P A G E
Friday, August 21, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Friday, August 21, 1998 |
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Until the eclipse of humanism and sociology by politics of ephemeral convenience one generally talked of two kinds of health — personal and public. Opposition groups in Uttar Pradesh do not have to struggle much to put the Kalyan Singh government in the state on the mat. THE decision of the Kurukshetra district administration to provide insurance cover to the pilgrims on the occasion of solar eclipse on August 22 is indeed laudable.
SPECTRE OF
VIOLENCE & TERROR Nemesis has at last caught up with the Americans. They have fallen victims to the cult of violence they either overlooked or helped it spread around the world, albeit unwittingly. |
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Lahore
Municipality TENDERS are hereby invited for the removal of night soil and sullage from the bungalows, etc in the Civil Station where iron carts which belong to the committee |
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Until the eclipse of humanism and sociology by politics of ephemeral convenience one generally talked of two kinds of health — personal and public. Now a third category has been added to the list — VIP or VVIP health. Personal health (or just health) is a state of physical, mental and social well-being. It involves more than just the absence of disease. In textbook language, a truly healthy person not only feels good physically but also has a realistic outlook on life and gets along well with other people. "Good health enables people to enjoy life and have the opportunity to achieve the goals they have set for themselves." Public health includes all actions taken to maintain and improve the general health of the community. (Government health programmes are supposed to provide most public health services). The VVIP or VIP category encompasses a large, grey area of real illness as well as political, opportunistic or fake ailments. A highly placed person with sufficient clout under CBI investigation suddenly develops a heart "problem" and rests in the five-star comfort of a reputed hospital instead of being lodged in a jail. A legally cornered rich man abruptly shows a recently obtained medical certificate of a kidney disease of grave chronicity and escapes judicial confinement. On many occasions, "certified" illness provides an escape from inconvenient meetings or assignments. Investigative journalism looks at this field as a fertile source of sensational revelations! The latest subject is the "ill health" of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Some of our contemporaries are digging up his medical history-sheets and hinting grimly at his possible physical incapacitation, mixing fact with fiction. According to
published reports, Mr Vajpayee had got one of his kidneys
removed in the eighties. He was not a VVIP then. The
medical advice and the surgical procedures carried out
went unnoticed and the political being of great repute
went about his normal routine. Venerable age, the burden
of national responsibility and political calculations
have brought him under tremendous media attention. Each
step he takes is literally watched. His mood variations
are photographically documented. His visits to health
care centres are recorded and reported. Today, he is
being shown by a section of the media as a head of
government suffering from a serious disease. It is
forgotten that the tired or faltering man whose body may
harbour health problems is also a person in public life
with a clear right to privacy. It is not difficult to see
political motives behind the "disclosures" of a
physical and personal predicament or suffering. Do we
remember that Mohammed Ali Jinnah had cancer at the time
of Partition? Former Prime Minister V.P. Singh has never
concealed the state of his health. Many high dignitaries
like Rajendra Prasad, S. Radhakrishnan, Zakir Hussain,
V.V. Giri, Sanjiva Reddy, R. Venkataraman, Zail Singh and
Shankar Dayal Sharma suffered physically in different
ways while in office. But there was not so much of prying
and probing then. The Prime Minister's health is a
national concern. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, the lovable
man, will make thousands of Indians pray for him during
his illness any day even if he is not India's Prime
Minister. A categorical note from his office giving a
clear picture of his health will remove motivated rumours
and present him as he is — a servant of the people
in sickness and in health. |
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Opposition groups in Uttar Pradesh do not have to struggle much to put the Kalyan Singh government in the state on the mat. The Chief Minister's party, the BJP, itself is working overtime to tire Mr Kalyan Singh out of power. There is a strong lobby within the Sangh Parivar which is bent upon preventing him from acquiring the stature of the most towering BJP leader of this politically significant state of the country. The party's dominant faction comprising the state BJP chief, Mr Rajnath Singh, Mr Kalraj Mishra and Mr Lalji Tandon (the latter who are ministers) is a part of this larger lobby. Hence their constant effort to find fault with the Chief Minister's style of functioning so that the party's central leadership finds a way out to replace Mr Kalyan Singh. But that is not so easy. Recently, when it was pointed out to the central leadership that the party's image was getting tarnished to a dangerous extent because of the unending rift between the Chief Minister and the organisation's senior leaders in UP, and that the situation must be defused before it was too late, no one could find an answer to the vexed question. In fact, the answer involved replacing the Chief Minister, which is what the Rajnath Singh group wanted, but it was not acceptable to the central leadership. Not because of an element of sympathy for Mr Kalyan Singh, but owing to electoral compulsions. In UP the situation is such that no political organisation can afford to antagonise the Dalit component of the electorate. Over the years, Mr Kalyan Singh has emerged as the undisputed leader of the Dalits having sympathies for the BJP. Replacing him by any other leader (which means Mr Rajnath Singh or Mr Kalraj Mishra) would send a wrong signal to the party's Dalit vote bank which the BJP's central leaders would obviously never want. The BJP's interests would also suffer alarmingly in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where assembly elections are due in November. In the battle of supremacy within the BJP Mr Kalyan Singh, no doubt, is having the upper hand. But there is no end to the fronts opened by people of his own party. The Uttarakhand issue, kept alive by the BJP, is threatening to devour his government. Whether the new hill state comes into being or not, he is going to be a loser. All 17 BJP MLAs from what is now known as the Uttarakhand region have threatened to resign if there is further delay on the matter. And in the event of the creation of the new state these members of the UP Vidhan Sabha will not be there in a position to provide the necessary support to the Kalyan Singh government, surviving on the strength of the 41 former BSP members (the case of their defection may be decided any time). Their support cannot be there forever, given the growing anger against the BSP deserters among the BJP's rank and file. This not all. The UP Governor, Mr Suraj Bhan, a former BJP leader, too, has started giving sleepless nights to Mr Kalyan Singh. The case on which the tussle between the Governor and the Chief Minister has come into the open is that of the UP State Universities Second (Amendment)Bill. It has been passed by the assembly, but Mr Suraj Bhan has expressed his reluctance to give his assent to the Bill, as the legislation drastically curtails the powers of the Governor-Chancellor in the appointment of Vice-Chancellors. The Chief Minister is helpless and has been virtually forced to forget it. Some time ago the RSS chief, Mr Rajendra Singh, during his visit to the state, had made adverse remarks against the BJP ministry, adding to the woes of Mr Kalyan Singh. If the BJP"s Dalit leader, therefore, turns into a Vaghela (former Gujrat Chief Minister), only his detractors will have to blame for this otherwise hypothetical situation.
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THE decision of the Kurukshetra district administration to provide insurance cover to the pilgrims on the occasion of solar eclipse on August 22 is indeed laudable. A 24-hour cover would be available to even those living within the municipal limits of the holy city on the day when lakhs of pilgrims are expected to take a ritual bath in the Brahm Sarovar. Although the administration has not specified the amount of money it has paid to Oriental Insurance Company for providing a cover of Rs 50,000 per head it is nevertheless a bold and innovative measure keeping in mind the general climate of insecurity in the country. In the past the Amarnath yatris have been victims of both natural calamities and terrorist violence which has compelled the Jammu and Kashmir government to step up security arrangements to make the pilgrimage as safe as is humanly possible. This year the Amarnath yatra concluded without any mishap. Of course, providing insurance cover to pilgrims does in no way absolve the mela authorities of the responsibility of making adequate arrangements for the safety of the visitors. The insurance cover scheme has been introduced following the drowning tragedy during the Geeta Jayanti celebrations. The success of the current arrangement for the safe stay of pilgrims will be known only after the solar eclipse on August 22. The details of the proposed measures as announced by the district administration do suggest that it has learnt from its mistakes which resulted in the drowning tragedy. By way of abundant precaution the Kurukshetra administration should also study the blueprint of the security arrangement of the Uttar Pradesh mela authorities for the last Maha Kumbh of the century which concluded at Hardwar, without even a minor hiccup, early this year. As far as the insurance cover scheme is concerned it should be extended to other centres in India keeping in mind the fact that virtually the entire country enjoys the status of Deva Bhoomi. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari there is hardly a state which does not attract pilgrims throughout the year. The dargahs of Sufi saints in Ajmer and at Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi attract a large number of devotees, both Hindus and Muslims, on specific occasions. Keeping in view the disturbing upsurge in Pakistan-instigated acts of violence most holy places have become soft targets for the militants. A combination of improved security and insurance cover for the pilgrims may have become inevitable to deal with the X factor in places where collection of people in large numbers is unavoidable. In fact, similar innovative schemes should be offered by the general insurance and life insurance sectors to average citizens since India is a land of countless festivals and endless festivities. In the past there has been some discussion on the need to provide some kind of social security to at least the underprivileged sections of society. The Janata Party government had even introduced a Janata Life Insurance Policy which provided a cover of Rs 10,000 (in 1977 it was a substantial amount) for an annual premium of only Rs 12 per person. How and why the scheme was abandoned is not known. It did provide some form of security to the families of those living around the subsistence level. The Centre should examine the feasibility of reviving the Janata Policy with suitable upgradation in the amount of insurance cover keeping in mind the poor health of the Indian rupee.
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SPECTRE OF
VIOLENCE & TERROR Nemesis has at last caught up with the Americans. They have fallen victims to the cult of violence they either overlooked or helped it spread around the world, albeit unwittingly. But the damage is done. Today America is suffering at the hands of the very people who are supposed to promote its geopolitical interests globally. Can't the USA think afresh and abandon those facets of its policies and programmes which strengthen the dark forces of terrorism? Violence is, of course, part of human nature. Unfortunately, certain governments practise it as a matter of their strategies. This is a pity. For, violence is not the way to a higher civilisation. Nor can it be an aid to human evolution. It is a destructive force. Those who live by the sword perish by it, says an old adage. For over 2000 years, wisemen have thought over the evolution of an ideal society. They have floated different concepts and ideas. None has, however, been really successful. Democracy is now being presented as a new way out of a violence-prone society. It has its good points. But it has not been able to contain the forces of terror and violence. Is it the failure of the system or of the leadership? Asked why she was living in a forest infested with wild animals, an old Chinese lady told Confucius that men are more dangerous than wild animals. This being unfortunately true, human civilisation is first of all the process of making man less dangerous to his fellowmen. But, honestly, is there a civilisation consciously striving to achieve this objective? I doubt it. Violence has become part of society by long denial of justice. The Greek and Roman societies used to own slaves. They saw nothing wrong in it. But the slaves thought otherwise. So they took to violence to liberate themselves. In India, the caste system has kept the vast majority of people in an inferior status. In five thousand years, the reformers failed to put an end to it. The point I want to make is this: no human society has an inbuilt mechanism for peaceful change and self-correction. Whether we like it or not, correction often comes through violence. And yet nature provides the best example of a self-correcting mechanism. Belief in infallibility is part of this cult of violence. The man who takes to violence somehow gets convinced of the infallibility of his beliefs. The Popes believed in their infallibility. The greatest Sikh scholars might have had their doubts about certain doctrinal points propounded by Sant Bhindranwale. But he never for once doubted his own infallibility. Such is the case with most upstart leaders in this country whether they belong to Jammu and Kashmir or to the North-East. They reject dialogue because they have no convincing case. They take to violence because it makes them instant heroes and brings them huge rewards. Such arguments as the one that violence is justified only in a tyranny and not in a democracy fall on deaf ears. It is the pride of democracy that it can bring about peaceful changes and that it is prone to less error. Very true. But peaceful changes are possible where both parties to a dispute are ready for adjustment or compromise. This is rather infrequent. The spirit is wanting for compromise. As for error, numbers do not make a thing right. A whole people can go wrong — either because they are ignorant or because they are obsessed with blinding passions. Can democracy be representative? Experience shows that power concentrates in fewer and fewer people. In some cases, just in one individual (back to the monarchic principle). A number of examples can be cited from the way some of Indian rulers have conducted themselves during the past 51 years. The fact is that men are not given to reasoning. And we have found no way to change this human nature. (We have just seen this in the opposition of men to the Women's Reservation Bill.) Women must learn a lesson from this: they must assert their numbers, for their strength lies in numbers. No man can get elected in this country without the votes of women. Let a few men bite the dust. Violence has a premium today. As a result, societies are getting more and more fragmented. According to the Election Commission, we have at present seven national parties, 33 state parties and 612 registered but unrecognised parties. The present Lok Sabha has 40 parties. Are we to believe that all these parties are busy working for the people? Surely, this is an absurd thought. These are personality-oriented parties with a one-point agenda: how to advance the interests of the "leader." Although violence was part of all societies, it was the industrial revolution and its reaction — Marxism — which made violence a way of life. Come to think of it, Marxism made violence "respectable". In doing so, it has done incalculable harm to society. What is regrettable is that certain countries have extended this violence to international life by advocating that war (proxy war included) is an extension of diplomacy! But civilisational values cannot be promoted by projecting violence as an instrument of change. In its long fight against violent tendencies India did try to chalk out a different path. The Buddhist experiment with ahimsa was certainly new. And Christ preached peace, though it was a foreign idea in the Semitic world. Today, we face another type of violence in many parts of the world — violence born of grievances, mostly tribal and ethnic. Then social frustrations and economic grievances too rise up on the wings of violence. These grievances are genuine. Take India's North-East, admittedly a neglected area. It had a case for violence. But the people of the area have their point. They have won the country's attention. There is now no case to prolong the bloodshed. Only personal ambitions of leaders are keeping the insurgency alive. Problems are, of course, there— rather far too many. Each problem is complicated not because it is insoluble but because the system and its leading cadres have either been indifferent or slow in responding to the needs of the hour. Visible or invisible seeds of unrest sown in the process have invariably germinated into major sources of irritation and violence. If we look closely at the murky goings-on in the polity, it will be seen that these are the offspring of social malfunctioning and political inaction. In fact, Indian society has in its fold incendiary material for violence. There is no homogeneity. The basic social and economic structure is disjointed. It is colonial in character and feudal in outlook, with shades of modernism thrown in here and there. Unrest thrives because of the inability or rather inadequacy of the system and of the leaders to deliver the goods. All this constantly brings to the forefront new issues and areas of tension, which invariably acquire political and ideological overtones. Take the case of fundamentalism. Mixed with crude politics, it can be more dangerous because it is irrational. It is taking different kinds of inspirations in different places. In Iran, it was a revolt against monarchy and modernism. In Sudan, Algeria and Afghanistan, it is pure revivalism. In many other places, the issues are mixed. Such is the case in J&K. There, the people had their grievances. But it was Pakistan's constant call to violence that inflamed their passion. But if Pakistan has an "unfinished business" there, to prove the two-nation theory, India too has its business — to deny it. The issue between India and Pakistan involving Kashmir is not mere territorial. It may not be even strictly a legal one. The issue is fundamentalism, whether Jammu and Kashmir should be a part of Pakistan because the majority of its people are Muslim. But the division of India did not take place on the basis of religion. Had it been so, the 120 million Muslims would not have remained in India. Nor is the "contiguity" principle right — for J&K is contiguous to both India and Pakistan. India can never accept the two-nation theory without destroying the basic pillar of its society— namely secularism. It accepts India's diversity and promotes peace. But the question of peace today has become part of geopolitical calculations. The USA supported Pakistan's claim to J&K, all because Pakistan chose to side with the West against Russia. As a result, this subcontinent has been on the boil for the past 51 years. In their pursuits of global interests in Asia, the Americans, wittingly or unwittingly, helped to train and arm whole armies of Islamic volunteers for the resurgence of Islam. Today some of the disbanded hordes are seeking fundamentalism. As was to be expected, they have now turned against what they call the "Great Satan" — America — for they are convinced that it is standing in the way of Islam's progress. Religion has become the leitmotiv of terrorism. And if this leads to a civilisational conflict, which is already predicted, America will have played no mean part in bringing it about. Be that as it
may. As we march towards the 21st century, we shall have
to find new answers and a credible mechanism to the
aberrations of the past. We must not live with terrorism
and violence-prone tendencies. We must create a new
system to fight against the dark forces that are bent
upon destroying all that is good in human life. In our
own country, we must explore new concepts to effectively
deal with the holocaust often unleashed by a set of
negative forces which debase human values, corrupt the
national psyche and dehumanise the system of free social
and political interaction. |
Successful flops FAILURES are of two kinds: unsuccessful and successful. The former become washouts of the society they live in, and the latter tower-houses of inspiration for others struggling to go up the greasy pole of success. Rebert Louis Stevenson, son of a civil engineer, was forced to follow in his father’s foot-steps. No wonder, he was a failure. The dejected father then wanted him to be a lawyer. Since he insisted that his son should not become one of those worthless pen-pushers, Stevenson was admitted to the Bar, worked as a lawyer for some time, detesting every bit of it. A failure again, he gave it up. Caught in a cleft, he switched on to literature and to his surprise, found his real world. If Stevenson had succeeded at either of the two earlier attempts, the world would have been deprived a literary luminary. Emile Zola’s failures would have frustrated anyone with lesser will. His father left to his family a rich legacy, a lawsuit against the municipality! Zola chose a scientific career, put his shoulders to it but failed. He did not allow failure to get the better of him. He started flirting with many things, but failed again. He lit the wrong end of the cigar every time. Had he succeeded in one or the other thing he had ventured upon, the world would not have known him as the author and the fighter that he was. He took to the pen and it was to his pen that he brought the accumulated wisdom of all his failures. Johnson was great even in his failures. When he was 21, his father died, leaving him a princely 20 pounds. Johnson’s ambition was to become a school teacher. He applied for a job, but he was so ugly and eccentric that he was sure to scare the children into fits. He got a job but failed in it. Had he been successful as a school-teacher, he might have passed into anonymity. He took a pad and wrote, and then wandered through London in search of a publisher. But he was told to "buy a porter’s knot and carry trunks." He found his love of literature but a pale pilgrimage of ill-paid toil and misery. He wrote and starved, starved and wrote. After years of hardship, he found his niche in life. To the money-minded, his love for literature seemed an act of mindlessness. After years of toil and tears, he found himself famous. John Keats flirted with medicine and surgery, but proved a flop. "I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest," said he. He took to poetry. Critics predicted a failure, and commented that the young poet would do well to go back to his apothecary shop and stick to plasters, pills and ointment boxes. He wrote "Endymion", which endures and affords one the purest of delight. He died young, thinking that he had flopped. He had, but successfully. William Blake lent a new reputation to failures. He first started earning his living as an artist. He knew that it was not his cup of tea. "As an artist, I was a hopeless failure, so I became an art critic!" Jerome K. Jerome proved a bungler as a clerk, schoolmaster and actor. He found himself sinking in the quicksands of his failures. He never had even a ray of success till he took to the pen, and then a miracle happened. Had he succeeded as a clerk? What? Miracles do
happen, but one has to work very hard for them! |
Population: the
other side DO you know Delhi had a hand in the materialisation of the epochal book, "The Population Bomb (1967)"? Paul R. Ehrlich "came to understand the population problem emotionally one stinking hot night in Delhi. People eating, arguing, screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People, people , people, people." And that was Delhi of the 1960s, not of the 1990s. We now constitute 16 per cent of the world’s population, with only 2.4 per cent of its land area, let alone much seasonal water shortage. And we are still increasing by 2 per cent; that adds another 18 million annually to 900 million. Fifty trying years of population control haven’t yielded the hoped-for results — the average births per woman tenaciously hovering a little below 4. The spectre of population explosion is indeed a grim reality with us. Yet the population scenario worldwide is not turning out as alarming as predicted by Ehrlich. "We will breed ourselves into oblivion" seems too dire a prediction. Ehrlich also feared that the pressure of numbers and rising per capita consumption would soon exhaust earth’s resources, more so of oil and crucial metals. Nothing of the sort seems to be happening. The world’s fertility rate is on a steep downward curve. And take a metal like copper. The reserves stood at 100 million tonnes in 1950. Since then 150 million tonnes of copper has been used, and the reserves now stand at 500 million tonnes. The date of exhaustion of oil — once put as early as 1968 — has been postponed again and again. Now, at much higher rates of use, these are slated to last at least 50 years. During the 1950s, the world fertility rate (the average number of children born per woman per lifetime) was five. By the end of the 1980s it had come down to four. And by 1995, fallen just below three ("World Population Prospects: The 1996 Revision", a UN publication). Today the total fertility rate is estimated at 2.8, and still going down. The so-called replacement level is 2.1, the level at which population stabilises. A whole lot of developed countries have fertility rates below this replacement level. The European fertility rate is down to 1.4, with Italy as low as 1.2, the lowest in the world. Japanese and Russian rates are also around 1.4 children. The US rate has been below replacement level for years. What about the developing countries where the population bomb was to be actually ticking? The fertility rate in these countries was six children per woman during the 1960s. This has now come down to three, possibly the steepest in demographic history. And there are clear indications that it is set to fall further and rather rapidly. The fertility rate has already dropped below replacement level in some 20 developing countries, including China, Cuba, Thailand, and Brazil. The world witnessed the greatest population explosion in history during the last half a century. Numbers have shot up from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly 6 billion by now. This rightly alarmed a lot of thinking people, including Ehrlich. What will it be by 2050? The UN’s "medium variant" puts it at 9.4 billion. The basic assumption is that by the year 2050 the average fertility rate for the world’s women will come down to 2.1, the replacement rate. That way the world’s population would stabilise at 9.4 billion. Some demographers, however, make out that the way fertility rates are falling, the replacement rate for the world as a whole may well be reached by 2025. Indeed, a few go as far as to foresee that with the process of modernisation, women in the developing nations would within the next 25 years aspire to achieve the fertility rate of 1.6, the one currently observed by women in developed countries. As nations modernise, they behave like modern nations. In such an optimistic scenario, the population explosion should spend itself out. And who knows, the decline in fertility may accelerate thereafter, with women all over the world choosing to have far fewer babies? The human population explosion would then turn out to be a mere blip in earth’s history, lasting perhaps no more than 300 years. That, at least, is good news for the environment. All this doesn’t mean that we relax on India’s efforts at family planning, or the nation become complacent about its population problem. Our situation calls for a high priority to population control and a sense of urgency. Yet we need not panic. Very strong forces of modernisation, urbanisation, and gender equality are busily at work, and should operate as a brake on our population explosion.
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Macaulay &
India’s rootless generations A country ignorant of its own heritage — that was India on the eve of the British conquest. Though a pioneer of higher learning (Taxila, Nalanda), India had ceased to think. It had to be told of its past — even of Ashoka, its greatest emperor, and of his edicts! Nehru called it "The Discovery of India"! It was a discovery for both Indians and others. India came to know of its past from Greek, Chinese and other records. In the process, it discovered its great achievements. Of Sanskrit, Sir William Jones had said: "More perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more exquisitely refined than either." Thus was the self-confidence of an almost lost race restored to it. But these discoveries remained unknown to most. They did not form part of India’s education. In fact, the British did not want the Indians to be reminded of their great past. Macaulay had his way. He wanted only baboos, not scholars — men, as he said, Indian in colour, but British in the way they thought. Naturally, the children of Macaulay grew up ashamed of the poverty of their civilisation, while they felt overwhelmed by the great achievements of Europe. The British historians made them feel worse by denigrating India. Indians were told that a few horsemen led by Ghauri or Ghazni were able to raid India again and again, plunder the country, and defeat the Hindu rajas. This created a great sense of inferiority complex among Hindu students. They never recovered from it. A great damage was done. They were never told that half of Europe was under Muslim rule then. Nirad Choudhary’s "Continent of Circe" is perhaps the best known expression of this sense of shame. But, then, he was not aware of much that was being discovered about India. It has been claimed that he knew the names of every street in London by reading books. If only he had tried to study what was available on India, he would have charted a different course. But, isn’t it a matter of utmost interest that what Nehru read in his prison cell led to the "Discovery of India", a book that stirred the drooping spirit of India, while Choudhary’s studies in his comfortable home led to the "Autobiography of an Unknown Indian", a book that brought shame to every Indian! How is one to explain this? Of course, they must have read different books. But I have a hunch: Nehru was a patriot, while Choudhary was already an Anglophile. Even at the age of 50, he knew little of India. Much of his knowledge of India came after he settled down at Oxford and wrote his book on Max Mueller. But, by then, he was already notorious as an Anglophile and could not have retracted his errors. Nehru says: "An individual and a nation must have depth and roots if they are to be counted in the world." Nirad Choudhary had no roots or depth. I doubt whether he had read Nehru’s "Discovery of India." One is again intrigued to ask: how is it that Sir William Jones, Prof. Max Mueller and many others saw in India one of the greatest civilisations (and this perception has steadily grown), while Choudhary and others of his ilk failed to see the same? It is not that India was without blemish. But what it had achieved was beyond imagination. But Choudhary was not alone. A whole generation of Indians was growing up, which was fascinated by Britain. They were the "brown" Englishmen. They took over the governance of the country from the British. They were considered as men of virtue and culture, even as authorities on art and literature. But they failed. They proved themselves to be philistines. They were neither here nor there. Without roots or depth, they failed to understand the country and its needs. Here is what Dr Subash Kashyap, former Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha, has written on the "founding fathers" of our Constitution: "It was an elitist body (Constituent Assembly) and not an assembly of representatives of the people. They were Western educated, nurtured in British concepts and culture and most fascinated by British institutions. Neither the ethos and genius of India nor the visions and views of Gandhi or JP seem to have inspired them much. The result was they bodily lifted large chunks of the 1935 Act (enacted by the British.)" If this is what our Constitution makers were, not much need be said of the other educated classes. So, here we are, our Constitution makers, our bureaucrats and our writers (at least most of them), all foreign to the life and culture of India! But what has happened of late to Macaulay’s children? Fifty years ago, Choudhary was the most well known Anglophile of India. Today, he is one of the bitterest critics of the Western civilisation, particularly British. Surely, his life has been a tragedy. His life’s work was in vain. But I’m not concerned with it. He should have known better. I only ask: how do you assess the life of such a man? There can be only one answer:he did immense damage to his country by denigrating it for four decades, when he knew so little about it, and he clouded our understanding of the West by painting it in rosy colours. The man was totally unfit as a teacher of men. And yet he set up shop in the heart of Oxford to teach us what India was! Thus, he misguided whole generations of both Indians and foreigners about the Indian reality. But there are many others (I do not want to name them) who made a living by denigrating India. (This was not the case with Choudhary.) They are the most despicable creatures. They too knew almost nothing of India and even less of the West. It was painful for me to read "The Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse," the new book by Choudhary — a denunciation of British, American and Indian societies. I have no intention to go into it, for it is so superficial that it does not merit our serious attention. Let me only say this: let his life be a lesson for others who are setting up shop in the West to sell India! Let it be a lesson to those who are today fascinated by America! After what Choudhary has said, perhaps few will dare to put on his mantle. At least, few will ramble about India. True, some are taking their loyalty elsewhere — to America in particular. There is no wonder. America promises abundance. The man of tomorrow in English-speaking. India has the third largest English-speaking group. They will want to be Americans. Enjoy the abundance. They may be brown, black or yellow, but their expectations are the same. India cannot meet them. But will not our youth be shattered one day when they discover the American realities? They will. This is the age of the refugees — men with no roots and depth. The Indian establishment is made up of them, people who have left their mental habitat. America is a nation of refugees. They have their unique psyche. Hannah Arendt says that they have come to symbolise the violence of our times and the culture of the exile. The refugee wants to remake the world in his own image — but they carry some of the greatest pathologies too, symptoms of exile and loneliness. |
 75 YEARS AGO Notice TENDERS are hereby invited for the removal of night soil and sullage from the bungalows, etc in the Civil Station where iron carts which belong to the committee work on the following conditions:- 1. Night soil carts will work during the night time between 12 to 4 a.m. 2. One sound bullock and one adult male driver be kept for every two carts employed. 3. On receipt of the first complaint in regard to non-attendance of a cart in a month, a fine will be inflicted equivalent to a week’s pay and if a subsequent complaint be received for the same cart in the same month, the whole month’s pay for the cart will be forfeited. 4. All the bullocks should be brought for the inspection of the Medical Officer of Health once in a month. 5. The contractor will be held responsible for any breakage or damage to the cart because of negligence on the part of the driver. 6. No cart which is leaking should ever be used. 7. Each cart should be thoroughly cleaned, greased and coal-tarred once in a month under the supervision of the Sanitary Inspector. 8. Rate should be quoted for the working of each cart. The committee has power to refuse or sanction any tender without giving any reason.
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