THE RELEVANCE OF NEHRUVIAN POLICIES IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES
14 November 2023
The author (Why are Nehruvian ideals still relevant to present times? The Hans India 14.11.23) made a fervent argument for Nehruvian ideals in the growth of the country. However, decades after Nehru’s death, we need to reassess the contributions of our past political figures. Nehru’s national ideology primarily reflected the political consciousness of the Westernized elite. Nehru is indeed the founder of the modern Indian state. But, given the background of his education and training, his view of traditional India was a mix of genuine pride, much ignorance, and some disdain.
Nehru threw his weight behind the seven principles of a ‘New India’ based on modernity: national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialization, socialism, scientific temper, secularism, and non-alignment. However, most of these goals had no or only a limited basis in Indian civilization. In stressing the role of industrialization and higher education in forging unity, he ignored primary education and cultural heritage as enduring bases for national unity. Nehru confirmed the contemporary European thinking of placing agriculture as a primitive activity.
His Fabian Socialism remained diverse and confused because Indian experiences did not match the theories. Scientific temper was an Orientalist view that education, science, and technology were primitive in ancient India. Secularism, the notion of state neutrality, and the separation of the public social sphere from the private religious sphere were straight imports of European Christian ideas battling their religious issues. Nehruvian secularism was an ambiguous and complex concoction and was hostile to the Hindus. Non-alignment was a key point, but Nehru’s foreign policy was, however, not adequately neutral. In his concern for the world stage, Nehru did not give India’s neighbors the degree of attention and priority they deserved.
Modernizing as the best solution was the conviction of Western superiority in the march of progress. Modernity’s constituents, such as rationalism, individualism, liberal democracy, the state, technology, a scientific worldview, utilitarianism, and economism, were not all logically related. They had come together in Europe because of historical factors and had different combinations in different societies. India could have developed its own distinct model of modernization. Despite his patriotism, Nehru’s firm fixation on the West as a solution to India’s problems probably caused more damage than benefit eventually.
POLITICAL ALLIANCES
28TH AUGUST, 2023
The Communists trying to ally with the Congress after BRS withdrew support is ironic. The only party that consistently fought the Congress, stayed mostly with the British, strongly helped the formation of Pakistan before independence, and persistently took orders from Russia and China to formulate its policies after independence has been the Communists. It is rich when they talk about ‘betrayal’. Looking at the alliances now happening, party-based democracy seems meaningless, as thinkers like Sri Aurobindo warned. We can disband the party system completely because, firstly, there can never be a single ‘ideology or philosophy’ to tackle all the problems related to a country, and secondly, the only purpose of everyone is to gain power by any means, which is a flaw at a deeper level of democracy. Parties are merely a ‘group’ identity that confers benefits on individuals, but they are never about an idea to develop the country.
STRANGE ALLIANCES OF POLITICAL PARTIES
JULY 19, 2023
The alliances formed for the next elections are only a pointer to the sham called democracy. One of the most profound thinkers of the last century, Ananda Coomaraswamy, called democracy a tyranny of the majority. Whether the win is by a slender or large margin, the defeated always feel angry and vengeful. The only aim of every single politician and party is to ascend to power and stick to it. Every route is valid to attain the purpose, mainly involving bribery, corruption, and nepotism. This has been true for all democracies for centuries. Greek philosophers were critical of democracy in saying that the ‘wisest and the best’ hardly come to office to administer the country. Sri Aurobindo was not in favour of a Westminster model of parliamentary democracy based on adult suffrage. However, we are now stuck with a so-called ideal system where all adults have the power to vote and choose monarchs at the state and central levels. Our ancient multiple kingdoms perhaps had fewer fights amongst each other. There is division and splintering among people as a direct consequence of the intense desire to gain power. The individual states actually feel that they have no part to play in the nation. The balkanization of the country we see along various lines is a direct outcome of political shenanigans. It is sad and heartbreaking when the most diverse ideologies unite with the only intention of removing one man from power. The ruling party alliances are also as diverse as possible, with the only idea being to stay in power. One of the smartest but troubling moves is to call the opposition alliance I.N.D.I.A. If you are opposing the parties, you are now opposing the nation itself. These are the popular slogans, apart from the liberal freebies that have won elections for parties while the country spirals on a downward path.
ON THE STATE OF DEMOCRACY IN INDIA
JUNE 29, 2023
Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote that democracy finally descends into chaos, where the defeated will always have a grudge against the victors. The amount of hatred that the Republicans and Democrats have for each other in the USA is even preventing marriages across the groups, if reports need believing. The same hate is now evident in the multi-party system of India, where things are even more chaotic. Both for the parties and the people following the parties, affiliation with the party seems to matter more than the nation itself. A new party comes into power and immediately undoes whatever the previous party has done, good or bad. There is prompt renaming of many schemes and benefits.
Even something so simple as praising a past PM on his birth anniversary becomes a slugfest between political parties as one accuses the others of inadequately honouring him. Great Indians who worried for their country are now in the brackets of narrow political identities. The most disturbing thing for an ordinary citizen is the role of the governor. There are all the reasons to disband it completely now that it has become a political post. In most states, allegations and counter-allegations abound that the governor is acting as the centre’s agent. The governor is mostly on an absolutely independent but ineffective path, unconnected to the ruling party.
The mess is of gargantuan proportions, and finally, the desperation for votes and the greed for power seem to be driving the country’s democracy rather than a love for the country. However, Greek philosophers two thousand years ago made the same criticism of democracy. Is there a way out? Perhaps the first would be to ensure some qualifications to become leaders, like some basic education and a lack of criminal records. Any civilization looks at qualifications and authority to allow any person to do his duty. It is sad that in a democracy, there are requirements to qualify for the lowest of the posts, but none for ruling the people, except the power to gain votes by any means possible. The leaders of today are only dividing the people in every conceivable manner, with rarely a holistic vision encompassing the country. Unfortunately, the people are following suit.
LOVING AND HATING MODI
MAY 26, 2023
The hatred for Modi by the opposition and a significant number of citizens must be one of the astounding phenomena of Indian democracy today. On the other side is the extreme reverence for him by another section of society. Each calls the other by the choicest of names. All the other ministers have faded into the background, as it appears that every single good or bad thing in this country is because of Modi. The extreme polarisation of people around a single person is unfortunate. Both the extraordinary hate and love are scary for the future of India, as people on both sides of the fence are losing balance and hurting India in the process. Despite all that, the banning of the inauguration of the Parliament building by the opposition is the saddest day for Indian democracy, and unfortunately, there are other citizens too who support such a ban.
CIVIL SERVANTS AND POLITICIANS
MAY 24, 2023
There is a lot of media coverage whenever the civil service results are out. Rightly so, as we need to celebrate grit, determination, and success. However, all the ‘adhikara’ and quality invested in becoming a civil servant or, for that matter, in becoming anything in the country today seems to be offset by the single lack of quality and ‘adhikara’ in becoming a politician. Sadly, there are stringent criteria for entering any profession, yet no such qualifications exist to become the ruler of our country and guide its people. The exclusion of the political leader from any qualifications except his or her ability to garner votes fundamentally represents the many problems of India in particular and democracy in general.
EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF OPPOSITION MEMEBERS
APRIL 10, 2023
A new bug of demanding to see the educational qualifications of opposition members has now infected politicians. Instead of focusing on the country, this is a huge diversion which fails to make the least sense. The Constitution of India on the eligibility criteria for an MP or MLA categorically makes no mention of educational qualifications. Ironically, right or wrong, perhaps the only professions in the country which does not require an education to practice are medicine and politics, both related to the well-being of the individual and the nation. An education is desirable but not mandatory for election as a people’s representative. For that matter, no democracy in the world asks for educational qualifications except mainly a certain age, citizenship of the country, and an absent criminal record. If at all, political parties can focus on the last to attack the opposition with. The defining criteria in democracies today is in making the education of its representatives irrelevant! Since the times of Socrates, the ideal governing model which selects the ‘wisest and the best’ to take care of its citizens has always been an enigma for thinkers. Democracy just appears to be the least of all the evils.
THE HINDUS REMAIN IGNORED BY ALL POLITICAL PARTIES
MARCH 25, 2023
When elephants fight it is the grass which suffers. With rising intolerances between the political parties and increasingly partisan attitudes of the judiciary appearing to act on personal whims it is the country and especially the Hindus who are suffering the most. BJP is an outcome of the amazing Congress policy of seven decades after independence where the latter divided the Hindus on every conceivable faultline. Not only that, their consistent definitions of ‘secularism’ and ‘liberalism’ were appeasement of the minorities and abusing the Hindus respectively. The other political parties were too insignificant to change the Congress attitude.
The BJP simply consolidated the Hindu vote which, fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, still has the majority share in the vote. When an angered Hindu community voted en bloc to the BJP, suddenly and ironically, democracy went into ‘danger.’ Unfortunately, most of the opposition, in its dislike or even hatred for the BJP and specifically Modi, is transforming into a hatred or dislike for the Hindus and even India. No political party is trying to make amends by trying to appeal to the Hindus that it will do better for them.
For most Hindus, the BJP happens to be the least of the evils but worried intellectuals have been disappointed at their performance. The BJP still thinks of binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It continues the Congress policy of dividing people into various groups, offering sops to each, and finally trying to project that it is doing more for the Hindus and protecting them from even extinction. As an example, the freeing of the temples from government control and the rejecting of many historical narratives set by the left-liberal academics is the minimum the government should have done till now for the Hindus.
What we need perhaps is a new avatar of BJP or a new party in India which takes in the real principles of Sanatana Dharma in running the country. Hindu, Hinduism, and Hindutva are very porous constructions which means everything and anything to politicians and scholars depending on their ideology and political affiliation. The silliest and the most popular of course is “Hindus and Hinduism good; Hindutva bad” which shows ignorance at the deepest level.
Hinduism may or may not be the same as Sanatana Dharma but it has the closest association. Sanatana Dharma has been existing for thousands of years as the driving philosophy of the nation and which has an immense capacity to absorb any pluralism, diversity, and multiculturalism more than any other political philosophy, faith, or religion in the history of the world. India has the solutions for harmony not only for itself but for the entire world if there is a true understanding of what the great country is all about. The few people who correctly understood the country were Sri Aurobindo in the past and scholars like Dr SN Balagangadhara in the present. It is time we look at them more diligently.
THE IRONY OF COMMUNISTS MOANING THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY
MARCH 18, 2023
There are many statements which politicians of all hues make which are ambiguous, contradictory, strange, and of course opportunistic. However, nothing beats them all (one might say ‘irony just died a thousand deaths’) when Sitaram Yechury (Shun BJP to save democracy, THI 18th March 2023) declares that BJP is responsible for the death of democracy in India. Anyone, whether right or wrong, has a right to moan about the death of democracy in India but it takes an enormous amount of gall and courage for the Communist Party to talk about democracy. Throughout the world and in India, the consistently anti-democratic party have been the Communist parties. If one can believe some rankings, the Communist party of India links to top terrorist/insurgent organisations too. Democracy is doubtful as the best form of governance as philosophers since the times of Socrates have stressed upon but for the present world, it may be the least of all evils. Despite problems with all political parties, they have a place in the democratic system excepting perhaps the Communist party as its record of anti-democratic and anti-national activities have ample proof in the annals of history.
BEING CRITICAL OF INDIA IN FOREIGN SHORES
MARCH 10, 2023
It is a simple rule of the family that the parents criticise the child inside the house but give fulsome praise outside. And so goes the old pun: an ambassador is a person who ‘lies’ abroad for the sake of his country. Any diplomat, politician, or an ordinary citizen has a grave moral responsibility to be kind to his country when talking about it in foreign shores. But the cheering crowds seem to unbalance our public figures and people cutting across party lines and in different professions have been guilty of it. Stand-up comedian Vir Das having a go at India; PM Modi criticising Indian doctors; and now Rahul Gandhi moaning about the death of democracy in India are some examples. I am no fan of any political party but the biggest problem today with the intellectual, academic, and political combine of the country is that dislike of a party and hate for a person is translating into hate for the entire Hindu community and the country too. The BJP does not represent the Hindu civilizational ethos and its understanding of Sanatana Dharma is equally poor. It has become successful in consolidating the Hindu vote only because of the consistent anti-Hindu stance of the Congress for seven decades.
THE SHOCKING BRIDGE COLLAPSE IN GUJARAT
NOVEMBER 1, 2022
Maybe, it is a cynical statement but with all the powers vested in the political leaders, bureaucrats, and technical experts our governments at all levels irrespective of the party since independence have been a colossal failure. Without fulfilling the basic needs of its citizens, they could only see the construction of all civil projects and infrastructure like roads as a huge source of making money. It is time that all citizens rise and strongly demand from its leaders only good roads for the next decade or so. Any failure on their part should lead the citizens to take the leaders to task severely. Our judiciary and press have largely become indifferent to the citizen’s woes. In this regard, THI is doing a great job to highlight the state of our roads almost daily. It is a mockery of democracy today that liquor and cash flows abundantly during elections and later the roads and civil structures take a hit with poor quality. Deaths, collapses of bridges, potholes, accidents does not seem to shake the conscience of our leaders one single bit. Throw aside all developments and achievements; build proper and safe roads and bridges for our citizens, dear governments at the state and center.
THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY
AUGUST 2, 2023
The editorial on August 2, 2002 on the decay of democracy in both the USA and India is disturbing but not surprising. Across centuries, political philosophers and intellectuals have seriously questioned democracy as the best way to govern the country. The search has always been on to find the ‘wisest and the best’ to guide the country to an ideal of maximal individual liberty under the umbrella of minimal state interference and maximal state security.
Plato (3rd century BCE) believed that democracy ruins itself by excess of its basic principle of an equal right of all to determine public policy. Oratory skills and the ability to garner votes become important to win power rather than ability even as nepotism, corruption, general incompetence, and finally tyranny becomes widespread in a democracy. Plato’s pupil Aristotle thought that democracy is based on a false assumption that those who are equal in one respect (like the law) are equal in all respects, including governing. In Francis Bacon’s ideal world, the government is of and for the people but by the selected best of the people. Spinoza was clear that democracy had still to solve the problem of selecting the wisest and the best to rule themselves. Yet, over the centuries, democracy has become the norm all over the world.
Sri Aurobindo said that the evil of democracy is the decline of greatness in humanity. Indian traditions, a mix of both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ values had evolved a way of an enlightened monarchy, a decentralised polity, and free citizens ages back. Indic wisdom focussed on the duties at all levels from the king to the ordinary citizen unlike western rights-based traditions. Thus, alternatives to democracy thrived without affecting trade, travel, agriculture, literature, and sciences in the Indian civilization, at least five thousand years old. Colonial consciousness accepted western political philosophies to solve problems for us even as many of the ideas do not simply make sense. Problematically, democracies seem to be failing both in the western and the Indian world. This is perhaps the best proof of what philosophers have always been saying- democracy in the present form is not the best form of governance.
THE ROARING LIONS ON THE ASHOKA PILLAR
JULY 14, 2022
People make a fetish of himsa and ahimsa even on simple issues like the installation of the lions on the Ashoka pillar in a more aggressive format. The opposition seems to have run out of issues. With all due respects to the great man, Gandhiji’s ahimsa was a peculiar philosophy which made our nation weak. Sri Aurobindo, a severe critic of Gandhiji, used to say that ahimsa and non-violence were tools for personal transformation and spiritual attainment but they are extremely damaging when applied to the dharma of the nation fighting many internal and external adversaries. Sri Aurobindo replied to Gandhiji’s son on a question about non-violence, ‘If Afghanistan decides to invade India, how would non-violence help?’ There was no answer. It is plain naivete to expect that by disarming oneself, the enemy would also do the same. However, this was precisely the attitude of Gandhiji which endeared him to the British authorities and the Muslims of that period. Ahimsa is the dharma of a seeker for moksha or nirvana but it is not the ideal of a Kshatriya fighting inimical forces and protecting the country. We have had enough of this wrongly applied ahimsa. The ‘new’ lions are simply the rediscovered ideal of the nation.
THE CHANGING FACE OF THE IAS
MAY 19, 2022
The article by Mohan Kandaji on the changing face of IAS is an interesting read. It is true that the political interference has increased over the decades but the public attitude towards the IAS remains of respect born out of fear only. They have joined hands with the politicians and have become mostly corrupt and inefficient. Pockets of quality are only exceptions which prove the rule. It is a matter clearly for everyone to see that despite holding unbridled power for decades after independence, most of the government systems are working at extremely low levels of inefficiency. Our roads reflect the political-bureaucratic nexus the best in the country. It is still a challenge to see a 5-kilometre stretch of road (not a highway) without potholes across the country. Does a road exist which remains intact beyond two monsoons? It is a terror experience for an ordinary citizen to deal with any government body, including the judiciary, without going into severe physical, mental, emotional, and financial trauma. For the IAS, it is a time to introspect more than anything else on how they have gone absolutely wrong in handling the country when they were supposed to provide the intellectual guiding force. It is a sad part that the fate of every single technical department has now slipped into the hands of the mostly non-technical IAS officers and the judiciary. As an aside, the latter’s judgements in recent times have only become a reason for more worry about the country’s future.
COMMUNISTS HAVE BEEN ONLY DAMAGING TO INDIA
APRIL 23, 2022
With reference to the article, Lenin lives on in Kolkata by Jayanta Roy Chowdhury (THI 23rd April 2022), it is worthwhile to consider how Marxist-Communist ideology in our academia and politics has been most detrimental to the cause of India and Hindus since decades. Other political parties are not paragons of virtue but this specific one has been the most damaging. Marx thought that Hinduism was the ideology of the oppressive and he thought British colonial rule was correct for India as our primitive country was incapable of handling itself.
In the 1942 Quit India movement, they betrayed the nationalists by acting as informers to the British agencies. During the second world war, this transition happened because Germany attacked Russia and Britain was an ally of Russia. Later, the Communists were second only to the Muslim League in creating Pakistan by supplying many intellectual arguments for a separate country. They sided with China during the 1961-62 war period acting against the interests in India. It is amazing that they had no problems in taking orders from foreign masters (Russia, China) to take their stances related to Indian matters. It is equally amazing how they distort the narratives later on to present a different picture. It helps when academia is on your side.
They claim to have fought the Razakars and the Nizams but they were equally brutal in inflicting violence on the hapless people of Telangana and Andhra. Their joining the Congress and fighting the Nizams had a larger and complex dimension emanating from Russia to make Andhra-Nizam area into a separate Communist nation within India. For a few years after the integration of Hyderabad, the Communists were still fighting the Indian state and it was only in 1951 (again from Russian orders) that they stopped it. The final straw has to be the Ayodhya controversy where the Muslim party was almost convinced for a peaceful resolution when the Marxist intellectuals stepped in to supply a set of ill-formed and deficient arguments to prolong the issue for a great length of time.
At a political level, the damage which the Communists did to Bengal and Kerala is too massive to even imagine. Their academic hegemony for decades also ensured a free run of Marxist ideology in a whitewashing of uncomfortable history along with pushing the glories of Hindu history into the footnotes. The only paradigm for them to view Hinduism became an exploitative hierarchical society in their binaries of exploited and the exploiter. Their ideas have only perpetuated a colonial view, despite being a ‘critique’. Today, in the declining political presence, our Universities are indulging in Cultural Marxism which inexorably fragments society and culture. By employing various terms, there is no end to the discovery of fresher victims and an endless atomization of our country. They have caused an immense intellectual and physical damage to our traditions and heritage which stays at par with all the colonial invaders.
LET US CALL OUT THE BLUFF OF COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA
MARCH 23, 2022
If there is one academic ideology and one political party which has been most inimical to India and Hindus, it has to be Marxism and the Communists respectively. Marx thought that Hinduism was the ideology of the oppressive and he shared the distaste of most Europeans for India and Hindu practices. He thought British colonial rule was correct for India as our primitive country was incapable of handling itself. Like the English, he believed that India was merely a stretch of land with a meek conglomerate of peoples passively waiting for the next conqueror. For him, the question was not whether it was right to colonize India, only whether British colonization was better than the Turks or the Russian Czar. Marx’s Indian followers across decades have not deterred from this view.
It has been a history of Marxists and the Communists in the political (receiving their orders from their Russian and Chinese masters) and academic arenas to be working constantly against the interests of the country and especially the Hindus. In 1942 Quit India movement, they betrayed the nationalists by acting as informers to the British agencies. During the second world war, this transition happened because Germany attacked Russia and Britain was an ally of Russia. A friend of a friend became a friend despite the fact they were tyrannising and ruling over us.
As Venkat Dhulipala explains in detail in his book, the Communists were second only to the Muslim League in advocating and creating Pakistan. They supplied the intellectual arguments for a separate Pakistan. They sided with China during the 1961-62 war period acting against the interests in India. It is an amazing facet of their almost fanatical ideology that they had no problems in taking orders from foreign masters to take their stances related to Indian matters. It is equally amazing how they distort the narratives later on to present a different picture. It helps when academia is on your side.
They claim to have fought the Razakars and the Nizams but they were equally brutal in inflicting violence on the hapless people of Telangana. Their joining the Congress and fighting the Nizams had a larger and complex dimension emanating from Russia to make Andhra-Nizam area into a separate Communist nation within India. This would be the first step in the dream of making India into a Communist nation. For a few years after the integration of Hyderabad, the Communists were still fighting the Indian state and it was only in 1951 (again from Russian orders) that they stopped it. The final straw has to be the Ayodhya controversy where the Muslim party was almost convinced for a peaceful resolution when the Marxist intellectuals stepped in to supply a set of ill-formed and deficient arguments to prolong the issue for a great length of time.
At a political level, the damage which the Communists did to Bengal and Kerala is too massive to even imagine. It is not that the other political parties are paradigms of virtue but the Communists have been the nastiest in its attacks on India and the Hindus, perhaps equal, if not more than the Islamic and the European imperialists. Their academic hegemony for decades also ensured a free run of Marxist ideology in a whitewashing of uncomfortable history along with pushing the glories of Hindu history into the footnotes as if it never existed. The only paradigm for them to view Hinduism became an exploitative hierarchical society in their binaries of exploited and the exploiter. Two generations of Indians after independence grew up internalising this discourse and now most of us have only shame with regards to our country and the internal religious and social wounds have only festered deeper. In the garb of an anti-colonial critique, they have only perpetuated a colonial view of the country and have caused an immense intellectual and physical damage to our country by their poor understanding of Indian culture.
Democracy may or may not be the best solution for the country; all political parties may belong to the devil, but the country can do very well without the Communists and their academic partners. Of course, in the declining political presence, our Universities are now indulging in Cultural Marxism which inexorably fragments society and culture. By employing various terms (which they are very good at), there is no end to the discovery of fresher victims and the endless atomization of victimhood in our country. Indian academia craving for prestige by its association with the west become the willing and conscious allies of the Western academia in its quest of disrupting the cultural coherence of the non-western societies.
IS DEMOCRACY REALLY A GOOD IDEA?
JANUARY 11, 2022
The article by Madabhushi Sridhar (THI 11th January, 2022) on a failing political system made for a distressing read. Land and property settlements; commissions on every conceivable deal; acquiring money and property beyond all possible means; pumping unimaginable money and liquor before elections; subversion of government machineries; and protecting criminal behaviour of relatives and friends have become almost the expected behaviour for politicians across the country. Nobody even bats an eyelid when the same politicians who derive power from people they go begging to before elections become completely deviant, untrustworthy, and unapproachable after coming to power. A recent popular movie showed how an MP is a part of the syndicate of sandalwood smugglers. Such depictions do not even remotely trouble anybody. The shattered roads across the country are perhaps the most glaring manifestation of our failed parliamentary democracy.
Nehru’s seven principles of a new ‘modern’ India to bring it out of stagnation (national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialisation, socialism, scientific temper, secularism, and non-alignment) completely rejected the indigenous past to some disastrous consequences. Parliamentary Democracy with universal adult suffrage, fair elections, separation of powers, and constitutionally guaranteed basic rights was the only way to hold together a diverse, vast, and divided country. Alternatives like ‘communitarian’ and ‘organic’ democracy advocated by thinkers like Vivekananda, Gandhi, and Aurobindo did not appeal to Nehru. Are modern civilisations morally superior? Civilisation, self-contained wholes, are not amenable to comparative evaluation. Modernity constituents such as rationalism, individualism, liberal democracy, the state, technology, scientific worldview, and such are not logically related and they came together in Europe because of historical factors. Some of them could even go in other cultures. India could have developed its own distinct model.
India could have opted for a more decentralised and participatory planning different from both capitalist and communistic forms, as eminent political theorist Dr Bhikhu Parekh says. Surprisingly, post-independent India failed to define traditional ideas on subjects like social justice, the specificity of the Indian state, secularism, legitimacy, political obligation, citizenship in a multicultural state, the nature of the law, the ideal polity, and the best way to theorize the Indian political reality. Political theory taking the state as its starting point and understanding society in relation to it replaced traditional social theory concentrating on the social structure with the government as one of its many institutions. Like ‘secularism’, ‘parliamentary democracy’ as a western solution transposed on Indian soil may be the cause of problems rather than solutions. Barring continuing work on Kautilya’s Arthashastra, there are no major reconstructions of ancient or medieval Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist texts on politics and discuss how Indian thought differs.
The search in western traditions was always present in the ideal for maximal individual liberty under the umbrella of minimal state interference and maximal state security. Seeking that harmony has created ‘isms’ of the most bewildering variety. Colonial consciousness again allowed narratives of western political philosophies to permeate into Indian thinking even as many of the ideas do not simply make sense. As a basic example, the labels of ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-liberal’ to political parties are more words of abuse revealing ignorance of the longstanding and inherent traditions of India.
Indian traditions had evolved a way of an enlightened monarchy and free citizens ages back. Arthashastra and other texts like Ramayana, Mahabharata (especially the Shanti Parvan), and Tirukkural focussed on duties rather than rights of both the rulers and the ruled. Our foundational texts emphasize on the four core human values: Dharma (right living), Artha, Kama, and Moksha. This diverges from the western rights-based individualistic philosophy. In traditional Hindu kingdoms, the polity and the social order were inseparable. The king’s dharma consisted in preserving and enforcing the varna and jati based social structures. Neither the modern concept of democracy nor its parliamentary articulation has a parallel in Indian thought. Karma determined an individual’s birth and natural endowments and thus fully deserved; the modern notion of group justice has no analogue in much of Hindu thought.
Indian civilization, at least five thousand years old, apart from a high quotient of personal happiness, had a thriving economy with highly-evolved arts, literature, education, sciences, spirituality, architecture, and so on. Alternatives to democracy did thrive without the necessity to invade and colonise other countries. Maybe, the decentralised structure allowed invaders to plunder us. Unfortunately, popular discourses made this an example of our ‘weakness’ glossing over the brutalities of invaders and colonials. Most educated Indians get confused with the hard right-left divide of the West as our traditional problem-solving mechanisms are a mix of both. We have lost many decades and now we cannot change the system perhaps. The best way is to make our political-bureaucratic system more accountable. But why and how will an animal lay the trap for itself?
WHY ONLY AIR INDIA? THERE SHOULD BE MORE PRIVATISATION
OCTOBER 15, 2021
It is amazing that a few rains come and ‘smart cities’ convert into ‘a city of lakes.’ Dengue and other illnesses make a vicious return even as the hospitals become places of intense chaos. Potholes, overflowing drains, stinking garbage, poor water supply, improper medical services are not an isolated phenomenon restricted to one state or region but are generally the story of our country. Irrespective of which political party comes to rule at any level, it is a sad fact that the political and bureaucratic machinery of the country gets low marks after independence for public services. Despite holding enormous power, even today the citizens do not have standard amenities by way of public infrastructure: roads, schools, hospitals, sanitation, and water management to name a few. We need to search hard for a five-kilometre stretch of road without potholes anywhere in the country. Efficiency and quality are still in the private sector of the country as the political-bureaucratic machinery equates only to corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence. This is not to deny the many brilliant politicians, bureaucrats, and public officials but they have always been individuals as the system stays intact.
Thomas DiLorenzo (The Problem with Socialism) says that every capitalistic and democratic society has some government owned monopolies like the post-office, railways, electricity, banks, police, firefighting, garbage collection, and so on. Experience and the numbers clearly indicate that they are always running in a loss. The ‘Bureaucratic Rule of Two’ holds that the ‘unit cost of government service will be on average twice as high as a comparable service offered in the competitive private sector.’ Profits, losses, and deliverance of quality manages the private sector. No such pressure exists for the government agencies which work solely on budgets and taxations coming from the people. In fact, the worse a government performs, the more it can claim from the budget. Indian citizens flock to private schools despite better salaries to the teachers in the government schools. What do we make of this? Ironically, the government employees always have a higher salary on average than their private counterparts despite the poorer services.
Yet the governments keep throttling the private bodies by innumerable ‘quality controls’ and even passing moral judgements when their own mirrors do not show a very pleasant face. Every single government office and every single law is an opportunity to make money over and above the salaries. The roads are pathetic and nothing exists like a proper traffic control in most places. There are no provisions for parking in most towns and cities but the traffic police are very enthusiastic about taking photographs of all ‘illegally’ parked vehicles and collecting money from the e-challans which they now issue with irritating regularity. The best solution would be to devise vehicles which can float in air to prevent the irregular parking on the roads. Why airlines only and a few industries? There is a case to privatise many of the government bodies and departments to help and save the citizens of the country from the iron grip of the babus and the political leaders.
COMMUNISM-AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE
JUNE 3, 2021
The two-part article by Mohan Kandaji manages to give a highly sanitised version of Communism in India. No single ideology has been more damaging to the spirit of India and Sanatana Dharma than the imperialist ideology of Communism and Marxism. Sita Ram Goel and Arun Shourie have explored them deeply in their essays and books.
Communist societies (Soviet Russia, China) reduced Marxism to a severe monotheism by being the only doctrine and the only Saviour. They could not help becoming totalitarian enemies of human freedom. Communism was an instrument of Soviet foreign policy, particularly with Stalin, in its drive towards world domination. It inevitably comes into conflict with positive nationalism drawing inspiration from its own cultural heritage and socio-political traditions.
Communist Party of India, a section of the Communist International, started in far-off Tashkent in October, 1920. The British initially imposed a ban on the Communist party and made Communist literature easily available to revolutionaries to wean them away from this ‘terrorist’ path. Paradoxically, many patriots became convinced Communists and swelled the ranks of the party after discharge from the prison. In the public eye, these patriots retained their stature for their services. Communists became patriots in a reflected glory.
The dissonance between Communism and positive nationalism in India was starkly evident during the Second World War. The Communist Party of India had initially opposed British imperialism and the Muslim League. In 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the Congress launched the Quit India Movement in August 1942. The Communists in the Congress opposed the Quit India resolution because now the ‘imperialist war’ became a ‘people’s war’ simply because an enemy of Britain had invaded the Soviet Union. An enemy (British) of an enemy (Germany) invading a friend (Soviet Union) became a friend. British imperialism became British bureaucracy. The Communists had a significant contribution towards the creation of Pakistan, perhaps next only to that of the Muslim League.
Its intellectuals have remained intensely inimical to the cultural traditions and heritage of India. Communism targets Sanatana Dharma as superstition, obscurantism, and priestcraft and denounces the Dharmashastras as repositories of primitive prescriptions, Machiavellian morality, caste oppression, untouchability, degradation of women, and so on. It condemns all Indic philosophies as Brahminical conspiracies to suppress Lokayata or atheism.
However, as the most important exercise in Independent India, Communist historians, gaining great influential power in the academic universities under a political patronage, have ridiculed every hero, period, episode, and precedent in which Hindus can take pride. In a peculiar and short-sighted philosophy of associating today’s Muslims with Islamic rulers of the past, they managed to completely whitewash the brutality of the Islamic invaders. This gross falsification of history is an injustice to all Indians, including Muslims.
In the intellectual sphere, Communism uses effectively a difficult language of doublespeak; it constantly discovers conspiracies against the working class and the minorities preventing harmony by pitching one against the other; and are adept at ‘swearology.’ Mahatma Gandhi (bourgeois scoundrel), Rabindranath (mageer dalal or pimp), Patel and Nehru (fascist duo) had some colourful names.
Unfortunately, India’s political language describes ‘Leftist’, ‘Rightist’, ‘Centrist’, and ‘Right or Left of Center’ positions without telling us what ‘Center’ means. Certain groups appropriated one label- ‘Leftist’ for themselves and reserved ‘Rightist’ for opponents without permission or prior consultation. The political language of Communists has been rich in introducing new terms. The heavy influence of this philosophy in the dominant ruling party after independence, the academia, and the media made sure that we internalised many of these toxic discourses. The peculiar political language evolved mainly by the Communists have not only misunderstood the Indian traditions but have gone a step further in maligning the Hindu traditions and culture.
Hindu society becomes a ‘crowd of caste-ridden, cow-worshipping and practitioners of obnoxious obscurantism’. The Leftists-Communists-Marxist-Socialist rainbow spectrum laud themselves as progressive, revolutionary, socialist, secularist, and democratic. Simultaneous is the denunciation of ‘Rightists’ or any opponent as reactionary, revivalist, capitalist, and fascist. The intellectual elite are extremely good at using difficult to counter Communist catchphrases: bourgeois and proletarian; class struggle and class collaboration; revolution and counter-revolution; bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism; fascist forces and the democratic front, and so on.
Nationalists led by Gandhi could not understand the nature and purpose of this obscure language. The Communists considered Gandhi as their greatest enemy because he could wean away the masses effectively, something which they hoped to do with their Indian leaders. Though the intellectuals and the academia soak themselves in a rich Communist language, it is fortunate that Indian population has thought it fit to reject them politically. Historically, Russia, China, and Bengal show clearly how Communism and Socialism can only cause physical and intellectual violence but not progress.
PARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE
SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
We grew up with the teaching that our language should always be ‘parliamentary’. This word always evoked a feeling of dignity and decency while conversing. However, the theory does not seem to match the facts of Indian politics. The recent episode of a Congress leader calling another senior leader of the same party a donkey is a graphic illustration of this. In choosing to exploit the recorded conversation, the opposition leaders also chose to give colourful epithets to the Congress leader. Is this ‘parliamentary language’ all about and is this the example our political leaders set to the growing generation of the country? The normalisation of such language which starts right at the top level of political leaders calling each other scumbags, criminals, donkeys, and such colourful epithets leaves one with a bitter taste about the nature of politics and politicians. At a deeper fundamental level, one begins to suspect the democratic form of governance as a gold standard. The parliamentarian language has become very unparliamentary. This distressing kind of language makes a huge case for the dictionary people across the world to remove the word and the idea of ‘parliamentary language.’ It seems extremely incongruous in the present times.
PORTUGUESE RULE AS A MODEL FOR NEW INDIA
APRIL 5, 2022
Few are aware that the Portuguese ruled Goa for 450 years (1510-1961) and yet had a poor economy. Portugal was a ‘pioneer in expansionism’, motivating other sea faring, ship building neighbours to explore, conquer, loot and plunder. Yet, it was one of the backward countries in western Europe in terms of GDP and per capita income. This was mainly due to short-sighted economic policies when it failed to outgrow its initial mercantile objectives of extracting maximum profits with minimal investment.
Agriculture, mining, infrastructure, industry, and higher education stayed quite static during their rule in Goa. Literacy remained at very low levels (11-13%) even after hundreds of years of an uninterrupted rule. Trade, commerce, tariffs, and other dues remained its major source of revenue with poor investment in production. Lotteries and excise duty generated great income. There was a silent encouragement of smuggling and illegal sales of Indian goods to generate the much-needed Indian currency. Banco Nacional Ultamarino, the only bank, had the dubious distinction of accepting deposits but offering no interest and advancing loans at what was probably the highest rate of interest in the world. In 1939, around 20-25% of total income consisted of excise tariffs, second to customs as the greatest source of state revenues. Portuguese India hence gained the dubious distinction of being the ‘most intoxicated’ country in the world. Portugal did not know unfortunately how to exploit the way the Britishers could.
The Portuguese should now be happy that many states are following their economic model where excise taxes form a major part of their revenue. We are now allowing the bars to remain open the whole night too without worrying about the risk of collateral damage to innocent citizens because of late night drunken driving. It is sad that Excise becomes an important part of revenue and the governments apply targets to achieve. Apparently, the department becomes jittery on the ‘no drink’ days as it makes exceptions for a few places to sell liquor. On the other hand, there are the hypocrisies of ‘prohibition states’ where liquor flows in equal amounts as any other state but the revenue goes into personal pockets.
ON THE DEGENERATION OF INDIA AND AN IRRESPONSIBLE OPPOSITION
MARCH 5, 2022
Ramu Sarma has written a bold piece in THI dated 5th March 2022 where he analysed the pathetic response of the opposition towards the Ukrainian student crisis. It is now the unfortunate polarisation around the single point of Modi and the BJP that hatred for them translates into hatred for the country. This is a time, as the editorial rightly points out, that the opposition should get its act together and offer solutions instead of resorting to criticisms using the social media platforms. On the same page, as a double-whammy, the main editorial highlighted the depressing degeneration of the country in the seventy-five years of independence where ‘region, caste, and religion’ have become the most important reasons for major discord. Where have our politicians, intellectuals, academia, and thinkers gone wrong? Why is everyone in the country unhappy for their social identity and go around with feelings of persecution and discrimination?
In the garb of rejecting the colonial narratives, the post-colonial academia, heavily infiltrated with a hegemonic Marxist ideology, completely misunderstood Indian traditions. In a deep symbiotic relationship with political leaders, they managed to distort every single framework of Indian society even more disastrous than the colonials themselves. An evil caste ridden Hindu society forever having a communal problem with the Muslims became the backbone of all scholarly output on India. Band aid solutions like whitewashing documented histories became the methods of achieving secularism. An excellent opportunity to understand India in a better framework never materialised from our social sciences which remained trapped in ideology. The social sciences continued to look at India and the world the way the west looked at India and the world. These universities nurtured many influential intellectuals who became our bureaucrats, politicians, and the media. The colonial view of India never disappeared.
Are there solutions? Yes, there are, if we radically reject the old theories and give place to intellectuals like Balagangadhara Rao and many others who are struggling to give an alternative viewpoint of our country and culture which stood strong for thousands of years against all attacks. Similar civilizations have simply melted away in the face of such onslaughts. Caste and sub-caste grew in the western contexts; varna and jati grew in Indian contexts. Is there a possibility that there is an inappropriate application of a western framework to understand our social systems? Every single social understanding has undergone radical alterations with new knowledge, but the supposed core idea of ‘Brahminism’- an exploitative divinely sanctioned system, permanently etched into Indian society from the days of early 17th century European travellers and missionaries to present day Indologists. One of the most complicated, dubious, and confusing discourse on social structuring in India has been to correlate the varnas and the jatis. There never has been a one-to-one correlation. There is a selective but constant quotation of the scriptures since the colonials landed in India (a distorted translation of the Manusmriti or a single verse in the Purusasukta). There are other equally important and valid scriptures that note a reversal of hierarchy and equal authority for all varnas, yet those remain ignored in the narratives. Is our understanding of varna and jati faulty at some level?
As Dr Balagangadhara strongly proposes, ‘Hinduism’ is a huge conglomeration of many traditions, rituals, local practices, and philosophies with a core characteristic of an indifference to differences. This transcends the concepts of both ‘tolerances and acceptances.’ Hinduism as a ‘religion’ became an experience of the West which saw religions wherever it went. They saw the multitude of traditions in the great tree of Sanatana Dharma and constructed religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism (sometimes even fighting each other). Do religions even exist as defined in the Abrahamic mode? The biggest problem of the world (colonial, post-colonial, modern, post-modern, and so on), cutting across all ideologies, is the continuous understanding of traditions as religions. For reasons we cannot grasp now, Christianity and Islam took the character of traditions like other traditions in India; they lost the fixation on distinguishing between the true and the false and the resulting proselytizing drive. This was the Indian solution to multiculturalism and pluralism. Instead of exploring our own solutions, we imported secularism for our ‘communal’ harmony, a solution for European Christendom at a specific point of its history.
An enlightened monarchy with decentralisation and individual autonomy was the key of Indian culture. A centralised Parliamentary democracy was never our route. The regional parties today are no surprise looking at the character of India but what is uncharacteristic is that they seem to have forgotten a core civilizational essence which defined and united Bharatvarsha in the past. Yes, there are solutions; only it needs strong work in the next few decades.
RANDOM MUSINGS 