The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Perspective

Need to practice secularism in letter and spirit
by C.P. Bhambhri

PUBLIC intellectuals commonly described as secular intelligentsia have to take up cudgels against social forces and public policies which either weaken or even destroy the secular fabric of multicultural Indian democracy. A few facts may be mentioned to substantiate the argument that the letter and spirit of Indian secularism has been violated and completely nullified by some of the events in recent times.

It was not unexpected of Mr Rajnath Singh, the BJP President, who on assuming his office, reiterated his commitment to strengthen the forces of “cultural nationalism” which, in reality, means the strengthening of fanatic anti-minority Hindutva. His commitment to “cultural nationalism” or fanatic Hindutva is just an old wine in a new bottle because the Sangh Parivar and its political frontal organisation i.e. the BJP had never abandoned its ideological commitment for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra in place of secular, democratic and cultural pluralistic and diverse Republic of India.

The secular intelligentsia of India can never take a holiday from its role and duty to oppose the anti-secular forces in the country. The lesson from history is that anti-democratic and socially fanatic movements have succeeded in their mission because the liberal intelligentsia equated their struggle against racism or fascism by just winning electoral victories over such negative social forces.

A struggle in support of secular parties and politics during the elections is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to weaken, even destroy anti-democratic forces because ideological battles have to be consistently fought at intellectual and political levels. This is the reason why the Congress’ model of secularism has to be opposed. A few decisions of the UPA government or its states, especially in Andhra Pradesh, have the potential of making society communal.

First, the Rajasekhara Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh provided 5 per cent reservations for Muslims and the courts have quashed this action. The issue raised by the government’s action and the judicial verdict is neither legal nor constitutional. The policy of reservations in public institutions is a political decision and the yardstick of evaluating any political choice is always normative.

A religion-based preferential treatment by the government in the name of “reservations in public institutions” is bound to create religion-based social distance among the religious communities. If the BJP is dividing Indian society on the basis of Hindus versus the “others”, the Congress’ policies of religion-based reservations in public services are also divisive religiously and culturally.

Second, university education for secularism is a key input in strengthening the secularisation of society because scientific temper among the recipients of higher education is an essential recipe for breaking their inherited religious boundaries. A storm in tea cup has been created by the Allahabad High Court judgment that Aligarh Muslim University is a “non-minority” institution and in such an institution religion-based reservations for admission is not permitted by the law of the land.

The Allahabad High Court ruling should have a sobering effect on the government and the citizens because a purely Muslim educational institution where students and teachers are only Muslims is a breeding ground for sectarian Muslim identity. The Centre promptly maintained that the AMU Act will be amended to “get past the High Court ruling” and instead of non-minority institution, AMU will be declared a minority Muslim community university so that Muslim students receive an assured system of admissions”. AMU will be “of, by and for Muslims only”, it said.

Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh advanced a spurious argument that the AMU’s status is a “commitment made by Indira Gandhi and the UPA government is committed to it”. When she got the AMU Act amended in 1981, the Allahabad High Court declared it ultra vires. This amendment was Indira Gandhi’s bid to curry favour with the Muslim elite in return for Muslim vote. Her opportunistic politics of 1980 Lok Sabha elections resurfaced this year. For the Congress with just 145 Lok Sabha seats is in a precarious political and electoral position and its electoral strategists are following in Indira Gandhi’s footsteps while forgetting the reality of politics of 2006.

The Congress cannot meet the challenge to Indian secularism in 2006 by playing crypto-secular card of reservations for the Muslim elite. The Hindutva of the Sangh Parivar is a reality and the Hindu Rashtravadis are engaged in destroying every secular institution of the country. But the Congress is completely incapable of answering Hindu communalism with real secularism. Rajiv Gandhi failed to rise to the occasion and socially destructive Ram Temple movement of the Hindutva forces was legitimised when the Congress government allowed Shila Puja at the disputed site in Ayodhya.

Why is the Congress like French bourbons unable to learn any lessons from its past blunders like the Shila Puja? Indian secularism, its theory and praxis, has always been problematic because the Indian model of “parity of religions” and “equal preference and patronage” for every religion practiced by the Indian state has always led to a situation of the weakening of secularism. The Indian model of secularism of equal protection and promotion of every sect or sub-sect or religion is logically flawed because the Indian state in reality ends up in offering concessions to every religious community as in the case of the AMU Act.

Secularism based on complete neutrality of the state in religious matters has to be practiced if the BJP’s Hindu majoritarian politics and the Congress’ politics of accommodation of every religions group have to be ejected from public life. The upshot of this is that the crisis of secular politics as witnessed in the first decade of the Twenty First century should make Indians rethink about the model of secularism, i.e. “religious parity versus religious neutrality”.

India has not been able to strengthen secular forces because “confederation of religions” has been a preferred Gandhian model which had failed even to stop India’s Partition. The “complete separation of state and religion” is the only viable model in which no secular party can be accused of being pseudo-secular or crypto-secular and secular policies for the poor, irrespective of their religion, replace religion-based preferences and reservations.

The writer is a former Professor of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

On Record
BJP not losing its sheen, says Sushma Swaraj
by S. Satyanarayanan

Sushma Swaraj

ONCE the BJP was considered to be the best opposition party in and out of Parliament. But after a six-year stint at the Centre, it seems to have lost its sheen as the main opposition. More so with the aggressive posturing by the Left parties which is occupying the opposition space. In an interview to The Sunday Tribune, Sushma Swaraj, a prominent leader of the BJP and Deputy Leader of the Rajya Sabha, counters this perception.

Excerpts:

Q: The BJP is losing its sheen as the main opposition party. Why?

A: It is not true. Actually the Left wants to give an impression that they are occupying the opposition space. But that is far from the truth because they are the ally of the Congress-led UPA government, supporting them from outside. They speak in the Coordination Committee (of UPA) and in Parliament but when the government doesn’t succumb to their pressure they vote with them (UPA). People are seeing through the game. As elections are due in West Bengal and Kerala, the Left parties are adopting an aggressive posture. Otherwise it is all fake. The BJP is the genuine opposition party. Our opposition is not fake. It is very genuine. The BJP is taking up all issues — corruption, Muslim appeasement, tainted ministers or the Prime Minister’s non-authority.

Q: What about the Iran issue and the Indo-US nuclear deal? The Left completely overshadowed the BJP.

A: If you compare the speeches of BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi and CPM leader Nilotpal Basu during the debate on the issue, Mr Basu himself acknowledged that all points that he wanted to raise were already mentioned by Dr Joshi. On Iran, though we were saying that if you had to vote, you have to vote after criticising Pakistan. My speech on Iran was much more aggressive than the Left.

Q: There is confusion over the BJP’s stand on the nuclear issue. Is the BJP opposed to the deal or only on certain issues related to that?

A: Our foreign policy should be India-centric. Its basis should be our own interest. It should not be US or some other country-centric. This is our firm stand.

Q: Has the BJP forgotten issues of corruption, Bofors, tainted ministers etc?

A: It is not true. You know the manner in which we had raised the Quottrocchi issue. True, a sizeable number of our MPs were caught on camera. But we took action against them. We never defended them.

Q: Don’t you think the proposed yatras by Mr L.K. Advani and Mr Rajnath Singh are aimed at activating the BJP’s cadre?

A: Our cadre is with us and there is no question of reviving it. As regards our yatras, appeasement of Muslims has been on the top of the Centre’s agenda. Now there is a backlash. This will become counter productive for this government also. We want justice for all and appeasement of none.

Q: Mr Advani had undertaken a yatra before the last Lok Sabha elections, but it didn’t help the party.

A: This (yatra) is not linked to elections at all.

Q: Mr Advani is not touching election bound states. Why?

A: We are delinking the yatra totally from the elections.

Q: Mr Madanlal Khurana has joinedthe chorus of Uma Bharti.

A: Ms Bharti is out of the BJP fold. She speaks like other political parties. So, this is no revolt from within. As regards Khuranaji, he is not happy rather unhappy about certain decisions. Rajnathji (BJP president) is talking to him and I think the matter will be sorted out.

Q: Doesn’t Uma Bharti have the capability to damage the BJP’s prospects in electoral politics?

A: I don’t think so. We have seen the phase when Kalyan Singhji (former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister) left the party and the Shiv Sena projected itself as the more “Hindutva” party and pitted its candidates against the BJP. So, I don’t think the BJP’s prospects will in any way get affected.

Q: The representation of women in the BJP is on the decline. Why?

A: It is not that we do not have capable women. The only thing is the male-dominated mindset. This had been the major reason for our demand for reservation for women. But as far as Rajya Sabha is concerned, the BJP’s strength of women MPs had dipped to four from five but I am happy that after the March 28 polls, our strength will again go up to five as one more woman has been given the ticket. So, there is no question of waning of our strength.

Q: Has the BJP forgotten about 33 per cent reservation for women?

A: No. Not at all. During our (NDA) regime, we were able to introduce the Women’s Reservation Bill. There was a draft which could be discussed. But the UPA Government has not been able to even introduce the Bill. Why? Because during our regime, MPs who were tearing the Bill are all now Ministers. Who will tear the Bill, if it is introduced? The Centre is in no position to even pass the first hurdle of getting the Cabinet approval of the Bill. Because these ministers (who oppose women’s reservation) will tear the Bill in the Cabinet itself. Consequently, this government has gone a step backward.

Jessica murder: Probe other angles too
by Balvinder

WHETHER or not the whole truth in the Jessica Lall case would ever be revealed is unknown. Yet the case has opened up a Pandora’s box full of various significant socio-legal issues. The police botch up, legal inadequacies and growing social apathy are some of the subjects that are currently being debated rather hotly.

Though the debate seems to be looking minutely at various aspects of this human interest case, the focus, knowingly or unknowingly, is being put more on awarding punishment to the yet to be identified culprits than on finding the root causes of such happenings.

‘Justice for Jessica’, in real spirit of the popular slogan, should be that no future Jessica meets such a sordid end. To bring the guilty to the gallows, though essential, should be secondary. So while looking for measures to make our judicial system more effective, it is more imperative to find and demolish breeding grounds of such social scourges. Is it not childish to suppose that Manu Sharma, who obviously is not a ‘Bhai’ brand notorious criminal, would shoot, point blank, a bartender who refuses him a drink?

The illegal bar owner’s daughter, who also reportedly told the accused that drinks cannot be served, must have refused with more authority than a bartender. But she was not shot at. Since the Jessica murder was committed in a high profile unlicensed bar, the possibility of the place being used as a high profile pick up junction for high-starred call girls can not be ruled out. And there are no reasons to believe that our national capital is absolutely free of any such malice or place.

May be, Jessica being not a part of the probable flesh trade run from the place it can be believed that her possible refusal to agree to a prospective customer’s proposal could have resulted in some heated arguments that ultimately culminated in the sad shoot out.

This particular angle probably is being ignored as this would put a huge number of high profile regular visitors to this unlawfully run bar portrayed as a “party” venue (remember the quote that the convict was told “the party is over”! Which party, who hosted it and who were the invitees?).

Frequent brawls, at times culminating into fatal incidents, like the Jessica one, occur only at bars and brothels throughout the world. Nearer home, one is witness to a number of hooligan activities at a recently opened bar in Chandigarh’s chief commercial plaza in Sector 17, (incidentally the duly licensed bar is owned by Manu Sharma). However, one has never seen a single such brawl at its adjoining popular and always packed Indian Coffee House during the past four decades of its opening.

Thus, besides asking for the heads of the real killers, corrupt, pressurised members of investigation teams and always somersaulting witnesses, we should also target at the root causes of such happenings. Before demolishing unlawfully approved buildings in our big cities the plagued places like those run by the likes of Bina Ramani needs to be hammered first and firmly.

OPED

Profile
Vaiko: Amma’s foe is her friend now
by Harihar Swarup

IN January this year, MDMK leader, Vaiko, had described his party as having O-positive blood group. His allies as well as his opponents were amused at this formulation. Someone from the ranks of the DMK, his main ally then, asked him: “What is the significance of this blood group”? Pat came the reply: “It can match any blood group”. Little did M. Karunanidhi and other DMK leaders realise then the significance of Vaiko’s remark. They could never imagine that the blood groups of MDMK and AIADMK could ever match. After all, the hostility between Vaiko and Jayalalithaa had touched a Nadir when she jailed him for 19 months under POTA.

As Vaiko smiled and posed with the woman he had described as “fascist”, ideologies in politics appear to be becoming meaningless. Jayalalithaa’s most quotable quote was: “There are no permanent friends or foes in politics”.

Vaiko’s days in jail had been agonising and his trauma was reflected in a book he penned while in detention. The book was released in Chennai by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh days before Vaiko and Jayalalithaa surprised the nation by forging electoral alliance. Vaiko quotes in his book on Annadurai as saying: “The rock that blocked the path becomes the stepping stone for the strong to walk on”. Unwittingly, perhaps, the Prime Minister observed: “It appears that Vaiko has used the prison wall as a stepping stone, not a boulder that blocked his way, to rise once again as a leader of his people”. Vaiko did make the prison’s wall as stepping stone to join hands with Jayalalithaa.

Vaiko is known as a rabble rouser in Tamil Nadu politics. There was a time when he made headlines for his provocative and controversial statements, often in support of his close friend, LTTE Chief, V. Prabhakaran. His support to the Tigers, perhaps, the most dreaded militant outfit of the world, crossed all limits when he reportedly hailed the LTTE’s attempt to assassinate Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga. His life-long ambition has been to see a “Tamil Elam” in Sri Lanka and he based his campaign on this issue.

Ever since he snapped ties with the DMK in 1993, he has been the most vocal politician, espousing the cause and rights of Sri Lankan Tamils. Vaiko often recalled to his friends and close party colleagues the 24 days that he had spent in deep jungles and bunkers in the company of Prabhakaran in Jaffna in 1989 when the Indian Peace Keeping Force and the Sri Lankan Army hounded out the LTTE from its hideouts. “We ate (with Prabhakaran) and slept together. Those were the best days”, the MDMK leader reportedly said.

A new Dravidian party was born in 1994 and it was headed by Vaiyapuri Gopalasamy (Vaiko). The MDMK consisted of the breakaway group of the DMK and led by an “emotional activist” of the party. The chasm between the DMK leadership and Vaiko widened in the early nineties, leading to his expulsion from Karunanidhi’s party. Some frontliners of the DMK and many party workers came in support of him.

Vaiko, along with some district secretaries decided to launch a party rival to the DMK. He undertook a padyatra from Kanyakumari to Chennai to highlight the new party’s programme. He remained, at the same time, a bitter critic of Jayalalithaa, even holding out the threat that “if voted to power, his government’s first task would be to seize her property and assets”.

There were moments of deep depression too in Vaiko’s variegated career. In 1996, he contested for both the Assembly and Lok Sabha seats and lost both. He was humbled by the DMK nominee for the Assembly seat and trounced by the CPI candidate in the Lok Sabha contest. Most of his party candidates met the same fate. Reviving the MDMK at that time looked an impossible task but Vaiko with his sheer dedication made it possible.

Vaiko has now four MPs in the Lok Sabha; this number is significant in the era of coalition politics. His party continues to be a cipher in the Assembly. With Jayalalithaa having given him 35 seats for the May 8 election to the 234-member Tamil Nadu Assembly and Karurnanidhi’s tough attitude, “Take 22 or leave”, Vaiko decided to quit the DMK-led alliance and join hands with the woman who had put him in jail.

What really is Vaiko’s calculation? He feels that Karunanidhi, now 82, may be fighting his last election. Even if he assumes chief ministership this May, he is unlikely to complete the full term. The DMK Supremo has already appointed his son, Stalin, as his heir apparent while Vaiko sees himself as the true alternative. The MDMK leader reckons that in a post-Karunanidhi scenario, the DMK will split, and if he has more MLAs on his side, he can wean away a significant segment of the DMK and eventually stake claim for the top job. Vaiko is the man to be watched in the Tamil Nadu elections.

Dazzle of BPOs and their social cost
by J.S. Gandhi

WHY are numerous mega business malls called call centres mushrooming all over the metropolitan centres? We find these coming up fast in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon. Among the MNCs are also companies which sell their software products to the global clientele. The call centre boys and girls, hired by these companies, become an important lever in the MNCs’ business outreach network.

These young boys and girls in the call offices are picked up or rather plucked off the middle of their educational careers without knowing where to settle finally. They lap up these earning opportunities, which look ideally cut out for their half-finished education and ill-resourced lower middle class parents. The parents perhaps also want to grab this early opportunity of economic support from their kids, not feeling sure of what the future holds for them. The parents welcome the immediate cash which helps them meet some of the spiraling needs of the families. This may look a bit oversimplistic, but is quite in keeping with the current social reality.

There is, no doubt, whatsoever that these youngsters cannot even dream of finding an employment as lucrative as offered by these MNCs. As it has also been corroborated through a brief survey undertaken recently by this writer in Delhi, most youngsters by virtue of their low score in the school-ending examinations have no admission options available to them on competitive basis, whether in business management, engineering, law or economics. Their parents cannot get them the paid seats in these subjects because of the exorbitant payments required for these admissions. None of the call office youngsters that were interviewed regretted having fallen out of their regular education to enter the job market so early. The survey also revealed that their parents were ill prepared to afford their further studies, which were expected to be far more expensive than their school studies.

While the MNCs wallow in the huge savings they make by running their call centres (BPOs) in India rather than in the UK, US or Australia, by the time the youngsters choose to leave these call office jobs or are eased out of these because of their diminished capacity for focusing on the clients’ queries, they may have lost the opportunity for building a regular career. This is bound to be despairing both for them and for their dotting parents who, by then, would have firmly plugged in the youngsters’ incomes into their family budgets.

Additionally, the age would also catch up with the youngsters since many of them may have either married by then or getting ready for it. This means many more upsets and frustrations for these young earners once we reckon with the difficulty of settling down as a married youngster. But even before they marry, their jobs would have changed their moral proclivities for good —almost out of recognition for a middle class family culture. As has come to be known now through some surveys, the call office kids use both their money and their unmonitored freedom to engage in freewheeling partying, booze and sex. Such a life style might even change their attitudes towards marriage and married life.

The point of argument here is not to bemoan the phenomenon of growing independence of the youngsters from the parental fold and traditional moral expectations — a trend which has already been shaping for quite a while now ever since the Beatles’s day, or perhaps even earlier. In fact, no such change in value-orientations needs bemoaning since the wheels of change in this direction are already moving and moving very fast. As a result, the youngsters are getting more and more inviduated from their families and parental controls.

Therefore, our only purpose in this brief write-up is to say that these BPOs act as an additional pacemaker in the same direction, i.e. in weakening the family institution and in accentuating the loosening hold of the family over the younger members.

The jobs that the youngsters occupy at these BPOs are marked by a high degree of invisibility from their families, parents and known social circle. In fact, it is a closed world within itself shared by their colleagues in the secluded sanctity of a mega mart. Long hours of night duties — inclusive of the pick-up and drop-back time taken by the company vans — are punctuated only by brief intervals of rest and relaxation. It is interesting sight to see young boys and girls often swaying in sleep in the pick-up vans while returning from their duty.

As some recent reports and also data collected by this writer have brought out, these intervals of leisure are often marked by wanton parties, booze, etc. On top of it, the youngsters feel heady with the handsome pay packet, which they use both to enjoy their newly earned freedom and to flaunt to their peers. And since they are able to share a part of family’s financial burden, they seem to experience a notional parity with their parents, so early in life.

Another important feature of these jobs is that these youngsters endure an unnatural work rhythm of night shifts on account of inescapable time-difference between India and the western world. As opined by psychologists and medical experts, to follow such a work-routine regularly imposes severe strains upon the youngsters’ psycho-physiological systems, evoking unfavourable response patterns from them. Besides, they are forced to remain cut off from their normal circle of friends and acquaintances including their family members. This is bound to generate a sense of social alienation and deprivation among them.

One can only hazard a guess how far these youngsters will carry on with their jobs, but surely by the time they finish with their careers in the BPOs, they would have lost much of their youthful exuberance and energy that they so require at this stage to build their careers in the competitive world. It is also likely that by the time they are through with their call office careers, they have very little idea on what further direction they should follow. Whatever they do, it will only be a second-rate choice, a compromise solution in view of the precious time that they have lost making some quick bucks for themselves and their families.

The BPOs would really have soaked the best out of them and should, therefore, be regarded as smart winners in this game of outsourcing. They win all the way inflicting a heavy, but unseen cost on the country where they put into effect their grand schema.

****

The writer is Distinguished Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Diversities — Delhi Letter
MDU to confer doctorate on Khushwant
by Humra Quraishi

SPRING time is getting to be the most happening phase here. Writers coming down here to give talks or have their books released, music festivals being held in prominent public parks.

On March 25, Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) in Rohtak will confer the Doctorate of Literature on Khushwant Singh. Two other universities — GND University, Amritsar, and Andhra University, Waltair (now Visakhapatnam) — had conferred the doctorate degree on him earlier.

I think he deserved a similar honour from Aligarh Muslim University because, on a Rockefeller Fellowship under the auspices of AMU, he wrote two volumes History of the Sikhs though he could have chosen any other university in India or abroad. I think he had chosen AMU for this work because he is one of those Indians who has done his utmost for the Muslim community and its institutions as also to bridge the gap between the Muslims and the Sikhs.

In course of an interview some time ago, I did ask him how the Partition chaos had affected most Sikhs and Muslims. He, however, held that there was no ill will on the part of the Sikhs towards the Muslims. He said two

Muslims have left a deep impact on him — one was his Urdu teacher at the Modern School, Maulvi Shafiuddin Nayar and the other was Manzoor Qadir, whom he had known from his Lahore days. He acknowledged that “interactions with these two men changed my entire perception”.

Sixth book on Middle East

Dilip Hiro was here giving details of what’s happening on the US-Iran front (in the backdrop of his book Iran Today). Amazing has been his research span. This particular book is his sixth one on politics in the Middle East. He gave us an account of the likely consequences in the event of the United States attacking Iran. But then, as Hiro pointed out, the US will not easily attack Iran for there are complexities involved.

He says anything military will be bad news for the world. Iran is the second largest oil producing country in OPEC, the fourth largest oil producing country in the world. It is four times the size of Iraq and three times more populous than Iraq with 90 per cent Shia population.

Also the fact that Iranians have been infiltrated into Iraq and are holding key positions in today’s Iraq. Thus, in case the US attacks Iran, it will suffer a severe backlash in Iraq.

More focus on Nehrus

Based on the new pictorial biography of the Nehrus — The Nehrus: Personal Histories — by Professor Mushirul Hasan (Roli), the India International Centre will organise a week-long exhibition of some of the rare photographs of the Nehrus. The exhibition starts on March 23 and concludes on March 30. Some rare moments “private and public face of the Nehru family” are said to be captured in those shots.

Work on Tihar Jail inmates

Saroj Vasishth, an enthusiastic writer, is here. She is known for the good work she had done on the Tihar Jail. Though she had shifted to Himachal Pradesh, she visits New Delhi almost every winter to interact with the inmates of the Tihar Jail. She writes, translates and edits the copy. Though she has written and translated extensively, I would consider her earlier translated book, Kala November — The Carnage of 1984 (Rupa) to be outstanding.

She told me that she is compiling and editing more with focus on writings of the jailed inmates. This brings me to wonder why do we, our system, discourage prisoners from keeping notebooks etc. This should, in fact, be encouraged for writing takes away so much stress. Activists like Saroj should fight for this and more of our hapless imprisoned population.

Writers’ meet: New faces

There should be more interaction between writers of different languages. Last weekend at the release of the Hindi (translated) edition of Arundhati Roy’s An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (Penguin), it was a pleasant surprise to see so many new faces — writers in Hindi, Oriya, Bengali, Telugu and Urdu, to mention a few.

A Hindi writer, Jitendra Kumar, left an indelible impression on the audience. Though he spoke for barely 10 minutes, he examined the issue of hypocrisy in the country. He is presently engaged on an in-depth study of caste politics and communalism in the media.