Raj Thackeray will dig deeper still

Raj Thackeray is taking Indian politics to new lows.  The attack on an MLS who took an oath in Hindi reveals the degradation of the Thackeray kind of politics.  The BJP MLA, Girish Mahajan, took the oath in English while the Congress MLA, Baba Siddiqui, took the oath in Sanskrit and Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had no problems with that.  So the problem seems to be with Hindi.  Raj Thackeray displayed his hatred of the Hindi-speaking people earlier on many occasions too.  His mentor, Bal Thackeray, whose policies Raj is following with ferocious devotion, had more hatred in his bitter heart.  Bal, in his heydays, attacked Indians belonging to many linguistic groups.

The violence perpetrated by MNS is totally unconstitutional.  Yet will the culprits be punished?  Yes, they have, for the time being, been suspended.  In all probability, the suspension will be revoked when the four MLAs who attacked Abu Azmi will read out an apology which they won’t mean at all.  And Raj Thackeray will go on preaching on national television channels in Marathi to people who don’t understand that language about the greatness of Maharashtra, its language and its people.  Will Raj Thackeray ever go behind the bars for the umpteen crimes that he has already committed?

We have just witnessed the moral erosion that is degrading the BJP govt in Karnataka.  The state’s new govt has bent its knees before the wealth and political clout of the Reddy brothers.

Wealth rules the roost in most places today. 

Raj Thackeray has not reached that depth in his pursuit of depths.  For want of better imagination he is currently stuck at the depth dug by his mentor.  This depth has already won him a lot of political clout in the state.  With clout will come wealth.  And wealth will dig new depths.  Politics and wealth have this amazing capacity to dig deeper and deeper.

When will we have leaders who will lead us to great heights?

India’s War on Maoists

 

One of Charles Dickens’ characters, Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol), when asked to make a donation for the sake of the poor responds acridly that the poor were none of his business and that they should go to the prisons or workhouses.  Despite being a disgruntled curmudgeon, Scrooge did not suggest that the poor should be killed.  He thought that it was the duty of the State to look after them.  Workhouses were the old institutions in England that provided food and shelter to the poor in exchange for labour. 

The government of India is not even as generous as Scrooge.  The Prime Minister has been asserting time and again that the Maoists are “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country”.  The Home Minister has declared a battle on Maoists by fielding 55,000 troops of security forces against the Maoists.  “The centre is committed to fight Naxalism [Maoism],” Mr Chidambaram has declared. “We will provide all possible help to… eradicate the left-wing extremists completely.”

Maoism is a serious problem in India today.  They are using ruthless violence in order to achieve their goals (securing the rights of the poor).  Violence of any form is not justified for rational creatures.  Yet when an extremely violent movement sweeps almost the whole country (Maoism has spread to 18 states in India), one cannot just sit back and utter platitudes about the futility of violence.  Nor should the country merely treat it as a law and order problem and use more violence to suppress the infectious violence. 

“The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the poor,” says a recent BBC report which also says that the paramilitary offensive against the Maoists is likely to begin in October.  Do the poor have no rights in the present world driven by the egotistic greed of capitalism?  Should their clamour for the basic amenities of life be silenced with machine guns and battle tanks?  Should the poor be exterminated from the face of the earth?

India is a country with an enormous number of people (300 million at the least) living in abject poverty.  Their number keeps increasing because their sources of livelihood are being taken away from them.  Their land is taken away by dams, SEZs (Special Economic Zones), industries, or housing schemes for the affluent.  Their traditional jobs cannot be sustained any more.  Other job opportunities are not provided by the government or any other agency.  What should they do?  Commit suicide? 

The Marxist Party (CPM) in India, which was supposed to defend the rights of the poor, has become capitalist all but in name.  In West Bengal the party has joined hands with the industrialists and other capitalist agencies and waged wars against the poor.  In Kerala the party has been corrupted thoroughly by the charms of capitalism.  When there is no one to defend the poor, they will defend themselves.  This is what the Maoists are doing.

But it is a bad defence.  The ruthless violence they have resorted to will not carry them far.  It is an act of despair.  It is a terrified cry for serious help.  It is the roar of the mortally wounded but ferocious animal. 

The government of India may succeed in putting out that cry by killing large numbers of Maoists.  But is that the way to overcome poverty: killing the poor?  Why does the government of India refuse to learn the lessons from the mess its military actions have created in the Northeast?

“When a few people decide to live larger than life, we all get trampled,” wrote Naomi Klein in 2001.  The Colossuses have been taking giant strides creating a system that is not very different from the ancient caste system of India.  The new Shudras are the economically deprived lots.  How long should this new socio-economic system keep the balance tilted before we realise that the tilt of the balance is as unjust as the old caste system that we now repudiate?

In the meanwhile, one hopes that the contemporary (economic) Brahmins will at least acquire the humanism of Ebenezer Scrooge.

 

Other related articles of mine:

From Naxalbari to Lalgarh

Slums in Capitalist Utopia

Needed an Alternative to Capitalism

Imperialism – Made in China

 

The Chinese, it seems, possess an uncanny knack for acquisition not very unlike the Americans.  In the olden days the British Empire conquered other people’s space: the geographical conquest.  In the globalised world the American Empire conquered other people’s wealth: the economic conquest.  China seems to be rivalling both those empires: it is accomplishing both geographical and economic conquests.

China’s economic conquests are already better than America’s in many Asian countries.  The Chinese Filipinos form just about one percent of the Philippines’ population.  But they control 60 percent of the country’s private economy.  The four major airlines, almost all the banks, prominent hotels, and shopping malls belong to the ethnic Chinese.  The industry and commerce are governed by the Chinese at every level of society.  There are millions of Filipinos working for the Chinese in the Philippines, but there are almost no Chinese working for the Filipinos.  Most billionaires in the Philippines are of Chinese origin.

Similar is the situation in Myanmar.  The Chinese dominate the commerce at every level of the society there too, from big hotels to hawking of cheap Chinese bicycle tyres.  Globalisation brought more and more Chinese into Myanmar and they have established themselves securely wherever they entered.  Railways lines, bridges, dams, airports and housing complexes – almost in every area of the infrastructure development, it is the Chinese who control the industry.  The grim fact is that 69 percent of the ethnic Burmese are unable to compete with the 5 percent Chinese.  Three-fourth of the ethnic Burmese people live in extreme poverty while the Chinese in Myanmar enjoy luxurious lifestyles.

Thailand began to open up their economy and borders in the 1970s.  Today, virtually all manufacturing establishments are Chinese controlled.  With the exception of a handful, all the powerful business groups are owned by the Thai Chinese.

The Chinese form 3 percent of the population in Indonesia.  They control 70 percent of the private economy of that country.  All the billionaires in that country in the time of General Suharto were of Chinese origin, except Suharto himself.

In Malaysia the Chinese population has grown to one-third of the country’s population.  The Chinese conquest in Malaysia is both geographical and economic, while in the other countries mentioned above it has largely been economic.

China is renewing its attempts at geographical conquests in India.  Recently China has made a number of aggressive intrusions into India’s territory along the borders in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.  When China cocked a snook at India’s attempts at building up peace in the neighbourhood in 1962, India paid the price for not taking China’s aggressive gestures seriously by losing parts of Ladakh and Arunachal.  And now, again, India is playing down the Chinese aggressions in many parts along the 2000-km Line of Actual Control.  Will India end up letting the Chinese Empire make more geographical conquests?

The Chinese intentions have never been innocuous.  Wherever they have set foot they have made the soil (or the economy) their own.  China has already made two-lane roads that stretch well into Arunachal, India’s territory.  The road that China built in their own territory, running parallel to the McMahon Line, is reinforced with many checkposts, barracks, watchtowers and underground constructions, all of which are meant to be used against India. 

In accordance with the String of Pearls doctrine, China has already encircled India technically by forging military ties with Sri Lanka and persuading the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar to give it surveillance posts.  Moreover, China is making strategic ties with Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It is also well-known that China has links with the militant groups in Assam, Nagaland and Manipur.   In addition to all that is the tri-nation road link between China, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

China also plays certain cheap tricks on India where international trade is concerned.  India and China are the largest drug suppliers to Nigeria.  In June this year, Nigeria detected a large consignment of anti-malaria drugs from China which were of no medical value at all.  But the packets of spurious medicine were all labelled “Made in India”.  China betrayed both Nigeria and India at one go.

Perhaps it’s high time that India took Chinese gestures more seriously.  When the Chinese appear to be cocking a snook, they may actually be rolling out their battle tanks or at least cocking their eyes on our wallets.

Hindi, Patriotism and other such things

 

In connection with the Hindi Week that was observed in an institution last week, a lot of speeches were delivered asserting the greatness of Hindi as a language and its worthiness to be not only the national language of India but also to be studied, if not mastered, by every Indian who loves his country.  “One who does not love Hindi does not deserve to be an Indian,” one of the speakers asserted passionately.  Another speaker, who held the audience spellbound with his rhetoric that eloquently combined passion with personal conviction, sought to project those Indians who do not care to learn Hindi as depraved creatures by comparing them to a person who does not love his mother.

I tried to carry the logic of these orators a little further.  Their logic is that if you love your country you should learn its national language.  What if I love the whole world, not just my country?  That’s what occurred to me while listening to them.  Then, by their very logic, I should learn the lingua franca of the world, instead of confining my linguistic pursuit to my country.  English is the lingua franca of the world and I am comfortable with communicating in that language for most purposes.  Does that make me a non-Indian?

My knowledge of Hindi is very meagre.  I can just manage to communicate meaningfully enough in Hindi (though hilariously sometimes) with those people who do not know English or my mother tongue (Malayalam) but know the language that came to be the national language of India solely by virtue of being spoken by the larger section of the country’s population.  I have no emotional connections with Hindi.  I do not believe a person’s patriotism has anything to do with his knowledge of the official language of his nation, particularly in the Indian context.  If I am a little passionate about English it is merely because it is the language which has given me most of my knowledge and has helped me express myself intelligibly to a larger audience. 

This led me to another question: do I love Malayalam (my mother tongue) as passionately as I love English?  To my surprise, I found it difficult to answer that question.  I’m sure of one thing: I have a soft corner (a sturdy one too) for Kerala (the place where I was born and brought up) and its language.   Though I have lived outside Kerala for more years than inside it, I still make sure that I follow the Malayalam news regularly by subscribing to a Malayalam newspaper and watching the Malayalam news channel.  I also find time to read some Malayalam books, novels especially. 

The time I devote to read Malayalam and to know about developments in Kerala is insignificant compared to what I devote to English and world affairs.  Does this detract from my love for Kerala?  I don’t think so.  According to my thinking, it merely indicates my passion for knowledge about wider things, a passion that takes me beyond the boundaries of states and the nation. 

Similar is the case when Hindi is concerned.  If I did not care to learn it properly, it’s merely because I never felt a need to do so.  If the practical affairs of my life had demanded mastering Hindi I would have mastered it.  If mastering Hindi would bring me any specific advantage I would have mastered it.  Merely because it is the consensus national language it need not (and does not) entice me at all.

One of the speakers (mentioned above) implied that Hindi is the language of the freedom fighters.  I think such rhetoric, while serving well to win the applause from young and impressionable listeners, is libellously insinuating.  It is a serious distortion of the country’s history and much more dangerous than trying to strike off some people’s national identity with their ignorance of the national language.

The divisiveness that underlies the arguments of fanatical advocates of anything (language, religion, race, almost anything at all) is what I find most detestable.

Like every nation India should have a national language and Hindi best fits the bill.  Fine.  Let Hindi be the national language.  Let it be promoted too by the government as best as it can be.  Let as many Indians as possible learn it and use it if they can in their day-to-day life.  (I wonder how a person in a village in South India or Northeast India would ever be able to use Hindi in his day-to-day life.)  But Hindi should not become another cause for fissiparous tendencies in the country.  It should not seek to swallow the hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects spoken in the country.  The multi-dimensional diversity in India is its sheer beauty.  Let that beauty continue to flourish.

BJP in Transition

 

The crisis that the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] is undergoing is an indicator of the long overdue need for the Party to change its political vision and ideology both of which are rooted more in hatred than any meaningful positive value.  In the last few years whenever and wherever the Party had some significant power it used that power to wreak a lot of havoc on some of the minority communities in the country rather than use it for the welfare of at least some sections of the society, at least the section for whose interests the Party exists.  What it means in the final analysis is that the Party was merely trying to get power or retain it by whipping up communal feelings.  There is no survival for such parties anymore in India. 

India has tasted the rewards of capitalist outlooks. The country has moved far ahead from the days of the “Hindu rate of economic growth” to a flourishing capitalist rate.  There is only one thing that capitalist outlooks understand: wealth.  Capitalists are interested in gods only insofar as gods will rake in more profits.  Their interest in culture or nationalism is also circumscribed by the same motive.  Ratan Tata moved into Narendra Modi’s Gujarat from Mamata Didi’s West Bengal not for the sake of Hindutva but for the sake of an environment that is conducive to his commercial enterprise. 

It is high time that the BJP realised this plain truth.  The age of gods and goddesses is gone.  Wealth is the new god/goddess.  L K Advani’s somersaults between hardcore Hindutva and opportunistic secularism (as when he lavished praises on Jinnah during his Pakistan visit) cannot hoodwink a population whose eyes are fixed on material progress.  Mr Jaswant Singh praised Jinnah and went on to assert that it was time for the Party [BJP] to change its attitudes.  That makes him different from Mr Advani.  Mr Singh is saying that BJP’s vision has become outdated.  And he is right.

But Arun Shourie is determined to drag the Party back by a century or so, it seems.  He is asking the RSS to take hold of the reigns.  The RSS is a retrograde organisation with revanchist attitudes.  At a time when millions of Indians have settled down in peace and prosperity in countries all over the world and all of which are non-Hindu, the RSS is thinking of forging a nation in India exclusively for Hindus.  How can such an organisation lead a political party to any kind of success in a democratic country that is relishing the successes of capitalism?

It is time for the BJP to melt all its antiquated vision and policies in a cauldron and give shape to a new vision and new policies relevant for the twenty-first century.  India is ready for that new vision.

India: a Nation of Plutocrats

 

India is all geared up to celebrate its 63^rd Independence Day amid fears of terrorist attacks.  Terrorism, however, is not the sole threat that India faces today.  A greater threat is posed from within: the threat of plutocracy.

Presenting the Constitution of the country on Jan 26 1950 Dr Ambedkar expressed a hope and a fear.  He hoped that India would achieve political equality soon but feared that economic and social inequalities would prevail for long.  All the progress and development that the country has registered so far is mocked by the large number of people living below the poverty line and an even larger number of people who cannot read and write.  The much vaunted economic growth that India has achieve has not yet translated as dignified living conditions for millions of people. 

The last Lok Sabha (Parliament) elections may throw some light on why such a deplorable condition exists in the country.  Criminals and plutocrats have got themselves elected to the Parliament with the help of their muscle power and money power.

150 of the new MPs (Members of Parliament) have criminal charges against them, 73 of them facing serious charges.  The BJP has sent 42 criminals as MPs to the Parliament, 17 of whom face serious charges.  The Congress has 41 criminals out of whom 12 face serious charges.

The National Election Watch (NEW) made a detailed study of the economic background of the MPs and discovered that 300 out of the 533 MPs are crorepatis (assets amounting to Rs 10 million).  This is in spite of the fact that many MPs have not disclosed their entire assets.  The contrast between the wealth of our ‘rulers’ and the 250 million who subsist on the bare minimum is too obvious to merit mention.

138 Congress MPs (two-thirds of the total), 58 BJP MPs (half of the total) and 14 out of the 22 Samajwati MPs are crorepatis.  BSP has 13 and DMK has 11 crorepatis.  The number of crorepatis in the Lok Sabha has almost doubled from 154 in 2004.  Politics seems to be an economically lucrative enterprise in India.

The statistics of certain individual MPs would make us believe that politics is the best commercial enterprise today.  In 2004 the total assets of the BSP MP Muhamed Tahir was Rs 116,697.  In 2009 it rose to Rs 10,779,346: an increase of 9137%.  Which other industry makes such profits?  Or take the example of another MP: C H Vijaya Shankar (BJP, Karnataka) – his assets rose from Rs 263,999 in 2004 to Rs 17,493,189 in 2009 (6526% growth).

According to a research conducted by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), about Rs 10,000 crore ($2billion) is spent on the month-long Lok Sabha elections in India.  Out of this only Rs 2000 crore is the amount spent by the government agencies for conducting the elections.  The rest is spent by the political parties and their candidates.  CMS estimates that about Rs 2500 crore is spent on the eve of the Election for ‘buying’ votes using various foul methods. 

The political parties spend more on canvassing and campaigns than the country spends on development schemes for the poor.  High Flying Aviation has disclosed that all of their helicopters and jet planes are hired by political parties during the campaign period at rates varying from Rs 75,000 to Rs 150,000 per hour.   BBC claims that Congress paid $200,000 to T-Series for the use of the song ‘Jai Ho’ in their campaign.  The BJP hired the services of the vast chain of FM radios all over the country.

Have the elections in India become an affair in which wealth and thuggery play a greater role than the opinion of the voters?  Has politics in India become a commercial activity for our leaders?  Are these the reasons why the poor remain poor while the rich get richer?

Identity and Religious Conversion

“We did not convert because we are poor. If I am poor but accepted by my community, there is no [social] terror in that poverty…. We did not convert for money. We converted because of the society that saw us as lesser, not worthy. We were ‘lower caste’, ‘untouchable’, ‘lowly’. Now we are Christian. Our god wants us. We can walk into his temple. We are worthy. You understand?” [Spoken by a Dalit convert in Orissa. Quoted in Violent Gods by Angana P. Chatterji, Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon, 2009]
The driving force behind religious conversions is, more often than not, a desire to live a “worthy” life, to have an identity that one can be proud of. The caste system being practised even today in Hinduism, despite all governmental efforts to eradicate it, is a major cause of religious conversions in India. Poverty and attendant exploitation is also another cause. But it appears that poverty and exploitation are intertwined with the caste system.
The caste system in India was seen by Dr Ambedkar, principal author of India’s Constitution, as the country’s greatest evil since it treated millions of people as subhuman by the simple fact of their birth. The man who tried his best to replace the discriminatory caste system with an egalitarian society, the Buddha, ended up as yet another god among the millions of deities in India. His teachings were suppressed by the Brahmins who feared that their stranglehold on society would be undermined.
Orissa is a state in India which witnessed much terrible violence in the name of religion and religious conversions. The violence still continues.
The Sangh Parivar organisations are opposed to the alleged mass conversions into Christianity of Oriya adivasis (tribal people) and others belonging to the lower castes. Many acts of outrageous violence have been perpetrated on the Christians and thousands of them are displaced from their hometowns. The Hindutva organisations allege that Christian missionaries allure the poor people with money and other enticements. How much water does the allegation hold?
Angana P. Chatterji, from whose book the introductory quote has been taken, has done a commendable job researching into the violence in Orissa. According to her, the adivasis and other lower caste people of Orissa seldom considered themselves Hindus. In her words, “The Paika Bidroha of 1817-1825, the Kol insurrection of 1831-1832, the Kanika agitation of 1921-1922, the Praja Mandal (peasant) Movement of the 1930s and 1940s speak powerfully of Adivasi and subaltern refusal to submit to cultural colonialism and Brahminical imposition” (199). Even in the 1990s there were conflicts between the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati (who claimed to be working for the welfare of the adivasis and the lower caste people of Orissa). For example, the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati opposed the adivasis when they fought for indigenous child rights (359). These Hindutva leaders did not want the adivasis to be organised. They opposed the adivasi struggle for Kuidina (a state for themselves). They tried to suppress the Kandhamal Nari Jagaran Samiti and the Kuidina Ekta Samiti. “They (the RSS and Lakshmanananda Saraswati) are dangerous people,” Chatterji quote some Kui people. “They want to kill our people like animals. They do not understand religious differences. They do not understand our connection to our land. We are neither Christians nor Hindus. We are Adivasi. We worship the Earth. There are Christian Kui’s. The Mission [church] never forced us to convert. Not in Kandhamal, before or after 1947…” (359)
Chatterji exposes the myth that the adivasis considered or were eager to consider themselves Hindus. In May 2006, at a convention attended by about 50,000 adivasis, the Bisu Sendra Tribal Council, which serves the tribal communities in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa, determined to ban Hindu customs and rituals, representations and priests from Adivasi spiritual and religious ceremonies (96).
Not different is the case with the lower caste people. Caste oppression has been a bone of contention for long in Orissa as in other parts of India. In Orissa, says Chatterji, “Dalit students and teachers have been denied employment and entry into schools and community events, and Dalit community members have been assaulted for participating in Hindu religious ceremonies” (69). Chatterji lists a number of incidents to show the disaffection between the people belonging to the higher and lower castes. Such incidents led to the conversion into Buddhism of about 3000 Dalits in Dec 2006.
Poverty
Poverty also plays its role in this complex issue. Orissa is one of the most backward states in India. In the words of Ramachandra Guha, “In 1999 Orissa overtook – if that is the word – Bihar as India’s poorest state” [India After Gandhi, Picador India, 2007, p.707]. The adivasis and the lower caste people were exploited economically in the attempts to set up various industries. The Utkal Alumina, which brought together Canadian and Norwegian firms with the Aditya Birla Group, led to the displacement of many adivasis from their land. 3000 acres of land cultivated by the adivasis was taken over by the Biju Janata Dal government and given to the industrialists. The same government also acquired land in Kalinganagar at much less than the market rate and handed it over to Tata Steel to build a factory processing iron ore for the Chinese market.
Apart from the capitalist industrialists are other exploiters such as the money-lenders who stand to benefit much by keeping the adivasis and the low caste people poor. All these exploitations have made Orissa a hotbed of Maoists. Christian missionaries also creep in with the intention of helping the poor and the downtrodden.
Solution
The solution seems to lie in two factors:
1. Put an end to the discriminatory caste system. This would engender a sense of respectability among the adivasis and the lower castes. Then there would be no need for religious conversion as a means of attaining respectability.
2. Give economic independence to the adivasis and the lower castes. This would put an end to the Maoist violence as well as the charm held out by poverty to Christian missionaries.