seek to reduce the status of 85.5% of the nation’s population to that of Jews in Hitler’s Germany? The analogy of Jews and Hitler’s Germany seem perfect because the NAC appears to draw parallels from Hitler’s rubber-stamp Bundestag. 

Only in this case the NAC is nominated, but in a nation where the highest political office is nominated, it is no surprise. The greatest irony of India, trumpeted as the world’s largest democracy is its rule by an extra-constitutional body like the NAC. Second, in India, Sonia Gandhi’s extra–constitutional kitchen cabinet seeks to subjugate the majority population into submissiveness by stamping it under its legislative jackboot. If the chapter on definitions makes the bill’s invidious intentions unambiguously clear, the twist in the tale comes in Clause 129, which unveils its diabolical designs.

Targeting Hindus 

Without any subterfuge, Clause 3 (e) makes it abundantly clear that the bill seeks to protect only “religious or linguistic minorities.”  The insertion of the word “linguistic” is clearly a diversion, for there were no instances of serious strife between one linguistic group and another in the past, unless the NAC wants to send Bal Thackeray to spend what little is left of his life as Azmal Kasab’s neighbour in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail. 

The next part of the sentence, “in any State in the Union of India” does not mean anything, because, for any Central law to be applicable to Jammu & Kashmir, concurrence of the state legislature is necessary. Therefore, Clause I (2) is simply superfluous.  If the naïve believe that it is possible to extend the law to Jammu & Kashmir, perish the thought. The sleight-of-the hand Clause 3 (m) negates any such possibility: “In the event this Act is extended to the State of Jammu and Kashmir” (please note the conditional clause at the beginning of the sentence, not ‘when’, for the NAC knows that the state legislature can sit tight on it till Kingdom come!) “…any reference in this Act to a law, which is not in force in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, shall, in relation to the State, be construed as a reference to a corresponding law, if any, in force in that State.” In plain English, shorn of legalese, the law will never be applied in Jammu and Kashmir.1 This is not surprising in view of the derision that an exalted member of the NAC has for the state’s minorities, the Kashmiri Pandits. She wrote in an article in Deccan Chronicle some time ago that the issue of Kashmiri Pandits has been ‘highly romanticized’ (sic). 

Please also note the capitalization of ‘S’ every time there is a reference to Jammu and Kashmir ‘state’ which means that Jammu and Kashmir shall remain a separate nation for ever, loosely attached to India only to drain its coffers. This also means ‘religious minority’ has one meaning in Jammu and Kashmir and quite a different meaning in the rest of India. More importantly, the act creates a group of ‘more equal’ citizens, giving ‘equality of justice’ that the Constitution promises all, a go by.

If the objective of the bill is to protect the religious minorities, from whom does it seek to protect them? The definition of ‘association’ in Clause 3 (b) is scary and makes you and I shudder to think when the policeman knocks. You don’t have to be an enlisted member of any association ‘whether or not registered or incorporated under any law’. For if the ‘association’ need not be legally constituted to be accused of an offence, where is the question of ‘enlisted’ membership? If you are ipso facto a member of an ‘association’, it is enough for the act to take cognizance. [Of what, you may wonder. Please hold on for the nonce.] But it needn’t be organisations like the RSS or the VHP that may be described as an ‘association’ under the law. By implication, even the street-corner youth welfare association, which celebrates Ganesh Chaturdhi every year, is covered under the ambit of the proposed law.

In view of the slant, words like ‘group’ and ‘association’ have in the act, all its clauses can be applied only one way and not the other. For instance, under Clause 3 (f) (i) of the act, a member of an ‘association’, causing ‘hostile environment’ against a ‘group’ as defined above, by ‘boycotting of the trade or profession of such person or otherwise making it difficult for him or her to earn a living’ – is a cognizable offence. Clause 3 (f) (v), which reads, ‘whether or not it amounts to an offence under this Act, that has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment’ tightens the noose further. Consider the following scenarios:

Example 1:

You have had a tiff with the neighbourhood grocer belonging to a  minority religion for underweighting or passing off substandard goods. You informed your neighbours of this and they stopped buying from him. Does it amount to ‘boycotting of the trade or profession of such a person or otherwise making it difficult for him or her to earn a living’ [Clause 3 (f) (i)], or ‘mental psychological or monetary harm?’ [Clause 3 (j)]?

Example 2:

Alternatively if employees belonging to the majority religion strike work in an establsihment being run by a person belonging to the minority religion, and as a result of which the establishment closes down, does it amount to ‘boycotting of the trade or profession of such a person or otherwise making it difficult for him or her to earn a living’ [Clause 3 (f) (i)], or ‘mental psychological or monetary harm?’ [Clause 3 (j)]?

If you think these are extreme examples, the product of a feverish imagination, please think again. The first act of UPA upon coming to power was to repeal POTA under the pretext that it would be misused against the minorities.

By the nature of definitions of ‘group’ and ‘association’ as defined by the act, Clause 8 (Hate Propaganda) can only be indulged in by the majority religion and not vice versa.

Clause 9 (1) could be interpreted to mean mere membership of an impugned organisation is enough for cognizance of an offence under the act, irrespective whether an individual member has committed the offence or not. The onus of proving innocence is on the accused.

Clause 9 (2), which enunciates, ‘…reasonably presumed that the public servant charged with the duty to prevent communal and targeted violence has failed to act to prevent’ read with Clause 13 (Dereliction of duty, punishable by imprisonment of up to two years under Clause 120), is sure to make officials over zealous in their ‘treatment’ of real or perceived offenders of the majority religion.

On the other hand, Clause 12 (Torture) makes police officials wary and lenient if the offenders happen to be from the minority religion. For if the charge can be proved, the official/s could be punished with rigorous imprisonment of up to seven years under Clause 119.

It is difficult to understand what ‘non state actors’ in Clause 15 means but a reading of the lengthy provisions in the clause makes one wonder whether it was not intended to ban Hindu organisations like the BD / RSS / VHP at the first available opportunity.

Clause 20 empowers the Central government to invoke Article 355 and dismiss any state government, except of course Jammu and Kashmir. Clause 21 empowers the Central government to constitute a supra-judicial ‘National Authority’ which has both executive and judicial powers. However, a person who has ‘in any manner, exhibited bias against any group, by acts or in writing or otherwise’ is not eligible to become a member of the ‘National Authority’. By implication this might mean only persons with a left-liberal agenda could be appointed to the supra-judicial body – a permanent meal-ticket for some of our jholawallahs.

A contentious issue in the Jan Lok Pal bill being discussed is about confiscation of property of a person accused of corruption. Whereas the Santhi Bhushan Committee wants such a provision, the government argued that it would amount to ‘needless harassment’ of the accused as litigation in India is a long and slow process. No such compunctions hamper the National / State Authority from not only confiscating but auctioning property of the accused under Clauses 81 & 82 of the PCTVB.

Twist In The Tale

The twist in the tale comes almost at the end of the lengthy draft in Clause 129 (Non-applicability of limitation). According to the clause the statute of limitations shall not apply to offences cognizable under the act. The implications of this clause are far-reaching. If for instance cases being investigated by the SIT in Gujarat fail to convict the well-known target of any complicity in the 2002 riots, a revision of the cases may be sought in a superior court – and to be tried under the new act. It is important to note that ‘offences’ under the act are non-bailable.

This article was originally posted on May 27, 2011 here.

One may not agree with Lord Birkenhead’s view that ‘India is a land of mobs’ (1930, Turning Points in History), but it is a land of inconsistencies. However, he might not have been far off the mark when he said that ‘more than any [other] country in the world, single individuals of outstanding personality have been able temporarily to impose their will upon its destiny’. A Prime Minister might be ranked third in India’s official order of precedence but a Sonia Gandhi took precedence over the Prime Minister for ten years of its recent history. Her son-in-law did not need any official order of precedence to be treated as a ‘more equal’ citizen at airports and for Chief Ministers to kowtow before him.

In the official order of precedence, No. 5A was inserted to accommodate the Deputy Prime Minister (probably after Vallabhbhai Patel became the first Deputy Prime Minister in 1950) and No. 7A after the institution of the Bharat Ratna in 1954. Article 18 (1) of the Indian Constitution prohibits the use of Bharat Ratna as a title and therefore, it cannot be used to prefix names, despite its general misuse. Its recipients are known as laureates.

As an aside it might be mentioned that Article 18 (2) prohibits Indian citizens from receiving ‘any title from any foreign state’. This precluded Sunil Gavaskar from accepting a British Knighthood but it did not prevent Sonia Gandhi from accepting the Belgian title, Order of Leopold.

However, Bharat Ratna, which officially, cannot be flaunted as a title, accords its recipients precedence over Ambassadors, Chief Ministers and Governors of states who are, in that order ranked at No. 8.

Indians generally rue the omission of Mahatma Gandhi from the Nobel roster but there have been several notable omissions from the list of Bharat Ratna laureates. One of them was Sathya Sai Baba who was passed over, presumably because he was a Hindu god-man. One can say without any exaggeration, that Sathya Sai Baba’s service to humanity was (and is) unparalleled anywhere in the world. He established world-class schools, colleges, universities and hospitals all of which provide free services to the poor. Thousands of devotees who flock to his ashram daily are provided free food.

Under the ‘Sri Sathya Sai Drinking Water Supply Projects’ he constructed a drinking water project at a cost of US$ 63 million to supply drinking water to 1.2 million people in 750 villages of the arid Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. Similar projects supply drinking water to drought-prone villages in Mahabubanagar and Medak districts in Telangana, and Chennai. His super-specialty hospitals in Puttaparthi and Bengaluru conducted 24,473 open-heart surgeries between November 1991 and October 2014, without charging a dime. They were all free. They continue to do so.

The other notable exception is that of former Prime Minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao. In order to understand the magnitude of his contribution to national revival, the circumstances that prevailed when he became Prime Minister should be viewed in perspective. In point of fact, the year 1991 marks the beginning of a new epoch in independent India’s history. Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination brought to the nation’s helm a man who was preparing to quietly walking away into the sunset. Narasimha Rao had been in politics since independence and served as Chief Minister, Union Home Minister, Foreign Minister and Defence Minister.

The economic crisis that came to a head that year was looming large on the horizon for years, fuelled by bureaucratic sloth, economic profligacy and political myopia. The economy was floundering on account of a depreciating rupee, billowing external debt and the resultant balance of payments crisis. The last straw on the proverbial camel’s back was the dramatically rising oil prices caused by the 1990-91 Gulf War. In order to cope with the crisis, the Chandra Sekhar government had to first sell twenty tons of gold (on which India had a repurchase option for six months) to raise $400 million in May that year and the successor government had to pledge a further forty-seven tons in July to raise a further $200 million loan. It was a national shame for a culture that treats gold as goddess Lakshmi, to part with family gold for daily necessities. Dr. Manmohan Singh who became the finance minister in the successor government did not have the heart to use words like ‘sell’ or ‘pledge’ when he informed the parliament about the transactions in November 1991. Instead, he said ‘sent abroad’ and ‘export’!

Following the crisis, the Narasimha Rao government initiated a series of steps to redeem the economy. The steps were a radical departure from the pernicious ‘Nehruvian socialism’ and set the nation on a track of progress. Those who do not want to credit the progress to Narasimha Rao, ascribe the economic policy to Manmohan Singh’s genius. Yes, the policy framework could be designed only by an economist with vision but it required Narasimha Rao’s sagacity to give political cover for its implementation. Second, he needed the boldness first to sell the reforms to his own party which considered any departure from Nehru’s policies a sacrilege, and then to the nation. The validity of the argument could be seen when we notice Manmohan Singh could not continue with his reform policy when he himself was the Prime Minister for ten years.

While Narasimha Rao’s economic policies are willy-nilly acknowledged there are two other areas of governance in which he left an indelible stamp on the history of the nation.

The first was defeating the Khalistani movement, which ‘had consumed 21,469 lives before it was comprehensively defeated in 1993’. The principal protagonists of the operation were K. P. S. Gill who as Counter-terrorism Chief of Punjab mercilessly and relentlessly executed it and, Beant Singh, who as Chief Minister of Punjab and Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister gave him political cover. Citing Julio Rebeiro, former Director General of Police, Punjab, Gill has this to say of the genesis of the problem:

“I regard Operation Bluestar and the November 1984 massacres as the two most important victories for the cause of ‘Khalistan’ […] not won by the militants, but inflicted […] upon the nation by its own government […] These two events, in combination, gave a new lease of life to a movement which could easily have been contained in 1984 itself.” (Gill, K.P.S. “Endgame in Punjab 1988-1993”. South Asia Terrorism Portal. Accessible from http://goo.gl/83qUhW

By the by, the political authors of Operation Bluestar and the 1984 Sikh genocide had both received the Bharat Ratna! Gill elaborates why stern counter-terrorism measures were needed to eradicate the scourge:

“The defeat of terrorism in Punjab, and I have said this before, was unambiguously the result of the counter-terrorist measures implemented in the state by the security forces. Moreover, the use of this coercive force was (and is) not just a necessary expedient, but a fundamental obligation and duty of constitutional government, and its neglect inflicts great and avoidable suffering on the innocent and law abiding.” (Ibid.)

Lest anyone had any doubt about the political processes (pursued by the aforesaid political authors of Operation Bluestar and the 1984 Sikh genocide) having achieved the objective of annihilating terrorism in Punjab, Gill clarifies:

“One of the dominant myths that these propagandists have tirelessly, and in some measure successfully, circulated is the idea that terrorism in Punjab was defeated not because, but in spite of the use of armed force against the militants. No evidence is ascribed to shore up this claim, but a variety of nebulous theories—essentially populist and politically correct slogans—are propounded regarding a ‘people’s victory’ or a ‘political solution’ that brought peace to the strife-torn province.” (Ibid.)

Had the political master not had the vision to support the stern measures to put down terrorism with an iron hand we would have had another festering wound in the west in addition to the ones in the north and the east, the existence of which is undoubtedly owing to another Bharat Ratna! Who knows, had Narasimha Rao had another shot at power, he would have had some out of the box ideas to contain them!

Another bold step Narasimha Rao took was in the area of foreign affairs by establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. Although India recognized Israel in September 1950 (a little over two years after its formation), it was not until February 1992 that full diplomatic relations were established. Considering the benefits a bilateral relationship with Israel could provide in the areas of agriculture, defence and counterterrorism, this was inexplicable. The overt reason for India not establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel was that it would displease her Arab neighbours, but the unstated reason was to placate the Muslim vote bank in India. As by the time India established full diplomatic relations with Israel, the Narasimha Rao government was in office for just over eight months, the decision must be said to have been taken very quickly.

Excerpted from ‘Twisting Facts To Suit Theories’ And Other Selections From Voxindica. (2016). Authors Press. New Delhi. pp. 429–434

On the eve of the May 2014 general elections, several Telugu news channels conducted what they call ‘panel discussions’ on astrology. It would be a mistake to expect ‘panel discussions’ on television to be objective in which the two sides of the issues under discussion are debated and rational conclusions arrived at. There is nothing rational or scientific about the debates. The subjects are selected based on their topicality to arouse viewer interest and are subject to two limitations: the channel’s political worldview and the political correctness of the subject. Commercial interests of course, determine a channel’s political worldview. As for political correctness, it depends on whether there would be a backlash. Even the most intrepid champions of freedom of speech tread cautiously in the face of a suspected backlash. If they are sure there would be no backlash, they would go overboard flogging the issue. There is no need to state the converse.

In the discussions on astrology, a couple of ‘not very articulate’ astrologers were pitted against rabble rousing rationalists and asked to predict the outcome of the elections. Despite protestations that Jyothisha predictions should not be made without sufficient data they were made to predict electoral outcomes, only to be jeered at. The anchors saw to it that the odd articulate astrologer did not get enough air time. He was simply shouted down in cacophony.

The overt objection of the rationalists to astrology is that it is unscientific. If the objections were really ‘scientific’, they should have objected to such disciplines as craniometry (measurement of the head), phrenology (measurement of the skull) and nasal indices as predictors of race not to speak of the wholly unscientific Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT)—which was based not on historical or archaeological evidence but on comparative philology!

Their unstated, underlying objection could be that it is a Hindu discipline! The rationalists, with their pathological rather than logical hatred for everything Hindu forget that the original Jyothisha Vedänga concerned itself with astronomy, not astrology. The primary objective of this Vedic addendum (of the Rig and Yajur Vedas) was in the preparation of almanacs. The Indian almanac writers known as Siddhantis have been producing accurate almanacs for hundreds of years. The predictive discipline of astrology was a latter-day offshoot, just as psephology was an offshoot of political science which itself can hardly be described as science. The question that the faux rationalists should seriously introspect is, ‘Why do they unquestioningly believe in psephology while they equally irrationally disbelieve in astrology?’

What logical arguments do the rationalists offer in support of their contention that astrology is unscientific? Do they offer cogent reasoning and verifiable proofs? No, just an arrogant and unsubstantiated assertion that it is ‘impossible’! In the history of science, there are many examples which disprove the theory of ‘impossibility’ when subsequent discoveries upturned confident assertions. For example, in 1800, the English scientist, John Dalton proposed that the atom was the smallest particle of elements and was indestructible.

Eysenck and Nias list several ‘impossibility’ theories which fell flat when subsequent discoveries disproved them.1 In 1933 Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford, two of the world’s greatest physicists declared that “the splitting of an atom could have no practical uses”. Just twelve years later America dropped its bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many countries in the world today harness the energy released by the splitting of an atom for peaceful uses.

Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus, all dismissed the theory that oceanic tides were caused by the moon as “astrological nonsense”. Johannes Muller, a very reputed nineteenth century physiologist and the author of an authoritative monograph on the subject, declared that measuring the speed of a nervous impulse would never be possible. Only three years later Helmholtz had measured it quite accurately.

What is science and what are the criteria that should be satisfied for a discipline to be declared scientific? Eysenck and Nias suggest three methodologies. Sir Francis Bacon’s induction method involves collection of facts and a theory hypothesized based on them. The Vienna School of Logical positivism suggests that a theory is proposed which is then verified or disproved by research. Then there is Sir Karl Popper’s argument that no theory can be finally verified as, even after a theory is verified umpteen times, one more experiment might still disprove it. The catch in this proposition is that Popper believes that “a theory is scientific if it is open, not to being proved true (which it never can) but to being proved wrong”. The authors argue that none of these methodologies were ever applied to astrology before disqualifying it as science.

A generally accepted criterion for a scientific theory is that its results should be replicable, i.e. it should yield predictable results and that the same results should be obtained in repeated experiments. Let us consider the example of modern medicine to validate this theory. Medical magazines regularly publish clinical trial reports of medical, surgical, radiological or other procedures used in the treatment of diseases. The reports very rarely report 100% cure rates with several trials reporting as low as 60-70% success rates. This means the results of curative procedures used in modern medicine are not always replicable. In spite of this anomaly, none disputes that modern medicine is a scientific discipline. “Statistical significance” (rather than absolute conformity) is an accepted criterion for validation of results in “double blind cross over” clinical trials used to study the efficacy of medicines. A majority of rationalists appear to be unaware of such nuances in scientific criteria.

While Eysenck and Nias do not explicitly say that astrology is a scientific discipline, they do not dismiss it as superstition either. They argue that more data is needed to come to a definite conclusion and more research. They cite the work of Michel and Francoise Gauquelin to support their view. Eysenck and Nias describe the Gauquelins as “a rare combination, possessing both a detailed knowledge of astrology and a genuine scientific outlook based on a formal academic training”. The Gauquelins were not astrologers but professional psychologists steeped in the ways of research. Their work in cosmobiology found a positive correlation between certain personality traits (which determine professional success) and planetary positions at the time of birth. Here is a brief account of the work of the Gauquelins that may be instructive:

The Gauquelins began their work by analyzing 576 members of the French Academy of Medicine, “who had achieved academic distinction by virtue of their research”. They found that the doctors were all born when Mars or Saturn had just risen or just passed midheaven. In order to validate the theory, the Gauquelins tried to replicate their experiment with another group of 508 doctors with similar antecedents. The replication conformed to the original observation.

Encouraged and intrigued by the results they extended the research to include other professionals in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Italy and reviewed 25,000 birth dates. When they contrasted 5,100 successful artists with 3,647 successful scientists they found quite interestingly that while the scientists were born when Saturn has just risen or was past midheaven, the artists tended to avoid being born under the planet.

Similarly when they reviewed the birth charts of 3,438 military leaders, in 680 cases (against 590 sufficient for statistical significance) they found that Mars, considered the symbol of the god of war had risen or was past midheaven.

In order to confirm the results the researchers studied control groups selected from the general population and concluded that the planetary positions as mentioned occurred only for the births of the famous and distinguished. The results seem to indicate that these planets are “related to destiny, success and good fortune”.

A corollary to the observations already made was the predictability of certain character traits found in business leaders and successful sportspersons. It was found that those with birth times associated with Mars were seen to have greater determination and iron will. A study that reviewed the birth charts of 2,089 sportspersons, 1,409 actors and 3,647 scientists could predict personality factors like “extravert”, “introvert”, “unstable” and “tough-minded”.

The researchers made quite a few other interesting observations in their studies. It is not possible to include them all here for want of space. However one point deserves to be mentioned. Invariably the results the researches obtained conformed to naturally occurring births and not artificially induced ones. This means that human hand cannot design destiny. It has to be ordained by the Gods!

Eysenck and Nias conclude that “the time has come to state quite unequivocally that a new science is in process of being born.”

It may be apt to remember what Bertrand Russel said on “the value of scepticism”: “When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain.”

[Excerpted from ‘Twisting Facts To Suit Theories’ And Other Selections From Voxindica. (2017). Authors Press New Delhi. pp. 434-439]

If in an open forum, had anyone made any of the following innocuous remarks, chances are they are likely to be contested. (1)Ambedkar was the Chairman of the ‘Drafting Committee’ of the Indian Constitution; there were other members who helped him write it … (2) Ambedkar was the Chairman of the ‘Drafting Committee’ of the Indian Constitution but he alone did not write it … (3)Ambedkar alone did not write the Indian Constitution … The only politically correct statement about the writing of the ‘Indian Constitution’ is, ‘Dr. B. R. Ambedkar wrote the Indian Constitution.’

The fact of the matter, however, is

The Constitution of India was not ‘written’ (as in writing a book) entirely by B. R. Ambedkar as popularly believed, nor was entirely ideated by Jawaharlal Nehru as some seem to believe. It was the collective effort of the best and the brightest minds who comprised the Constituent Assembly (of India), who toiled for about three years between 1946 and 1949. Nehru proposed the ‘Objectives Resolution’ and Ambedkar was the Chairman of the ‘Drafting Committee’. There were originally 389 members in the Constituent Assembly but after partition in 1947, some members who represented the states / areas which were carved out as Pakistan left. The residual Constituent Assembly had 299 members. 

Sir B. N. Rau, a constitutional expert and adviser to the Constituent Assembly, prepared a draft Constitution based on the 1935 Government of India Act and his studies of the British, Irish, Canadian, US and other constitutions. The Constituent Assembly used the draft as the basis for developing the Indian Constitution.    

The Index at the end of “The Makers of Indian Constitution - Myth And Reality” (Chavan, Sesharao. 2000. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan), has a curious entry: plagiarism. The issue of plagiarism was discussed in Chapter 4, “Draft Constitution” (pp. 51-88). The chapter details how Sir B. N. Rau prepared the draft constitution comprising 240 clauses and 13 schedules. Sir B. N. travelled to Great Britain, Ireland, United States of America and Canada to study their Constitutions before preparing his draft. He had discussions with President Harry Truman of the USA, Prime Minister D’ Valere of Ireland and many other constitutional experts. It was his draft that was put before the Constituent Assembly to suggest suitable modifications to the “Draft Constitution”. The Constituent Assembly appointed the following members to the ‘Drafting Committee’ at its sitting on August 29, 1947:

Shri Alladi Kuppuswami Ayyar

Shri N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Dr. K. M. Munshi

Syed Muhammad Sa’adulla

Sir. B. L. Mitter

Shri D. P. Khaitan

The Committee elected Dr. B. R. Ambedkar as its Chairman in its first meeting on August 30. From then on, it met on forty four days till February 13 1948 and the first draft of the Constitution was presented to the President the next day, February 14 1948. The draft was put up for the public to study for eight months. On November 4 1948 it was formally presented to the Constituent Assembly for clause by clause discussion, debate and amendments.

While introducing the Draft Constitution to the Constituent Assembly Ambedkar acknowledged the role of various Committees whose reports formed the basis for drafting articles:

“The Drafting Committee in effect was charged with the duty of preparing a Constitution in accordance with the decision of the Constituent Assembly on the reports made by various committees, appointed by it such as the Union Powers Committee, the Union Constitution Committee, the Provincial Constitution Committee and the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights, Minorities, Tribal Areas etc.”

He then explained the rationale for using Government of India Act of 1935 as the basis:

“It is said that there is nothing new in the Draft Constitution that about half of it has been copied from the Government of India Act of 1935; and that the rest of it has been borrowed from the Constitutions of other countries that very little of it can claim originality.”

There you have it from the horse’s mouth. Ambedkar went on to say:

“One likes to ask whether there can be anything new in a Constitution framed at this hour in the history of the world. More than 100 years have rolled over when the first written Constitution was drafted. It has been followed by many countries reducing their Constitution to writing. What the scope of a Constitution should be has long been settled. Similarly what are the fundamentals of a Constitution are recognized all over the world. Given these facts, all Constitutions in their main provisions must look similar. The only new thing, if there can be any, in a Constitution framed so late in the day are the variations made to remove the faults and to accommodate it to the needs of the country.”

Ambedkar explained that while the Constitutions of other countries were used as the basis, appropriate modifications were made to suit the Indian context:

“The charge of producing a blind copy of the Constitutions of other countries is based, I am sure, on an inadequate study of the Constitution. I have shown what is new in the Draft Constitution and I am sure that those who have studied other Constitutions and who are prepared to consider the matter dispassionately will agree that the Drafting Committee in performing its duty has not been guilty of such blind and slavish imitation as it is represented to be.”

He explained why, in writing the Constitution, it was not necessary ‘to reinvent the wheel all over again’:

“As to the accusation that the Draft Constitution has produced a good part of the provisions of the Government of India Act 1935, I make no apologies. There is nothing to be ashamed of in borrowing. It involves no plagiarism. No body holds any patent rights in the fundamental areas of a Constitution.” 

Labels: Alladi Kuppuswami Ayyar, B. L. Mitter, B. R. Ambedkar, B.N. Rau, D. P. Khaitan, Drafting Committee, Indian Constituent Assembly, K. M. Munshi, Muhammad Sa’adulla, N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar

The Constituent Assembly debated at length on the inclusion of the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the preamble. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee explained why it would not be in the interest of democracy to tie the nation for eternity to concepts which seemed attractive at the time.

The Indian Constituent Assembly comprising 389 of the best and brightest minds worked for three years to produce the longest written Constitution in the world. The wise men of the Constituent Assembly debated the inclusion of the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ at length and decided to leave them out of the Preamble. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Chairman of the Drafting Committee opined that inclusion of these terms in the Preamble would limit the scope of democracy.

Ambedkar felt that the democratic system of governance with its stress on equality for all citizens would ipso facto ensure equal religious rights. He was of the opinion that the inclusion of the word ‘socialist’ would deprive the people of a possibly better system of governance than socialism at a future time. Here was what he had said:

“What should be the policy of the State, how the Society should be organised in its social and economic side are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances. It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself, because that is destroying democracy altogether. If you state in the Constitution that the social organisation of the State shall take a particular form, you are, in my judgement, taking away the liberty of the people to decide what should be the social organisation in which they wish to live. It is perfectly possible today, for the majority people to hold that the socialist organisation of society is better than the capitalist organisation of society. But it would be perfectly possible for thinking people to devise some other form of social organisation which might be better than the socialist organisation of today or of tomorrow. I do not see therefore why the Constitution should tie down the people to live in a particular form and not leave it to the people themselves to decide it for themselves.”(Italics added.)1

It appears Ambedkar was prescient about the possibility of leaders or political parties using Constitution-tinkering as a political tool to usurp power. Here was what he had said in his speech:

“In the first place, the Constitution, as I stated in my opening speech in support of the motion I made before the House, is merely a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the State. It is not a mechanism whereby particular members or particular parties are installed in office.” (Ibid. Italics added.)

The Constituent Assembly thereafter rejected a motion to include the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the Preamble. However, Ambedkar’s prediction about political leaders using amendments to the Constitution as political tools did not have long to wait. In less than eighteen months after the Constitution was adopted on November 26 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the first amendment inserting Article 19 (2) to curtail the fundamental right of freedom of speech. There were other amendments but it was his daughter Indira Gandhi, who made wholesale changes to the Constitution during the 1975-77 Emergency, she imposed on the nation. Her 42nd amendment act included the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the Preamble. Enacted in 1976, the one amendment rewrote more than 50 articles and Schedules! With the entire opposition in jail, she did not have to bother with the nuisance of debate and discussion of the clauses.

Thus, there are three different meanings to the word ‘secular’. The first was the original European connotation in which it meant separation the Church and the State. Then there is the connotation as envisaged by the Constituent Assembly and as defined by Ambedkar, which meant equality of all religions. The third connotation is the political tool, which the Congress party and more specifically Indira Gandhi and her successors put to good use for garnering minority votes. In essence, the use of secularism as a political tool involves appeasing minority vote banks to queer electoral arithmetic for electoral gains. It has different connotations in different political contexts. It has one meaning in Hindu majority states and quite a different meaning in other states where Hindus are in a minority. By the by Indira Gandhi’s famous Constitutional amendment which inserted the words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ in the preamble is yet to be applied in Jammu and Kashmir. The Hindu religious bodies alone are state controlled and their incomes appropriated by state governments. The Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009 enjoins public and private educational institutions to provide free education to students to the extent of 25% of their strength. However, the RTE act is not applicable to educational institutions run by minorities.

Excerpted from ‘TWISTING FACTS TO SUIT THEORIES’ & OTHER SELECTIONS FROM VOXINDICA pp. 126-128

During much of his current term President Donald Trump had to fight accusations that he had had a secret covenant with the Russians, who helped him rig the 2016 presidential election. There were three prime accusations. The first was that a Russian organization, ‘Internet Research Agency’ (IRA), which influences poll outcomes through social media campaigns, was deployed to run down his opponent Hilary Clinton and boost his election. The second was more serious and was about a possible hacking of the computers in the Democratic Party election offices by the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU. Had this been proven it would have turned out to be not just Trump’s own ‘Watergate’ but far worse! The third was about ‘obstruction of justice’.

This article is not about whether or not President Trump was guilty or not of the misdemeanors he was accused of but about their treatment by the American media. The accusations levelled by Trump’s political rivals were orchestrated by internationally visible sections of the American media like ‘CNN,’ ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’. Times’ journalists won two Pulitzer Prizes for the ‘Trump-Russia’ stories!

The US Attorney General William Barr appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the allegations.  The report Mueller submitted in March this year did not find any substantive evidence to prove the allegations. As Byron York observed in his September 10, 2019, ‘Washington Examiner’ opinion piece

‘the conspiracy-coordination allegation the Times had devoted itself to pursuing turned out to be false … The Trump-Russia hole came up dry’!  

The story did not end there. Some of The New York Times’ readers and its own staff were not happy. York wrote ‘many on the Left faulted [The New York Times] for being insufficiently anti-Trump’! At this point, the issue spilled out of the media domain. It is no more about disseminating information or offering comment, however judgmental could it be. It is now more an ethical dilemma, a reflection of the media scene back home in India. Should a media organisation behave like a consumer goods supplier or restaurateur and cater to the tastes of a consumer – assuming a majority of readers the paper caters to are of a certain political leaning – or remain steadfast to an ideal of sticking to the truth? And remain neutral till the issue is settled one way or the other in the appropriate forums? The Times is now caught between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis of its own making.

The paper conducted an internal town-hall meeting for its newsroom staff to assuage ruffled feelings. It was necessitated because of an uproar over a headline about the president’s alleged ‘racism’ and tweets from the paper’s staff. ‘Slate’ published a transcript of the recording of the Times’ town-hall meeting edited and curated by Ashley Feinberg. The Times’ Executive Editor, Dean Baquet and Publisher A. G. Sulzberger addressed the meeting.

A defensive Baquet seemed to find fault with the readers. He suddenly remembered that it was not the duty of the media to run political campaigns, but as an independent media hold administrations accountable! He pointed out the obvious: 

“They [the paper’s critics who want Trump’s head] sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president.”  

What should be worrying in this episode is the apparent political conditioning of the staff. Shouldn’t newspaper employees be trained to be neutral observers and faithful reporters rather than political instruments?

Both York and Feinberg felt that Baquet’s remark that “the story changed” was significant. York wonders whether having spent a lot of time and energy on the ‘Trump-Russia’ story (and failed) the Times would spend the next two years on the “Trump-is-a-racist narrative”?

The ‘The Fourth Estate’ in the headline does not refer to Geoffrey Archer’s eponymous novel but to Edmund Burke’s laudatory reference to the press.1

In Irving Wallace’s brilliant thriller, ‘The Almighty’, the protagonist inherits a newspaper, a fictional rival of ‘The New York Times’. The conditional inheritance stipulates that the paper which was way behind its traditional rival should surpass its circulation for at least one day in the succeeding year. In order to retain ownership, the protagonist recruits a gang of terrorists to stage events and then scoop them as news. He sets himself up as ‘The Almighty’!  

The present media might not go the whole hog to stage terror incidents to scoop stories, but they were, in the past, halfway there. The way they stoked war hysteria for George W. Bush to bomb Iraq in the second gulf war in 2003 to destroy elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was near enough. Are the Times’ and The Washington Post’s anti-Trump campaigns one of a piece with their earlier war campaigns?

The versatile genius of Ādibhaṭla Nārāyaṇa Dās (1864-1945) as an aṣṭāvadhāni, writer, poet, composer, linguist, dancer and actor is well known. He was the creator of the performing art harikatha which is a composite of five distinct arts—purāṇik storytelling; poetry and classical music, pre-written and composed extempore; dancing and acting. He wrote twenty-one harikathas (which he called yakṣagānās); seventeen in Telugu, three in Sanskrit and one in Telugu devoid of Sanskrit terms. The literary component of the harikathas is characterized by rich imagery and idiom. As the yakṣagānās were written to be performed on stage they were imbued with euphony in every line and a piquancy flavour in every passage and verse. In addition to choosing rāgas and tāḷas appropriate to the contexts in which the kṛtis were composed, he experimented with rare and innovative rāgas and tāḷas, and special features like svarākṣara kṛtis and rāga mudras. His aṣṭāvadhāna performances, which he commenced much before he wrote his first literary work, had musical elements. Just as other aṣṭāvadhānis composed verses on demand, he composed kṛtis extempore in specified rāgas and tāḷas and sang them to synchronize with two or four tāḷas.

Nārāyaṇa Dās wrote his first literary work when he just turned twenty. It was Aṃbarīṣa Caritra (1883). The harikatha has been hailed for the beauty of its language, innovative storytelling and the depth of its philosophical insights. From then on for the next sixty years he produced magnificent literature in a variety of genres: prose, poetry, music, drama etc. They included moral stories for children, allegorical poems suffused with deep philosophical insights, philosophical treatises and translations.

There were three distinct phases in Nārāyaṇa Dās’ literary odyssey. The first, 1883–1910, was entirely devoted to writing in Sanskritised Telugu (also known as miśrama-Telugu), the language in which most Telugu literature was and has been written to this day. In the second phase, between 1910 and 1920 he wrote both in Sanskrit and Sanskritised Telugu. The third phase began around 1920, when he set out to compare and contrast the beauties of Shakespeare and Kāḷidās in a monumental study, he titled Nava Rasa Taraṅgiṇi (1922). It was no mean task to vet the entire corpus of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays and one hundred and fifty-four sonnets; select passages in which the nine rasas (moods or sentiments) are portrayed; pick up similar portrayals from Kāḷidās’ plays and kāvyas, and contrast their relative beauties and merits. The different languages in which the esteemed poets wrote presented a difficulty for their comparison. Therefore, Nārāyaṇa Dās decided to translate them both into Telugu for evaluating their relative merits. Here he saw a second difficulty. A thousand poets before him must have translated Sanskrit works into Telugu but none burdened himself with the rule that a translation from Sanskrit to Telugu should not contain either tatsama (equivalent) or tadbhava (derivative) Sanskrit words. There is a variant called acca-Telugu, in which tadbhava words are permitted, but it would not do for him. He therefore chose what he termed as nāṭu-Telugu[1] totally excluding tatsama and tadbhava words for his translations of Shakespeare and Kāḷidās. If he could not find a suitable word to translate a Sanskrit word, he coined it. Similarly, he created a corpus of nāṭu-Telugu technical words for use in Āyurvēda, poetics and music. Nava Rasa Taraṅgiṇi in effect launched the third phase of his literary career. From then on, most of his literary works were in nāṭu-Telugu. There were two exceptions: his musical magnum opus Daśa Vidha Rāga Navati Kusuma Mañjari (1938), and his philosophical magnum opus Jagajjyōti (1939-43).

Though an accomplished litterateur and musician, Nārāyaṇa Dās chose harikatha as his principal vocation for he believed that inculcation of bhakti was the means to attain an exalted level of consciousness and eventually mōkṣa. In almost six decades, in hundreds of performances from Kolkata to Kanyakumari he strove to instill bhakti in the minds of his audiences. Though most of his literature reflects this ideal, two works through which he sought to win the almighty with the intense ardour of his bhakti deserve mention.

In 1908, his fourth elder brother and lifelong mate in his artistic odyssey, Pērayya Śāstry fell seriously ill. His doctors gave up hope. Nārāyaṇa Dās sat by his bedside, composed and recited Mṛtyuñjaya Śiva Śatakaṃ. In it he laid bare his heart and spread it at the feet of “Mṛtyuñjaya Śiva” as it were. In the composition he pleaded, beseeched, wailed and even threatened Mṛtyuñjaya Śiva, the god of laya, to spare the life of his beloved brother. He earnestly wanted his brother to outlive him. His wish was granted and his elder brother not only survived the severe illness but outlived him.

The second work of a similar nature is Talli Vinki, nātu-Telugu versification of Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram. Talli Vinki was his last work written between 1943 and his demise on January 2, 1945. In this work, Nārāyaṇa Dās did not seek a boon for himself but to fulfill the wishes of all his compatriots.

At the beginning of Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Viṣṇu informs Brahma that the trinity, Brahma, Viṣṇu and Mahēśvara create, sustain and retrieve life at the behest of Ādi Parāśakti, the supreme mother goddess. The introduction to Talli Vinki is an erudite elucidation of mother, motherhood and mother goddess Ādi Parāśakti, reflecting what Viṣṇu says in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.[2]

The following discussion is in part summarized from the introduction[3] to Talli Vinki, except where otherwise indicated. Spirituality has been accorded a prime position in Indian philosophical thought. Ancient Indian ethos laid great store by the control of physical senses and abjuring sensual pleasures as a means for the pursuit of mōkṣa. The sages, who transcribed the śṛtis, recognized that though it was an ideal, it was not possible for everyone to achieve. Therefore, in their infinite wisdom they prescribed a three-tiered approach comprising karma, upāsana and jñāna, with jñāna being the ultimate goal of spirituality. Ascendance from one stage to another is contingent on the success or adhikārita achieved in it. The first part karma is for everyone and includes the practice of dharma in the pursuit of artha and kāma.

The second step upāsana requires strong will and self-control. The practitioner (or upāsakaḥ) focuses his entire consciousness on the single deity he intends to internalize, while excluding all other thoughts. He meditates with the appropriate mantra till he experiences an inner ecstasy, an illumination. In effect, the upāsakaḥ ‘experiences’ the deity. In congruence with the meditation, the outward behaviour of the upāsakaḥ should conform to dharma. In order to internalize and experience the deity, the impure body has to be purified not just physically but by excising all impure or adhārmik thoughts. The upāsakaḥ should first understand the ṛṣi, chanda, daiva forms of the mantra. In the initial stages the upāsakaḥ visualizes the deity outside and apart from him but as he ascends the meditative ladder, when he achieves adhikārita, a stage comes when he visualizes that he and the deity are not different. This is the stage at which the upāsakaḥ really internalizes the deity. In the karma phase different practitioners see the same truth differently. In the jñāna phase the differentiation ceases and the practitioner experiences the deity. The upāsana phase bridges the two.

Three states of consciousness are described in the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣat. They are wakefulness, dreaming and dreamless sleep. The fourth, the state of transcendental (or ultimate) consciousness is known as turīya—literally, the fourth state in Sanskrit. It is also described as nirvāṇa. In his Yōga Sūtras, Patañjali̍ described it as samādhi or intense abstract meditation.[4]It is in this state that the upāsakaḥ begins to experience the deity, which eventually leads him to the jñāna phase.

For those who cannot graduate through the three phases, karma, upāsana and jñāna as prescribed by the Vēdas, ancillary works known as smṛtis, (the six vēdāṅgas¸ the one hundred and eight upaniṣats, the eighteen purāṇas, the two itihāsas Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata et al) were written by the sages. In order to enlighten ordinary human beings about the path to achieve jñāna, some knowledge parts of the smṛtis were included in the purāṇas. Thus, Rudrādhyayam was included in Sūtasaṃhita, and Bhagavadgīta, Sanatsujātīyam and Viṣṇusahasranāma Stōtram in Mahābhārata. Similarly, Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram was included in Brahmāṇḍa purāṇa. The absorption of knowledge by ordinary enthusiasts of jñāna however depends on the adhikārita achieved by them.

At the age of eight Hindu boys are initiated into vēdik education beginning with the instruction for intonation of the gāyatri mantra. The instruction is conducted by the father to the son. The objective of intonating gāyatri mantra is to develop mind control. Though gāyatri is Brahmavidya, which amounts to worship of a male deity in nature, it is taught to the boy in the form of worship of the mother goddess. Instruction of gāyatri mantra takes two forms. The gāyatri imparted by the father while initiating the son into vēdik education consists of the twenty-four-syllable mantra which is known as the ‘overt’ gāyatri mantra. There is another form of worship of the mother goddess which is learnt as part of the karma–upāsana–jñāna  progression. In view of the cryptic nature of the worship, it requires initiation by a guru. The ‘cryptic’ gāyatri is also known as Lalitāvidya. Unlike the ‘overt’ gāyatri mentioned earlier which is imparted in boyhood, initiation into Lalitāvidya can be done at any age. Among all learning Lalitāvidya is considered to be the most sacred. Hence it is also known as Śrīvidya. The deity Lalita is symbolized in the Śrīcakra for the worship or upāsana. According to the smṛtis, not only the desire to learn Śrīvidya follows purity of mind during several preceding births but the birth during which Śrīvidya is learnt would be the culmination of the cycle of births:

Caramē janmani yathā śrīvidyōpāsakō bhavēt |

Nāma sāhasra paṭhasca tathā caramajanmani||

The primary text for learning the Śrīvidya is Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram. The Sanskrit word ‘sahasra’ normally means a thousand but in this context, it need not notate a number. Depending upon the strength of his desire and the intensity of his ardour the upāsakaḥ can choose any one of the following five deities for internalizing through intense abstract meditation. They are Aṃbikā (Lakṣmi, Sarasvati), Śiva, Viṣṇu (Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Hayagrīva), Gaṇapati, Sūrya.[5] The ṛṣis of sanātanadharma internalized these deities through their upāsana. Based on their spiritual experiences, they revealed the divine nature of the deities encoded in the stōtras. Among all the stōtras, Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram may be said to be the most sacred. The sahasranāma stōtras of all other deities generally list synonyms of their names, define their general nature and describe their conquests. Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram is different. Every name is an aphorism and has a deep cryptic meaning. In point of fact, the stōtram encodes the entire corpus of knowledge that was revealed in the four Vēdas.

Ādibhaṭla Nārāyaṇa Dās might have commenced his Śrīvidya upāsana quite early in life but he wrote the commentary at a mature age―he turned eighty when he commenced it. He fervently wanted to share the illumination he experienced with his compatriots―in a language they did not know was theirs, but hoped at some time they would, enticed by the lyrical euphony of his translation. Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram is believed to be written by the eight deities known as Vāgdēvis in the Sāmavēda tradition to be chanted in a rhythmic metrical intonation. It would be appropriate for any translation to be written in a similar melodic metrical rhythm. Talli Vinki may be said to be the first poetic translation capable of being chanted in such a rhythmic metrical intonation. The translation is in the dvipada or in the long form mañjarīdvipada metre that lends the text a melodic flavour for chanting. In each verse he defined the name, explained its significance and the benefits it bestows on the upāsakaḥ. In some cases where the cryptic names need instruction of a guru, he merely translated them without further explanation.

Ādibhaṭla Nārāyaṇa Dās finished translation of the work in 1944 and was eager to publish it but could not do so because of scarcity of paper (and many other commodities) caused by the war raging in Europe. In late 1944, he was faced with one of the most critical situations in his life. It was one of those crises, which puts a man’s character to an existential test. In a way the goddess might have given him an opportunity to demonstrate the prowess of his upāsana. His only grandson who just turned twenty-two was afflicted with a very severe form of small pox. Again, as in the case of his elder brother, doctors had no hopes about the young man’s survival. He meditated a whole night chanting Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtram praying the goddess to bless his grandson with life and offering his life as barter. Miraculously the grandson began recuperating from the next day and was completely healthy in nine days. On the tenth day, January 2, 1945 Ādibhaṭla Nārāyaṇa Dās, the sage, shuffled out of his mortal coil.

[1](1967). “Nāṭu Telugu”. Introduction to Sīma Palku Vahi, Nāṭu Telugu–Telugu dictionary In Ādibhaṭṭa Nārāyaṇa Dāsa Vyāsa Pīṭhamu. (1974). Joga Rao, S. V. (Ed.). Eswara Rao, K. (Publisher). Guntur. pp 67-90.

[2]Narayana Das, Adibhatla. (1974). “Mattu” (Introduction). Talli Vinki. Ibid.pp 110-121.

[3]Neelakantha Sastry, Oruganti. (1974).“Toli Paluku” (Introduction).Narayana Das, Adibhatla. Talli Vinki, (1974).Joga Rao, S. V. (Ed.).Dasa Bharati Prachuranalu. Guntur.

[4]Prabhavananda, Swami. 1977. The Spiritual Heritage of India. Sri Ramakrishna Math. Madras.p.15

[5]Over time many other sahasranāma stōtras have been composed and chanted but only the five (including their parenthetical variations mentioned) were ordained by the ṛṣis and may be said to have vēdik imprimatur.

Labels: Ādibhaṭla Nārāyaṇa Dās, Bhāgavata Purāṇaṃ, Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣat, Nātu-Telugu, Śrīlalitāsahasranāma Stōtraṃ, Talli Vinki

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. … The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it [the battle ground], far above our poor power to add or detract. … It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” — Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address”, November 19,1863.

For the masses of India, it was a long-awaited culmination for a hundred-year struggle. It should have been a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” that should have been formed. Instead, what was formed was a government of compromise or a series of compromises for power. As Munshi (1967:48) noted “In 1946-47, the Interim Government, formed at the Centre, of Congress and League representatives, was a ghastly failure.” He adds “[L]ooking back over the years … if the decision had been otherwise, the whole country would have been at the mercy of the Muslim League.” The bloodbath unleashed by the League on the ‘Direct Action Day’ on August 16, 1946, bears testimony to this.  

According to some analysts the INA trials of (Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army) which were held between November 1945 and May 1946 and the [Royal] Indian Naval Mutiny between February 18 and 25 1946 convinced the British that they could no longer hold on to power in India. The British ‘Cabinet Mission’ plan of June 1946 set a target date of June 1948 for what it called the ‘transfer of power’ to the Indian leadership. Appointed to execute the ‘plan’, Lord Mountbatten, however advanced the date to August 1947. His unseemly haste to score a personal achievement led to disastrous consequences, with about two million lives lost.  

As a first step for the ‘transfer’, the British formed an ‘Interim Government’, which was in fact, inclusion of a Cabinet of Indian leaders in the Viceroy’s Executive Council. A group of ministers headed by Jawaharlal Nehru [as Vice President of the Executive Council] was sworn in on September 2, 1946. Jawaharlal Nehru became the Vice President by virtue of his being the President of the Congress party.

The ‘Constituent Assembly’ too was a British creation following the implementation of the ‘Cabinet Mission Plan’. However, the body was not constituted on the principle of universal adult franchise but indirectly elected from the provincial assemblies.

Could a body constituted by the imperial power (which therefore it had the right to abolish it) has the moral authority to draft a ‘Constitution’ for governance of the liberated nation? Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (the Chairman of the Drafting Committee) acknowledged the moral dilemma and the weakness inherent in the Constituent Assembly to write the Constitution. (Deb, 1949: 1644-67)

Turning back to the formation of the ‘Interim Government’, by June 1946, when the ‘Cabinet Mission Plan’ was announced, it was clear that the president of the ‘Indian National Congress’ would be anointed the head of the government. Abul Kalam Azad who was the Congress president did not seek re-election (as he originally intended) but stood down in favour of Jawaharlal Nehru. (Azad, 1960:167). There were two contenders, one was Vallabhbhai Patel and the other J. B. Kriplani, who later became president in the same year. M. K. Gandhi made it clear that the president should be elected unanimously and favoured Jawaharlal Nehru. As he did on several earlier occasions (twice when Subhas Chandra Bose and once when Vallabhbhai Patel were the favoured candidates), he contrived to nullify the election and have ‘his man’ elected! Having headed the ‘Interim Government’, since September 1946, it was but natural for Jawaharlal Nehru to be ‘anointed’ the first prime minister of independent India in August 1947. He thus continued to be the unelected prime minister for another five years till the first general elections were held in 1952.

In the interim, between 1946 and 1952, the unelected ‘Constituent Assembly’ functioned as the parliament and carried out amendments to a ‘Constitution’ it wrote! The Constituent Assembly submitted the Constitution to the president on November 26, 1949 which was adopted on January 26, 1950. The first amendment was enacted on June 18, 1951, i.e., within eighteen months of its adoption! Curiously the very first amendment of the nascent democracy aimed at curbing freedom of speech and stalling judicial scrutiny of legislations.

References

Azad, Abul Kalam. (1960). “India Wins Freedom”. Longmans, Green & Co. London.

Deb, C.A. (Ed.). Constituent Assembly Debates. Vol. IX, 17 September 1949.

Munshi, K. M., (1967). “Pilgrimage to Freedom”. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Bombay.

Those readers who have been following the trail of this blog would remember that it all began with the post “Should We Re–Write Indian History?” The secular, rational, scientific–tempered historians who have been re–writing history would have us believe that the objective for ‘re–writing’ is to present a secular, rational, scientific–tempered (SRST) version of India’s history and not to ‘Twist Facts To Suit Theories’ as alleged by the ever–whining Sanghi Bhaktas. 

In keeping with its avowed principles of SRST, the newly elected government (in 2004) reconstituted the Indian Council of Historical for Research (ICHR) as the ‘Indian Council For Re–Writing Secular, Rational, Scientific–Tempered History’ (ICSRSTH). The ICSRSH has been tasked to re–write India’s history as ‘secular, rational, scientific–tempered history’ (SRSTH). The doyenne of SRST historians, Ruma Li was appointed its chairperson with similarly qualified and distinguished SRSTHs Irf Ha, Aud Tsk and Ran Gu as its members. The chairperson and members will have no fixed tenure but will be in office till the ICSRSTH completes its job of re–writing India’s history and bringing it up to date. Other SRSTHs will be co–opted to write chapters related to specific periods.

It is not that there was no unofficially–officially curated history before, or that these eminences were not associated with history–writing earlier. There was and they were. Like all quasi–government bodies, the ICHR too was autonomous on paper but in actual practice it was the government that called the shots. It appointed its members and controlled its purse strings.

In the short interregnum of six years between 1998 and 2004 a ‘reactionary’ non–left government was in power and it attempted to make some changes in history–writing. The attempts were unsuccessful of course. The ecosystem—fueled by power and pelf—the previous governments planted took deep ideological roots and it would need determined efforts of a massed army to undo their handiwork. All that the short–lived government achieved was a few screaming headlines denouncing its ‘toxic’ efforts to saffronize history–writing and Op–Eds predicting doomsday if the trend was not reversed. A few years after the ‘reactionary’ government returned to power in 2014, its new HRD minister, more secular, rational and scientific-tempered than true-blue secular, rational and scientific-tempered left-illiberal historians, declared that his government did not change so much as a comma in the secular, rational, scientific-tempered history produced and propagated by the ICSRSTH.

As everyone knows, just as the history of the USA began in the eighteenth century, so did India’s history begin in the tenth century. India had no history before then. The Council decided that Ruma Li and Irf Ha would write the history from the beginning till the reign of Shah Jahan. Aud Tsk would write from the reign of Aurangzeb onwards. The historians have the necessary research experience into the history of the periods. Besides they have knowledge of languages like Sanskrit and its allied languages like Prakrit; Avestan and its allied languages like Old and New Persian; Turkish and its dialects like Chagatai. They have acquired intimate knowledge of epigraphy in various languages and dialects; archaeology and architecture to be able to accurately decipher and interpret stone edicts and archaeological relics.

The Council also decided that Ran Gu would write the modern parts of India’s history beginning with Gandhi and Nehru. As Nehru was a talented cricket player—which he played with his English cohorts while studying in Cambridge (which, he lamented was too crowded with plebian Indians)—it was felt Ran Gu’s intimate knowledge of the game would stand him in good stead in interpreting the sporting streak in Nehru’s psyche. Nehru’s classmates in Cambridge recall that he was a sportive player who played the game not for winning but for the game’s sake. When he bowled, he pitched the balls not to hit the stumps but to fall at the feet of the opposing batsmen to enable them to strike them off the field. When he batted, he left the balls that were pitched at his feet alone to enable opposing bowlers to score maidens. By the by, not many know but in the field of horse racing, the word maiden is used to denote a horse that never won a race!   

Ruma Li began at the beginning, when Mohamed Ghazni began distributing hoarded temple wealth to the masses. How did Ghazni distribute hoarded temple wealth if India had no history before the tenth century? Only bigoted Sanghi Bhaktas who lack rationality and scientific–temper (BSBWLRAST) ask such impudent questions. Ghazni found the wealth in the form of forbidden infidel idols made of gold, studded with priceless stones. Each idol was estimated to cost several hundred thousand dinars. He also found wealth estimated at millions of dinars, hidden in temple vaults groaning and begging to be liberated.

Ghazni was a socialist, whose heart bled and bled for the weak and downtrodden. What? The concept of ‘socialism’ did not exist in in the tenth century the way it was since the nineteenth century? You BSBWLRAST! The word might not have been used then but it is the spirit of the noble thought that is to be understood and interpreted by true SRSTHs. As a true patriot, Ghazni took away the wealth to be distributed to the people of his country. He gifted a part of it along with male and female slaves to the Caliphate but it was not because he was a bigot but because of his true allegiance to his religion. The bigoted Sanghi Bhaktas called the male and female laborers conscripted and transported to the Caliphate ‘slaves’ without understanding Ghazni’s noble intention of providing employment to poor unemployed labor. 

The noble, scientific–tempered visionary Ghazni reasoned, quite appropriately, that if the wealth was distributed locally in Hindustan, it would make people lazy and, stunt the progress of the society. With the noble intention of providing employment to masons, sculptors and other artisans Ghazni ordered the Sri Krishna temple in Mathura be doused in naphtha, burnt and razed to the ground. It was estimated that it would take two hundred years to recreate the architectural splendor and sculptural grandeur of the temple. The altruist Ghazni wanted thousands of masons, sculptors and other artisans to be gainfully employed for the next two hundred years! He also understood that any new construction on such scale would uplift the economic mood of the society. Earlier historians missed this noble streak in the character of Ghazni. In order to set right the imbalance Ruma Li devoted a chapter to nuance his character.

Ruma Li meticulously chronicled the good deeds of the subsequent conquerors. There was neither Ganga nor Yamuna before Babur arrived in north India and ipso facto there was of course no Ganga–Yamuna Tehzeeb. First, Babur dug the Ganga and two harems later, his grandson Akbar dug the Yamuna. In between them, they planted the Tehzeeb comprising nazrana, jabrana, shukrana and ‘drink, dance and make merry’.

Labels: Akbar, archaeology, Aurangzeb, Avestan, Babur, Chagatai, epigraphy, Gandhi, Ganga-Yamuna Tehzeeb, Indian Council of Secular, Rational Scientific-Tempered Historical Research, Mathura, Mohamed Ghazni, Nehru, Persian, Sanskrit, Turkish

N. B.: Talvin Baffler, founder of the secular, rational, scientific-tempered futurology, who saw this article when it was first published on VOXINDICA on April 13, 2020, said he was struck by the amazing accuracy of its predictions. He predicted that this would exactly be how Indian history would be taught in the 2030s, the world over.

The projection of Nehru as a visionary statesman was a carefully crafted enterprise and incorporated into it were many orchestrated myths. These include the establishment of institutions of excellence (officially Institutions of National Importance or INIs) like the IITs and IIMs. It is another matter though that by the time the first IIM was established in November 1961 Nehru had a job explaining about blades of grass and barren lands in the parliament and exactly a year before the Chinese ended his misery — of having to explain about blades of grass and barren lands in the parliament! 

Were there no institutions of excellence in ‘India that is Bharat’ (as the Constitution describes it) before the scientific-tempered Nehru waved his magic wand to fill the void? It would not please the secular historians if you said there were. But first let us look at what the scientific-tempered Nehru did to the ‘Ministry of Education’ itself. (The Ministry of Education was renamed as the ‘Ministry of Human Resources Development’ in 1985 but reverted to its old name in 2020). 

A look at the range and sweep of functions that the Ministry handles is mind-boggling. To put it succinctly, it determines what we learn about our past; what we do with our present and how we shape our future. The Ministry has two broad divisions, the ‘Department of School Education and Literacy’ and the ‘Department of Higher Education’. The latter superintends a number of institutions which include the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Central Universities, the IITs the IIMs, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) et al. 

In 2014 Abhishek Manu Singhvi was ‘astonished’ to learn that the newly appointed HRD minister was “not [even] a graduate”. Have you ever wondered about the educational qualifications of India’s first Education Minister, chosen by Nehru to superintend a ministry that was to superintend the institutions of excellence and, research and development in science, engineering, technology, not to speak of humanities and social sciences? 

Nehru’s chosen Education Minister was Maulana Sayyid Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad! That was a mouthful; wasn’t it? He was born in Mecca, but his family relocated to Calcutta in 1890. What were his qualifications for supervising the crucial ministry of education? Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was ‘home-schooled and self-taught’! There need be no objection on that count. A ‘home-schooled and self-taught’ person could turn out to be a genius. But would Nehru have appointed a ‘home-schooled and self-taught’ ‘Shankaracharya’ as India’s education minister? 

Azad’s activities during and after the freedom movement should leave no one in doubt about his inclinations. He inveigled Gandhi and other Congress leaders into supporting the Khilafat movement in faraway Turkey, a movement with which India had nothing to do. It was an ill-advised quid pro quo by the Congress leaders for co-opting influential Muslim leaders into the freedom movement; a quid pro quo the nation would live down to regret. Azad and fellow Khilafat leaders Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan along with others founded the Jamia Millia Islamia in Lucknow in 1920. It was later shifted to Delhi. The Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, the precursor of the Aligarh Muslim University had already been in existence since 1875. In another of those secular anomalies of ‘India that is Bharat’, these two institutions of higher learning, funded by the people of India, cater exclusively to the Muslim community. Azad proposed reserving houses vacated by Muslims displaced during partition for Muslims in India. He was in favour of Muslim personal laws as opposed to a uniform civil code (UCC).

Azad helped Nehru in 1936 in the espousal of socialism as party philosophy in the face of opposition from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Babu Rajendra Prasad and C. Rajagopalachari and in his re-election as Congress president in 1937. In 1946, he resigned as Congress president to make way for Nehru to get elected. All in all, Azad was Nehru’s ‘twin-soul’ and confidante; worth rewarding with a key portfolio. 

Coming back to the institutions of excellence, were the IITs the first institutions of excellence, established by a visionary Nehru as his sycophants would have us believe?  The history of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) does not fit into the Indian Left Illiberals’ fictitious ‘India’s founding fathers’ narrative with Nehru as its over-arching visionary. 

During a voyage from Yokohama to Vancouver in 1893, Swami Vivekananda impressed the philanthropist-businessman Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata with his views on science:

“How wonderful it would be if we could combine the scientific and technological achievements of the West with the asceticism and humanism of India!”

Jamsetji Tata wrote to Swami Vivekananda five years later in 1898 about his idea of establishing an institution to promote research in science and technology and seeking his co-operation for it.  

A committee was constituted to prepare a blueprint for setting up the institution. Tata bequeathed a substantial part of his own wealth for funding it. Sadly, Tata did not live to realize his dream project. He died in 1904. The Queen Regent Vani Vilasa Sannidhana of Mysore (who ruled the princely state on behalf of her minor son Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV) donated 371 acres of land for the institute and the IISc was inaugurated on May 27, 1909. Nehru was all of twenty years when the IISc was born. Ironically, the only linkage Nehru had with the IISc was that he died on the same day in 1964!

And now about the IITs! According to the website of the IIT, Kharagpur (the first IIT), the Honourable Sir Jogendra Singh (member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, Department of Education, Health and Agriculture) set up a committee in 1946 to “consider the setting up of Higher Technical Institutions for post war industrial development in India.” The twenty-two-member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar recommended the setting up of four Higher Technical Institutions in the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern parts of India. They were to be modelled on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thus, was born the first IIT in May 1950 which initially functioned from Calcutta and later shifted to Kharagpur in September 1950. 

The IIT, Kharagpur began functioning in the Hijli detention camp (renamed Hijli Shaheed Bhavan) where many of our great freedom fighters were detained and some sacrificed their lives for the independence of the country. The hallowed history of the camp is marked by the martyrdom of two freedom fighters, Santosh Kumar Mitra and Tarakeswar Sengupta, whom the British shot dead on September 16, 1931. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose came to the camp, to receive the dead bodies of the martyred freedom fighters. 

The most sordid twist in the saga of the Hijli Shaheed Bhavan was that a part of it was converted into the “Nehru Museum of Science and Technology” in 1990. The martyrs were dumped on the wayside of history.

[The first four IITs were established between 1950 and 1959. As the IITs earned worldwide reputation for the quality of their output, their number was increased to fifteen by 2009 and twenty-three by 2016.]

Labels: Abul Kalam Azad, AICTE, Hijli Detention Camp, HRD Ministry (Ministry of Education), IIMs, IISc., IITs, J N Tata, Krishna Raja Wadiyar, MIT, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, NCERT, Nehru, Sir Jogendra Singh, Swami Vivekananda, UGC, UoI Champaign

An earlier version of this article was published on VOXINDICA ON July 07, 2019