by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Srinagar : Kashmiri Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Shah Faesal on Wednesday said he had quit the coveted service to protest against unabated killings in Jammu and Kashmir and against the marginalization of Indian Muslims by Hindutva forces, “reducing them to second class citizens”.
Faesal made the announcement on his Twitter page as news of his decision spread.
“To protest unabated killings in Kashmir and the absence of any credible political initiative from Union government, I have decided to resign from IAS. Kashmiri lives matter,” he said.
He said he would address a press conference on Friday.
After topping the civil service exam in 2010, Faesal was allotted the home cadre of Jammu and Kashmir. He served as District Magistrate, Director of School Education and Managing Director of the state-owned Power Development Corporation.
He recently returned from the US where he had gone on a Fulbright fellowship from Harvard Kennedy School.
Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah confirmed Faesal’s decision to join politics. Abdullah tweeted: “Bureaucracy’s loss is politics’ gain. Welcome to the fold.”
Informed sources said Faesal was likely to join the National Conference and fight the Lok Sabha election from Baramulla in the Kashmir Valley.
Faesal also issued a detailed statement outlining the reasons for his decision.
“To protest against the unabated killings in Kashmir, and lack of any sincere reach-out from the Union government;
“The marginalization and invisiblization of around 200 million Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindutva forces, reducing them to second class citizens;
“Insidious attacks on the special identity of Jammu and Kashmir and growing culture of intolerance and hate in mainland India in the name of hyper nationalism, I have decided to resign from the Indian Administrative Service.
“I wish to remind the regime of the day that subversion of public institutions like RBI, CBI and NIA has the potential to decimate the Constitutional edifice of this country and it needs to be stopped.
“I wish to reiterate that voices of reason in this country cannot be muzzled for long and the environment of siege will need to end if we wish to usher in true democracy.
“I am thankful to my family, friends and well-wishers for supporting me in this amazing journey in IAS. One of my important tasks hereafter will be to train and guide aspiring civil servants to help them in achieving this dream.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Bhopal: Congress workers celebrate party
By Brajendra Nath Singh,
New Delhi : The results in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan came as a major shock for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has won all the major states barring Delhi, Bihar, Punjab and Karnataka in elections held after the sweeping 2014 Lok Sabha victory.
The BJP was routed in Chhattisgarh and defeated in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in closely-fought contests. The party mostly banked on the image of Chief Ministers Raman Singh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan to lift the party’s fortunes.
In Rajasthan, where opinion polls had written off the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah put in extra efforts, besides banking on the hardcore Hindutva image of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, to take the battle to the Congress, but still lost.
The BJP, however, managed to open its account in Mizoram, where the Mizo National Front (MNF) ousted the ruling Congress partty, but saw its numbers fall from five to one in Telangana, where the Telangana Rashtra Samithi swept the polls.
The results of these five states, which were dubbed the semifinals ahead of the next general elections in April-May 2019, could be a factor in the battle between the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Congress-led opposition.
The major issues raked up by Congress, specially the farm loan waiver amid an agrarian crisis across the country, employment and anger among upper caste, seems to have worked in its favour and could haunt the ruling dispensation if remedial measures are not taken.
The BJP is not ready, however, to accept the defeat as a referendum on the Modi government.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said issues in state elections are entirely different. The BJP won Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2003 but lost the Lok sabha elections next year, he pointed out.
The general elections in 2019, he added, would be fought around Modi’s performance, with people voting for a tried and tested leadership instead of a non-ideological opposition coalition which is bound to collapse sooner than later.
The Congress, which had a disastrous performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and suffered successive defeats in various Assembly elections, smiled for the first time after defeating the BJP in a direct contest in the three crucial states in north India.
Party president Rahul Gandhi, who campaigned vigorously, said the Assembly election results were a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s non-performance on issues of unemployment, agrarian distress, corruption and negating the ill-effects of demonetisation.
Out of total 678 Assembly seats in the five states in the current round of elections, the Congress has won close to 300 seats while the BJP managed to win over 200 seats. In the 2013 Assembly polls, the BJP had won 377 seats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram while the Congress had won only 122 seats in these states.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had won 62 out of total 83 Lok Sabha constituencies of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram. Now the three Hindi heartland states will be ruled by Congress and the its impact would definitely be felt in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
In the first instance of a party getting majority on its own in 30 years, BJP won 282 seats in Lok Sabha in 2014. The BJP-led NDA had won 336 seats out of 543.
Its allies include the Shiv Sena, which has been on the war path for a while. Similarly, N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) have walked out of the NDA.
Since 2014, BJP has managed to retain just six Lok Sabha seats in by-polls. It won Lakhimpur in Assam, Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, Beed and Palghar in Maharashtra, Vadodara in Gujarat and Shimoga in Karnataka.
In the last four years, the party has lost Lok Sabha by polls in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh, Gurdaspur in Punjab, Alwar and Ajmer in Rajasthan, Kairana, Phulpur and Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Bhandara-Gondiya in Maharashtra and Bellary and Mandya constituencies in Karnataka.
The BJP, however, maintained the verdict was a mandate against the state governments and not against the Modi government.
“The results in five states clearly show there is no uniform trend across the country and local factors determined the outcome in each state. This is evident from the fact that even Congress suffered massive defeats in Mizoram and Telangana.
“Despite 15 years of anti-incumbancy in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has put up a fight in Madhya Pradesh and has a major comeback in Rajasthan. The BJP’s and Congress’ vote share in both the states in Mandhya Pradesh and Rajasthan is almost tied which clearly show that the BJP has the potential to comeback with big victories in 2019 Lok Sabha polls,” BJP Spokeperson G.V. L. Narsimha Rao told IANS.
He also said whenever Congress has tied up with a regional party, it cost them votes.
(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Saket Suman,
Book: The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and his India; Author: Shashi Tharoor; Publisher: Aleph Book Company; Pages: 504; Price: Rs 799
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revels in being in the public eye, and reaps the advantages that come with it. Public scrutiny, however, seems to unsettle it. In a democratic set-up, a citizen who hails and praises a leader also has the right to evaluate and, if necessary, criticise him. Shashi Tharoor, who presented a lengthy argument on (and in) “Why I Am A Hindu”, tackles in his new book a different subject — and has run smack into a controversy with a prickly BJP.
Consider the “scorpion sitting on the Shiva lingam” (icon of Lord Shiva, one of the Hindu Trinity) metaphor, for instance. It appears on page 81 and is used to convey the dilemma of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the BJP’s ideological parent — with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The comparison, in the first place, is not Tharoor’s, but that of an unnamed RSS leader, quoted in an article that appeared in 2012, six years ago, in Caravan magazine.
“In his 2012 profile of Mr Modi, the journalist Vinod K. Jose quoted an unnamed RSS leader describing his feelings about the Gujarat supremo with ‘a bitter sigh’: ‘Shivling mein bichhu baitha hai. Na usko haath se utaar sakte ho, na usko joota maar sakte ho’…Try to remove the scorpion, and it will sting you; slap it with a shoe and you will be insulting your own faith. That remains a brilliant summary of the RSS’s dilemma with Narendra Modi,” Tharoor writes in the book.
No sooner were these words uttered by the author at a literary gathering that the BJP cried foul, accusing him of insulting the faith of Hindus. The irony remains that the BJP’s offensive further substantiated Tharoor’s assertions — in this book, and more so those from his last, “Why I Am A Hindu”, where he pointed out that his Hinduism is a lived faith and that the self-proclaimed ‘Hindutva Wadis’ had no business to dictate how one worshiped — or even chose not to worship.
What would one anyways do if a scorpion was to be found sitting on the Shiva lingam? Tharoor does not answer this question but reiterates what the unnamed source had said: That either way there will be a problem. How is this comparison an insult to Hinduism, as Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed?
But more importantly, the scorpion and not the Shiva lingam is Tharoor’s subject and allegations of hurting the sentiments of Hindus are, at best, attempts to derail the discourse arising from this book. The book is about Modi, and not Hinduism. Criticising Modi is not criticising Hinduism, and those in power would do themselves a great service by reading how a leader from the opposite end of the political spectrum evaluates Modi and his government.
“The Paradoxical Prime Minister” is dedicated to “the People of India who deserve better”. The book is divided into five sections spanning 50 lengthy chapters in about 500 pages. Interestingly, Tharoor’s target is not the post of the Prime Minister, and one can argue that even Modi is not targeted as vehemently as could be expected from a prominent Opposition leader. Remember how the BJP went all out against Manmohan Singh? Tharoor, even in his criticism, is respectful towards the office of the Prime Minister.
What Tharoor does, and succeeds in doing, is show his readers what Modi said and says, and what he and his government did during the four years of their rule so far. The contrasts are presented through a range of sources, not “crack-pot” links hovering all over the internet, but widely accepted, credible sources of information, such as leading newspapers, acclaimed books and magazines.
And Tharoor’s most significant source in “The Paradoxical Prime Minister” is Modi himself. He refers to Modi’s numerous speeches — some emotional, others rhetorical, all of them full of alliterations and punchy slogans — to contend that there is a huge gap between the promise and performance, rhetoric and reality.
It deals with all the core issues that have been at the centre of national discourse during the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government and ends with a chapter titled “The New India We Seek”, where the author paints a picture of the future that he envisions for the country.
Tharoor is not a neutral observer in the book, as he himself acknowledges in its Introduction, but is, nonetheless, objective. “The Paradoxical Prime Minister” deserves credit for scrutinising the actions of a ruling Prime Minister, focusing on how, according to the author, there is a gap between what he said and what he achieved, and for really laying bare the governance during the past four years. Isn’t this what democracy is all about?
And since a lot is being said in the name of God, one is reminded of Nissim Ezekiel’s “Night of the Scorpion”, a poem set during the night the narrator’s mother was stung by a scorpion. And what happened? “The peasants came like swarms of flies/and buzzed the name of God a hundred times/to paralyse the Evil One”. In the end, rationality survives and superstitions bear no fruit.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
More than the social impact of the Supreme Court’s judgment on gay rights, what will be of concern to the ruling party at the Centre is its political fallout. Hence, the eloquent silence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the subject.
For the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), any expansion of the concept of civil liberties is fraught with danger to their restrictive worldviews since a widening of human rights carries the prospect of greater individualism.
If the rights of the homosexuals to live without legal constraints are conceded, it can only encourage the people to free themselves of other restrictions as well such as on choosing live-in partners (of whatever sex) and eating, dressing and speaking as they please.
It is noteworthy that the verdict on gays has come close on the heels of the judgment which described the right to dissent as a “safety valve” which the government can only shut off at its peril lest there is an explosion.
Moreover, the court had also upheld not long ago the right to privacy which the government described as an “elitist” concept.
For the Hindu Right, as also for other religious fundamentalists, this dalliance with civil rights — the freedom to criticise the government, the exaltation of privacy and now the decriminalisation of homosexuality — entails a push towards liberalism and modernism which are anathema to any group which wants the society to be bound by shackles of orthodoxy and obscurantism.
It is ironic that although the Hindutva brotherhood speaks of decolonising the Indian mind, the two colonial laws which have long been its favourites are the section on homosexuality in the Indian Penal Code and on sedition.
Now that one of them is gone, there is little doubt that these closet followers of Britain’s 19th century politician Lord Macaulay — even as they decry the secular groups as “Macaulay’s children” — will hold on resolutely to the law on sedition as their only safeguard against the “anti-nationals” who, they believe, stalk the land.
It is also possible that the saffronites will keep a hawk’s eye on any social problems that may arise because of the assertion of gay rights. As the BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has said, with eager anticipation, if a five-judge bench can overturn an earlier judgment in favour of criminalising homosexuality, a larger bench can undo the present verdict if gay bars begin to flourish and there is a rise in the cases of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infections.
Interestingly, what these judgments underline is how the judiciary is more attuned to the changing world than the elected representatives of the hoi polloi who often argue in favour of giving greater primacy to the legislature than the judiciary since they claim to represent the people while the judges are unelected denizens of an ivory tower.
However, one possible reason why MPs and MLAs, especially of the BJP, seem to be out of sync with the present-day world is the presence in their midst of a large number of criminal elements who can hardly be regarded as the most progressive sections of society.
For instance, of the 543 elected members of the Lok Sabha, of whom 186 have a criminal record, 63 belong to the BJP, followed by eight of the Shiv Sena, four of the Trinamool Congress and three each of the Congress and the AIADMK.
What the Supreme Court judgment appears to have done is to persuade parties like the Congress, which usually hedges its bets lest it should fall on the wrong side of public opinion, to come out in the verdict’s favour, presumably because it senses that this judgment, more than any other, has become a touchstone in the matter of breaking out from the stranglehold of the past.
To distance a party from it, as the BJP is doing, will amount to virtually alienating the entire youth community. Even if a majority among them do not have homosexual instincts — according to official figures, there are 2.5 million gay people in India, but this may be an underestimate since, till now, it was unsafe for them to reveal their sexual orientation — the youths nevertheless see the ruling as an assertion of living life on one’s own terms and not be held hostage by the dictates of a society steeped in conservatism and of political parties which believe that their agenda can only advanced if the country is made forcibly to conform to khap panchayat-style social and cultural norms.
To these youths, being or not being gay is of little consequence. What matters to them is to be able to make up their own minds and not be told by elders to abide by certain rules which are regarded as outdated by the younger generation.
If parties like the BJP and “cultural” organisations like the RSS realise the value and motivation of such mindsets, they will desist from their present attempts to impose a straitjacket of their pseudo-religious identity on the nation.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books
By Saket Suman,
Book: The RSS – A View to the Inside; Authors: Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle; Publisher: Penguin; Pages: 405; Price: Rs 699
In a book released this week, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been projected as “the most influential cultural organisation in India today”. The implications of the Sangh’s functioning on India’s culture, particularly in the context of Hinduism, or what is called Hindutva, is well known but is this projection an appeasement of the all-powerful Sangh by providing them legitimacy in what is billed as a scholarly offering “backed by deep research”, or is it worthy praise bestowed in the light of its work in the culture domain?
The offering at hand is the sum total of all aspects that the authors felt have led the Sangh to take its present shape — that of the ideological parent of the ruling government with country-wide presence and strong political affiliations. It reveals many answers but, for reasons best known to the authors and publisher, it deflects, ignores and often beats around the bush when it comes to tackling the most pertinent issues related to the Sangh in contemporary times.
Let us begin with two chapters in the book titled “Ghar Wapsi” (Homecoming) and “Protecting the Cow”. Both of these issues have gained prominence ever since the current RSS-backed government came to power in 2014 and has led to numerous instances of mob violence and lynching. The horrors arising from some (of many) recorded instances have shaken the nerves of right-thinking individuals and has caused fear among the minorities, but the generosity with which the authors tackle the subject is appalling.
The book elaborates on why protecting the cow and ghar wapsi hold such immense significance for the RSS, charting the beliefs of its idealogues Hedgewar and Golwalkar, and then draws a case study around the BJP’s dealings with the beef issue in the Northeast, where the ruling party sort of accepted it as it is a norm in the region.
It quotes a slew of prominent RSS and BJP leaders who contend, like the Sangh’s prachar pramukh Manmohan Vaidya, that “we (the RSS) don’t tell society what to eat”, adding that even people who eat beef could become its members.
Their assertion, however, is in stark contrast to the ground reality where members of the Sangh’s affiliates have been directly responsible for horrendous acts of violence in the name of the holy cow, dearer to the organisation than those lynched for slaughtering and, supposedly, consuming its meat.
The authors fail to raise tough questions despite their “unprecedented access” to key leaders of the Sangh, who are otherwise largely unapproachable by mainstream media.
And then there is “What Does Hindutva Mean?”, an elaborate chapter on the philosophy of the Sangh. Here again, the Sangh’s leaders paint a rosy picture of all things good in their philosophy. They say, as the book quotes them, that India is “a civilisational nation state” and that the RSS has never talked of making Hinduism a state religion.
The book points, flatteringly, to RSS literature, which, according to the authors, speaks approvingly of the religious and cultural diversities. Again, there is no meeting point between their words and ground realities, and what is more, the authors just let that be, without probing further.
The book goes on to quote RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as saying that forcing others to chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai” is wrong and that “all people living in the country are our own and we can’t force our ideology and thinking on them”. Really, the authors should have asked some questions here as well, but they do not.
Moving on, there is a chapter on “Indianising Education”, where the authors claim that within months of the BJP’s victory in the 2014 general election, the then HRD Minister Smriti Irani “met with senior RSS figures” who wanted “the essentials of the Indian culture” to be reflected in school curriculum across the country.
It further mentions that in view of the “importance of the HRD Ministry in implementing the RSS goal of ‘indianising’ education”, the party selected Prakash Javadekar to replace the controversial Irani.
“Just a month after assuming his new post, Javadekar called a meeting that included senior RSS and BJP officials and other constituents of the Sangh parivar engaged in education,” the book says.
The motive of this meeting, says the book, was to discuss “the draft education policy earlier initiated by Irani” and to seek “suggestions to instill nationalism, pride and ancient Indian values in modern education”.
Notably, the over-400-page book’s actual text runs till page 256, after which is the appendix and notes section, which go on for about 150 pages. It also charts brief biographies of the RSS leadership, in glowing terms, and its constitution.
Even though this book is a missed opportunity as there is much more — and of utter significance both to the RSS and the country — that demanded exploration, it is not devoid of merit.
This book’s big achievement is in charting the journey of the Sangh — how the once banned organisation came into the mainstream, mobilised voters and played a crucial role in the 2014 general election, as it is expected to play in the coming election too.
But in its totality, the sense that a reader gets after reading this book is a glorification of the Sangh. It describes the inner working mechanisms of the organisation but fails to point out the outcomes resulting thereby.
The book surely has a lot of substance but can one possibly look at a raging fire and ignore those being burnt in it? This book does just that.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in )
—IANS
