The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

It’s EC’s right and duty!

PERHAPS the Deputy Prime Minister needs to be reminded that the abbreviation EC stands for Election Commission and not Extra-Constitutional. This unpleasant exercise has become necessary following Mr Lal Krishna Advani’s poser to the Election Commission on the Gujarat elections. He has questioned the very competence of the poll panel to decide the timing of the election in Gujarat. Perhaps he has forgotten that the Election Commission has not visited Gujarat to dictate the dates of the election, but only to find out whether the atmosphere is congenial for holding free and fair elections on any particular dates. It is an autonomous organisation empowered by the Constitution to sit in judgement on this vital issue. If it says no to certain dates, no it should be. There has been a general decline in the independence and moral stature of many such revered organisations, but the Election Commission does not happen to be one. That is only because it has steadfastly refused to toe the government line. Instead of coming in conflict with this body, the government will do well to respect its assessment and stand by it. If the situation in Gujarat is really as peaceful as the government has projected it to be, then it has no reason to fear the EC because the latter has no axe to grind, unlike some political parties. Unfortunately, many independent sources speak of an atmosphere of tension and hatred in which elections may get vitiated. The Election Commission is one touchstone which must be honoured.

What the government and other parties concerned have to bear in mind is that communal harmony can be restored in Gujarat - and for that matter in any other state of the Union - only if there are no reasonable doubts in the mind of the public about the motive of the rulers. Elections are not held for the sake of any party but for the sake of good administration. The timing of the election too has to be finalised according to the ground situation. It is the right and the moral duty of the Election Commission to gauge it with precision. The same holds true of the President of the country. After all, he is the First Citizen, and like every other citizen, he can and must respond to the misgivings exercising the collective mind of the country. He is the symbol of the Republic, and it will be in bad taste to attach motives to his decision to visit the disturbed state.

America’s Iraq problem

IN the post-Soviet world the Americans have begun to suffer from two serious syndromes — Iraq and Al-Qaeda. The latter, a terrorist network with its headquarters in Afghanistan, is almost finished with the whereabouts of its head, Osama bin Laden, remaining shrouded in mystery, while the former — the Iraqi regime — is still surviving with its main architect, Mr Saddam Hussein, succeeding in strengthening his position among his people. The world community has no disagreement with the USA so far as its anti-Al-Qaeda drive is concerned; rather the super power is getting support from all possible quarters in its war against the terrorist network. But Iraq represents an altogether different case. Between 1990 and 2002 the world has come to realise that the US agenda in Iraq is solely aimed at protecting its own economic and strategic interests. That is why the nations which agreed to become part of the US-led military campaign against Iraq in 1990 are no longer willing to play that role today when the Bush administration is fine-tuning a fresh plan to attack the uncomfortable regime on the pretext of it re-emerging as a threat to world peace. Canada says that it cannot back a move which does not have the sanction of the United Nations. Britain, the staunchest ally of the USA, has openly expressed its reservations about the American gameplan, pointing out that an armed drive to change the Saddam regime may lead to inflaming of the world’s other trouble spots, creating a very complicated situation. The viewpoint of the UK’s Tony Blair regime is that no such action is thinkable without reviving the abandoned Palestinian-Israeli peace process, a subject more urgent than the unjustifiable perceived threat from Iraq.

Even the US Congress is opposed to what President George W. Bush is so keen on initiating in the case of Iraq. The American Congress believes that any military action against Iraq at this point of time may turn into a nuclear conflict in the West Asian region because of the existing geo-political reality there. Mr Saddam Hussein has grown more popular among the Iraqis and other Arabs since 1990. As a tactical move, in the event of a fresh onslaught from US forces, he will attack Israel with the help of his mobile missile launchers with a view to further strengthening his appeal among the Arab public. But Israel will not keep quiet. It may retaliate with a massive nuclear strike, not caring for any appeal from the USA or others. Israel considers this essential to safeguard the deterrence value of its nuclear weapons for its very survival in the volatile region. Even otherwise, where is the need for all this when the Saddam regime is ready for a dialogue on the issue of allowing UN Weapons Inspectors to Iraq to begin their work afresh? The truth is that the USA is no longer willing to tolerate Mr Hussein in a commanding position in Iraq because he can come out with any dramatic move against the super power. There are, however, other ways to tackle such a situation. Under no circumstances should the people of Iraq be deprived of having a ruler of their choice. If Mr Hussein is their preference, the USA has no right to dispute it. It is the question of sovereignty of a nation and it must be respected by the super power. It is for the people of Iraq to change their ruler if they so desire.

OPINION

The Indian idea: towards fraternity-I
Secularism, religion, culture & minority syndrome
B. G. Verghese

GUJARAT has rent the country asunder by questioning the very idea of India. The Muslim League tried to divide people but failed and had to rest content with dividing territory. Though partitioned, India remained India, something more than just geography. It embraces the history, culture, values and aspirations of a richly plural society and combines many streams and traditions down the ages.

That the forces of Hindutva should now seek regressively to validate the two-nation theory is both-tragedy and farce. This will not succeed. Yet, it represents a challenge that needs to be confronted by dialogue and reconciliation. The immediate task at hand is to rehabilitate the victims of hate in Gujarat and ensure that their citizenship is made whole again through justice, the restoration of dignity and removal of fear.

The word “rehabilitate” in its original sense meant ‘to invest with dignity’, a noble intent far removed from the squalid official pretence in Gujarat. Civil society must step in to fulfil this solemn duty from which the Central and Gujarat governments have resiled.

The larger task is to mend India. This calls for introspection about what has gone wrong. Why should a section of Parivar Hindus feel oppressed and inferior when they are so obviously part of the dominant majority and ruling elite in every sense? Why this warped self-image, the lurking grudge and retreat into the dim past when it is the future that beckons?

At one level, the ordinary mingling and jostling of everyday living in India has produced a remarkable inter-cultural penetration over generations in every field. Maybe at another level, there has been a relative absence of meaningful social discourse in recent times, with community leaders talking at rather than with one another. Where there is dialogue, the terms of discourse have been skewed.

Secularism, for instance, is a basic feature of the Constitution, literally and Article of Faith. The dictionary meaning of “secular” is to be wordly and in the Indian context the term was perhaps meant to signify separation of the church from the state. Yet the constantly reiterated concept of sarva dharma sambhava implies equal respect for all faiths, not atheism; for India is a highly religious society. “Equal respect” is, however, difficult to practice when so little has been done to teach even the rudiments of the great religious traditions that flourish in the country.

Sarva dharma sambhava has at best established a sense of “separate but equal”, quite the opposite of fraternity, the major social premise of the Constitution. The term “secular” was not found in the Constitution (except in Article 25 where it is used in its “wordly” meaning) until inserted into the Preamble by Indira Gandhi in 1976. The Founding Fathers rightly preferred the broader and nobler term Fraternity (togetherness, bonding, brotherhood) which encompasses much more than “secular” or sarva dharma sambhava. Unfortunately, the meaning and practice of secularism was soon distorted.

The Muslim underclass was orphaned at Partition with the exodus of many among the community’s elite and professionals to Pakistan. Its residual leadership vested with “nationalist Muslims” and the clergy after the integration of princely states and zamindari abolition effectively removed the latter two categories from the political scene. To a traumatised community besieged by uncertainty, it appeared prudent to cling to orthodoxy. Modernising Muslim tendencies for years received short shift from the government in the name of a touch-me-not “secularism”.

Culture is far wider than religion. But failure to distinguish the one from the other further distorted the meaning and practice of “secularism”. Urdu, a rich and uniquely Indian language, was an early “Muslim” casualty because of its part-Persian legacy. Few who make such fatuous denominational distinctions realise that a good part of their English usage in ordinary conversation draws a great deal from the Bible. The Oxford English dictionary is said to contain over 3000 Indian words. This is enrichment, not aggression.

Everyday way-of-life customs such as bhoomi puja, saraswati puja or the celebration of Vishwakarma are correspondingly criticised as “Hindu” rituals violative of secularism if performed on public platforms. There is no such regressive thinking in Indonesia, the world’s largest Islamic state or Buddhist Thailand and Cambodia all of which celebrate their “Hindu” cultural roots. The great Muslim exponents of Hindustani music sing in praise of Ram and Krishna. The blending of “Hindu”, “Muslim” and other traditions in food, dress, architecture, rituals, festivals, sufi-rishi practices and much else is evident all over India.

The teaching of history has been distorted by an unreal categorisation into so-called Hindu/ancient and Muslim/medieval periods emphasising dynastic rule and mutually antagonistic heroes and villains. In truth, after the first Muslim conquest, later invaders were challenged by Hindu-Muslim coalitions and overthrew extant Muslim regimes in Delhi. Beyond the court circle, Hindus and Muslims shared the same joys and suffered similar oppression at different times. The people’s history of India was not denominationally segmented.

However, revivalists see things differently. For Some, history ended around 1000 AD with the Muslim conquest. Honour was only restored in 1947. In Hindutva’s new parlance, Porus’s battle against Alexander was the “first war of Independence” and the 1857 Revolt the second. Muslim revivalists on the other hand mourn the period after Plassey as a Dark Age of servitude. The rise and growth of Islam happened to coincide with the ascendancy of the Caliphate whose ending after World War I saw some in India seeking its restoration. It took a while after Independence for such elements to come to terms with the reality of nation-states and to reconcile themselves to the fact that secular India was not Dar-ul-Harb. On the other hand, the genius of Hindu India has been to make space for everybody and accommodate divergent tendencies within a greater oneness.

The adjustment of deep-seated mind-sets and primordial emotions to changing political, economic and technological circumstances takes time. India is going through such a period of transition. The process has been slow and halting because social reform and the concept of fraternity have not been given the importance they deserve in nation building witness the ham-handed manner in which matters of “official language” or cross-community and elite-to-people communications have been traced. The country has been all but bereft of social reforms after Gandhi and Ambedkar and, maybe, Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan. “Godmen” are no substitutes.

Another flaw in the country’s secular framework lies in the political investment made in the expression “minority”. The Constitution recognises religious, linguistic and cultural minorities who are accorded the right “to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice” and guaranteed protection of their customary laws and way of life (if Scheduled Tribes). These are valid safeguards that are not constitutionally extended to the majority community in terms only because they hold the reins of governance in their hands in any democratic calculus.

Recognition of a minority implies the existence of a majority. A person’s religion for the most part is an accident of birth and less of independent persuasion, except by adult choice or conversion. Faith essentially is and should be personal, though rituals are prescribed and administered by religious establishments. Furthermore, individuals do take part in congregational worship and other observances and community festivals, many of which are, however, becoming secular occasions, market opportunities and, alas, even political manifestations.

Every individual has multiple identities defined by sex, age (child/senior citizen), occupation, cultural attributes/preferences, interests and so forth. This may render him/her a majority under one category and a minority under another. Dr Karan Singh has often said that he is part of the majority community in India, but is a minority in J&K though again restored to majority status in Jammu.

Likewise, Sikhs are the majority community in Punjab and Christians in Mizoram and Nagaland. Often, however, people do not change as much as their appellations do. The label “minority/Muslim” or “majority/Hindu” is not necessarily what they themselves choose but what is pinned on them. It is the others’ perception that gives one his/her public persona. Ehsan Jafri died not because of what he was but for what he was perceived to be by a frenzied and misguided mob.

Unfortunately, faith has been politicised and, religious communities/denominations, like caste, sought to be treated as vote banks. This has put a premium on numbers and electoral/political power, whereas being part of a “minority” or “majority” is in many ways more a matter of attitude than of numbers. A self-assured, well-educated, confident Parsee, Sikh, Christian or Muslim seldom sees himself as a “minority” as he can hold his own among the rest. The same can be said about the “son of the soil” (bhoomiputra) once he knows he can withstand economic and social competition on merit. It is the weak, uncertain and diffident who suffer a minority complex

Thus Sinhalese often betray a minority psychosis vis-a-vis the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka. Similarly, the Hindutva crowd constitutes a vociferous minority in India because of the strange inferiority complex it exhibits. This condition calls for correction through dialogic therapy. Both majoritarianism and minorityism should be eschewed.

In any event, it is quaint to describe the 130 million and more Muslims in India as a minority. This is to drain words of meaning. At best Muslims are a “minority” in relation to Hindus, no more. The term in fact derogates from the principle of equality of citizenship and has by wrong usage come to imply a patron-client relationship.

Hence the RSS formulation that minorities must “earn” the goodwill of the majority community. The Canadians have dealt with this problem more creatively by formally labelling their tiny Inuit (Eskimo) community the country’s “second majority”.

Article 30 gives minorities the right to run their own educational institutions. These enable them to make senior appointments and “administer” these institutions and to reserve up to 50 per cent of admissions to members of their own community even though they are beneficiaries of government aid. The width and ambit of this Article is currently being argued before the Supreme Court.

The Arya Samaj and Ramakrishna Mission have in the past pleaded minority status to be able to establish and administer their own institutions. This is odd; but answers can be found to such conundrums. However, it is not obvious that minority educational rights discriminate against the majority in any real sense. Ultimately, what matters is conformity to prescribed standards and, more than that, excellence — whether the institutions be convents or madarsas or shishu mandirs and vidya bharatis run by the Sangh Parivar.

(To be concluded)

The writer is Visiting Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

POINT OF LAW

Striking lawyers on the wrong side of the law:
High Court
Anupam Gupta

REFLECTING widespread public dissatisfaction over the phenomenon, and determined to check "unethical methods" of redressal of grievances by professionals, the Punjab and Haryana High Court came cracking down on lawyers’ strikes last fortnight, holding "every such action .... as illegal and wholly unjustified".

"No advocate," ruled the High Court on August 2 in a sweeping decision, "is entitled to go on a strike or abstain from work" for any reason whatsoever, regardless of whether it is a statutory body like the Bar Council or a non-statutory body like a Bar Association which has given the call to do so.

Separated by a distance of 37 pages, it is a decision that appears nonetheless to be the natural outcome of an intense, almost aristocratic, dislike of all forms of popular agitation voiced in the very opening paragraph of the judgement.

"Bandhs, strikes, boycotts, picketing and dharnas," said the High Court, "are the hallmarks of the modern social set-up in urban India. There is a complete lack of work culture, sense of duty, civic sense and responsibility ... Professional bodies of lawyers, doctors, chartered accountants, etc are not immune from this syndrome which is eating into the vitals of our nation’s foundation. Rather, strikes and boycotts by professionals like lawyers and doctors are becoming a routine feature .... This is certainly not the society dreamed by the Father of the Nation — Mahatma Gandhi."

Churlish and technical though this bit of criticism might sound to the lay reader, and lest newspaper reports of the judgement create a wrong impression, it is important to point out that, insofar as doctors and chartered accountants are concerned, these opening remarks are wholly obiter.

Taken up on a suo motu reference by a learned Judge of the High Court, distressed by the February, 2000 lawyers’ strike against proposed amendments in the Code of Civil Procedure, the case decided by a Division Bench on August 2 involved strikes by lawyers only and no other section of the community.

"I treat the strike resorted to by the lawyers from February 23, 2000", said the Judge, "and any other that may be resorted to in future, as a Public Interest Litigation and refer for adjudication the question as to whether a section of lawyers which ... may (choose to) appear despite strike call given by a particular Bar Association or Bar Council of India or Bar Council of any State, can be proceeded against by any such bodies for any punitive action against them. The Hon’ble Bench, dealing with the matter, may, in its discretion, add other dimensions or questions for adjudication."

The dateless futurity of the reference, and the invitation to add new dimensions or questions, notwithstanding — it is not for the first time, after all, that public interest litigation has tended to defy all limitations of pleading and issue-formulation — it is apparent from the judgement that strikes by doctors, chartered accountants or any professional group other than lawyers was not a question debated at the Bar.

Nor, for that matter, did the Division Bench issue any notice to any statutory or non-statutory body representing any professional group other than lawyers.

However heartfelt the opening remarks against doctors and chartered accountants might therefore be, and whatever consolation lawyers might draw from knowing that they do not stand alone in the line of fire, the remarks cannot be treated as anything more than obiter dicta.

The blanket judicial condemnation of all forms of mass protest — "bandhs, strikes, boycotts, picketing and dharnas" — in a single opening line, regardless of the object or cause and regardless as well of whether the action is peaceful or attended by violence, stands on an even lesser footing though jurisprudence has yet to devise a proper name for an obiter beyond an obiter.

Actuated no doubt by a genuine concern for the present state of Indian polity and society, it is this undifferentiated rejection of all democratic action by judicial ipse dixit — this "antiintellectual approach", if I may be permitted to label it thus, borrowing from Robert Stevens’ brilliantly comprehensive biography of the House of Lords: "Law and Politics, the House of Lords as a Judicial Body, 1800-1976" — that constitutes, in my opinion, the most fragile part of the August 2 verdict, even though one fully appreciates the growing sense of alarm over lawyers striking work at the drop of a hat and the hardship caused thereby to litigants.

"I do not deny, of course, that both a general strike, and others of far less amplitude, inflict grave injury and hardship upon the community," wrote Harold Laski, one of the tallest intellectuals of the 20th century, befriended and respected by the tallest judges of his time for his acute understanding of the interface between jurisprudence and society.

"But when trade unions seek for what they regard as justice (he said), one of their most powerful sources of strength is the awakening of the slow and inert public to a sense of the position. Effectively to do this, in a real world, it must inconvenience the public; that awkward giant has no sense of its obligations until it is made uncomfortable."

Nor is there a hard and fast line, said Laski, between industrial action and political action.

"Quite frankly (he elaborated), I would have liked to see a general strike proclaimed against the outbreak of war in 1914... You cannot compartmentalize life; and where grave emergencies arise, the weapons to be utilised must be fitted to meet them."

A government which knew, added Laski (no arm-chair academic), that its declaration of war was likely to involve a general strike, would be far less likely to think in belligerent terms. "I do not see why such a weapon should be struck from the community’s hand. I do not forget that the German Republic was saved from the Kapp Putsch by a general strike."

A lawyer is no industrial worker, the Division Bench would say, as indeed would many lawyers themselves. As indeed, in fact, said the learned Single Judge in his reference, quoting a 1993 ruling to which he was a party.

"A lawyer has no master and no employer," he wrote. "He continues to be engaged for self occupation. The concept of strike was, thus, totally unknown to this profession for as many as 23 years after the advent of the Constitution. Insofar as my memory goes, (the) first strike came to be observed on the supersession of three Hon’ble Judges of the Supreme Court way back in 1973..."

Regardless of whether the 1973 strike against supersession of Judges — a strike which reverberated throughout the country and did the Bar manifestly proud — was actually the first in history, a fact that would require considerable research to be either confirmed or refuted, it is astonishing that the Division Bench, overwhelmed by alarm over the frequency of lawyers’ strikes in recent times, devotes no attention at all to this aspect of the matter.

Coupled with its undemocratic rejection of all mass action, its failure to distinguish between the lawyer as lawyer and the lawyer as citizen and public leader is the principal shortcoming of the August 2 verdict.

The lawyer as lawyer does definitely become a "trustee of his (the client’s) faith and confidence", as the Division Bench chooses to put it, even though the concept of "trust" as a source of rights and obligations is one of the most challenging concepts of jurisprudence, the danger of the moral being facilely converted into the legal always looming large over the mental horizon.

Equally definitely, however, the lawyer as citizen and public leader is required to rise above his professional obligations and is universally expected to do so.

"(T)he lawyer’s extra-professional role is not independent of his professional role but is in fact closely related to it," said Walter Wardwell and Arthur Wood in their address to the American Sociological Society in 1954. "However, we cannot escape the fact that the lawyer has extra-curricular obligations of a special kind simply because he is a lawyer."

While the same may be true of certain other professional groups such as physicians, they said, "the lawyer’s extra-professional obligations are distinguished by being closely related to the organised political unit and to formally organised groups serving community purposes."

"This brings the lawyer’s extra-professional activities (they added) more to public attention than is true of other groups and gives them special significance. There results a sense of urgency about the lawyer’s citizenship role which does not exist in the case of other occupational groups."

In refusing to recognise this role and denying lawyers the right to strike under any circumstances and for any reason whatsoever, the August 2 verdict betrays, however, a contrary sense of urgency.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Internal meditation means concentration on certain centres (chakras) of the body. The most important and most favourable chakras (for beginners) in meditation are the chakra in the heart and the chakra between the eyebrows.

In the waking state the mind functions in the brain, in the dream state it works near the throat, and in deep sleep it goes to the heart... So the ultimate purpose of internal meditation is to bring the mind to the heart.

This is done in three stages — the mind comes from the external objects to the head, then the head comes to the heart... Slowly, you begin to feel that the mind descends from the head through the throat to the heart... You must do it with caution; otherwise you will sleep and mistake it for meditation.

— Swami Krishnananda, Yoga, Meditation and Japa Sadhana.

***

Put power into your meditation so that whether you sit for five, 10 or 15 minutes a day, you go into meditation with full force and vigour... You then begin to build up a tremendous, dynamic force, a reservoir within yourself which acts as a catalyst to push you onto contemplative states.

— Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, Merging with Shiva: Hinduism’s Contemporary Metaphysics

***

The mantra is the master key that unlocks the mystery of the inner kingdom, revealing the fullness of your own heart.

The mantra fills you up with light. It fills you up with love.

Whenever you are alone, just repeat the mantra.

Then you will always have good company.

Whenever you find yourself dejected, bring your mind back to the splendour of the heart, filled with love, and listen to the Divine sound

SO’HAM,

“I am That,

I am That,

I am the Truth.”

— Swami Chidvilasananda, Gems from the Magic of the Heart

***

In joy and sorrow, in pleasure and pain, one should act towards others as one would have them act toward oneself.

— The Mahabharata