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Time for sound & fury
Slavery a shame |
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No logic in judges’ transfer
The doomed clean India campaign
Western Asia and pitfalls of nationalism
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Time for sound & fury Opposition parties are unlikely to give this time the NDA government the kind of cooperation extended during the Budget session of Parliament. They are more or less united against the BJP government, which lacks a majority in the Rajya Sabha. Leave alone wooing opposition parties to get key Bills passed, the BJP is not on good terms even with its allies. The unilateral approach will extract its price. If a joint sitting of Parliament is called as a last resort to push important legislation, it would take time and the winter session may not show any concrete results. The government may, therefore, continue to face the criticism of being "big on vision and short on execution". An indication of the storm ahead was available on Sunday when Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress stayed away from the all-party meeting. It plans to agitate on the issues of black money and communalism. The Congress too is unlikely to play along even though some of the laws to be passed were initiated by its government. The party opposes even the insurance Bill as it says the BJP has brought in substantive changes, including an alteration in the definition of FDI to cover foreign portfolio investments. The Opposition stand on the GST (Goods and Services Tax) is unclear, while states are yet to overcome their differences. The recently formed Janata Parivar, which comprises parties such as the Janata Dal (United), the RJD, the Samajwadi Party and the INLD, which together control 25 seats in the Rajya Sabha, has made known its strategy of protesting any changes in the pro-farmer land acquisition law. The BJP is under pressure from the industrialists' lobby to make it industry-friendly for the success of Modi's "Make in India" campaign. MPs spend more time on playing politics in Parliament as dictated by their respective political parties rather than do the job for which they are elected. Laws are usually passed without a serious debate. No matter which party or coalition is in power, Parliament's functioning largely remains chaotic and disorderly. Will the Modi government bring in any change? |
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Slavery a shame The fact that India is both the world's largest democracy as well as the world’s slave capital is on the face of it a paradox. According to the Global Slavery Index
(GSI) 2014, published by the Perth-based civic group, Walk Free Foundation, India is home to 14.29 million slaves. According to the report, “India's modern slavery challenges are immense. Across India's population of over 1.2 billion people, all forms of slavery exist.” The wide spectrum includes inter-generational bonded
labour, trafficking for sexual exploitation and servile or forced marriages. Families have been enslaved for generations. Be it in brick kilns, carpet weaving, embroidery and textile manufacturing, forced prostitution, agriculture, domestic servitude, mining and organised begging rings. Estimates are that over 23.5 million people in Asia are living in modern-day slavery. Ironically, the term is by itself an oxymoron. India remains top of the list with an estimated 14.29 million enslaved people followed by China (3.24m), Pakistan (2.06m), Uzbekistan (1.2m, new to the top five), and Russia (1.05m). According to the ILO estimates, the profits of forced illicit labour are around $150 billion and modern slavery contributes to the production of at least 122 goods in 58 countries. Populations become susceptible to slavery due to government policies (or lack of them), no availability of human rights protections, poor economic and social development levels, state stability and the extent of women's rights and levels of discrimination. Around 90 per cent labourers in India work in the informal economy and lack a monitored work environment. The worst affected are lower castes or tribes, religious minorities and migrant workers. India has been proactive in criminal-justice reforms. In 2013, the government amended the Indian Penal Code to include specific anti-trafficking provisions. In 2014, the number of police anti-human trafficking units was expanded. The government, corporates and civil society can strive to end the worst form of exploitation that dehumanises people and takes away their free will. In a resurgent, progressive 21st-century democratic nation flaunting all the markers of progress, there should be zero tolerance to all feudal practices. |
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How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.
—John Burroughs |
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The operation of the Press Act
THE Government of India, we hope, is not unwilling to recognise the public spirit of Indian journalists on the present occasion. Someone will, indeed, say that it is all due to the magical effect of the Press Act or the New Ordinance. Well, that is one view of the matter with which no one need quarrel. It is, however, so ungenerous and unjust that it does not even call for a reply. The Indian section of the press in this country has known by experience the official bent of mind and even personal whims, and has therefore been avoiding everything that is likely to embarrass the officials in the work of administration. Our leading organs have been models of self-restraint in comparison with many home papers, and not a few of their counterparts in India. A "glimpse" of Indian soldiers
ENGLISHMEN in England seem to have been anxious to obtain a "glimpse" of Indian soldiers and this is what the Manchester Guardian writes of the Indians in its issue of the 27th October: "So far London has had little chance of getting a glimpse of the Indian soldiers. We have had to be content with newspaper photographs of Sikhs and Gurkhas and their terrible, twisty knives. This afternoon in Charing Cross station-a crowded stage of war tragedies since war began-a lonely Indian soldier appeared among the throng of refugees and idlers. Sightseers made a solemnly gazing ring round him. He was tall, and had a face like smoked ivory. He wore a khaki overcoat and a khakhi turban with a red badge in the side. He looked unutterably lost. An English soldier, perhaps thinking a comradely word would be in season, left the ring and tried to begin a talk with him, but didn't get very far, for the Indian knew no English.
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No logic in judges’ transfer
Self-inflicted wounds seldom heal. I am reminded of this whenever I think of the transfer policy of High Court judges being followed by the Supreme Court. No doubt the power of transfer of judges from one High Court to another is to be found in the Constitution. But when in 1963 some amendments were to be made, the then Law Minister in order to remove apprehensions about the misuse of power assured Parliament that the transfer of a High Court judge would only be done with the judge's prior consent. But in 1975 the High Court judges were the target in series of non-consensual transfers because they were said to be too independent. The Supreme Court, one had hoped, recognising the danger to the independence of the judiciary, would strike down this provision — but rather it self-inflicted a wound by continuing to uphold this power. I fail to see any logic in the present policy of transfers. Normally transfers may be explained by the Supreme Court by relying on what is ironically called the “uncle/nephew phenomenon”, namely to transfer those judges whose sons or brothers are practising in the same High Court - though to me this unnecessarily accepts an adverse assumption without any solid proof. But to transfer a judge at the initial stage is most unfair. There is double jeopardy. When judges are appointed in one court and then transferred to another, they are denied the right to practise in the parent court. The more damaging aspect of the transfer of judges is the practice of appointing outside Chief Justices and judges notwithstanding the fact that at the Chief Justices’ Conference held in 2002 it was resolved that the policy of having outside Chief Justices of High Courts be discontinued. But the government was apparently not happy with it because in such a case it would have no hand in the appointment because the seniormost judge of a High Court would automatically have to be appointed the Chief Justice. Later on, however, the Supreme Court collegium yielded to the government suggestion of outside Chief Justices and the damage was done. There are no past precedents in India nor in other countries like the USA and the UK does this practice prevail. In fact, in the USA, in many states the Supreme Court justices, whether elected or appointed, are not posted outside the state. No one has found fault with this practice in the USA or the UK. Why this gratuitous insult to the Indian judiciary? I have never understood the logic of transferring the seniormost judge whose turn has come to head the court in which he has worked for almost 10 to 15 years and with the functioning of which and also the lower judiciary he is most familiar. To transfer him out of the state for a period of one or two years to a new court to which he is a total stranger, most likely not even knowing the names of his colleagues, is a strange concept of advancing the administration of justice. He may willy-nilly have to rely only on the opinion of a few select colleagues and officials which unfortunately may spell further disharmony in the High Court. Is there any special reason why the judiciary wants to devalue experience and, thus, score a self-goal and reduce its own effectiveness? Let us not indulge in hypocrisy of judges being tigers and fiercely independent — yes they should be but practical life is different. We know to our shame how apparently Supreme Court judges caved in during the Emergency (1975) and how the threat of transfer kept many quiet. Do not forget that judges come from the same background as the rest of us mortals. That transfer policy continues to defy logic has been brought to public notice very recently and rudely when I read in a newspaper about the appointment of nine judges in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. All of them, we are told, were asked to give their consent to be transferred any time at the discretion of the Supreme Court, though they were given the useless lollypop of inviting their three preferences of the states to which their transfers could be made. I understand none of them has any relation practising in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Three have already been ordered to be transferred. How a choice has been made and by what norms is not immediately known. So arbitrary and one may even say unsympathetic is the decision that amongst these three there is a lady judge, who has no parents and, being unmarried, no immediate family she can take with her to the new strange place. I am quite sure that if the executive had transferred any officer in such circumstances the Supreme Court would have pontifically reprimanded the executive for justifying its arbitrary and discretionary anti-women attitude - sarcastically this action of the collegium has given a pleasurable justifiable occasion to retort loudly: “Physician heal thyself first”. Let me make it clear that I have never seen or met any of these nine appointees, nor have I known the parents or relations of any of them. My distress is because of the deep attachment I have to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, where I spent my best years at the Bar and where friends were gracious enough to elect me the president of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association unopposed in 1967-68. So any decision touching the High Court by the mysterious working of the collegium naturally disturbs me. I also know closely the trauma of transfers from my experience during the 1975 Emergency. But then we were political animals and could bear the trauma, namely, family disruption and isolation, tolerably well. But there is no justification for putting the politically neutral judges, especially a single lady judge, to the trauma of transfers and tragically that too at the hands of the family head — the collegium of the Supreme Court. I know I am sounding harsh, but let me in my defence call to aid the observations of Justice Holmes of the US Supreme Court who said: “I trust that no one will understand me to be speaking with disrespect of the law, because I criticize it so freely…but one may criticize even what one reveres… and I should show less than devotion, if I did not do what in me lies to improve it.” The writer is a former Chief Justice, High Court of Delhi |
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The doomed clean India campaign “Why are you throwing garbage next to my house?” “The road is not your dad's. It's public property and I can throw what I want on it. It's a free country!”
How proud one feels to see a man get down from his car, stand next to a wall, and relieve himself in full public view, keeping the manly tradition alive! Anyone who has the impunity to question him would, of course, get the obvious answer, “What's it to you? Is it your wall?” After all, many enlightened politicians have realised that manliness means lack of self-control in more ways than one and have even advised girls not to tempt men by wearing provocative clothes. How unfair it is, then, to expect a man to control his urge to pee! The powerful Indian male must assert his manliness by continuing with this tradition. After all, he is no woman that he needs to look timidly for the rare public toilet. Mr. Modi is clearly going against our tradition by telling people to clean India and to have a toilet in every home and school. The Opposition, of course, realises the full import of such a misinformed initiative taken by the Prime Minister. It is precisely for this reason that they have taken upon themselves the role of the protector of our culture and people, as every opposition party in India has always done in the past. “Cleanliness?” They ask, “How can Modi succeed where the Mahatma failed?” Only a person like Dr Shashi Tharoor with his Western outlook can be fooled by Modi to support a doomed campaign for which he was rightly reprimanded by the Kerala Congress. We, the people of India, can dispose of our garbage wherever we want. We not only have the freedom to dirty the air by bursting fire-crackers at festivals, weddings and other happy occasions but also get away with old contraptions that pass for vehicles. We can find such vehicles in most Indian villages and cities, merrily spewing out black fumes and enjoying the freedom we all so richly deserve. We understand our dear Prime Minister, despite his strong 'Swadeshi' background, has knowingly or unknowingly played into the hands of foreign powers. It is, therefore, our duty as enlightened citizens of this great nation to educate him to leave things as they are and not to indulge in activities that will take away our hard-earned rights from us. |
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Western Asia and pitfalls of nationalism
The year 2014, and the month of November, coincides with a momentous happening a century back. I refer, of course, to World War I that commenced in August 1914 and ended in November 1919. A century later, it is useful and enlightening to dwell on the immediate and longer term impact of this on the Arab societies of western Asia. The beginnings of Arab nationalism in the closing decades of the 19th century, has been diligently traced by George Antonius, Bassam Tibi and others. Freedom from foreign domination was one aspect of the matter; another was the gradual awareness of possessing an identity distinct from other identities, of belonging to a ‘nation’. This emanated from two processes, one purely religious and the other essentially linguistic. The latter was the older of the two and applied “to Christians as well as Muslims, and to the off shoots of each of these creeds.” Thus 'early Arab nationalism was clearly a predominantly secular ideology' with a subtle intermixture of Islam and sought to profess liberal values. This intermixture was also at times an uneasy one; one scholar has argued that 'in defining its relationship with Islam, Arab nationalism often ends where it started: with the glorification of Arabism as a commanding value in Islam.' Confederation of Arab states The Arab revolt of 1916 was the first organised political action by Arab nationalists. It intermeshed with the politics of the powers aligned against the Ottomans and was impacted by it. While the Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916 spoke of ‘an independent Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States' in the conquered Ottoman territory, the Anglo-French Declaration of November 1918 specifically mentioned 'the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations.' The modification of this arrangement in the San Rimo conclave of April 1919 was viewed by the Arabs as 'a breach of faith.' It is important to recall that the nation-state principle did not grow organically in the region as it did in Europe for three centuries in the post-Westphalia period. The territorial entities carved out from the Arabic-speaking parts of the Ottoman Empire thus lacked historical legitimacy as political units (with the exception of Egypt) and therefore needed to create a national sentiment. They reinforced it by recourse on the one hand to sub-national, tribal, religious or monarchical identities and on the other to supra-national, pan-Arab sentiments. Two instances of heart-wrenching introspection seeped deep into the psyche of the public and the intelligentsia. They contributed expressions to the vocabulary of modern Arabic-al nakba (the catastrophe) for 1948 and al-hazima (the rout) for 1967; the latter in particular generated serious analysis of Arab society. Its critique of Arabism focused on its social base urban elites, merchants and army officers. Prominent among critics were the Syrian philosopher Jalal al-Azm and the poets Ali Ahmad Said 'Adonis' and Nizar Qabbani. Loss of Palestine In keeping with age-old tradition, poetry remains a powerful stimulant to sentiments and it has been observed that 'the loss of Palestine formed the tragic reality that determined the climate within which Arabic poetry has developed since the late forties. The poetry of the last three decades has embodied the frustration, bitterness and despair eating at the heart of the Arab poets in these years.' Further afield, the Moroccan historian Abdallah Laroui described Arab society as 'living in infra-historical rhythm.' He cited with approval Syrian historian Constantin Zurayq reproach that the Arab nationalist attitude was romantic and lost in the past. Thus the intellectual edifice of secular nationalism and modernity, called a 'dream palace' by Fuad Ajami, was seen to develop structural cracks and failed to sustain itself: 'After 1967, there was a widespread sentiment that unity was no longer the issue.' A final blow to it was administered by the1990-91 Gulf War. The perception that the national took precedence over the pan-Arab and that Arab unity did not necessitate a union was emphatically articulated by an Arab leader in September 1982: “Arab unity can only take place after a clear demarcation of borders between all countries…The question of linking unity to the removal of boundaries is no longer acceptable to present Arab mentality…We must see the world as it is…The Arab reality is that the Arabs are now twenty-two states, and we have to behave accordingly…Unity must give strength to its partners, not cancel their national identity. In relation to the West Despite the commonality of language, culture and to a considerable extent religion, the national positions of individual Arab states in regard to relations with the West were portrayed vividly in developments relating to the Baghdad Pact in 1955, the Suez crisis of 1956, the formation of the United Arab Republic in 1958, the Arab Summit of 1964, the resulting trauma of the Six-Day War of 1967, the Camp David Accord of 1979, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In each of these, the curse of centrality in geopolitical terms was evident; in each, it was compounded by the geopolitics of oil and the imperatives the Cold War. Most of the time it was a relationship between a centre of power and domination on the one side and a dependent and subordinate periphery on the other; it was described by the academic Hisham Sharabi as 'the outcome of modern Europe's colonization of the patriarchal Arab world, of the marriage of imperialism and patriarchy.' This sustained the status quo and impeded or prevented normal political and social evolution. Dominance of tradition The dominance of tradition was evident in the slow pace of social progress. In 1928 a Lebanese lady had written about the four veils of cloth, ignorance, hypocrisy and stagnation that hampered the progress of women; seventy five years later, in 2002 and 2003, the UNDP's Arab Human Development Reports still spoke of deficits of knowledge, freedom and women's empowerment as principal challenges to progress in the region. Despite the urging of the Alexandria Declaration of March 2004, freedom as a catch word was side stepped by the political establishments in their civil or military incarnations and did not translate into more open political structures. The failure on this count left these societies entrapped in non-participatory structures of governance. These became pervasive and were evident even in societies that opted for democratic forms, if not substance, of governance in the post-2003 period. None indulged in democratic institution-building. An immediate consequence was a non-inclusive approach, and practice, of nationalism. Islamist solutions Alongside, and as a consequence, the erosion of the legitimacy of the secular nation-state brought forth various versions of Islamist solutions as viable alternatives. It represented to its proponents the only means of expressing popular opposition to regimes regarded as incapable of delivering wider political participation. It considered Arabism as 'a mere stage' for Islamism without a contradiction the two. Another, more radical, Islamist perspective has come forth from Tariq Ramadan. He depicts the Arab societies as 'rushing headlong into blind alleys' and suggests that 'the Arab world and Muslim majority societies not only need political uprisings; they need a thoroughgoing intellectual revolution that will open the door to economic change, and to spiritual religious, cultural and artistic liberation —and to the empowerment of women. With the exception of Egypt, the primary and primordial identity of the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire was essentially tribal with some regional attributes. The regions in question were administrative units of the empire. As independent entities, no organic changes were brought about in their internal tribal structures; instead, the tribal hierarchies were integrated in the new political structures that, despite protestations to the contrary, ended up being authoritarian. This deprived them of a mass base and genuine public participation through political institutions. Aspects of this deficiency were reflected in the UNDP's second Arab Development Challenges Report 2011 which urged the need for 'a new social contract of mutual accountability (in which) the state becomes more responsive and accountable to the citizen'. One last word about certain other traits of nationalism that became clearer in the 20th century. The anti-colonial and anti-imperialist phase of nationalism was one aspect of individual movements; another was the content of their strategies of governance. It was here that the ideological edges became evident. It has been argued that nationalism was amongst the transcendental fictions of the twentieth century in which nationalistic self-identification was considered superior to others; also that 'appeals to our tribal instincts, to passion and to prejudice, and to our nostalgic desire to be relieved from the strains of individual responsibility which it attempts to replace by a collective or group responsibility.' In many instances, militant nationalism became a reflex of despair resulting from economic failures and of unrealised aspirations along with a motivation to resurrect an imaginary past devoid of these shortcomings. From this, slippage into a religio-cultural form of strident nationalism has been found to be easy. Nationalism has also been viewed as 'a deeply divisive force if it is not tempered by the spirit of tolerance and compromise or the humanitarian universalism of a non-political religion. Its stress on national sovereignty and cultural distinctiveness hardly helps to promote cooperation among people at the very same time when for technological and economic reasons they grow more and more interdependent.' The pluralist approach As against this authoritarian or cultural form, an alternate approach is that of pluralist or liberal nationalism that 'celebrates the particularity of culture together with universality of human rights, the social and cultural embedded-ness of individuals together with their personal autonomy. In this sense it differs radically from organic interpretations of nationalism, which assume that the identity of individuals is totally constituted by their national membership.' Its emphasis on plurality eschews assimilation and celebrates diversity. It is multicultural in essence and aspires 'towards a form of citizenship that is marked neither by a universalism generated by complete homogenisation, nor by particularism of self-identical and closed communities.' The Indian approach This, in fact, has been the Indian approach. It is premised on the ground reality of a plural society that is multiethnic, multi-religious and multilingual, a secular polity rather than a religious one, and a democratic state structure functioning on the basis of Rule of Law.’ Each of these ingredients constitute the core values of the Constitution; none can be abridged or abandoned without damaging the constitutional structure and endangering social harmony; nor can another set of values be grafted on the richness of Indian diversity without impinging on its uniqueness. Citizens know that Article 51 of our Constitution enjoins amongst Fundamental Duties the preservation of the heritage of composite culture. This, as Professor Upendra Baxi pointed out many years back, is a 'fundamental obligation.' — The writer is the Vice President of India. This article has been excerpted from the 43rd Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture delivered by him on 'A Century of Turmoil in Western Asia: Some Pitfalls of Nationalism' at the Nehru Memorial Museum, New Delhi
Arab state system
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conversation such as this is not uncommon and, as long as anyone alive can remember, we have always cleaned our homes and thrown the rubbish next to our houses or in front of our neighbour's dwelling in the street. People in villages relieve themselves in the fields. It is just an extension of this stupendous tradition that every male, regardless of his economic status, has the right to pee on any wall that he wants to even in cities. The whole country is, after all, his kingdom and Mr Modi is clearly playing with fire when he voices his bizarre views on cleanliness and talks of toilets for all.