English. Indianised!

For a people blessed with over a thousand tongues, fascination with languages is nothing if not understandable. Even a couple of millennia ago, a man (or a woman) with a polished tongue was held in high esteem. Poets who could compose dreams in words were revered and among the graces which were sought from the Gods, was vak (power of speech). Few cultures other than India would have had instances were rules of grammar were codified and universally accepted. The Indian’s urge to ‘perfect’ the word was so strong that the language itself was called ‘polished’ (Sanskrit).  

Yet, like any other aspect of life, too much of a good thing may not really be good. Blessed with intellect, but made arrogant by belief in their achievement, for many - mastery over the word became the yardstick for knowledge. It mattered little if this mastery resulted in anything productive or worthwhile; if a snatak could utter perfectly formed words, in the perfect meter, woven together in a flowery tapestry, other mere mortals were supposed to shake their heads in amazement and utter - Ah. Me! 

History records that the East India Company offered to set up colleges offering Sanskrit and Arabic languages to the Hindus and Muslims respectively. However, the Bengali Hindus, petitioned that there were already numerous native institutions to take care of the Sanskrit language. What Hindus needed was a modern educational institution which would open them to modern sciences and the English language.  

200 years have passed since then. Today, India boasts of among the largest English speaking populations in the world. Not only is English an official language of governance; culturally, it is the prime language of India. If this seems outrageous, let’s just look around. Signages, hoardings, IT systems are all in English. Somehow it is a given that each Indian possesses or should possess knowledge of English to move around, if not ahead. 

Many nationalists are astounded that despite a robust freedom struggle, Indians have refused to reject English in favour of native languages. Yet, it is hardly surprising when one considers that for over 800 years, Indians have preferred foreign languages over their own. Not very long back, the test of a person’s education was his knowledge of Persian – Haath kangan ko aarsi kya, padhe likhe ko Farsi kya? Not only did Indians embrace Arabic and Persian, many till date consider these languages more sophisticated and polished than ‘crass’ Indian tongues. A case in point would be the contrived truism of Urdu being the most mellifluous of languages. Quite interestingly, while Indians (particularly of the secular variety) consider Hindi peppered with Turko-Arabic-Persian loanwords to be a better (and secular) language compared to Hindi proper, Greeks consider Turko-Arabic loanwords as uncouth and uncivilized. The reason is very simple – while Islamic rule managed to inflict a fatal blow to the Indian’s sense of accomplishment, the Greeks, despite being under the Ottoman rule for centuries, treated the Turks as barbarians and their civilization, worthy only of contempt. 

No wonder that the Indian’s historical predilection of foreign languages, coupled with a Macaulayed education system and supplemented by a British system of governance, has resulted in English being the de facto National Language of India. 

Nothing would prove the argument on primary of English better than the “Sanskritisation’ of English. By the virtue of its rules, each Sanskrit word has to be used and pronounced in a particular way(s).  While when compared to Sanskrit, English does not have much of rules, the Indian elites have ensured that only the Queen’s English, spoken with the oh-so-propah accent is seen as English. So, while other English speaking Nations manage beautifully well with their local variants of the language, Indians find ‘Indianisms’ a matter of ridicule. If English is indeed an Indian language, as many votaries of English claim, what is wrong in Indianising English? A language can enrich itself only through cultural interfaces. Even Sanskrit has been influenced by Dravidian and Austroasiatic languages, so why so much of resistance to letting Indians speak English the way they are comfortable with? Will not a working knowledge of the language suffice, like it does for vast sections of the world? Or does the Indian elite expect each English-speaking Indian to produce a literary tome worthy of a Nobel? Funny, when you consider that in the last 100 years, none of such Indians have managed to even come close to winning recognition for their language skills. 

The fact of the matter, as the Dalit activist, Chandrabhan Prasad said –English is the new caste system. Those who know English are the new dvija (twice-born); those ignorant are the Shudra and ati-shudra. And since all the twice-born cannot be equal, the institution of study, the accent, usage of words not commonly used in general conversations, become those filters which define the caste hierarchy further. It would be ironical to all others but these elites that while intermixing of native language loanwords in English communication would be considered a sign of ill-education, a person conversing in pristine Hindi would also be considered un-sophisticated, if not uneducated. When the forced controversy over Ved Pratap Vaidik’s meeting with Hafeez Saeed cropped up, a striking feature of the commentaries were the ridicule heaped on Vaidik being a vernacular journalist!  

The moot question is – are Indians falling in the trap of language worship yet again? Pray, what benefit would the Nation accrue if all the Indians start conversing only in the dialect preferred by the Queen of Buckingham palace? Will the Nation not be served better, if these energies are diverted towards achieving excellence in vocational skills or simply improving product/service quality?

China is Goliath but is India David?

Once the Indian leadership realised that the Chinese were indeed ‘teaching them a lesson’, Jawaharlal approached the Formosa (now Taiwan) leadership with an offer which he felt they could not refuse. A Indian recognition of Formasa as the ‘real China’ followed by an International campaign to back this recognition to the hilt. Formosa expressed thanks and regretted the ‘inconvenience’ which Indians had been put at by the Red Army. It added, however, that if Indian support was in expectation of Formosa’s support in the border fracas, it was bound to be disappointed. The Nationalist Government, which saw itself as the legitimate ruler of China, considered the core middle kingdom and adjoining provinces of Mongolia, Manchuria, Sinkiang, Formosa and Tibet as Chinese lands and hence there was no question of supporting any alien Nation which undermined, in their views, territorial integrity of the Chinese Nation.

Such is National consensus on territorial integrity among the Han that Taiwan has till date not relinquished Chinese claims over Mongolia. While the People’s Republic of China has recognised Mongolia as an independent Nation, it was under severe duress, when China was but a shadow of its powers. Nothing stops China from renewing its claim and annexing Mongolia once Taiwan reintegrates with the mainland. If single-minded obsession with territorial integrity were the benchmark for National pride, then the Han Chinese are definitely the most proud of all nationalities inhabiting the Earth. Just take the example of Tibet. A vast land of a pacifist couple of million trampled and contained by a bellicose bully which is 1200 million strong. Little chance that Tibetans can regain their autonomy or at least the way they would have wanted. Yet, China ensures that most Nations do not play host or their leaders do not grant any audience to the Dalai Lama. Any transgression of this code is met with demarches and diplomatic sanctions. One may wonder – what harm will the powerful middle kingdom suffer if some leader does meet the Dalai Lama? After all, there is neither any organised resistance movement against the Chinese rule nor does the Lama seek independence. And even if there were such a movement, what chance would it have to succeed against a mighty, determined Nation? Still, rather than taking any chance and ignore any activity which might fan separatist fires, China prefers to err on the side of caution and punishes the transgressors of its territorial integrity in the harshest possible ways.

What is the lesson for India?

For one – India is not China. It never was, and it never will be. For all those self-deluded individuals/organisations which hyphenate India with China or talk of inanities such as Chindia, if nothing else, the recent visit of the Chinese President should be enough to serve as a wake-up call. A salivating gentry was waiting with breathless expectations on what ‘gifts’ would China come bearing – a USD 100 Billion FDI, technology for high-speed trains, support for a permanent seat on UN security council, a border settlement! Is it a relationship of equals or even near-equals when one of them is so clearly the seeker?

Two – Indians do not value territorial integrity inspite of having suffered invasion after invasion in the last two millennium. We have had but one Chanakya who understood the need for securing our frontiers. After that, it was only the invaders – the Khiljis, the Mughals and later the British, who realised that a Nation vulnerable at its edges cannot ever be in peace. The British in particular, whatever their end objectives be, ensured that India was at its widest and most secure from foreign invasions in a long long time. But, after independence, the naïve Indian leadership, in constant affirmation of their ‘statesman’ image, goaded by the ‘peace-at-any-cost’ brigade, has somehow confused ceding of land with diplomacy. In each of its encounters with its neighbours, from Sri Lanka to Maldives, from Myanmar to Bangladesh, from China to Bhutan and of course Pakistan, we have ceded land, either voluntarily or under force. Today, we are a witness to China shrinking our frontiers through the very Chinese method of ‘creeping acquisition’ – slowly claim land pasture by pasture, prevent Indian activity in what was hitherto undisputed Indian land, deepen ingress into Indian territories so that more and more of the frontiers become ‘disputed’ and consequently, a non-go area for the India army.

In the last few decades, each time a Chinese dignitary visits, we have had border transgressions, each more serious than the other. But, so thick is the skin of Indian establishment that an ex-diplomat, who runs an influential blog on foreign policy, blamed the Indians for ‘provoking’ the Chinese. More seriously, a sort of consensus is developing that any border settlement with China should be maintenance of status quo, i.e., India retaining Arunachal Pradesh and ceding Askai Chin and the trans-Karakoram area to China. Such thoughts are fraught with immense dangers for our Nation on account of multiple reasons. One - unlike India, China takes a long term view of its territories and any piece of land, which was ever under the Chinese, is seen as being part of their Nation forever. Hence, an abdication of Chinese claims over Arunachal does in no way prevent future Chinese from staking claim. This becomes even more likely when one considers the stance of Taiwan over Mongolia. Two, Indian claim over Askai Chin is historically more valid and legally more tenable than compared to its claim on Arunachal, or at least large parts of it. The lands of Arunachal were ceded by Tibet to British under the Shimla agreement. This settlement was never accepted by the Chinese for they refused to recognise Tibet’s right to negotiate as a sovereign Nation. On the same lines, India has always recognised China’s sovereignty over  Tibet with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in his characteristic search of validation, gratuitously recognised Tibet Autonomous Region as an integral part of China. Now, if Tibet was never a sovereign Nation, how can its act of ceding lands to India be considered valid ? On the other hand, the lands of Askai Chin were overrun by Dogra armies and administered by kings of Jammu & Kashmir and hence are more validly ours. Third, what will India gain other than tenuous peace at the cost of sacrifice of land? Is this lasting sacrifice for at best, a temporary reprieve, worth it?

The callousness of us Indians can be gauged from the mere fact that an official memorandum between Government of Gujarat and China contained a map which showed Askai Chin and Arunachal as disputed. Nothing highlights our selfishness better than the constant refrain of industrialists that increasing trade will force China to mellow down. The reality is that this trade is skewed heavily in favour of China and its imbalance has only magnified in the last few years. If anyone has to feel the pinch of an interruption in trade, it is the Chinese as they will lose a vast market for this finished goods. Yet, all the economic logic has not prevented China from strengthening its claim to what it feels are its core National interests. Indians on the contrary, ever so happy to save money, are aghast at the mere prospect of a stoppage of cheap Chinese goods from flooding our markets.

Given our vacuousness, the stance taken by Narendra Modi, while not substantial, is a welcome improvement from the vapid conduct of the previous NDA and UPA governments. Even as our home minister parroted the shameful UPA line that Chinese transgressions are but a result of different perceptions of border (wonder why India does not transgress, if this be the case), the Government allowed Tibetan refugees to demonstrate against the visiting dignitary and made pointed references to the border dispute. Yet, the same Government succumbed to Chinese pressure and withdrew from Chumar. In a case of callous oversight, India yet again recognised Chinese sovereignty over Tibet in the MoU signed on the new route to Kailash Manasarovar.

While the very nature of our people ensures that India can never be China, we need to be wary of this forceful Nation which has defeated us in both the armed encounters we have had with them (eighth and twentieth centuries). At the same time, Indians need to appreciate those qualities which have ensured that except for small intervals, China has stood like a colossus in the community of Nations. Developing a sense of territorial integrity and National pride would be a good beginning.

We! Or Our Victimhood Defined

I watched the movie ‘Finding Fanny’ last week. Needless to say, I was appalled that a movie based on a group of Goan Christians did not have a single Goan or a Christian in it’s lead cast. Leave aside other characters; even the blink-and-you-miss role of the padre was played by a Hindu actor! What sort of discrimination does our film industry practice that it had to pad up a Gujarati married to a Punjabi to play the lead role? Is Goa so devoid of Christian women with large derrieres that it had to resort to such blatant racism?

Sadly, the story of Bolloywood’s (Indian film Industry, if you like) insensitivity does not end here. We had a Muslim playing the role of Flying Sikh, Milkha Singh, even though, in real life, Milkha’s parents had been mowed down by marauding Muslim mobs. In hardly any movie involving a tawaif, a real life tawaif has played the lead role. Leading actors have played the roles of alternately abled, i.e., lame, deaf, dumb, blind, deranged et al. Does India lack people with disabilities that actors had to be painted and dented to play such roles? We still laugh at Mehmood’s antics in Padosan. Surely, Bollywood had accomplished classical singers from the Southern parts of India, who could have played the role with panache?

But No! A Kamalahasan playing a dwarf in Appu Raja, a Nimal Pandey playing a cross dresser in Daayra or a Manisha Koirala playing a terrorist from the North Eastern India are simply symptomatic of the inherent prejudices of us, the ugly Indians. In an egalitarian India, we would not have the need of people ‘acting’ to assume some other persona. Only those who are representative of the character will get the just chance to play the said role. So, Shahrukh fans; eat your hearts out. The only movie where you should see Shahrukh next is where he plays a third generation émigré from the North-West Frontier Province!

Outrageous?

Madness? Xenophobia? Rant of some ignoramus who does not understand ‘art’?

Maybe! Or maybe not!

I am only articulating what the collective angst of all those who felt outraged at Priyanka Chopra playing Mary Kom, gets replicated on a larger scale.

In the last few weeks, words of outrage on the above ‘abomination’ have spewed forth in many publications, including longish columns in the ‘Open Mag’, the youngest pretender to the ‘liberal’ space of India. The root of anguish is the perceived discrimination against people from the North-Eastern States in mainland India. That the movie was shot in Manali rather than in Manipur was condemned. The snarling face of Priyanka, as she launched a punch, was declared to be an attempt to appear ‘chinki’. After all, does not snarling result in one squinting the eyes, baring the teeth and stretching of flesh over the cheekbones?

So, the fact that the movie ‘Mary Kom’ could not be shot at Manipur on account of a ban by terrorist groups to fight ‘Hindi colonialism’ is the fault of Hindi speaking people. That a commercial movie director decided to place his bets on a known star rather than risk money on an unknown face from the North East only a manifestation of his racial prejudices. And no, an actor should not play roles other than those defined by his ethnicity/gender/social strata as any attempt to do so is insulting to the collective psyche of those people who he chooses to enact.

Sadly, over the last few years, our shrill self-proclaimed ‘liberal’ brigade has succeeded quite a lot in dulling our powers of cognition. In the world getting created through this shrill discourse, there are only two categories – the oppressed and the oppressor. And; the identity of both these categories gets defined at birth. Hence, the murder of Nido Tania was a blatant case of racism simply because he belonged to the North east. And no, the fact that he vandalized the restaurant after getting teased on his hairstyle was immaterial in provoking the murderers. That Delhi is a city, where murders get committed for as paltry issues as giving way on road, a loan of INR 20 or a place in the queue for filling up water. But no; that 5 autos bypass a North Easterner without picking her up is racism and not the boorishness of the autowallah, which extends to even the most Punjabi like Punjabi of Delhi.

Very soon, we are likely to have another law which with ‘prohibit’ racism against the North Easterners. What exactly will it achieve? That autowallahs who do not pick them up will be locked up, or that people who tease them will be prosecuted?

What is certain is that a person accused of committing a crime against someone from the North East will be tried under 3 different sections of law for the same crime – one on the general provision, another on the SC/ST Act and lastly, on the new law. If it sounds ridiculous, it is, because it is.

Over the last few years, accelerated in the recent past, we now have a surfeit of laws, and more sadly, a social consciousness, that defines identity as the basis of victimhood.

Almost all woman-centric laws, including the recent changes to rape-related laws are draconian in the sense that the burden of proof of innocence shifts to the accused. While the overall intent might still be noble, such laws and others like the ‘promotion of communal violence bill’ ultimately cleave the society for they link the crime to identity. In such a discourse, a poor man cannot be a criminal for his crime will be seen to be dictated by his poverty. A riot will always have the Hindu as a rioter even if the killed and maimed are all Hindus.

Worse. Such social consensus will absolve the so-identified 'oppressed' from making any effort to play by the rules of any civil society. While a certain degree of discrimination against people from the North East might be real, can it in any way be said to be as serious as what the so-called mainland Indians experience in many North Eastern States? If being called Mayangs, being extorted, being put under targeted curfew, being deprived of numerous benefits and debarred from places/social gatherings/open celebrations is not racism, then what is? How many of those condemning racism in North India also realise that the reality is more complex? A one-sided condemnation will ultimately lead to tacit and then explicit validation of even the most serious types of discrimination which the 'discriminated' and the 'oppressed' practice. After all, what remains if the moral centre of a people remains moral no longer?

Muslims form a larger proportion of undertrials in the country as compared to their population? But are not more people from the community involved in crimes and terrorism related activities as compared to others? If proportion was to be a criterion, India will have to open up many more jails for women for inspite of being some 49% of the population, they do not comprise even 3% of the undertrials!

Much is made of the fact that North Indians call all people from TN, Kerala, AP and Karnataka as Madrasis? Is it ignorance or racism? A few days back, a youngster from Punjab, when getting to know that I am from Orissa, asked if Orissa is ‘in’ Andhra! Racism or ignorance? On my B-School campus, mates from Southern parts of the country, on seeing me eating rice would exclaim – do North Indians also eat rice? Racism or ignorance? Having stayed in Bangalore, Chennai and Kochi, have experienced enough incidents of auto/taxi drivers trying to charge higher fare, shopowners trying to cheat, co-passengers being nasty (alongwith of course a much larger number of very positive experiences). Do I call that racism, ignorance, indifference or a general human tendency?

Not many years ago, our founding fathers (even the anglophile Nehru) understood that the only way the disparate people of India would forge a common identity would be through celebration of the strings of unity which runs through our diverse communities. Today, we are regressing to a tribal culture where our birth defines the people we are, our rights, our grouses and even more ominously, whether we would be considered as an oppressor or not? A reprehensible caste system is getting created where those who are perpetually offended can commit murder and get away with it. Perhaps, it is because claiming victimhood is easy. Why should I make an effort to get out of my cesspool if I can blame my plight on the ‘other’ and be sympathized with and get helped much?

One ever lasting contribution which the ‘liberals’ have certainly made to the modern society is to provide a surfeit of labels. That you don’t want to label yourself is immaterial as probably that defiance will earn you some other label. Individual efforts count for little and the shackles imposed by these labels will prove stronger than what the erstwhile varnashram dharma could impose on you.

Drums all around! “Four legs good, two legs bad.” Or wait! Is it Two legs good, four legs bad!?

A 'secular' attack on the Kashmiri

July 25, 2014. Local inhabitants attack the Kheer Bhavani temple, Tulmula, Kashmir. They damage its gates by heavy stone pelting and threaten the pilgrims inside the temple, all the while raising pro-Pakistan and anti-India slogans. Coverage of the shameful event – twitter, facebook, an inside page story of a few newspapers of Kashmir. No mention in the mainstream media (MSM).

For the uninitiated, Kheer Bhavani, the shrine of Ragnya Devi is considered the premier worshipping site of Kashmiri Hindus, even more so ever since Sharada Peeth became out of bounds for its devotees. In spite of having been forced into exile, even during worst of the terrorism years, Kashmiris from all over the globe made a once-a-year pilgrimage to this ancient temple to offer rice-porridge to Ragnya Bhagwati. Even for the secularists, this shrine is of critical importance as each year, the annual mela would provide an opportunity to the CM of the day to pose with an old Kashmiri exile, smiling to the cameras, all of this proving that the chimeral Kashmiriyat was very much alive and kicking.

This attack on the temple has coincided with a strike in Kashmir Valley, protesting against the Kashmiri Hindu efforts to restart those religious yatras (Kaunsar Naag, Harmukh, Surveshwar, Dhyaneshwar, Thejwaer, Harshawar etc) which had been stopped for the last two and a half decades on account of terrorism and their exile from the Valley. The ostensible excuses may seem strange but still bear reproduction, if for nothing, simply to highlight their absurdity and the rabid nature of Islamic separatism which wants nothing but to erase the last vestiges of non-Islamic presence from the valley.

The perpetually aggrieved Kashmiri Muslim has the following objections against the Kashmiri Hindu efforts to practice their religion peacefully:

1.    “I have not heard of these yatras being conducted for last so many decades”

2.    “At Amarnath, you at least have an ice Shivling. These other yatras have no idol, no object of reverence but simply lakes, mountains and springs. So, there is no reason why you should conduct the yatra.”

3.    These yatras have been invented by the Indian Government which wants to Hinduise Kashmir. Under the pretence of yatra, the Indian Government plans to resettle large number of non-Kashmiri Hindus to alter the demographics of Kashmir.

4.    “Your yatras will destroy the fragile ecology of these areas”

It does not take a very high degree of intelligence to determine that no emotion other than a visceral hatred of the non-Islamic presence in Kashmir has given rise to these objections of the ‘secular’ communalists. The many lost decades did not witness any of the above pilgrimages simply because the dispossessed exiles were not in a position to undertake them. It is akin to the classic case of the bully taking possession of an object by force and then claiming right of possession even though it was he who had dispossessed the weak.

As regards the supposed absence of any object of veneration in these yatras – well, by Islamic contention itself, Hindus are pagans par excellence. After all, which other people manage to find divinity in both the animate and the inanimate, stupid enough to lack the power of discrimination and worship the stone, the tree, the cow, the snake, the mountain and the rive? Does the fervent Islamist not know that a Hindu’s trip to the sources of rivers, of mountains, of sacred ponds and springs are a homage to the spot, to that very miracle of nature? More importantly, is it the Islamist who will decide how and what the Hindu will worship? In the all-pervading atmosphere of dimmitude, perhaps yes! After all, isn’t the MSM discourse on Moradabad riots full of homilies on how the generous Muslims ‘allowed’ the Hindus to build a temple, on how they ‘allowed’ the Hindus to celebrate Holi and use a loudspeaker once a year on Mahashivaratri and how the perfidious Hindu, goaded by the Talibanasque BJP has sought rights which they do not deserve, more so because they form a small minority on those ‘secular’ lands?

The excuse that the Indian Government wants to ‘Hinduise’ Kashmir is nothing but self-induced hallucination on the part of the Islamist. We have a state of affair where even the Jammu region has seen massacres and riots designed to force exodus of the minority Hindu from areas of mixed demography like Doda, Kishtwar and Rajaouri. Can Hindus really count among their ranks people with Islamist like fanaticism, who would be willing to settle in hostile, unfamiliar terrain, where each day would bring new dangers to life and limb? If, for argument’s sake, we assume both availability of such people and a Government design to settle them in these regions, will nature allow them to survive on what are essentially mountains, cut off from civilization, accessible only through trekking routes and anyway, under the snow for over six months a year? However, what use is logic and common sense to that fanatic who participated in a mass movement against the Amarnath Shrine Board’s desire to construct temporary shelters for Amarnath Yatra pilgrims on lands which are non-accessible for over eight months a year! And… even if the Hindu does want to Hinduise Kashmir, then what exactly is wrong? Is not the Hindu a citizen of Kashmir? Does she not a right to practice her religion like her sisters belonging to a different faith? What crime has she committed if she wants to maintain and celebrate the civilizational links of the land of Sharika Devi with rest of India?

The only valid concern is ecological damage. However, this excuse loses credibility when the same Kashmiri protesting religious tourism has no problem with commercial/adventure tourists. As against a few hundred yatris, thousands anyway trek to the Kaunsar Naag lake each year and no squeak is ever heard on the 'havoc' they wreak on the Kashmiri ecology. And in any case, environmental degradation is not a concern which cannot be addressed significantly through focused rules and implementation by both Government and pilgrim agencies.

Only a few weeks back, pilgrims and langar organisers were attacked at Baltal. Numerous tents were burnt, people assaulted, property worth lakhs damaged and pilgrims were left to fend for themselves without food and shelter. Other than this riot, vehicles carrying Amarnath pilgrims have been subject to stone pelting on numerous occasions this year. But of course, leave aside the ‘secular’ MSM, these events have been of little concern even for the ‘Hindu Nationalist’ BJP.

The way Kashmiri Islamists manage to discover nefarious schemes in almost all acts of Govt of India, the same way, our ‘secularists’ have managed to create an alternate reality of ‘Kashmiriyat’ under which the Kashmiri Hindu was cared for by the benign Muslim. In this alternate world, the only oppression was of the Dogra kings on Kashmiri Muslims, the only massacres were those of some Muslims in the aftermath of Partition. In this land, the Kashmiri Hindu ‘migrated’ from the valley on her own accord, under a revolting scheme hatched by the RSS and implemented by Jagmohan. For the ‘secularist’, there is no better example of the large-heartedness of the Kashmiri Islamist than the Amarnath Yatra, where the locals not only ‘allow’ the pilgrimage but also ‘facilitate’ it, of course oblivious of its financial implications to them. Now, such secularists cannot obviously be expected to berate the liberal Kashmiri Muslim for a Baltal or a Kheer Bhavani. And certainly, if the gorilla becomes too big to ignore, one or the other ‘secular’ fact-finding missions would certainly discover that the injuries sustained by the Hindus would be self-inflicted and their grievances, imaginary.

Yet, at one level, it is more the Nationalist Hindu who is to blame when she indulges in such breast-beating, berating the MSM for ignoring attacks on her person and identity. For so many years, the MSM has been nothing, if not consistent in ridiculing the Hindu angst in service of ‘secularism’. For the MSM, the only issues worth covering with vituperative fury would be some random comment and supposed forced feeding. Why cannot the Nationalist Hindu create a systemic alternate discourse where the need for validation from these ‘secularists’ would not arise? Alas, it may not be, for even the supposed ‘outsider’ who got elected in face of no-holds-barred attacks of these very secularists, seems to have decided to make all out efforts to win their approval. We have seen what happened to a previous regime which embarked on such defeatist and meaningless endevour. History will repeat itself and leave behind in its trail, tears of the Hindu who does not have the right to speak even for herself!

Update

The J&K State Government has succumbed to Islamist pressure and withdrawn permission to the Kaunsar Naag yatra. This is of course not an attack on the religious rights of minorities of Kashmir for no act of Islamists can be anything but kosher for our 'seculars'. 

Defend Minority Rights - Liberal Style

How a society treats its poorest and most helpless citizens, often a minority group, is indicative of its strength. While this statement has been ‘Indianised’ to refer only to minorities, its righteous rhetoric cannot be ignored.

Since the protection and furtherance of all minority ‘causes’ is the life defining mission of our ‘liberals’, it is quite surprising to see that rather than protecting, they have ganged up against one of the most vulnerable minorities in India – the Vegetarians!

Contrary to the image of India being a vegetarian land, the vast majority of Indians consume meat. In 2004, as per the Anthropological Survey of India (as against a pop survey by CNN-IBN), barely 220 million Indians out of 1028 million (2001 census) were vegetarians. Even within traditional vegetarian communities, more and more families are taking up meat and fowl consumption. Hence, not only are the vegetarians a minority; horror of horrors, they are a declining minority in dire need of state protection to shore up their numbers and way of life! Without adequate safeguards, it is likely that they will be overwhelmed and consumed by the majoritarian meat-eaters in the country. What a travesty that would be? A beautiful strand of Indian diversity getting subsumed by that anaconda of majoritism! Even the die-hard meat eater will agree that an India sans vegetarians will militate against the very ‘Idea of India’, whosoever’s it is.

Then why, why is this hapless minority the butt of ridicule and attacks from the very people who are supposed to protect them?

The resident agony aunt of ‘secularists’ in India, the venerable Outlook ran a story of how Jains (a very small minority) are terrorizing the palate of Muslims by insisting that their sacred town, Patilana, be declared vegetarian. Soon after, the relapsed Open The Magazine ran another story on Vegetarian Terrorism, bemoaning how the evangelical vegetarians want all to survive on grass and yet again coming down on the Jain minority for seeking to protect, practice and propagate their religious beliefs. But, how could they? Jains, being vegetarians and numerically much smaller than Muslims are a huge (sic) minority. Then, should not the weaker minority be supported in the clash of two minorities?

It must be quite a lapse of judgement for the venerable Outlook to agitate against a sect which is double-minority and granting of minority status for whom, it celebrated only months back. After all, isn’t respect for minority practices a cornerstone of ‘liberal’ activism? Not only do these liberals need to stop protesting against these minorities, they should launch a campaign to protect those vegetarian property owners from those majoritarian meat-eaters who insist on becoming their tenants. The issue is of course not whether an individual’s right of ownership. It is simply religious identity. How can the majoritarian meat-eaters force minority vegetarians to dance to their tunes? Taking the campaign ahead, these liberals should fight for the right of those vegetarian run establishments who do not want meat to be cooked / warmed in their premises. As a next step ‘liberals’ need to get a hate law passed to protect the hapless vegetarian against jibes of her meat eating acquaintance, who asks with mock concern ‘ how do you survive on grass?’, ‘but what do you eat other than paneer in restaurants?’ ‘why don’t you try chicken/mutton/fish?’ This done, ‘liberals’ must pressurise the Government to legislate tough laws on the lines of dalit and women protection laws, to prevent harassment and intimidation of this vanishing minority.

As in the case of sexual orientation, vegetarianism is both a choice and a result of conditioning. So, why should the paternal protection sought for one not be offered to the other group?

Who exactly is a minority in India? The answer is a little complex. For the layperson, any individual or group, which is less than 50% of the total group of people, comprises a minority. However, in the Indian ‘secular’ parlance, the minorities are a broad spectrum group comprising of Muslims, women, tribals, dalits etc. Now, if some 90% of the population gets identified as minorities, how can a mere 10% of the population be considered a majority?

Very clearly, the assumption that minority must equal helplessness, weakness is flawed. After all, a handful of British ruled over India’s teeming millions. And, isn’t it the numerically insignificant tiger, which sits at the apex of the food chain, even when the jungle is full of herbivores?
 

But, paradoxically, for Indian ‘secularists’, some groups remain ‘minorities’ irrespective of absence of any weaknesses attributable to their being a ‘minority’. Hence, an Allahabad High Court judgement pronouncing that Muslims were not a minority (owing to their history, size and political influence) was treated with derision with many ‘secularists’ offering to teach basic arithmetic to the learned judge of the court. So, in India, the matter is settled. Any person who is not a Hindutvawadi, preferably an ‘upper’ caste, Hindu male, is a minority. Hindu here specifically excludes followers of Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism and for some, followers of Kashmiri Shaivism and the Lingayats.

So, any action by any person who belongs to this abominable group, if against any member of the numerous ‘minorities’ populating India, becomes a communal act. Hence, the crass actions of a Shiv Sena MP becomes an attack on Indian secularism only because the person who was at the receiving end of this ‘religious persecution’ happened to be a Muslim, who was fasting even at night! Wonder why non-Muslim students being denied mid-day meals or being forced to have lunch in school toilets in some North Kerala districts are not seen as worthy of concern, particularly when they too are minorities in those Muslim-majority lands?

Poriborton - a mere change of face is not enough

With successive Indian Governments not exactly having set the Ganga on fire with their list of accomplishments, the 6 year NDA Government (1998-2004), was not really a bad deal for India. If nothing else, that Government did nothing which created a social fissure or economic meltdown. Yet, the Government failed to get re-elected. The reasons vary as per biases of the observer. For the secular fundamentalist, it was on account of the Gujarat riots, for the statistician, an outcome of alliances, for the socialist, a backlash against capitalism and for many committed BJP supporters, an apathy which held them back for voting for the party.

This intermittent blogger has previously argued that the seeds of BJP’s downfall had been sown in between 1998-1999 itself and that the NDA’s return to power in 1999 General Elections was more of an incidental event rather than an affirmative reward by the public. The reasoning is simple – the BJP lost vote-share as compared to 1998 and rather than breaking new ground, like it had done in between 1996-98 and earlier in between 1989-1991, its footprints had reduced. Moreover, unlike previous occasions, when a war or a large internal security issue had resulted in an electoral surge for the party seen as being best placed to secure the Nation, the Kargil War could help the BJP only retain its tally of 182 seats.

While the non-BJP/anti-BJP camps may offer different viewpoints, the reasons behind BJP’s denudation was obvious. The people who had voted for the BJP all through the 90s had not done so for love and fresh air alone. They had done so in hope of a break from the past, a new model of governance and a hope of having a ruler who could walk the talk. Yet, what did we have? A Prime Minister who made the obnoxious Nehruvian consensus his own! A party which seemed determined to desperately woo those who seemed even more determined to hate it and a polity which continued to rule the way it had for the previous half-century! Unfortunately, it was not the BJP alone which paid a price for acting like those proverbial pigs in ‘Animal Farm’, who, having dispossessed the oppressor, aped the latter and became one of them. More than the BJP, it was the Indian Nation which got punished in form of a decade long debilitating rule of the UPA.

So much so from the past!

But why to rake up these painful memories when we have a BJP Government at the centre today led by a charismatic individual who single handed has won a majority for the party?

This digging up of the past is important for while early, not only is the BJP is acting like those who it has defeated, it is showing signs of yet again succumbing to the need of getting accepted by those who have nothing but disdain for those who make the BJP what it is. If this assertion seems to verge on hyperbole, let’s consider the following:

• Commencing dialogue with Pakistan even when the ground reality of its support to terrorism has not changed
• Effecting an individual driven change in rules of service for TRAI
• Changing railway fares through an executive order rather than the budget
• The PM’s ostensible views getting communicated through whispers and leaks
• Proposal on easing Visa restrictions on Bangladesh, forget about clamping on illegal migration
• Government’s inclination to press ahead with enclave swap, Teesta water treaty with Bangladesh
• Continuing with UIDAI
• Little movement or even statement of intent on corruption cases involving the previous dispensation, sons-in-laws

More ominously, those very experts, who had warned of apocalypse if Modi were to come to power, are now sending messages of reassurance that the new dispensation’s adventurism has been replaced by pragmatism and life will continue as it was before May 26, 2014. After all, for these experts, anyone who lights candles at the Wagah border is certain to warm cockles of their bleeding hearts.

True, the India society has become accustomed to a slow pace of change. Yet, the masses who voted in droves for Modi, did not do so with a hope of having a saffron Congress in saddle. If a vote for Modi was an endorsement of what he had come to embody, it was an even stronger rejection of the past. A vote for Modi was a vote in hope of a better tomorrow, not a fatalistic acceptance of a little more of the same of the last decade. 

The BJP may complaint that the public is not allowing them a honeymoon period. But why should the public do so? If a Government enjoys fruits of power from day 1, it has to be accountable from that day. True, there is a time for build up but that gestation period should not end up un-nerving the public, particularly when the early signs of poriborton are more of the same. Anyway, in this world of instant communication, which incidentally the BJP should understand, having tapped its power only recently, there will be little patience shown by those who got swept to voting booths on the promise of a positive change. 

Lest the BJP feel that it being treated unjustly, let it remember that human beings are designed to judge more strongly those who they have trusted. Vengeance for trust broken is high – ask Aam Aadmi Party. A BJP seen as getting back on its promises will be wiped out even more comprehensively than the Congress. While that fate may be five years away, we have critical assembly polls happening later this year. For a government whose legitimacy was questioned on shallow grounds of vote-share, a loss in the polls would be a serious setback, indicating that the surge of support for Modi/BJP was but a temporary anomaly. The polls are for BJP’s taking. What it needs to do is to simply walk its talk and if that seems difficult, at the very least, not commit those acts which it had opposed, while in opposition.

For the sake of the Nation, let us hope that what are now being seen as disturbing signs turn out to be false alarms and that the BJP does deliver what it has promised.