A DEMOGRAPHIC DISASTER? NOT REALLY
AUGUST 24, 2023
Vincent Fernandes’ article (India staring at a demographic disaster, THI, August 24) was filled with rhetoric, unsubstantiated claims, and general naysaying about the prospects of a golden future for India. How did he manage to say that India’s education is a mess and its democracy does not measure up to international ratings? The problems with Indian democracy are the generalised problems of any democracy articulated since the times of Socrates and Plato. It is finally a ‘tyranny’ of the majority, where the defeated are always unhappy.
Our primary education was a failure because it did not have a direction and a unity of purpose in building national character. The country made the error of solely concentrating on higher education, ignoring primary education. However, this was not true for higher education. This consequently led to the creation of an unemployed middle class, many of whom migrated to greener pastures. After 1991, the process is now slowing down. Unlike many countries, which depend on foreign degrees to get their validation, India has a strong higher education system in place.
India’s demography is an advantage, a story of immense hope, and can only be a disaster for people whose idea of India is perhaps different. The most important demographic change in the next 20–30 years is that our average age will be in the 30s. Every country goes through three demographic phases: first, a high birth rate and a high death rate; second, a prominent young working and labour force, which can be a backbone for industrialization; and third, an increase in the elderly. The last has happened to most western countries and is soon going to happen to Asian giants like China and South Korea.
Primary education has come back as a big force in the country, and when combined with the demographic change, our country is ready for a huge leap in infrastructure and heavy industrialization. There is everything positive going for our country in education and demographics, and we should perhaps not mess it up. But this story is one of hope rather than dismay and depression, as the article seems to convey.
SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE STATUE CONTROVERSY
JANUARY 26, 2022
There has been a controversy about the installation of Subash Chandra Bose’s statue recently in Delhi. The opposing camp questions Bose, in his struggles, seeking support from fascistic Hitler and Japan. European countries had complex power struggles which sucked other countries into their wars. Hitler initially had good relations with Stalinist Russia and England. Later, he turned to attack Russia and the second world war polarised countries with the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) on one side and the Allied powers (U.S., Britain, France, USSR, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia) on the other. The fluctuating relations between countries also reflected in volte-faces in India too. The Communists, for example, fought the British initially; later they became a friend as Germany invaded Russia (a strong friend) and England declared war on Germany (an enemy now). Post-war, of course, Russia and the US went on a confrontationist path.
In a typical scenario of victors writing history, the winners became the good people and the losers (specifically Hitler), extremely bad. The Nazi rule under Hitler was cruel and brutal. The Nazi regime murdered six million Jews and more than five million non-Jews (Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, blacks, the physically and mentally disabled, political opponents, Slavics, dissenting artists, the resisting clergy, and so on). However, to gain a perspective, there were 31 famines in 120 years of British Raj. As Shashi Tharoor (An Empire of Darkness) states explicitly, in just 10 years (1891-1900), 19 million people died in India due to famines alone. The famines, the biggest colonial holocausts, are at the top of some of the most severe inhumanities in modern times. Under the British Raj, India suffered countless famines. The first of these was in 1770 (10 million deaths), followed by severe ones in 1783, 1866, 1873, 1892, 1897 and lastly 1943-44. The regular Bengal famines were the result of careless planning, Malthusian ideas, and highly racist leaders sitting in England looking the other way. Churchill hated the Indians and thought that they bred like animals. He also wondered why Gandhi did not die in the famine. In the 1942-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust, the British starved to death upto 3 million Indians for strategic reasons with Australian complicity. All these apart from 62000 and 87000 Indian soldiers who died during the first and second world wars respectively; a war without any personal stake or honour, except for the reason that we were a colony of the British.
The British also divided us politically into two countries using religion; caused social disruptions by their caste-system narratives and pernicious Aryan theory frameworks; converted traditions into religions; stripped us economically; fed their industrialization by raw material produced from India; made India a market for their finished products; destroyed agriculture by converting large tracts of land for cash crops or for their opium trade; and levied heavy taxes. As Dr SN Balagangadhara proposes, the most unfortunate violent consequence of past colonialism is the present ‘colonial consciousness’- an altering of our intellectual frameworks but much after the colonials have left. The colonized refuses to understand any other narrative except the colonial ones.
Hitler undoubtedly was bad; however, Winston Churchill and the British were equally cruel and brutal. But our colonized minds exonerate the latter. Subhash Bose had an equal role, arguably even more than Gandhi, in gaining our independence through the Indian National Army, the INA trials, and the subsequent Naval Mutinies. He was a great patriot and was playing Chanakya Neeti in the art of warfare by approaching the enemy of the enemy to gain what he desired from the core of his heart-the independence of India. As Balagangadhara says, in seeking the Nazi support, it is possible that Bose was expressing our experience of colonialism; as colonial subjects, there was no difference between the British and Nazis in terms of their cruelties. The criticism of the statue by the naysayers is unwarranted and represents a homage to our past colonial discourses by colonized minds.
COMEDIANS AND CULTURAL MARXISM
NOVEMBER 19, 2021
Vir Das, a stand-up comedian, is in the news in recent times for his speech on ‘two Indias’ in a foreign country. The proponents of freedom of speech are supporting him while many do not agree that it can cross the limits to abuse one’s country. The short speech was hardly comedy; it was also large on rhetoric and low on facts. At a larger level, this idea of an individual’s freedom to say anything is a New Left phenomenon. ‘Cultural Marxism’, an offshoot of this, perpetuated in hallowed academic institutes like the JNU basically have a constant anti-state slant where the nation-state is a bourgeois fraud played upon the masses. The rejection of any expression of national unity like in cricket or even Republic Day Parade is almost a normative behaviour at some institutes. Accordingly, the Indian nation-state is ‘Brahmanical’ and ‘patriarchal’; is ideologically rooted in multiple ‘evils’ of the Hindu social order; and is fundamentally inclined towards the oppression of women, Muslims, and Dalits. This evolved into an oppressor-oppressed binary and spawning of the victimhood industry, with everyone claiming to be a victim of some oppressor.
An ‘anywhere mindset’ characterizes these cultural Marxists- an attitude which places a high value on autonomy, mobility and novelty and a much lower value on group identity, tradition, and national social contracts (faith, flag, and family). They are ‘just individuals’ and ‘the personal is political.’ The individual’s political life is an extension of one’s preferred identity by race, gender, sexual preference and so on carrying the potential of infinitely fragmenting politics. Thus, there is no end to the discovery of fresher victims and the endless atomization of victimhood in our country. Indians, craving for prestige by its association with the west, become the willing allies of the Western academia in disrupting the cultural coherence of the non-western societies. No wonder Das speaks about Pakistan, and the colours of saffron and green to hint subtly at the narrow attitudes of the majority.
Colonial consciousness has not left academia, despite the talk of post-colonialism ironically. The social science disciplines (history, political science, economics, sociology) as we know them today originated in the west. This makes it impossible for a social scientist in a non-western society to speak with reference to traditions of knowledge indigenous to it. Our top academics, intellectuals, and public speakers (now comedians too), consciously or unconsciously, are eager to describe their country in terms supplied by the west to gain legitimacy. The implications of our academics viewing the Indian traditions of knowledge as being ‘truly dead’ are indeed serious. The cow must be food since it is so in the western hemisphere. It hits hard and hits fast at our civilizational roots.
The progressives have a habit of throwing abuse on anybody who does not agree with them and often calling them ‘fascist’. By a strange logic, any call for unity in the name of patriotism also becomes fascistic. Respecting the flag becomes fascistic; national anthem played out in cinema halls becomes a fascistic move; and questioning of flag-burning and anti- India slogans become a new Nazism. One prominent left thinker, Dworkin, says that the right to speech exists to protect the dignity of the dissenters. Thus, the more silent and the more law-abiding your activities, the less you may protest the provocative utterances of those who do not care anything about your values. The voice of dissent is the voice of the hero. In other words, a truly sincere government, after having passed a law, will be lenient towards those who disobey it.
Being critical of family, institutions, society, culture, and the country is important but there should be a sense of time, place, and consequences before doing that. In this matter, it is equally wrong on the part of both Vir Das now and our Prime Minister in the past when he made critical remarks on Indian doctors on an international platform. It is perhaps a happy thing that colonial consciousness might be diluting a bit. At independence, our intellectuals spoke of a single bad India; now comedians talk about two Indias- one good and one bad. Some relief!
BOOK BANNING
NOVEMBER 16, 2023
Madabhushi Sridhar has written a relevant and thought-provoking article (THI, 16th November, 2021) regarding the right to read books. Book banning has a long and illustrious career in India and it is ironically one of the best ways to increase the readership of a book. In the present times, book banning is, in fact, extremely irrelevant too. A book is easily available online in most cases. Access to the readers is never a problem and banning increases only the publicity. Beyond that, it does not make sense. Anyway, reading habits also appear to have gone down considerably with attention spans of the upcoming generations fit only to read social media messages and reflect on them. Few have the time and energy to read books of some length. Most book bans concern hurting religions, but it is the maturity of the society to allow books to come into the market without resistance. India has a great tradition of ‘vada’ or debate and the best way to counter intellectual violence is by intellectual responses. Wendy Doniger wrote a (in)famous book ‘Hindus: An Alternative History’ where she applied discredited Freudian theories to many Indian stories, legends, and gods. Vishal Agrawal wrote a book countering Wendy’s book page to page and paragraph to paragraph showing that her book was more of an alternative for history. The Freudian theories were perhaps more applicable to the author herself as Vishal shows. That is indeed the proper way to address intellectual violence instead of indulging in physical attacks like in the case of Taslima Nasreen. Whatever be the intentions or the level of scholarship of the authors, banning a book is never a solution and neither is physical violence of any kind.
THE ED AND OUR CELEBRITIES
SEPTEMBER 9, 2021
There is certainly a huge hype created by the media on the ED grilling our celebrities. We are seeing one ‘big’ name after another making a visit to the office with our faithful media channels prominently covering them. The agency also perhaps wants the attention to show that they are doing their job fearlessly and honestly by treating everyone at par. However, in our country, with decades of experience, the citizens have a right to be cynical about the outcomes. Most are sure that except some unknown ordinary people lower down in the chain all the celebrities are bound to go scot-free. The top-level people and the middle level consumers will stay safe as the axe will fall on some couriers. Nothing will ever happen to our ‘heroes’ and the fans can breathe easy.
However, the most important message here is for the youth of today obsessively crazy about these celebrities and making them role models. Playing some character on the screen and being a final projection of an army of writers, directors, producers, and technicians behind them does not make them heroes in any sense. Personal qualities like integrity; hard work; passion; empathy; love and respect for those who especially do not matter; and such, makes one a hero in the truest sense.
Indian traditions enumerating the four purusharthas (Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha) have made this clear since ages. Artha (money) and Kama (desires) never have a low position in the scheme of life but the foundational basis for realising these remains Dharma. The final objective of the right living is always Moksha. That is why the heroes in Indian traditions have been people like Ramana Maharishi, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, or Adi Shankara. The life of our celebrities outside of their on-screen persona is hardly worth emulating and this message should become clear from the present goings on in the big ‘drug’ racket. There will not be any punishments and perhaps we have resigned to such outcomes. But the message from the sordid episode should be a revelation for our starry-eyed fans.
BREAK IN THE PULICHINTALA DAM
AUGUST 6, 2021
On the way from Tanjore to Trichy in Tamil Nadu is a wonderful ‘Grand Anicut’ or the Kallanai dam built on the river Cauvery. It is a stone dam constructed 2000 years ago by a Chola King. It is the oldest stone dam in the country still in use and the second oldest in the world. The dam is a wonderful sight and is a testimony to the idea that perhaps an enlightened monarchy is a better deal than democracy where only oratory, money power, votes by any means, and personal power counts. The Brihadishwara Temple or the Big Temple at Tanjore is an overwhelming experience where the architecture, inscriptions, and the mural paintings on the ceilings simply stun a visitor. A visit to most ancient and medieval temples, like the Ramappa temple in Telangana or the Adalaj Step-Well in Gujarat reflect the amazing civil engineering and architectural skills of the olden times.
Today, a brand-new road outside my house does not last beyond one rain. Potholes, the size of craters, rapidly cause terror to the numb citizens. Dams develop breaks and buildings collapse causing immense damage to its citizens; surely, the cause cannot be the construction material or building technologies. Our scientific and engineering progress has much to applaud for as today, in a big jump for humanity, we look to explore space and other planets.
The present break could have been due to a genuine problem of some kind which hopefully an investigation would reveal. However, the citizens have become extremely cynical. Construction and road-building are the biggest money generators apparently for every single link in the chain. Unfortunately, if the stories need believing, the media at the ground level also gets its price to remain silent. The numb citizens have no one to complain as we continue to deal with poor roads, poor drains, rainwater flooding cities without any rivers, collapsing buildings, and disrupting dams. Why cannot we ensure quality in at least these vital infrastructures? The only way remaining is to appeal to the good conscience of the nation builders and protectors. It is only a question of willing. The fear of punishment or a public loss of face no longer neither exists nor worries anyone even as the helpless citizens struggle in a ‘glowing country’ where beautiful structures stand tall by the side of the beastly broken roads.
RIVER WATER SHARING
AUGUST 4, 2021
Madabhushi Sridharji has written an informative article on the difficulties between the two Telugu states and the involvement of the central government on the issue of Krishna and Godavari rivers. Fresh water will be the reason for future conflict and violence across the world in the future. Timothy Clack, in his book ‘Ancestral Roots’, describes this as ‘War of the World’. Water ‘scarcity’ and ‘stress’ are less than 1000 and 1500 cubic meters of water per person per year respectively. In the next three decades, fresh water coming mainly from rivers, would be a cause for severe fights unless we utilise our technology and environment in a proper manner. Fresh waters make up less than 2.9% of all water on the planet, and of this only 0.007% is accessible for use. An enormous pressure will arise for the world as stark predictions say that by 2050, water stress and scarcity will affect 7 billion people in 60 countries and 2 billion in 48 countries respectively. Chillingly, the global population would be likely 9.2 billion in 2050, so practically there would be strife for the whole world.
River water control is a source of conflict from a district level to an international level. As an informed professor involved in water management tells, river water should be under a central scientific body; ideally one body for each individual river. Each river has a specific way for utilisation without degrading it and without causing an environmental damage. Many factors come into play apart from a simple flow. Though an important consideration, it is rarely an equation of saying that since 50% of the river is in one state, it should get 50% of the river water. That would be a recipe for disaster on a broader scale. The Mekong River Commission is one such example which guides the Mekong River utilisation flowing across six countries starting from China. We do have dedicated water resources scholars in various academic departments across the country who do a serious study of the river waters and give solid proposals. However, all their outputs become invalid as politics take over and neighbours start fighting for its share. The allegations against each other fly thick and fast on the issue of height of dams or the number of canals constructed.
It was perhaps a Constitutional error to make river waters a combined Central and State subject. All kinds of politics and not science now determine how we utilise the precious river waters. The political equations also play a role as the Center allegedly favours one state over another. Madabhushi gently alludes to this in the article. Narrow parochial interests take over the larger interest of the nation while managing water resources. River Jordan is a source of trouble in the Arab world even as China interferes with Brahmaputra, a potential issue in the future between not-so-friendly countries. Narmada, Godavari, Krishna, Cauvery are all causes of conflicts between districts, states, and regions in the country today. The fights over water are not surprising. However, the collective humanity does throw up surprises and it may just come together to save the world from the potential ‘water bomb’ of the future, more serious than all previous bombs.
RANDOM MUSINGS 