The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Time for introspection
Cong must bridge ‘disconnect’ with workers

THE introspection exercise that Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi has undertaken on Uttar Pradesh in view of the party’s disappointing performance in the recent assembly elections is well-meaning but it needs to go beyond the predictable finger-pointing and finding scapegoats. The whole process must be honest and threadbare, and the focus of the party should be on what could be done in the future, and not on recrimination. It should be a cause for some soul-searching as to why the party’s traditional vote banks of Dalits and Muslims shied away from it this time around. Was the election strategy of the Congress flawed and if so, what are the lessons that can be learnt from it? Was there a degree of arrogance among the party’s Central and State leaders that alienated the party from the people?

Rahul Gandhi was right when he said that the party’s fundamentals were weak. For decades now, the Congress has been organizationally weak in UP. It is now clear that merely creating a personality cult will not do. Significantly, the party lost in all the five assembly segments of the parliamentary constituency of Rae Bareli which party president Sonia Gandhi represents despite the fact that her daughter, Priyanka Vadra, was incharge of the campaign in both Amethi and Rae Bareli. The party apparatus in the country’s largest State needs to be built brick by brick by devolving greater power to grassroot leaders. The manifest nepotism in the party with candidate selections being largely dictated by leaders who wield influence with the high command has to go. Rahul Gandhi’s plan to divide the State into four zones for better management and control may sound like a good idea but there is need for a pan-State leadership that inspires the cadres into action. The ‘disconnect’ between the leaders and the party workers has to go and this may entail some tough decisions.

If the Congress is to come back strongly in the Lok Sabha elections from UP, the newly-elected legislators will have to effectively voice people-related issues in the assembly as Rahul Gandhi has rightly said. At the same time, a new State leadership must be groomed and trust reposed in it.

India in South China Sea
Pointless protests by Beijing

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s response to China’s so-called warning to India on the question of oil exploration in the South China Sea in collaboration with Vietnam is in keeping with India’s consistent position. The area (Blocks 127 and 128) where India’s ONGC Videsh is to start drilling is not in Chinese territorial waters. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry reiterated the fact on Thursday — the day when National Institute for South China Sea Studies President Wu Shicun made an unsubstantiated claim — that Blocks 127 and 128 were, without doubt, in Vietnamese territorial waters and China knows it fully well. Yet it keeps objecting to India’s role in line with how Beijing, of late, has been flexing its muscles against its neighbours. But India has asserted its right to play its due role because the waters under question are the “property of the world”.

The actual reason is not the oil exploration pact that India and Vietnam have signed, which is a purely economic activity. China’s worry is that India is gradually expanding its presence in East Asia where Beijing has been lording over with small countries. These countries, most of them members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), are in favour of India playing its role in a big way in the strategically significant region. India too has increased its efforts for better relations with these countries as part of its Look East policy. This is upsetting for China, as India’s expanding presence in the region does not fit in with the Chinese scheme of things.

The authorities in China should remember that times have changed, and today no nation, even if it is a super power, is in a position to impose its will on others. China has every right to pursue its goal of becoming the super power of the future, but this does not mean that it can make others in its immediate neighbourhood, in particular, to act in accordance with its dictats.

Thought for the Day

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

— Winston Churchill

ARTICLE

Case against death penalty
An opportunity for Punjab’s contribution
by Justice Rajindar Sachar (retd)

India is persisting in retaining the death penalty notwithstanding the fact that so far 139 countries from all regions of the world have abolished this kind of punishment and 150 have put a moratorium on it. The UN passed a resolution on September 20, 2010, appealing to all nations to observe a moratorium on the death penalty if they are not agreeable to pass legislation to abolish it.

Recently by a curious turn of events a slight clink seems to have crept in against a look-like formidable wall of opposition to the abolition of the death penalty. I am referring to the case of Balwant Singh Rajoana, who was awarded the death penalty for the assassination of Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995. Rajoana did not appeal against his conviction nor did he file a mercy petition before the President for commutation of his sentence. The High Court confirmed his death sentence in 2007.

The Parkash Singh Badal government did not take any interest in this case nor was this an issue in the recent election in Punjab. But recently the Jathedars of the holy and universally respected Akal Takht chose to issue a Hukamnana to Badal to commute the sentence of Rajoana. From Press reports it appears that Rajoana made it clear that he was not asking for mercy and wanted to be hanged. Why the Jathedars so acted is a matter which, I am quite sure, all well-wishers and devotees of Akal Takht will consider seriously in view of the fact that Punjab has witnessed disturbing scenes and a lot of tension, and even the police had to intervene to maintain calm in some places.

Obviously because of political compulsions the Punjab Chief Minister met the President of India seeking mercy so as not to hang Rajoana, and his execution has been stayed for the time being.

Another petition filed in the Supreme Court as a PIL seeking mercy for Rajoana was dismissed by the court, observing that such a petition was not maintainable.

I may make it clear that I am a confirmed believer in the abolition of the death penalty. I am pointing out only the convoluted action of the Badal government in acting in this manner rather than in the straightforward constitutional manner which is open to it.

I was glad to read in the Press an official statement by the Shiromani Akali Dal, the ruling party, that it was against the death penalty “as it is the ultimate denial of human rights and it violates the right to life”. If so, I would suggest a straight constitutional method — the Punjab government should have a law passed by the Punjab Assembly amending the Indian Penal Code and providing that punishment for death will be life imprisonment instead of the present death penalty or imprisonment for life as provided in the Indian Penal Code. Our Constitution’s Concurrent List enables both Parliament and the state Assembly to pass legislation. Entry No. 1 in the list includes all matters, including the Indian Penal Code, at the commencement of the Constitution.

Thus, both the Centre and the State can legislate and provide for various sentences under the Indian Penal Code. Of course, if the Punjab government has to amend the Indian Penal Code for providing only imprisonment for life it may prima facie run counter to the Indian Penal Code but for such a situation Article 254 of the Constitution itself provides a remedy —– that in such a case the State law may be reserved for the consideration of the President, and if it has received his consent, then that law shall prevail in that State. The result will be that if the Badal government acts, the Indian Penal Code will only provide for imprisonment for life and not death in the State of Punjab. This will serve both the purpose of Rajoana not being hanged and also set a healthy precedent for the rest of the country to abolish the death penalty.

It is thus clear that notwithstanding the retention of the death penalty in the Indian Penal Code, a Central piece of legislation, the Punjab government can pass a law providing for only imprisonment of life under the Indian Penal Code and send it for approval to the President. It will then be for the Centre to take the decision, and if it is does not approve of the Punjab government’s suggestion, at least the Badal government will be able to say that in the process of all that it did it tried to avoid the execution of Rajoana.

That the states in our Constitution can take different views on the question of death penalty is not in doubt. The example of the US is there. The US consists of 50 states. While at the federal (central) level, the imposition of death sentence has been upheld as a constitutionally valid punishment, 13 states as also the District of Columbia have prohibited and banned death sentence.

The vociferous opposition to the abolition of the death penalty springs from myth that it can lead to an increase in murders. Facts show otherwise. Thus, in 1945-50, the State of Travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders whereas during 1950-55, when death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders.

In Canada, after the abolition of the death penalty in 1976, the homicide rate declined. In 2000, there were 542 homicide cases in Canada – 16 less than in 1998 and 159 less than in 1975 (one year prior to the abolition of capital punishment).

A survey conducted by the United Nations in 1988 concluded that research has failed to provide any evidence that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment.

The Punjab government should not have any second thoughts about the support both on moral and legal grounds for the abolition of the death penalty in Gandhi’s India who said, “I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows, God alone can take life because he alone gives it”.

Similarly, Dr Ambedkar said, “I think that having regard to this fact, the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether”. In the same manner, socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan said, “…death sentence is no remedy for such crimes.”

The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, called the death penalty “…a sanction that should have no place in any society that claims to value human rights and the inviolability of the person.”

Will the Badal government bring in the necessary amendment as mentioned above? If it does not, it will expose it to the charge that all this drama of appealing to the President for mercy for Rajoana is a political gimmick, and not because of any larger consideration for human rights.

The writer is a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi.

MIDDLE

The bitter-sweet month
by Harish Dhillon

IN the opening lines of his “Canterbury Tales”, Chaucer establishes his belief that April is the sweetest month, a belief that I subscribed to wholeheartedly during the 70s and the 80s. April was the fully flowering jacaranda tree, outside the chapel. It was the call of the cuckoo bird breaking the silence of the early morning, a call repeated again and again as if the poor bird could not believe in its ability to create such magical music. It was the sudden sharp shower which signalled the blooming of swathes of pink thunder lilies on the hillside. It was the incessant murmur of the bees as they searched for nectar in the sweet smelling primroses that bloomed against stone walls. It was the breathtaking sweeping panorama of snow-covered peaks, which one could clearly see on short-back.

April was an azure sky with wisps of snow-white clouds drifting across, as if to emphasise the purity of the blue. But more than this, April was the month of the Hodson Runs when each child ran against himself to break his particular barrier and, as housemaster, my heart beats anxiously for each of my boys. April was the month of treks, when one got an opportunity to be a teacher in matters which did not find a place in normal school life. In the sweetness, the perfect precision of this month, I could see an argument for God’s existence.

Then I came away and each April, though the memory of that intense sweetness never failed to return, accompanied with a longing that was like an ache in my heart. I yearned to be back in that wonderland called Sanawar. Over the years I realised that the magic had come more from the people I had lived with. The wonderful children, beginning with that first special batch of 1972, who set the very high bench mark for my teaching for the next 40 years; children who were friendly and affectionate without being familiar; children who took correction in the right spirit and never sulked or held it against you when they were punished; children who never displayed the arrogance of their parents’ money or position. There were the parents who firmly believed in what we were trying to do for their children and respected and admired us for it. There were the colleagues who trusted each other and who rallied around you in your hour of need. My love for Sanawar has become that mysterious love for a left-behind place, which becomes larger than the time spent there.

Though I have pushed this love into the inner recesses of my mind, each April it resurfaces and will not be denied. My heart is filled with a cruel, painful yearning for what once was and what I know can never be again.

Five hundred years after Chaucer, Elliot wrote:

“April is the cruellest month ... mixing memory with desire.”

April is still the sweetest month in my memory but paradoxically, I now know it also to be the cruellest.

OPED

The catalytic power of women
Women’s emancipation is not a new concept. Several decades ago Mahatma Gandhi saw its significance. He also linked social reform movements with the national movement for Independence
Reicha Tanwar

Mahatma Gandhi's voluminous writings on issues of women's concerns in terms of their scope and dimension are arguably beyond comparison in modern times. Quite often the modern reader would come away being surprised by the contents which are often not only orthodox but brutally frank. In a style that is unique, Gandhi moves with ease between seeking support of tradition and scriptures where they support women on the one hand and rejecting them outright where he finds that their dictates are oppressive tools in the context of women.

Women & freedom movement

The importance of Gandhi needs to be appreciated in the context that he not only represented in himself the spirit of several great social reformers but also gave a fresh momentum and a broader perspective to the movement for women's emancipation by interlinking social reform movements with national movement: "Many of our movements stop half way," he noted, "because of the condition of our women." He, repeatedly stressed the urgent need for attending to problems afflicting contemporary Indian society indeed even before he raised the demand for swaraj. He believed that swaraj would be impossible unless women stood side by side with men in the battle for freedom. And that such an association on equal terms on the part of India's millions of women was not possible unless they had a definite consciousness of their own power. In this sense, Gandhi was far ahead of his time, because the nineteenth century consciousness of women's problem was limited essentially to their position within the traditional family structure.

Throughout his career, Gandhi constantly urged women to become involved in both the freedom movement as well as in their local communities, both at the levels of service and politics. The Gandhi-led freedom struggle in India ushered in a new era of consciousness on the part of Indian women. By drawing women into the national Independence movement, Gandhi: "tapped the amazing resources of womanhood and made them a constructive force in national reconstruction." The process of emancipation or empowerment so to say was a natural sequel of Gandhi's thought.

Step outside household

In an important way, Gandhi is an essentialist with regard to gender, but not fully. He finds that men and women are fundamentally one, the soul in both being the same and as such each is deserving not only of autonomy but to be treated as the equal of the other. For Gandhi, each has a distinctive sphere of duties of dharma and each must carry out the responsibilities attached to that sphere. Interestingly, Gandhi finds that the spheres often overlap in most critical ways and that what is appropriate for men in their sphere is largely appropriate for women in theirs and that the general qualities and culture required are practically the same for both sexes. He wants women to spend time outside the household; finds that women need to assume some of the cultural characteristics of men. Moreover, Gandhi holds that there are no inherent limitations of what women can do, including occupying the highest ranks in politics. He wanted the members of the family to be autonomous, both within the family and community, and calls for a reconstitution of family practices which challenge conventional ideas of the superiority of the husband/ father over the wife/ mother.

Partnership of equals

For Gandhi, marriage must ultimately be something the parties agree to enter freely. This is one of the reasons that he is repulsed by child-marriages which take no account of the wishes of the future partners. And it explains his opposition to dowry which he finds: "nothing but the sale of girls". For this reason, he wants parents to: “so educate their daughters that they would refuse to marry a young man who wanted a price for marrying and would rather remain spinsters than be party to the degrading terms. The only honourable terms in marriage are mutual love and mutual consent.”

Gandhi insists that a woman's destiny cannot be completed within the household and abhors the idea that domestic work is to take a major part of a women's time. He notes: "To me, this domestic slavery of women is a symbol of our barbarism." He says that women also require a prominent place in the community and women, like men, must be judged by their moral qualities rather than on a logic based on anatomical predestination. His reconstructed family is a place where both fathers and mothers assume shared duties, leading him to argue that the: "Care of children and the home is a joint responsibility. Woman is the mother, but her own motherly tenderness should extend beyond her own children and, therefore, her sphere must also extend beyond the home."

Gandhi denounced in unequivocal terms the custom of child marriage, which he considered as "an immoral and inhuman act, for it undermined our morals and induced physical degeneration". He maintained: "by countenancing such customs we recede from God as well as swaraj." Repudiating the claim that child marriage had a religious sanction, Gandhi argued, smritis which enjoined early marriages do not depict the true essence of Hinduism and must be rejected as interpolations.

Voluntary & forced widowhood

Gandhi struggled to decimate the line of demarcation between the sexes. When Eleanor Morton's Women Behind Gandhi first appeared in 1954 it created a sensation. The issue of Gandhi's lifelong experimental obsession, indeed an obsession that still remains beyond comprehension of mere mortals namely brahmcharya and celibacy had women as the central focus. Gandhi adopted the practice of brahmcharya in as early as 1901. He took a lifelong vow of celibacy in 1906. For Gandhi brahmcharya was a broad concept that constituted an entire philosophy and a moral imperative that was to be adopted not only in deed but also in thought and word. The end objective of his subsequent experiments in his ashrams was the abolition of the distinction between male and female. At a later stage he even formulated the concept of a married brahmcharya, something he introduced in his own life from 1906. He drew conviction in this thought from two extremes- Manu and Christianity. In many ways Gandhi was ideologically very close in this context to Ramakrishna Parmahansa. He explained the concept as: "One who never has any lustful intention….who is capable of lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner sexually excited. Such a person should be incapable of lying, incapable of intending or doing harm to a single woman or man… is free from anger and malice and detached in the sense of the Bhagwadgita. Such a person is a full brahmachari." (Collected Works, vol. 87, 17 March 1947, p 108).

The issue of debate in this remarkable letter. of course. is Gandhi's reference to 'voluntary widowhood' being a 'priceless boon'. Only Gandhi would have imagined that a discernable line was possible to draw between 'voluntary widowhood and forced widowhood'.

In the context of Sati too we note a similar line of thought. Gandhi was all for widow remarriage as we have seen and left a sufficient scope for 'a faithful widow remaining chaste and dwelling herself to her husband's memory' (Young India 5, August 1926).

Courage is gender neutral

What comes out rather clearly in Gandhi's writing in the context of gender is that first and foremost women must assert their claims to dignity and rights. In fact, he wants both men and women to recognise claims for autonomy in a manner that they rise above gender and even suggests a division of labour for the security of the family in a reconstituted form. Gandhi repeatedly noted how as the first step to equality it was important for women to come out in a manner in which they are not perceived as 'objects': "Courage for example is not the exclusive quality of men but it is a virtue that is necessary for each person…… a woman thinks that she is weak and allows herself to be called so, this is not right". The nearest Gandhi got to absolving an action that could be seen as violence was when he felt that a woman was well within her rights to slap a man if he tended to show dishonour to her dignity:

"The trust of a woman who slaps is not in the slap, her trust is in God... Her rage will indicate her opposition.... The slap is not an expression of violence, only of their opposition.”

The writer is Director, Women’s Studies Research Centre, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra

inspirational force

Millie Graham Polak and Sonja Schlesin were Gandhiji’s closest friends in South Africa. Sonja Schlesin was the best secretary Gandhi had.

Sarladevi Chowdharani and Madeline Slade from England were Gandhi’s close associates after his return to India. While Sarladevi was Tagore’s niece, Madeline Slade was a British Admiral’s daughter whom he re-christened Mirabehn.

Gandhi had high respect for Premabehn Kartak, Prabhavati and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Premabehn was known as the field marshal of the Gandhian army and Prabhawati was the wife of the distinguished socialist leader

Among the younger of the Mahatma’s women associates were Sushila Nayar and Manubehn Gandhi. Sushila was his personal physician and Manu Gandhi was the grand-daughter of the Mahatma’s brother, the youngest and most lovable of his women associates.

Above all was the towering figure of Kasturba Gandhi popularly known as Ba and she was the stabilising factor throughout Gandhi’s life.

Sarojini Naidu joined Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and returned the Kaiser-i-hind gold medal awarded to her by the government in 1908 for humanitarian works.

Kamladevi Chattopadhyay, though in her teens at that time, plunged in the movement with pioneering zeal after leaving studies.

Lado Rani Zutsi, wife of Ladli Prasad Zutsi after hearing the intense appeals of Gandhi, organised a Kumari Sabha in Lahore to provide a platform for women to discuss social and political issues.

Parvati Devi, daughter of Lala Lajpat Rai, was another worker who tirelessly toured Punjab to enlist the support of women.

Abida Bano Begum was a tireless worker who undertook tours of many provinces exhorting women to discard purdah and wear khadi.

Thus spoke Gandhi

On dowry: The dowry system, as Gandhi sees it, when coupled with requirements for intra-caste marriages, restricts choice and encourages artificial arrangements. Accordingly, he concludes that: "The girls or boys or their parents will have to break the bonds of caste if the evil is to be eradicated. All this means the education of a character that will revolutionise the mentality of the youth of the nation."

On purdah: Gandhi comes out strongly against purdah. He said: "Chastity is not a hot-house growth. It cannot be superimposed. It cannot be protected by the surrounding wall of the pariah. It must grow from within and to be worth anything it must be capable of withstanding every unsought temptation. It must be a very poor thing that cannot stand the gaze of men."

On remarriage: Gandhi's view on remarriage among widows have for long been under discussion. He wrote an article for Harijan (22.6.1935) in response to a letter that informed him of how a 17-year-old girl had lost her husband in the earthquake in Queta. "I have repeatedly said that every widow has as much right to remarry as every widower. Voluntary widowhood is a priceless boon in Hinduism; enforced widowhood is a curse… All the young widows, therefore, who are in the unfortunate position of this bereaved sister from Quetta should have every inducement given to them to remarry, and should be sure that no blame would be attached to them if they chose to remarry, and every effort should be made to select for them suitable matches."