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| Monday, December 11, 2000, Chandigarh, India    |
Thaw in PM’s stand Musharraf's master-stroke |
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GENERAL PINOCHET’S TRIAL Of clicks, bricks and bandwidth
Wife at Work
Manipuri women
dare to dream
“A” cost her an Assembly seat
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A slight softening is noticeable in Prime Minister Vajpayee’s attitude towards the Ayodhya temple and a discussion in Parliament. It is more like his old self of speaking cautiously without giving up his position. After two days of controversial statements stressing on the need to build a temple at Ayodhya to respect nationalist sentiments while rejecting outright the demand for the resignation of three Cabinet Ministers, he climbed down on Saturday. He is now ready for a discussion in Parliament and will say whatever he wants to say only on the floor of the House. More importantly, he directed his only Muslim Minister to express the feelings of his community on the contentious issue. This has a reference to the intense heckling he faced on Friday from co-religonists at a mosque. Obviously, Mr Vajpayee did not expect such a strong reaction from the minorities and also the vast liberal sections. In a way, it is good that he has seen why people take his statements so seriously, particularly when he seems to be inching towards the Hindutva agenda. His remark in the Staten island (“I am a swayamsevak”) kicked up a mild furore. The same statement from any other BJP leader would have gone virtually unnoticed. This is true of Home Minister Advani and Human Resource Development Minister M.M. Joshi. But it is different with the Prime Minister and the reason is very simple. There is vast liberal and centrist political space which the Congress once dominated. And with the decline of that party, the alliance led by the BJP has moved in and Mr Vajpayee alone among his party leaders represents this culture. Or that is the popular opinion and for the present. Seen in this context, a weakening of his position cannot but adversely affect the strength of the moderate tendency and that will spell trouble in the long run. The ruling coalition revolves around him and the regional parties are advocates of the centrist line. That is a source of strength and also an inhibiting factor. He does not have the luxury of going back to his RSS roots and the turmoil last week proved this. In the midst of this brief political upheaval comic relief was available from RSS chief Sudarshan. He dropped a bombshell by claiming that kar sevaks from his and sister organisations merely scratched the plaster of the masjid but the structure came down in an explosion. Nobody heard any loud report because the bomb perhaps had a silencer attached to it. What is more, at least for three days before December 6, 1992, everyone entering Ayodhya was frisked for any explosive material after an intelligence agency took the boast of a kar sevak seriously and alerted the police. Perhaps it is this report that Mr Sudarshan has referred to, quoting an old Gandhian worker who has however denied it. A very authentic rejection of the bomb story has come from Mr Kalyan Singh who supervised the demolition and resigned as Chief Minister of UP minutes later. The RSS chief’s twist has not even raised laughter but the Prime Minister has lent some weight to it by referring to a taped conversation. He did not go beyond this but said that if the Lok Sabha members wanted to hear it, he was ready to play it. Again this is for the first time in eight years that there is this talk of a tape. In the weeks after the destruction of the masjid there were rumours of the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao asking his Home Minister S.B.Chavan to show restraint. This was torn out of context to present Mr Rao as abetting in the pulling down. It is time this mystery was cleared so that the two former Ministers had a chance to clarify their position. |
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Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, as it appears today, has emerged a master tactician. By striking a deal between his government and ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, resulting in presidential clemency for the latter, the self-appointed Chief Executive has weakened the political movement against his regime to the point of rendering it rudderless. Along with Mr Sharif 19 members of his family have reached Saudi Arabia as part of the secret deal, which also has it that the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) supremo will remain out of the political arena for as long as 21 years besides the forfeiture of his property worth $8.3 million to help the Musharraf government in its face-saving exercise. This means that there will be little political pressure on the military ruler now. Mr Sharif's wife Kulsoom, without holding any post in the PML, had not only launched a powerful campaign against military rule but had also joined hands with Ms Benazir Bhutto's PPP and 16 other parties to form a grand alliance named the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy. Of course, the father of the conglomerate of so many political forces was veteran politician Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, but Mrs Kulsoom Nawaz provided the maximum strength to it. By working relentlessly ever since her husband was overthrown as Prime Minister and put behind bars with a life sentence slapped on him, she had succeeded in creating abundant sympathy for the jailed leader. She had also emerged as a major threat to the government of General Musharraf, who must be feeling relieved after her departure from the Pakistani soil. By agreeing to live a life of exile Mr Nawaz Sharif may be happy that he has saved himselves from a life in jail. But he has proved to be a weak-hearted person (even if it is finally diagnosed that he has no serious heart problem), who could not bear his difficulties till the coming elections, not very far. He could have secured presidential clemency then too. But there was a big if. He has opted for a less risky course, though he will go down in history as an escapist of the first order. His partymen, who had been suffering all kinds of harassment because of the struggle against army rule at the instance of their jailed leader, must be cursing him for leaving them in the lurch. Reports suggest that there is great resentment among the PML rank and file as Mrs Kulsoom Nawaz consulted nobody in her party before quietly agreeing to fall into the trap laid by General Musharraf. The leaders of the grand alliance forged only the other day too must be feeling let down by the Sharif family at this critical juncture when they seemed to be succeeding in their struggle for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. If all that has happened is a great loss for the pro-democracy movement, it is going to make life easier for the ruling General. He will have all the time with him to give a practical shape to his strange political ideas. He may think of installing an elected regime which may be easily remote-controlled by him when he decides to relinquish power. He has already strengthened his position in the armed forces by making certain key Generals change their places of posting. He has eliminated any threat to his rule, if at all it was there, from the army side. In the absence of political pressure too, General Musharraf may try to concentrate on the implementation of the promises he has been making, which may help him regain the sympathy of the public he had lost during his 14-month rule. To assuage the feelings of the people who might have wished Mr Sharif to suffer in jail and receive the wages of his sins, the General may be more vigorous on his anti-corruption drive and redouble his efforts to restore the health of the economy. All this is, however, a matter of guess. What he has proved is that politicians can never be a match to military men in a war of supremacy, at least in Pakistan. |
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GENERAL PINOCHET’S TRIAL WE do things more democratically in India than in Gen Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, but would anyone ever have dreamt of setting up the Shah Commission and other investigations if Indira Gandhi had not lost the 1977 election? Indira Gandhi herself used to say that after her defeat she had made up her mind to retire to the hills but that Janata persecution forced her to return to the political fray and defeat Morarji Desai and Charan Singh at their own game simply to defend herself and Sanjay. If winner takes all in politics, loser also loses all. General Pinochet’s plight could be a warning to autocrats everywhere how dangerous it can be for a dictator to dismount the tiger. The drama also raises disturbing questions of law, morality and justice in political life. As his lawyers battle to avoid a trial, the 85-year-old General might reflect that none of this would have happened if he had stayed on in power like Spain’s Francisco Franco or Portugal’s Antonio Salazar. When the mob began to rampage in Jakarta three years ago, Indonesia’s former President Suharto reportedly told his cronies that the only reason he hung on to office was to save his children from prosecution. The conviction of his beloved youngest son has proved those fears right. Of course, the former Chilean dictator has much to answer for. He might be ailing and aged, but survivors of his prisons and torture chambers and the relatives of his dead victims would say that Chile’s tragedy goes back to September 11, 1973, when the military overthrew Salvador Allende, who was the Western hemisphere’s first democratically elected Marxist president. Allende’s widow claimed that he had been murdered in cold blood. About 2,000 leftists were also butchered amidst allegations of American complicity. Yet, General Pinochet was not alone. His supporters’ jubilation when the British courts released him in March on humanitarian grounds after he suffered two strokes and the Chilean naval commander’s warning that the arrest has added to tensions are reminders that the 1973 coup was popular with the middle and upper classes, as well as the military. They thought that Allende’s socialist autarky, the nationalisation of the five largest copper mines, soaring inflation and trade union unrest were driving Chile into bankruptcy. General Pinochet was the saviour who promised to “exterminate Marxism.” He is still seen as symbolic spearhead of the anti-communist movement. No wonder, the Communist Party pursued him with lawsuits until one filed in January, 1998, led to his arrest. His followers would no doubt plead political necessity for the coup and subsequent repression. If we discount that justification, we are left with uncomfortable legal controversies. Coups are by definition beyond the law but, as has been said before, revolutions create their own constitutionality. In any case, Chile’s President Ricardo Lagos is not accusing General Pinochet of usurping power 27 years ago or of murdering Allende. The charge relates to the disappearance of 77 political prisoners in the early months of the Pinochet regime. Its helicopter-borne murder squad, known as the Death Caravan, is suspected of shooting them down. If the former dictator is eventually brought to trial, he will undoubtedly claim ignorance, plausibly arguing that no president is responsible for every miscarriage of justice. Nor will it be easy to prove direct or exclusive guilt after all these years. They were all in it together. Whether we like it or not, Allende’s political orientation — he won in 1970 by a 36.3 per cent vote, mainly from peasants and workers — incited the Right to mobilise against him, with or without American Central Intelligence Agency support. When he stepped down in 1990, General Pinochet took the precaution of making himself a senator for life with lifelong immunity. The courts respected that status and refused to entertain nearly 200 criminal cases until a crusading judge, Mr Juan Guzman, took action and himself supervised digging operations to produce unidentified corpses that could be cited in evidence against the General. That suggests personal commitment beyond the call of duty. However, zeal is not the prerogative of only one side since the judicial personnel, who would not earlier touch the General because of his self-bestowed immunity, had all been appointed by his own regime. Even Mr Guzman’s efforts might have been foiled if Chile’s Supreme Court had not stripped General Pinochet of his immunity in August. If a dictator is imprudent enough to retire, on no account must he travel abroad. General Pinochet’s immunity was first challenged in distant Spain. Then in England. Given the new obsession with apologies for ancient tragedies, no leader can count himself safe when outside the protection of his own jurisdiction. An American president abroad could be charged with genocide in Vietnam. Similarly, Indians might slap a lawsuit on a touring Queen Elizabeth demanding reparation for Jallianwala Bagh and other atrocities of the Raj. Khalistani and Kashmiri terrorists can also take legal action on foreign soil against five former Indian Prime Ministers as well as Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. They can even sue Mrs Sonia Gandhi for the alleged offences of her husband and mother-in-law. The law is running amok, justice degenerating into a circus. No one can possibly hold a brief for Chile’s egregious former dictator; no one can fail to honour the victims of his brutality. The anguish their relatives still suffer commands sympathy and respect. But the 1973-90 guilt was collective. It will not be washed out by making a scapegoat of one doddering octogenarian after further months of legal wrangling over his medical and mental status by a team of six Chilean doctors. A showcase trial and conviction would not help anyone. It would be far more to the point if Chileans can put a sordid past behind them and rise to the future. That is also the painful challenge that faces Bangladesh. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s killers tried to leave no survivors to track them down, but being in England, Mrs Hasina Wajed escaped the massacre of August 15, 1975. However, the proceedings she instituted nearly 20 years later against her father’s murderers might be thwarted because the three retired army officers whom the Dhaka court convicted in absentia in 1998, together with 12 other former military men, are in the USA which shows no eagerness to hand them over. What is more to the point, though no daughter might like to acknowledge it, these men were given safe conduct out of Bangladesh and even appointed to diplomatic positions abroad. That meant that their deed enjoyed top-level support across the board. As in Chile, the guilt for Sheikh Mujib’s murder was collective. Everyone was in it at the time. Which is why probing the past is not always healthy or fruitful. Feudal Nepal solved the problem with drastic efficiency. Whenever a palace revolution overthrew one dynasty, the victor put his predecessor’s entire family to the sword. Failing such a ruthless remedy, it might be best to let sleeping dogs lie. Imprisoning General Pinochet would not make Chile and the world a more secure place for those who survived his dictatorship. By confusing justice with vengeance, as in India and Bangladesh, it would also gravely damage the prospect of a necessary reconciliation. |
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Of clicks, bricks and bandwidth HAVING settled that the “clicks and mouse” and the “bricks and mortar” economies are not mutually exclusive and have to co-exist, especially in India, let us face it that inadequate infrastructure has once again proved to be our undoing. Economy, new or old, sans a robust backbone, will collapse, sooner than later, under its own weight. We can ignore it at our own peril. Far too many vehicles jostling for space on our creaky roads and the resultant chaos, an overloaded rail network, ill-equipped ports and obsolete plants and machinery, coupled with vague systems of accountability do call for infrastructural improvement without delay. India faces the challenge of making manufacturing an integral part of infrastructure. Ditto for the new economy. Huge disparity between the national and international bandwidth is primarily responsible for the poor Internet speed and its reliability in India. Bandwidth is a measure of the amount of data that a communication system can efficiently carry. Isn’t it shocking to learn that on most of the national trunk routes, the Internet bandwidth is restricted to 34 mbps as against the total international bandwidth of 400 mbps available through VSNL gateways in the country. Quite often, the domestic bandwidth shrinks to as low as 8 mbps on most of the routes! Of reliability, the less said the better. Downtime varies from 3 to 10 per cent against the global benchmark of less than 0.1 per cent. Moreover, the downtime varies significantly across locations. It is of utmost importance that the supply of bandwidth not only precedes but exceeds the demand. Setting up of domestic Internet exchanges is critical to improved reliability and speed, as much of the bandwidth is gobbled up by the local e-mail routed through the USA! In the face of the fluctuating fortunes of the dotcom players across the globe, including the mighty Microsoft, it would be naive to believe that the new economy is a mere technological revolution. It is a financial revolution as well, which makes it far more volatile and vicissitudinous. It is the fuel of finance which fires the engine of technology. The ongoing US boom has been driven by the risk and venture capital funds. Not so in Japan and Germany. Though they had access to the same technology, they lacked the risk-taking capabilities of the American financial markets. The big difference between the old and the new economy is that the former made the financial markets invest in the physical capital whereas the latter marshals them to support innovation. In the Indian context, why can’t we develop a mechanism to make domestically developed technologies serve the domestic markets like agriculture and automobiles? At present, our IT professionals are developing products for the global IT industry. We remain largely export-oriented but low on value addition. Our inability to combine programming skills with domain skills has not helped innovation or production of specialised products. We only talk of downloading from the Net. How about uploading? Experts opine that if India stays in the unsustainable low wage labour game without adding value and creating our own market, China may overtake us. In the old economy, it has already become a bugbear! It is high time we gainfully utilised the services of our IT experts to the benefit of the vast Indian society which is witnessing a divide between the technology haves and have-nots. This digital divide has got social implications. The much talked about bodyshopping by the developed world portends ill for India. It is a happy augury that the Central government has decided to declare 2001 as the year of electronic governance. A major step has already been taken up by putting the IT Act, 2000, on the statute book. If implemented in the right spirit, e-governance would go a long way in restoring the faith of the citizenry in the efficacy of the government machinery. Transparency and promptness in service should be the hallmark of e-governance. Internet, the greatest enabler of our times, works round the clock. Once the governmental activities like the payment of taxes and tariff, renewal of licences, registration of births and deaths as also public complaints are made online, one would be able to conduct transactions from anywhere, anytime. Likewise, monitoring mechanisms, shorn of elaborate paper work, could be strengthened. Such services are already in vogue in the Arizona state of America, Singapore has fared spectacularly well in on-line governance. While implementing e-governance, it would be desirable to harness the expertise of reputed private agencies on a revenue-sharing basis and exclude the direct involvement of government officials. This would ensure early and favourable results by way of improved quality of service, customer satisfaction and accountability so conspicuous by their absence. |
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Wife at Work In India, match fixing is an old practice. A national pastime. I experienced it more than thirty-six years back. My father, like all others, had fixed the match for me. And since then life has been a long story of give and take. Of hard work and mutual care. Of even roses and ruses. My wife has worked all these years to change my habits. Now she complains that I am not the man she had married. I am convinced that love is only an idle ideal. Marriage is the reality that has to be recognised. And the secret of matrimonial 'harmony' is to say — 'Haar Manni'. But sometimes even the golden rule does not work. My wife (probably like all the other ladies) is convinced that she can do all that any man can. I have a cushy job. I make much noise but do nothing. In any case, she is confident that she can handle everything well without any of the fuss that I make. And by God's grace, she got her chance. To prove her point. The summer was almost gone. Her birthday was close. I wanted to send invitations for dinner to some close friends. The number to match the years. To have a reasonably decent celebration. To tell the local caterer to organise a hearty meal. The order for liquor had to be placed with the local dealer. Also the cake from the bakery. And suddenly, I had to go out. On account of a totally unforeseen call. She had not missed the anxiety on my face. Nor had she hesitated to offer her services to take care of all the pending jobs. To send all the letters. To place the order for food and beverages by e-mail. And so on. Luckily without even remotely realising that all this was intended to be her birthday bash. She sounded confident. As usual, I was taken in. And I left. To take care of the delicate task entrusted to me. But I took care to tell her to call my secretary, and to tell him to do the needful. And she did. But in her own inimitable way. And on the crucial evening, I came back. Just in time to be ready for the party. Of course, she was not surprised. Seemed totally relaxed. Her usual confident self. It took her no time to tell me that everything had been done meticulously. The caterer and the liquor dealer had been duly instructed. So everything was hunky dory. Despite the deep apprehension inside me, I tried to look calm and relieved. But I casually asked — "What about the invitations?" Her reply was quick and firm — "Sending the letters through the peon would have been such a hassle. So I had them posted. The whole lot." Oh! My God! I said to myself. Without letting the lips move. But she noticed my face fall. And she was curious. I attempted to sound normal. Only on her insistence, I asked — "Did you not read about the postal strike in the papers? Why did you send the cards by post?" Regardless, I knew that there was no time to do anything. Yet, I tried to act ensure that the liquor was right. Having done that, I began to get ready. And sure enough, the tables were laid. The crockery and cutlery was proper. The wine glasses were clean. The beer had been chilled. The wine bottles had been laid. The cake had been put in the middle of the central table. The candles had been thoughtfully avoided. All the candles would have been a fire hazard. Yet, something was nagging me. I was uneasy within. But I had a good shower. Soon I was ready. Before the appointed time of 8 o'clock. Dressed to receive the guests. Eight. Nine. Ten. Not a soul arrived. Thanks to the strike of the postal employees, nobody had got the invitation. Yet we had the feast. The only variation being that the bearers and the servants who had to attend on the guests, were served. By the birthday girl herself. I also lent a helping hand. But she was undoubtedly in her elements. And it was a good celebration. She was delighted. I was happy. Despite the fat bill that made a good dent in my purse. My wife had really worked. The fault, if at all, lay only with the postal employees. |
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Between them, Khundrakpam Sushila and Maichon encompass the challenges from survival to being agents of change facing women in the northeastern state of Manipur in general and those in the rural areas in particular. Sushila (35) represents the face of the Manipuri women able to interact with the polity and seize the opportunities thrown up by it. For example, she rode the empowerment wave unleashed by the 33 per cent reservation for women in the panchayat raj institutions to become a pradhan. Maichon, on the other hand, represents the tradition-bound Manipuri women, who lacking the tools to master her circumstances being illiterate sleep-walks through life, as it were. Hers is thus the story of the archetypal victim. Maichon hails from Khangabok Sorok Wangma, 35 km away to the south of the state capital Imphal on national highway 53. Just about 1 km into the small unpaved road from the highway, the scene changes drastically. The rows of semi-concrete shops give way to small mud-walled thatch houses ringed on all sides by small canals and clumps of bamboos. The canals serve to drain the rain waters of which the state unfailingly receives a surfeit, as well as the water reservoir. This is because most villages either lack the facility of piped water or, even where infrastructure exists, the taps have long gone dry due to non-maintenance. But the lack of basic amenities is no more an issue. Her spirit has been broken by the numbing poverty which is her lot now. She now depends on her husband, Khundrakpam Rajen (40), and son, Imobi (16), both for material and emotional sustenance. The last time she indulged her choice was defying the wishes of her parents to elope with Rajen. That was 18 years ago. Having neither land nor a stable source of income, her life is being defined by the torment of surviving for the day, not knowing where the family’s next meal is going to come from. (Grassroots) Satisfied men live longer Keeping your chin up and rolling with the punches may sound like cliches, but according to a team of Finnish researchers, this advice could save your life. In a study of more than 22,000 adults in Finland, investigators found that men who reported high levels of satisfaction with their lives were more likely to be alive 20 years later. There was no association between life satisfaction and mortality for women, however. “It seems to me that the coping abilities of women with distress and dissatisfaction may be better than in men,” the study’s lead author, Dr Heli Koivumaa-Honkanen, from the University of Turku in Finland, told Reuters Health. For example, men who feel dissatisfied might cope with their feelings by abusing alcohol, smoking and not exercising while women might talk to friends or seek professional help, she added. Life satisfaction refers to a sense of general well-being and takes into account a person’s interest in life and their feelings of happiness and loneliness, the authors explain. Dissatisfied men were more than twice as likely to die of all causes than those who were satisfied with life, and more than three times as likely to die of a disease, the report indicates. Men who drank heavily were at even higher risk. Marriage, exercise, high social class, not smoking, and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol diminished the risks somewhat, but the association between feeling satisfied and living longer remained.
(Reuters)
Race to patent genes The race for commercial control over the essence of life is threatening to spiral out of control, with private firms, universities and charities claiming exclusive development rights over natural processes in the human body at the rate of 34,500 a month. For the first time, research commissioned by the London-based Guardian newspaper reveals the awesome scale of the gene rush, as investors, scientists, entrepreneurs and lawyers use powerful new technology and obscure new laws to isolate and patent the genes which make us what we are before they even understand what the genes do. Biotech firms say they need patent protection to recoup their investments. But the risk to society is that future medical researchers — private and public — will have to hack their way through forests of patents, paying out hefty licence fees to a host of gene-squatters, before the miracle drugs of the genetics revolution reach the market. “It’s like someone buying a street and taking a toll from everybody passing through,” said Thomas Schwiger, of German Greenpeace, which is campaigning against gene patenting. Sue Mayer, head of GeneWatch UK, the independent watchdog body commissioned by the Guardian newspaper to analyse the gene patent rush, challenged the basis on which gene patents are granted — that genes, orbits of genes, are “inventions”.
(Guardian)
Treating arsenic waste Scientists at the Anna University have found that the technique of solidification/stabilisation (S/S) can be effectively used for reducing the leachability of arsenic-containing waste, a prerequisite for disposing of hazardous waste into landfils. Industrial processes lead to generation of hazardous toxic metal wastes which can not be destroyed or re-used. The S/S technology is used to transform potentially hazardous waste into less hazardous or non hazardous solids before these are disposed of in landfils. The S/S technique employs selected materials like portland cement, flyash and lime to alter the physical and chemical characteristics of the waste. It leads to production of a monolithic solubility of the contaminants in the leaching water. TS Kumaravel and K Palanivelu of Centre for Environmental Studies applied the S/S process to an industrial waste containing large amounts of arsenic. The waste originated from an ammonia plant of a fertiliser unit.
(PTI) |
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“A” cost her an Assembly seat “RESERVATION of parliamentary seats for candidates from the Scheduled Castes,” write Profs Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany in their book “The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty and the State in Modern India” published this year by Cambridge University Press, “is perhaps the most problematical part of the whole scheme of compensatory discrimination.” And perhaps the prickliest of the problems involved in such reservation in the national Parliament and State Assemblies — the expression “parliamentary” employed above covers both and not only the former — is the question of exactly who, or which group, is a (member of a) Scheduled Caste entitled to avail of the reservation. A question that the November 23 verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Akali Dal Minister Satwant Kaur Sandhu’s case, setting aside her election from the reserved Assembly constituency of Chamkaur Sahib on the ground that she does not belong to a Scheduled Caste as legally defined, throws up in the boldest relief. Claiming to belong to the “Ramdasi” caste, Mrs Sandhu suffered the mortification of seeing her claim challenged by an independent candidate, who could garner only 558 votes as compared to the 40, 348 polled by her, and negatived by the High Court on overwhelming evidence. Her father, who retired from the Army, her brother and sister, both in government service, and her son, a police Inspector, had all held themselves out as “Ramdasia” (not “Ramdasi”) Sikhs in their respective service records. “I can give no explanation as to how this has happened,” she said helplessly in her deposition, leaving little to the High Court by way of deduction. Whether or not the word “Ramdasia” actually denotes the same caste as “Ramdasi” — only the letter “a” at the end distinguishes one from the other insofar as nomenclature goes — the distinction proved legally fatal for Mrs Sandhu. For while “Ramdasi” is included in the list of castes in Punjab given in the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950, promulgated by the President of India under Article 341 of the Constitution and amended from time to time, “Ramdasia” is not. The President may, reads Article 341, with respect to any State or Union Territory, specify by public notification the “castes, races or tribes, or parts of or groups within castes, races or tribes”, which shall be deemed to be Scheduled Castes for the purposes of the Constitution in relation to that State or Union Territory. Parliament may by law, it reads further, “include in or exclude from” the list of Scheduled Castes so specified any caste, race or tribe or part of or group within any caste, race or tribe, but “save as aforesaid (such) a notification... shall not be varied by any subsequent notification.” Article 342 of the Constitution, the very next Article, contains a similar provision in respect of the Scheduled Tribes. Just which groups are on the lists of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, observes Prof Marc Galanter in his “Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India”, a leading work on the subject, “is not as simple a matter as it might appear.” The names by which certain groups and sub-groups are known, he points out, quoting from the Lokur Committee Report of 1965, vary from district to district and sometimes from area to area within a district. There is also a tendency for castes and sub-groups to give themselves new and fanciful names from time to time, and to resent being called by any other name. The Scheduled Castes and Tribes orders issued by the President, he says, “make a valiant attempt to grapple with this by including some synonyms and specifying some subgroups, but other synonyms and subgroups are omitted — by design or otherwise. To make matters worse, many of the names used have a shifting connotation, being used at different levels of generality”. The same term, for example, may be used to refer to an endogamous caste group and to a cluster of related castes. Sometimes more than one community bears the same name. The “name” of one group may be used as titles or surnames in another. Or a group’s name may connote a profession which is followed by others as well. The confusion, adds Prof Galanter, is compounded by problems of inconsistent translation, transliteration, and spelling. And, to cap it all, the very existence of the presidential lists acts to “induce movement across the line into favoured categories by manipulation of equivocal nomenclature.” Can, then, the word “Ramdasi” in the list respecting Punjab be read as “Ramdasia”? An old, 1964 ruling of the High Court (reported two years later in 1966) suggests that it can. “The expressions Ramdasi, Ramdasia, or Ravidasia,” said Justice Inder Dev Dua, speaking for a Division Bench, “do not seem to possess or convey any clear-cut or crystallised distinctive characteristics. The result of the researches apparently made by various authors (including Sir Denzil Ibbetson, whose report on the Punjab Census of 1881 remains a highly valued classic despite the changes wrought by time) does not seem to justify the submission that these expressions respectively carry precise, exact and distinctive meanings, excluding the possibility of some individuals ultimately using any of these epithets interchangeably.” Unfortunately for Mrs Sandhu, and despite the insistent perceptivity of Justice Dua’s opinion, the approach underlying it is no longer good law. And, paradoxical though it would surely sound, for good reason. “It is now settled law,” observed the Supreme Court in 1996 in Pankaj Kumar Saha’s case, putting it tersely, that “the Court is devoid of power to include in or exclude from or substitute or declare synonyms to be a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. The Courts would only look into the notification issued by the President to see whether the name finds place in the notification” and pass judgement accordingly. That, in fact, has been the position right since 1965, when a Constitution Bench of the court in Bhaiyalal vs Harkishan Singh ruled out any litigative inquiry into the nature and scope of the relevant entry in the presidential notification in order to ascertain whether the unnamed “Dohars” of Madhya Pradesh are actually a sub-caste of the “Chamar” caste listed therein and, as such, covered by the latter term by implication. An enquiry of that kind, said the Bench, speaking in one voice through Chief Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar, whose commitment to social justice was second to none, would not be permissible having regard to the provisions contained in Article 341. “In view of the authoritative pronouncements by the Apex Court,” the Punjab and Haryana High Court ruled accordingly on November 23, “it would not be possible for this Court to uphold the submission made on behalf (of Mrs Sandhu) that Ramdasias should be deemed to be included in entry 9” of the presidential order, which refers inter alia to Ramdasis. Once a conscious decision is taken by the President of India, it said, any variation in relation to any group or part of a caste which is excluded can be made only by Parliament as provided in Article 341 of the Constitution. Much as Prof Galanter would disagree with the “rigid formalism” of such an approach, wedded to the text of the presidential order, it is the only one that can safely and consistently be followed by all Judges without plunging into domains beyond the intellectual equipment of the Bench and the Bar. For all the attractions that the ideal of “social engineering” holds for the legal system, the hazards of sociology, social anthropology and history in which the concept of caste is mired are better left to specialists in those disciplines. |
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The life of man is far longer and far greater than you have supposed. The Spark which has come forth from God must return to Him; and we are as yet far from that perfection of Divinity. All life is evolving, for evolution is God's law; and man grows slowly and steadily along with the rest. What is commonly called man's life is in reality only one day of his true and longer life. *** Just as in this ordinary life man rises each morning, puts on his clothes and goes forth to do his daily work, and then when night descends he lays aside those clothes and takes his rest... just so when the man comes into the physical life he puts upon him the vesture of the physical body, and when his worktime is over he lays aside that vesture again in what you call death, and passes into the more restful condition .... and when that rest is over he puts upon himself once more the garments of the body and goes forth yet again to begin a new day of physical life taking up his evolution at the point where he left it. And this long life lasts until he attains that goal of divinity.... —C.
W. Leadbeater, After Death-What? (To those who mourn) *** So long as a man has not realised God.... he will have to be born again and again. —The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, chapter XXI *** The main point to be decided in regard to the doctrine (of reincarnation) is as to whether we have had a past. We know that we have a present and feel sure of a future. Yet how can there be a present without a past? Modern science has proved that matter exists and continues to exist. Creation is merely a change in appearance. The theory... does not confine man to this small earth. His soul can go to other, higher earths where he will be a loftier being.... —Swami Vivekananda's lecture at Evanston. Evanston Index, October 7, 1893. *** The absence of any memory of past existences is wrongly and very ignorantly taken as a disproof of the actuality of rebirth; for if even in this life it is difficult to keep all the memories of our past... it is evident that so radical a change as a transition to other worlds followed by new birth in a new body ought normally to obliterate altogether the surface or mental memory, and yet that would not annul the identity of the soul or the growth of the nature. —Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, The Life Divine, chapter XXII |
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