by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Image – ET
By Ram Puniyani
As Covid 19 has created havoc all rounds, the rulers of certain countries are using it to further intensify their set agendas. The democratic freedoms are being curtailed in certain forms, the reaction to which has come in America in the form of a campaign, which is opposing “stifling” cultural climate that is imposing “ideological conformity” and weakening “norms of open debate and toleration of differences”. In India similar intimidations have been intensified. In addition the occasion has been used by the sectarian forces first to link the spread of Corona to Muslim community and now in the name of reducing the burden of curriculum certain chapters on core concepts related to Indian nationalism are being deleted from the text books.
It has been reported that chapters on federalism, citizenship, nationalism, secularism, Human Rights, Legal Aid and Local Self Government and the like are being dropped. Education has been an important area for communal forces and they constantly keep saying that leftists have dominated the curriculum content, it suffers from the impact of Macaulay, Marx and Mohammad and so needs to be Indianized. The first such attempt was done when BJP came to power in 1998 as NDA and had Murli Manohar Joshi as the MHRD minister. He brought the changes which were termed as ‘saffronization of education’. Their focus is more on social science. Some of the highlights of this were introduction of subjects like Astrology and Paurohitya, and chapters defending caste system, nationalism of the type of Hitler was praised.
With defeat of NDA in 2004, the UPA did try to rectify some of these distortions. Again after 2014 the RSS affiliates working in the area of education have been active, interacting with MHRD officials to impress upon them the need to change the curriculum matching with their Hindu nationalist agenda. Its ‘Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas’ has been asking for removal of English, Urdu words in the texts. It has asked for removal of thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore on Nationalism, extracts of autobiography of M F Husain, references to benevolence of Muslim rulers, references to BJP being Hindu party, apology of Dr. Manmohan Singh for anti Sikh pogrom of 1984, the reference to killings of Gujarat carnage in 2002 among others. This they call as Bhartiykaran of syllabus.
As RSS is a multithreaded hydra one of its pracharak Dinanath Batra has set up ‘Shiksha Bachao Abhiyan Samiti’ which has been pressurizing various publishers to drop the books which are not conforming to their ideology. One recalls their pressuring withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s ‘The Hindus’, as it does present the ancient India through the concerns of dalits and women. Mr. Batra has already come out with a set of nine books for school curriculum, giving the RSS view of the past and RSS understanding of social sciences. These have already been translated into Gujarati and thousands of the sets of these books are being used in Gujarat Schools.
The present step of deleting parts of curriculum which gives the basics of Indian Nationalism, secularism and human rights is a further step in the same direction. These are the topics which have made the Hindu nationalists uncomfortable during last few years. They have been defaming secularism. They removed it from the preamble of Indian constitution, when they put out an ad on the eve of Republic day in 2015. From last few decades since the Ram Temple movement was brought up, simultaneously the secular ethos of India’s freedom movement and secular values of Indian constitution have been constantly criticized. Many an RSS ideologues and BJP leaders have been asking for change of Indian Constitution for this very reason.
Secularism is part of the concept of Indian nationalism. In the name of religious nationalism, sectarian divisive nationalism they have been attacking various student leaders in particular. When we study Nationalism, the very genesis of Indian nationalism tells us the plurality of our freedom movement with its anti colonial roots. The struggle was for Indian nationalism and so the Muslims and Hindu communalists kept aloof from this great struggle against colonial masters, it was this struggle which built the Indian nation with all its diversity.
Similarly as we have equal rights as citizens the chapters on citizenship are being dropped. Federalism has been the core part of India’s administrative and political structure. As the dictatorial tendencies are becoming stronger, federalism is bound to suffer and that explains the dropping of this subject. Democracy is decentralization of power. Power reaching the lowermost part of the system, the villages and average citizens. This got reflected in Local self Government. The power is distributed among villages, cities, state and center. By removing chapters on federalism and local self government, the indications of the ideology of ruling party are on display.
While we are not dealing with all the portents of the planned omissions, one more aspect that related to dropping of chapter on Human rights needs our attention. The concept of Human rights and dignity are interlinked. This concept of Human rights also has international ramifications. India is signatory to many an UN covenants related to Human rights. The indications are clear that now rights will be for the few elite and ‘duties’ for the large deprived sections will be put on the forefront.
In a way this incidental ‘Corona gifted opportunity’ to the ruling Government is being fully used to enhance the agenda of ruling party in the arena of Educational Curriculum. The part of curriculum with which the ruling party is uncomfortable is being removed. This act of omission does supplement their other acts of commission in changing the shape of educational curriculum, which are reflected in RSS affiliates’ suggestions to MHRD regarding Bhartiyakaran of contents of syllabus. As per this the things like regarding the great epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata as History, the things like India having all the stem cell technology, plastic surgery, aviation science etc. will have a place in the changes planned by communal forces!
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Ram Puniyani is a former professor of biomedical engineering and former senior medical officer affiliated with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Modi.2 has emerged as a very powerful Government. It has not only the numerical majority; it is also facing a weak and divided opposition. That is one of the reasons for it stream rolling over people’s opinions and imposing the agenda of RSS-BJP of Hindu nationalism in a blatant way. On one side it has brought in a law banning triple talaq, on the other it has revoked article 370. Encouraged by these easy successes, now it seems to be unfolding it’s other agendas one by one.
Speaking on occasion of Hindi day, the BJP President and Union Home minister Amit Shah went on to speak his party mind on the subject Hindi as the national language. Mr. Shah said, it was necessary to have one language which could represent India in the world…and that Hindi was widely spoken and could be the language to keep India ‘united’…”To preserve our ancient philosophy, our culture and the memory of our freedom struggle,…there is at least one language, Hindi, that the nation knows. If Hindi is taken out of our freedom struggle, the entire soul of the struggle is lost.” He tweeted this to emphasize his point: “I want to appeal to people to promote their native languages but also use Hindi to make the dream of Bapu and Sardar Patel of one language come true.”
The intentions behind this statement were not so hidden though the language is very clever. The idea is to relegate English and regional languages to the margins and to give more prominence to Hindi all through. Sensing the intentions of Mr. Shah, many a leaders from South India, M K Stalin, Shashi Tharoor, Pinrayi Vijayan and Kamal Haasan have openly come against his statement. All of them see this as an attempt to impose Hindi on these states. Vijayan put it bluntly through his tweet, “That language (Hindi) is not the mother tongue of majority of Indians. The move to inflict Hindi upon them amounts to enslaving them.” While Kamal Haasasn, in a video uploaded with him standing next to the Ashoka pillar and the Preamble, says India became a republic in 1950 with a promise to the people that their language and culture will be protected. “No Shah, Sultan or Samrat can suddenly break that promise. We respect all languages but our mother language will always be Tamil… The battle for our language will be exponentially bigger…”
As such our country has been very diverse in all the matters related to language, culture, religion and ethnicity. The freedom movement was the real reflector of this diversity. People cutting across all these considerations stood as a single fraternity, respecting the diversity and the rich heritage coming from different religions and languages in particular. In all the languages, India’s aspirations of becoming a single nation got expressed. Hindi along with other regional languages have inherited rich lineage of becoming the mirror of Indian society. Though English was introduced primarily as administrative language, it soon became part of Indian culture, and all these also became a mirror of Indian society and aspirations.
In contrast to national movement for freedom from British slavery, which stood to reflect all the languages, the communal forces had different ideas. Muslim communalism came up with the slogan, ‘Urdu, Muslim, Pakistan’, and on parallel lines Hindu nationalism threw up the slogan, ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’. When Pakistan was formed in the Muslim majority areas (East Pakistan and West Pakistan) their languages were very diverse. Muslim League’s insistence that Urdu should become the national language of Pakistan did precipitate the feeling of separation of East Pakistan from West Pakistan leading to formation Bangla Desh with Bengali as the major language.
Interestingly the Constitution makers concluded that “Hindustani, written either in Devanagari or the Persian script at the option of the citizen, shall, as the national language, be the first official language of the Union. English shall be the second official language for such period as the Union may, by law, determine.” The three language formula envisaged English, Hindi and regional language as the fulcrum of education. During sixties there was an attempt to introduce Hindi in Southern states, and this led to massive protests all over, with the result the policy was put on hold. Again with new Education Policy under consideration wanted to make Hindi as mandatory. The argument continues that Hindi is language of the majority of Indians. The latest data shows that it is mother tongue of 25% of Indians and 44% people say they know Hindi. The massive opposition to this language part of New Education Policy yet again led to holding back of Hindi as mandatory. One recalls that even during 1940s when Congress Government came to power in Tamilnadu (Madras at that time.), attempt was made to introduce Hindi there. The resistance to this was articulated by Periyar Ramasamy Naicker, who raised the slogan ‘Tamil Nadu for Tamilians’ and accused Hindi of being a tool of the Aryans for infiltrating Dravidian culture.
How does one deal with the complex language issue. Country has been running well with English, Hindi and regional languages being used in different proportions at different levels. While there have been conscious efforts to spread Hindi to Southern states, there are no parallel steps to popularize regional languages in Hindi speaking states. One must say Hindi has definitely made long strides in spreading into southern and other states all over the country but this task has been achieved not by impositions from top but by the spread of Hindi films, and popular Hindi serials apart from the efforts of organizations promoting Hindi.
Issue of Urdu as national language contributed to split of Pakistan. In contrast India has done a remarkable balancing act in matters of languages so far. The reorganization of states on linguistic lines has given a unique strength to us. With Amit Shah unfolding their agenda of imposing homogeneity all over, including in matters of language, one hopes this present sanity will prevail and sentiments and aspirations of all non Hindi speaking states will be given due weight age in deciding the national language policy.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Ram Puniyani
By Ram Puniyani
The violence against religious minorities has been on the rise during last few years. Many a reports tell us not only about the overall rise in the violence but also about the portents of violence orchestrated in the name of Mother Cow and nationalism in recent times. It has increased the insecurity among the religious minorities to no end; leading to ghettotization, which has started affecting the social fabric in very adverse way. It is in this background that the efforts of Jamiat-e-Ulama Hind to start youth clubs for self defense have to be seen and assessed whether this is the right step?
Maulana Mahmood Madani, the chief of the organization while telling about the efforts of his organizations gave an outline of the things to come. As per him the motto of the initiative is “to make youths capable of dealing with tough situations and help the country whenever there is a situation of crisis. He said that the outfit will provide training to the youths just like the Scouts and Guides.” Reacting to this the likes of Vinay Katiyar and spokesmen of RSS related organizations said that this may promote violence and that this is an attempt to copy RSS model, but it will not work. While Madani focused on the training like that of Boys Scouts and Guides, the self defense logic may lead it to an unwanted direction.
Many a spokesmen from Muslim organizations have opposed this step of Jamiat by saying that Muslims have full faith in justice system and that giving safety and security to the citizens is the duty of the state. It’s undeniable that the feeling of insecurity among the Muslim and Christian community has seen an unprecedented rise; with the coming of Modi Sarkar to power. As such it has been RSS and its progeny which introduced the training in wielding lathi (baton), guns in a systematic way. RSS shakhas began with lathis in their shakhas. The question is that time the major problem of Indian society was with the British rule. Could they have used lathis against British? No way! It was primarily for the use within the society itself.
From last few decades the Bajrang Dal and Durga Vahini have been given training in guns as well. All this has been done in the name of self defense! What comes to one’s mind is that in post independence period we have the rule of law with Indian Constitution as the fulcrum of our values. Here we have police, judiciary for protection and justice. So what justifies the program of RSS combine in so called arms training? RSS is very fascinated with arms and every Dusshera day they worship armaments. They have an exhibition of armaments. There are reports doubting whether the police have information about these armaments with RSS, while they do hold license for that. While talking of non violence; RSS has glorified the arms and indulged in training the young boys and girls in these weapons.
On the top of this RSS affiliates have undertaken Trishul (trident) distributions. These trishuls, which have been distributed times and over again; have contributed to rise in hate sentiments. Trishul has religiosity associated with Lord Shiva and is blunt; while the trishuls distributed by these groups have sharp edges like knife. Legal positions apart; such ‘self defense’ organized by communities is a negative phenomenon.
Dilemmas of Muslim community and organizations like Jamiat are well taken. What should be the role of minority organizations in such troubled times? There are Muslim organizations which are opposing Jamiat’s move. Community’s plight cannot be saved by training some youths in techniques of scouts and guide, neither in copying the methods of RSS combine. What is needed is to call for proper implementation of justice and policing mechanism. Most of the communal violence reports tell us about the partisan attitude of the police and the lax attitude of political parties is the main reason for violence going up and up. Justice has not been delivered in 1984 anti-Sikh massacre; it might have given the major boost to the culture of impunity. In Mumbai Sri Kirshna Commission report was not implemented, boosting the trend of where criminal can get away, innocents suffer and justice is denied. In Gujarat violence, post Godhra, which took place right under the nose of the most efficient chief minster; nearly two thousand Hindus and Muslims were done to death, while state was accomplice in the violence.
The Jamiat leadership should think whether they are going in the right direction. Good intentions alone are not enough. Let’s identify the core cause of violence. It’s the Hate manufactured in society. Hate in turn has peaked to mountainous heights due to the misconceptions about the minority community enhanced lately due to abuse of social media in a systematic and planned way. Islam has been demonized as violent religion and Christians are looked down as converters. In Gujarat the travails of the likes of Teesta Setalvad, foremost human rights activist, tell us that getting justice is a humongous task. The need to counter the divisive propaganda done by our TV channels, done through section of media and spruced up by social media needs to be countered. The perceptions about our medieval period, freedom movement and all inclusive nature of Indian nationalism need to be taken far and wide.
What is needed is a broad alliance of those concerned about the security and protection of human rights of all. Right to life has lately been compromised heavily. All those working for preservation and promotion of rights of citizens need to come to uphold the basic Indian ethos of pluralism and the core values of Indian Constitution. Jamiat like organizations will do better by focusing on training the youth in the abilities to counter Hate by spreading the message of peace and love, by training them in countering the prevalent misconceptions against religious minorities and against weaker sections of society.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Ram Puniyani
The politics of communal polarization in is focusing on many identity issues, one being the Love Jihad, where the Hindu girl married to a Muslim or Christian man is targeted, and is legally manipulated in a manner to ensure that she is forced to be sent to her parents or sent to ‘anti Conversion clinics’. There is some public knowledge about Hadiya and the bogey of Love Jihad, spiced up with recruitment for participating in Jihad in Syria. Still, the cases of the likes of Swetha, a Hindu woman confined in a Yoga Center, where she is being pressurized to abandon her marriage to a Christian man are much less known. As per Shwetha the Yoga center as such is a re conversions clinic for those women who have adopted Christianity or Islam and married non Hindus. Lot has been coming in the media about the alleged immaturity of the girl Akhila who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man, who is a worker of Popular Front of India (PFI).
The total focus on linking the case to PFI, to alleged joining of planned terrorist activity in Syria was brought in to give a different twist to the case. This was the pretext for the NIA to step in. This made the link of conversion of Akhila as a sinister plan to woo Hindu girls, covert them to Islam and induct them into the terror module. Quite a fertile imagination of those in authority. In Hadiya’s case Court went to the extent of declaring that a 24 years old girl is of a tender mind and is gullible. The judges might have forgotten that in India age of voting is 18 years, after which the person becomes adult and responsible for one’s decisions and actions. Hadiya did say in the Court that her conversion and marriage to a Muslim man is out of her own volition. Later Court hearings did not call her for depositions. Even the latest Court verdict has given a month’s time before court will hear here her in person (30th October 2017). These are surprising times. An adult, a Homeopathic student is mature enough for decisions for her life, but keeping her in her parents’ custody away from her husband is unthinkable on moral and social grounds, grounds which should guide the interpretation of law and consequent decision.
In case of Swetha, the Yoga Center (Ernakulam) , where she has been detained turns out to be a place where emotional blackmail and even threats are being used to force the girls to abandon their new faith or to force their spouse to convert to Hinduism. Another Hindu woman Sruthi Meledath also testified similar experience when she was asked to leave her Muslim husband Anees Hamid, whom she planned to marry. This was at Yogvidya Kendram. The similarity of the agenda of such centers is very clear.
The issue of Love Jihad will become so dangerous for women in love, was not anticipated a decade ago. The cleverly crafted ‘Love Jihad’ campaign is based on the patriarchal notions, which are one of the core ingredients of communal politics. As per this communal thinking the notion of ‘Our women’, their women’ guides them. Woman is regarded as the property of man and is symbol of community honor. In precipitating communal violence rumors based of threat to ‘our women’ is put at the forefront, Mujaffarnagar violence being the prime example of the same. At the same time violating the modesty of women of other community comes as a badge of honor in this scheme of things. The love jihad issue began with Coastal Karnataka, where inter religious marriage were targeted, particularly when the girl was Hindu and the boy was Muslim in most cases and occasionally Christian. As such in an open society, social interaction among people of different religions does provide the ground for inter community interaction. This is something which can be the strong cementing factor in the concept of Fraternity in the triad of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
During freedom movement, people like Gandhi and Ambedkar proactively talked about the role of intercommunity marriages in promoting abolition of caste, and to extend the point inter religion marriages are the ground on which communal harmony and national integration find deeper and solid base. This is what the trajectory of things in democratic society should be. With the clouds of communal divisiveness coming up on the horizon, the patriarchal notions and attempt to control the lives of women have become stronger. In India Hindu communalists in particular have been floating organizations to discourage such alliances and to break them to when such unions take place.
One recalls the notorious Babu Bajrangi whose prime role was to attack inter community couples. In West Bengal the case of Priyanka todi and Rizwan Kausar is a painful reminder of the malady taking deep its roots in the society. While patriarchal values are there in other social ideologies also, in communalism, fundamentalism these are absolute in degree. While there are glorious examples of marriages, Hindu boy Muslim girl and vice versa, it seems the intimidations of the likes of Hadiya and Shruthi are being taken to absurd limits to set example in the society to dissuade others. Yoga Centre’s as decoy for breaking inter-caste marriages is sad news. Here deceit is the tool to break the spirit of girls involved in the process. The torture of the spouse involved in these cases has not been much recorded. As such love knows no boundaries of caste, class, religion and nationality. One can say inter religious marriages can also be an index of communal harmony and transition to a society where Gender equality is respected and striven for!
These two incidents have abundantly demonstrated that here in Kerala apart from the bogey of CPM’s attacks on RSS cadres love jihad is a big propaganda issue raked up during last few years.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Ram Puniyani,
The ‘Quit India’ movement 1942, whose 75th anniversary is currently being celebrated, was the major landmark in the struggle for India’s Independence. On 8th August the Indian National Congress working Committee Meeting at Gowalia Tank Maidan (now August Kranti Maidan) decided to launch the movement against British rule. This was the major popular mass movement after the non cooperation movement of 1920 and Civil Disobedience of 1930. Gandhi’s’ magic of involving the Indian people against the British was the spinal cord of struggle for India’s Independence. Earlier the politics of Congress was exclusively done by the educated and other elite. Gandhi in tune with his philosophy, the major ingredients of which were Satya Graha and non violence, revolved around the involvement of all the people irrespective of their caste, class, religion or gender.
Earlier in May 1942 Gandhi was already telling British to leave India. With this resolution of Congress the biggest battle for Independence came into being. The term for this upsurge, ‘Quit India’, was provided by a Socialist Congressman, Yusuf Mehrali. Most of the Congress leaders were arrested, and thousands courted arrest to make the point of their participation in the direction of Indian nationalism. The revolt was massive to the extent of shaking the British rulers. What were the core values of this movement?
It is true that Congress was the major party unquestioningly standing for this movement, providing the ideology and logistics of the movement. The other political formations like that of Communists and Hindu-Muslim nationalists kept aloof from this. For communists, as Russia joined the war against Germany, this war was labeled as Patriotic War and they supported British. Muslim Nationalism, Muslim League with Jinnah in the leadership, had already talked of separate Muslim Pakistan. They were unconcerned about this movement. They felt an undivided India is synonymous with Hindu raj.
As far as Hindu nationalists are concerned, there were two major streams. Hindu Mahasabha under the leadership of Savarkar, which was opposed to Quit India movement and gave firm instructions to supporters of Hindu Mahasabha to stick to their assigned duties in the state apparatus. The other stream was RSS. Its Chief Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar issued the instruction to all the Shakhas, not to do anything which will annoy British authorities and to abide by law. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the RSS worker, was arrested during this period, but he was quick enough to clarify that he was a mere onlooker and not the part of agitation and so he was let off. The founder of previous avatar of BJP, Bharatiya Jansangh, and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was at that time leader of Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal. He promised the British that he would do everything in Bengal to defeat the Quit India movement.
The participation of the people of the country was remarkable. This movement was the peak expression of what the concept of ‘India as a Nation in the making’ stood for. As people of all religions fought shoulder to shoulder, Gandhi’s central credo of Hindu-Muslim unity was there for all to see. By this time the support for Muslim League was miniscule and Hindu Mahasabha did not have much electoral support from Hindus. It is these values which culminated in the Indian Constitution.
Today what is happening while we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of a great mass movement? The ruling party which is not aligned with the spirit of Indian freedom movement and so also of Quit India movement has to blow some trumpet for electoral considerations. So our Prime Minister in his ‘Man Ki baat’ expresses the hope that people quit communalism, casteism, corruption etc. This is a noble thought but seems to be mere slogan. We have seen that due to the policies of this Government, communalism has grown by leaps and bounds. Adding on to the divisive issue of Ram Temple, Love Jihad, and Ghar Wapasi has been added a more potent issue of Holy cow-beef eating. This issue itself has led to incitement of mass hysteria leading to lynching after lynching. The IndiaSpend data of last six years of lynching has shown that these incidents have gone up many times over during last three years, since Modi came to power. The insecurity of Muslims has gone up by leaps and bounds; they have been marginalized from the political stream at a rapid speed.
It is during last three years that we have witnessed the atrocities against dalits going up and assuming frightening proportions. The institutional murder of Rohith Vemula, the brutal flogging of dalits in Una is a sampler of the state of dalits in the country. While the economy is taking a rapid downturn for weaker sections of society, the issues of corruption like that of Vyapam are being put under the carpet. The Nobel sentiments expressed by Prime Minster will remain hollow trumpets unless steps are taken to unite the people in the spirit of what Mahatma taught, i.e. Hindu Muslim unity and freezing the issues like that of Holy Cow-Beef for the sake of better social atmosphere.
BJP is launching nationwide ‘Sankalp Se Siddhi’ (Determination for Achievement) program at all India level in which among others film on Savarkar will also be shown. It is a total negation of the spirit of Quit India movement, as Savarkar had strongly opposed the movement, as he was for Hindu nation, for collaborating with British to oppose Muslim nation. The basic ideology and spirit of this great mass movement urges upon us to value the spirit of fraternity and equality rather than paying lip service to Mahatma by making him an icon of cleanliness, to follow him on the path of communal politics. Remarkably Gandhi had refused to endorse to move to ban cow slaughter in deference to the diversity of the country. One hope that the resolution being passed in joint house of parliament will have a mention of Gandhi and Congress, who were the pivot of the struggle for Independence.
