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Friday,
July 18, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Cloudburst in Kulu Punish the thugs Paying tax without pain |
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The Road to Bali
Gab of the gifted ones
Caste, occupation divide gets sharper in Punjab A French exhibition on Kashmiri Pandits
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Cloudburst in Kulu HIMACHAL
Pradesh is no stranger to flash floods but the loss of human lives has rarely been as high as the state suffered on Wednesday when a cloudburst inundated the Gadsa valley of Kulu, sweeping away a whole camp housing hundreds of labourers. Over 150 persons had drowned in a swollen Satluj in the year 2000 also, but that had happened over a 200-km stretch from Namgya in Kinnaur to Tatapani in Mandi. On Wednesday the swirling waters of the Pulia Nullah found almost all their victims at a single spot. They were mostly migrant workers from Bihar and Nepal working on the Parbati hydel project. It is necessary to find out whether many lives would not have been lost had the labourers’ camps not been set up dangerously close to the river. There is need for extreme alert in future. The government must ensure that the workforce does not have living sheds at sites vulnerable to landslides or other mountainous hazards. The heavy rain and the washing away of a large portion of an approach road have made rescue work difficult. But the help provided by the local people has been poignant. It is at the time of such misfortune that there is an outpouring of human fellow-feeling. Ever since the ITBP has been made the “first responder” in the Himalayan region by the Ministry of Home Affairs, official response too has been quicker and more efficient, but a lot still remains to be done. A disaster management mechanism is necessary at district, state as well as national levels. But the immediate need is to inform the next of kin and provide adequate help to the sufferers. The gravity of the tragedy as often is compounded by the fact that all victims belonged to extremely poor families. A natural calamity can strike anywhere but the sudden increase in cloudburst incidents in the Kulu area during the past 10 years or so is puzzling. There has been a heavy loss of life and property. Large chunks of fertile land, which is already scarce, have been washed away. The Gadsa valley itself had suffered a similar debilitating flood five years ago. Although innocent residents of the valley of the gods believe that it is a divine curse because the pristine valley has been defiled by drug addicts, perhaps indiscriminate mining and deforestation have a lot to do with the phenomenon. A thorough study is called for. Nothing can be done about topography-related features which may be causing repeated cloudbursts but man-made contributory factors certainly need to be identified and eliminated. |
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Punish the thugs THE
CBI enquiry ordered by the Supreme Court in the Taj Corridor case should help unravel the mystery surrounding the atrocious project. The individuals behind the project, that sought to destroy the basic character of the historic monument, came close to beating the record of Victor Lustig, the man who with 45 known aliases was considered the master of deception and trickery. Among his infamous deeds was the daring attempt to "sell" the Eiffel Tower in Paris to a syndicate of scrap merchants not once but twice! The brain behind the Taj scandal may not have as many aliases as Lustig had. The CBI should be looking for a group of greedy individuals who crafted the Taj Corridor Project. The scheme for building a multi-storied shopping mall overlooking the final resting place of Mumtaz Mahal and Shahjahan would have made the monument look like a stretch of white rubble holding up other money-making expansion fantasies. The masterminds apparently thought that once the clearance was obtained either through deception or trickery or collusion, no one would ask questions about a project that was said to have been cleared "at the highest level" by the Uttar Pradesh sarkar. The brazenness with which objections from the Central Pollution Control Board, the Environment, Tourism and Culture Departments were ignored would have shocked even hard-boiled crooks. The thugs behind the project must have been assured protection by very powerful individuals at the highest level. UP Chief Minister Mayawati's statements that she had no clue about what was going on in the name of improving the looks of the Taj should be taken with a pinch of salt. An ordinary thekedar would not have had the gumption to defy the apex court's stay on further work without encouragement from some decision-makers. NPCC, one of the agencies given the contract, had the audacity to put up a board saying that work was being done under the orders of the Supreme Court! The CBI should not take much time to piece together the sequence of events leading to the scandal. The politicians, the bureaucrats and the so-called experts who sold the preposterous scheme need to be given exemplary punishment. An amount of Rs 175 crore was sanctioned. How much of it was spent before the apex court cracked the whip? Every paisa, with penal interest, should be recovered from those who tried to take the nation and a slice of history for a ride. |
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Paying tax without pain THERE are some who just don’t want to pay taxes. Then there are others who do but are intimidated by the cumbersome procedures. After all, it is no pleasant task to fill complicated forms which are Greek to an average person. The paper work is tedious and burdensome and puts off even honest taxpayers. Not all of them can afford to take the help of chartered accountants and taxation lawyers. Finance Minister Jaswant Singh has thrown a lifeline to such honest taxpayers by announcing a major tax reform initiative. The aim is to make the tax system more people friendly. A software called “Sampark” has been prepared to enable easy preparation of tax returns for the year 2003-04. A National Tax Tribunal is to be set up for uniform interpretation and implementation of the Income Tax Act. Fifty additional Benches of the appellate tribunal are to be instituted to hasten the pace of tax refunds and dispute settlements. These and several other measures like reducing compounding fees for direct and indirect taxes and authorising search and seizures only where credible evidence of substantial tax evasion exists will make the life of taxpayers a little less taxing. The Finance Minister is right in his assessment that the more you simplify the procedure, the more will be tax adherence. Taxpayers are honest by and large. The short-sighted policies which treated them as evaders even on technical grounds were tailor-made to encourage evasion, red -tapism, delay and litigation. Making life easier for the honest ones would perhaps persuade others also to join the law-abiding majority. Voluntary compliance can bolster tax revenue which has fallen short of the Budget targets in the first quarter of the current fiscal. There should be no need to take the help of professionals for filing one’s tax return. And getting refunds should be equally hassle-free. The reforms sought to be carried out in the Income Tax Department need to be replicated in the Customs and Excise Department as well. In fact, the tax tyranny needs to be reduced in every walk of life. And it is not only taxpayers who should be expected to be squeaking clean. The same qualities are necessary in the tax officials as well. Not all of them are paragons of virtue. Every such black sheep goads hundreds of citizens to evade taxes by making an under-the-table settlement. The Finance Minister should go after these undesirable elements more forcefully. Simple forms will help him garner more money for the national kitty and with less pain to the taxpayer.
Thought for the day My name is death: the last best friend am I. — Robert Southey
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The Road to Bali THE
Temple of Segara Amrta on the ocean’s edge is a reminder that the Bharatiya Janata Party might fumble at the hustings and Nepal teeter on the edge of chaos, but Hinduism is alive and well on the island that Jawaharlal Nehru called “the morning of the world”. Surprisingly, there is no official Indian presence among the British, American, German and other consulates in Bali. Nevertheless, one cannot say in Bali, as Paul Wolfowitz did to Jaswant Singh, quoting Rabindranath Tagore on Muslim Indonesia, “I see India everywhere but find it nowhere.” Though the manifestations of its deities are unrecognisable, the names are not. Bali captures the essence of the enlightened Indian ideal. Birth does not deter caste mobility and, as a European scholar found, a believing “mlechha” can enter the ranks of the “dwija” if the Central Hindu Dharma Committee approves and a “pedanda” — priest — performs the appropriate purification rites. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the 1930s film, The Road to Bali, the dream island of Bali-Hai in South Pacific, and the sex and sweat of Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club where 202 white tourists were bombed to death are excrescences that have left no mark on Bali’s sublimity. Elsewhere in Asia, from Beijing to Bangkok, people idolize Westerners and pay them the supreme compliment of imitation. The Balinese do neither. They do not share the visceral hatred of whites that prompted Amrozi bin Nurhassyn, the Javanese Muslim whose trial took place on the island. They regret the Kuta bombings because tourists were frightened off. Then came the SARS scare. “We’ll be bankrupt if this continues!” they wail with no greater emotional involvement. Perhaps there is a cultural explanation for this indifference to the tourist paradise. The mountains are where Bali’s gods live and where spirits return when released from the cycle of reincarnation or karmaphala. The sea is impure by contrast, and it is the sea that drew hordes of lusty young Australians who comprised 85 per cent of the tourist traffic. The beaches with their bars, discotheques, seafood restaurants and strolling musicians backed by shops and hotels were the altars of this new trade. The mountains, where temples nestle, bear witness to a 2,000-year-old faith whose symbol is the swastika, the wheel of the sun. It makes for instant recognition. Balinese acquaintances took us to Indian shops and spoke of the Brahma Kumaris, Sai Baba and a Gandhi peace centre. The grains of rice on my son’s forehead, placed there at the Pura Jaganatha, Denpasar’s relatively new temple, draws appreciative looks. A priest asks if I can recite the Gayatri Mantra. The girl who serves us dinner on Sindhu beach proudly says she is a “Brahmana” and it is on a note of disapproval that the young man in the Internet cafe exclaims that so many of his customers look Indian but claim to be from America. There is no dividend in being either a Westernised or a cock-a-hoop Non-Resident Indian. Bali is the only place in the world where a Hindu Indian is greeted with fraternal respect. The island is so different from neighbouring Java that one cannot help but wonder if it aspires to return to its historically sovereign status when eight kings ruled the land. Timor Leste is independent and Aceh fighting a war against Jakarta. Rumblings can be heard from some of Indonesia’s 17,000 other islands. Indonesian Islam is exclusive enough for a Javanese politician to denounce Megawati Soekarnoputri “because she is a Hindu”. The reference is to her grandmother, a Brahmin Balinese from Singaraja, the old capital, who married a Theosophist teacher. Sukarno was their son. No Balinese that I spoke to said explicitly that he or she had never thought of independence. But one, more forthright than the rest, explained that Timor Leste was near Australia and enjoyed external support. Bali is in the heart of the archipelago. They laughed in embarrassment at the huge poster of Che Guevara that we saw on the road to Mount Kintamani. Bali has no rebels and revolutionaries, they insist. Yet, the placidity could be deceptive in a land where villagers bet exuberantly on bloody cockfights under the shade of moss-covered temple parapets. In the walled courtyard of the family that once ruled the central Badung state, the last king’s daughter regaled us with tales of the massacre of September 20, 1906, when the king, his family and thousands of retainers, all dressed in ceremonial white, marched out to meet the Dutch army. The Dutch opened fire on “women with weapons in their hands, lance or kris, and children in their arms” who “advanced fearlessly upon the troops and sought death.” Two years later the royal family of Klungkung, highest of the eight kingdoms, similarly sought death in the ritual mass suicide called puputan. About 3,000 Balinese perished. When the Dutch tried to return in 1946, a freedom fighter, Gusti Nagurah Rai, and his followers staged another puputan. If the Balinese knew how to die, they also knew how to inflict death. That was grimly evident in the late sixties when hundreds of thousands of Partai Kommunis Indonesia members and their Chinese supporters were slaughtered throughout Indonesia. That was how Suharto replaced Sukarno. “In Java we had to egg the people on to kill Communists,” said Sarwo Edhy, the army General whom Australian newspapers called the Butcher of Java. “In Bali, we had to restrain them.” PKI members dressed in white were led to their death as in a puputan. “It was all very orderly and polite” wrote a Balinese observer. This is not the place to recall how Hinduism spread to the Indianised states of Southeast Asia, or how the faith receded in the face of militant Islam, though leaving behind an unmistakable cultural legacy. But much in “Farther India”, to use the Western term, justifies Upendra N. Ghoshal’s proud, if not politically correct, use of the description “Greater India”. No wonder, we were told over and over again that rich Balinese travel to India to see the Ganges. “We call it tirthayatra,” they say, unaware that the world sounds all too familiar to Indian ears. I was shown the card of a member of the Badung royal family who works at the International Academy of Indian Culture in New Delhi. Bali’s last governor, Ida Bagus Mantra, was educated in India. Despite Indian indifference to this distant offspring, many Balinese feel that the best way of strengthening their religious and cultural identity is by reaffirming their roots in the cultural metropole. It is also interesting to reflect how India and China interacted even in ancient times. Legend tells of an 11th century Balinese king, Mayadanawa, who married a Chinese princess, converted to Buddhism and added her family name of Kang to his royal title. One version has it that the disapproving Hindu deities cursed her to be childless (mandul) whereupon she died and her heartbroken spouse erected a shrine to her memory in the temple on the shores of the island’s largest lake. In a slightly different version, Mayadanawa fought back against the Hindu gods by creating a pond that poisoned them when they drank from it. But Indra hurled a thunderbolt into the ground, causing the antidote to spring up, which gave the Temple of Bubbling Elixir (Pura Tirtha Empul) its name. Religion is the symbol of a greater struggle for temporal power in both tales. Hinduism is also at bay in both. It is a contest that the Balinese adore, constantly enacting the fight between good and evil, between Barong, the mythological dragon, and Rangda, the mythological monster. Naturally, Barong always wins, testifying to the eternal optimism of a small and marooned society that has preserved itself against continuous assault, and whose trauma has received little Indian recognition since Nehru’s lyrical
tribute. |
Gab of the gifted ones WHENEVER I pass through Chandigarh, I make it a point to chitchat with my college going niece and schoolboy nephew. They tell me juicy stories about gab of the gifted ones studying in their institutions. Recently I sat with them for half an hour to fill my memory tubes with succulence. The first one was from my niece about a teacher who had asked the class to write a short paragraph on brain drain. A gifted one wrote, “It starts with brainwashing and totally disturbs the state of repose of cerebrospinal fluid, which is contained within the ventricles of the brain, that results in its seepage into parts foreign to brain. It is brain drain.” The secretion from the mind of the short paragraph writer bathed my sap-skull. I told them a moth-eaten one that when a group of students was asked to write an essay on ‘A Football Match’, a gifted one wrote, “Rain came; no game.” My nephew enjoyed it and shared an almost identical one with me. The topic this time was “My First Day in School” and the gab was, “I was absent on the first day.” My niece reverted to the English class and said that the teacher explained the meanings of “pro” and “con” and said that “pro” meant in favour of an argument or reason or party or person and “con” was opposite of that — a reason against. She then asked the students to use the words in such a way that made them understood the meanings. A known pro SAD-BJP group gifted one stood up and gabbed, “Progress and Congress”. I got nostalgic and told them the story of my friend Kapal Dev; a real gifted one, a stylish badminton player who made a mark in Bombay badminton circle later. Professor Sud was taking physics classes one late afternoon. All were fed up after the day’s hectic schedule but Professor Sahib was continuing. He was telling up about Sir Issac Newton. He started narrating the story, “Newton was in the open at Woolsthorpe — looking at a tree. Suddenly an apple fell on his head and led to his contribution to the laws of gravitation. How wonderful! What do you say?” At this instance Kapal got up from the seat and said, “Sir, had he been sitting in the class like we at present, it would have never happened.” I told the listening duo that my memory tubes still get drenched with tra-la-la that had followed when the corners of the solemn-faced teacher had also turned up and how that desperate gab from gifted Kapal had made us spring out of
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Caste, occupation divide gets sharper in Punjab PUNJAB has recently witnessed a sudden rise in caste-related conflicts. Though caste has always been a fact of life in Punjab, it never led to any major incident of violence as has been frequently reported from some other states of India. Politically, though caste has been an important factor, particularly at the local level, it has not been an idiom of political discourse in the state. Even when a conflict led to polarisation at the local/village level, it rarely became a source of sustained mobilisation on caste lines at the state level. State politics in Punjab has revolved around questions such as regional interests of Punjab vis-à-vis other states, identity politics of religious communities, or class interests of the peasantry and other sections of the Punjabi society. Socially also the relations between the underprivileged castes or Dalits and the traditionally dominant or upper castes have generally been, relatively speaking, cordial. Caste divisions are not too visible in Punjab. The caste scene in Punjab also has several other distinctive features. Among all the states of India, the proportion of the Scheduled Castes population is the highest here. Against the national average of around 16 per cent, their population during the 1991 Census was more than 28 per cent. Dalits of Punjab have also been quite mobile. Apart from the positive effects of the Sikh movement, which nearly completely marginalised the Brahmanical ideology in the region, there have also been several vibrant movements from within the Dalit communities. The Ad-Dharam movement, which was initiated by Mangoo Ram in the Doaba region, has been one of the most successful of the Dalits movements anywhere in India. In terms of social and cultural indicators of progress, the Ad-Dharmis of Doaba will compare well with any of the so-called upper/forward castes of Punjab. The success of Green Revolution technology also played an important role in transforming social relations in the countryside. Though, the way it was conceived, the new agrarian technology did not envisage any reforms in the caste system, it nevertheless produced many changes. Most of the older caste-based occupations pursued by different groups were made virtually redundant by mechanisation. With growing awareness Dalits too began to dislike pursuing these occupations as a calling of their caste. This led to a process of ‘dissociation’ of caste and occupation, producing a significant change in the social economy of the village. It would be virtually impossible to find a Dalit below the age of 25 anywhere in rural Punjab today who would prefer pursuing the occupation of his/her caste to any other secular employment. Even when Dalits work as scavengers or pick-up dead cattle, a large majority of them do so on A contractual basis and not within the framework of the traditional caste ties. For various historical reasons, very few Dalits in Punjab own or operate land. Their lack of landownership obviously increased their dependence on the landowning castes. Until some time ago working on land of the landowning farmers was virtually the only source of employment available to them. Many of them worked as attached labourers (siris) who were perpetually indebted and tied to their employers. New opportunities of employment were opened up by the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation. Those who had taken to secular education, such as the Ad-Dharmis of Doaba, could find employment outside agriculture. The state policy of reserving a quota of jobs exclusively for them helped in this process. Even those who are not educated, or are not able to find regular jobs in town, dislike working as labourers on land. The arrival of migrant labour from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar provided an easy alternative to landowners. As a result Dalits in some pockets of the state, such as Doaba, have been able to distance themselves from employment in agriculture and consequently from the landowning farmers. Since they do not seek employment on farms, their dependence on the landowning Jats has reduced significantly. Wherever, they have been able to attain a certain degree of economic mobility and freedom from the local economy, they have also tried to build their own gurdwaras and community centres. Having their own cultural resources gives them a sense of ‘autonomy’ and self-respect. These three processes of ‘dissociation’ of caste and occupation, ‘distancing’ of dalits of the agrarian economy of the village and a growing sense of ‘autonomy’ from the social institutions of the village, mostly controlled by the dominant Jats, has given them a kind of political agency that they did not possess before. A gradual institutionalisation of democratic political institutions has also induced a sense of power in them. Many Dalits are today elected to village panchayats as panchs and sarpanches. Apart from the constituencies reserved for them, given their numerical strength some of them also get elected from open constituencies. However, despite all these “achievements” caste continues to be an important source of social inequality, particularly at the village level. A large proportion of the Dalits continue to be among the poorest in Punjab. While many Dalits have come out of their traditional occupations, their position in the social economy of the village remains marginal, mainly because of their landlessness. Their increased presence in formal structures of power, such as panchayats, does not necessarily mean their substantive empowerment. With the process of democratisation taking roots even at the village level, Dalits are no longer willing to conform to the traditional norms of hierarchy and submit to the authority of the dominant castes. Jats, on the other hand, are not willing to recognise the changed scenario. Though apparently a very rare and peculiar case, the conflict over the control of a religious shrine in Talhan fits very well in the framework. Several other cases of conflict being reported from villages of Sangrur, Ludhiana or some other parts of the Doaba region too seem to fall in this pattern. The writer is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Study of Social Systems,
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A French exhibition on Kashmiri Pandits A travelling exhibition organised by a French scribe on India’s terror-ridden state of Jammu and Kashmir and its victimised Pandit community opens in New Delhi next week. Francois Gautier’s display will focus on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, the state’s original Hindu community that was forced at gunpoint to flee after the insurgency began in the state 14 years ago. The 38-panel exhibition has examples of slogans shouted by Islamist guerrilla outfits to threaten the Pandits, like: “We are going to clean Kashmir of infidels”. It opens on July 18 at the India Habitat Centre. “The insurgency destroyed the bonhomie and love that Kashmiris, Hindu and Muslim, had shared for centuries,” said Gautier, who came to India as a 19-year-old and stayed on to become one of the country’s most prominent foreign correspondents. As a result of the insurgency, more than 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits fled the valley in the early 1990s, their homes bullet-riddled and deserted. “Even now there are more than 70,000 Kashmiri Pandits living in makeshift refugee camps and some are paid a measly Rs.800 per month by the government,” Gautier told IANS in an interview. The idea of the exhibition came about after Gautier won an award for journalism four months ago. “The award included Rs 51,000 as cash and I decided to start an organisation called FACT or Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism,” said Gautier. “The exhibition is the first project of FACT and it’ll be followed by another project on the Northeast (which also has a decade long history of insurgency).” Gautier plans to take the exhibition to New York, Washington, Geneva and Paris. “I plan to take it everywhere and tell people how Indians, and mainly Hindus, have suffered.” Gautier also feels that Indians are like the Jews. Mauled and ravaged across the centuries by invaders and conquerors, Indians have always tried to peacefully assimilate foreigners who washed up at their shores. But they very often haven’t been paid back in kind, said Gautier, wearing a yellow T-shirt and dark trousers, sitting at Delhi’s Le Meridien Hotel. “Between 1800 and 1900, 20 million Indians died due to famine under British rule. That’s the biggest holocaust in the world but nobody talks about it. I want the new generation of Indians to know what once happened to them.” Gautier has also for long held the view that India’s majority Hindu community has suffered at the hands of its minorities for its benevolence. And though he denies it, the journalist who is married to an Indian and divides his time between Delhi and the international city of Auroville, Pondicherry, has often been accused of siding with the country’s Hindu nationalists. “I ask why is it that when the president of a self-proclaimed secular nation like the US swears on the Bible when taking the oath of office, it’s okay. But if the Indian President does so on the Bhagvad Gita, there would be massive criticism,” said Gautier. “I believe all religions in India have been broadened and tempered by the spirit of benevolence in Hinduism, the only religion that is not monotheistic. Sometimes saying so makes me unpopular,” he laughed. —
IANS |
The son who adores his mother and father and makes circumambulation around them earns the same virtuous results which could be obtained from making circumambulation of the whole earth. This is certain. He who leaves his parents behind in the home and himself goes on pilgrimage to different holy centres, becomes responsible for the sin accruing from assassinating them. The greatest holy place to undertake a pilgrimage to for a son is the lotus feet of his parents because for earning virtuous fruits from pilgrimage one may have to undertake a long journey and then he will find a tirtha. But this holy centre is readily available in the home itself. It is the easiest means for dharma. The parents for a son and the husband for a wife are holy centers always located in the home. —
Shiva Purana, Rudra Samhita, Kumara Khanda (XIX.39-42) Devotion gives you the tremendous courage you need to keep walking on the path When it is necessary to make
— From Thus Spake the Buddha compiled by Swami Suddhasatwananda |
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