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Editorials - 13-08-2022

With tempers running high among Hindutva activists in Karnataka after killings and counter-killings in Dakshina Kannada, K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj and Raghava M. report on how the government’s handling of the investigations could further nourish the ecosystem of violence in the State’s coastal belt

On July 27, as his car drove into Nettaru, a remote hamlet in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka, Nalin Kumar Kateel, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) State chief, met with a hostile reception. Workers of his party and Sangh Parivar outfits surrounded and pushed his car, raising anti-government slogans.

It took Kateel, the area MP, nearly an hour to pacify the angry crowd after consoling the family members of Praveen Nettaru, 34, his one-time driver and a budding worker of the party’s Yuva Morcha, who was hacked to death by a gang of assailants a day earlier. “What is the use of BJP being in power in both the State and the Centre if they cannot safeguard their own workers?” Praveen’s mother Ratnavati toldThe Hindu .

Coming close on the heels of another BJP worker, Harsha, 28, being hacked to death in Shivamogga on February 20 this year, the murder of Praveen Nettaru seems to have unleashed a wave of anger and frustration among the Hindutva cadre base across the State. The two murders also come amid a virulent communal campaign against the Muslim community by Hindutva forces in the State – starting from hijab, which eventually expanded to halal meat, azaan, and an economic boycott of Muslims.

Police sources say Praveen was killed to avenge the murder of Mohammed Masood, 19, in Kalanja, allegedly killed by Hindutva activists. The July 26 killing was closely followed by the murder of Mohammed Fazil, 23, in Surathkal, reportedly to avenge Praveen’s death – three murders in 10 days in Dakshina Kannada district, pushing the police into defensive mode.

Fearing a communal riot or more retaliatory killings, they not only imposed prohibitory orders but also a night curfew, forcing all shops to shut at 6 p.m. They also banned pillion riders on two-wheelers, a measure that drew the ire of the public and was soon withdrawn. The night curfew was in force for over 10 days, exposing the fragile law and order scenario in the coastal region. The political opposition has come down heavily on the government, terming it a “breakdown of law and order”.

There has been rebellion in units of the BJP, with over 100 local office-bearers resigning, even as Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists barged into the residence of Home Minister Araga Jnanendra complaining of inaction against “jihadis”. Even Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai was gheraoed and BJP workers openly called for a “Yogi Adityanath model of leadership” for the State, pushing him to say he would also implement the “U.P. model”, while several leaders called for “encounters of jihadis”, implementation of “bulldozer justice”, and a ban on Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) and its affiliates. Sources said the heat of the unrest among the Sangh Parivar cadre was so intense that Union Home Minister Amit Shah flew down to Bengaluru for an official event and held talks on the sidelines with various factions to pacify them.

Murder as retaliation

Hours before he was killed, Praveen had got a cost estimation done for installing CCTV cameras at the chicken shop on the outskirts of Bellare town he had opened in October 2021. “He had felt unidentified people had been moving around him,” said Dinesh Chandra B. Hegde, Praveen’s friend and a member of Bellare gram panchayat from the BJP.

On the fateful day of July 26, around 8.30 p.m., Praveen was about to bring down the shutters of his shop when two bike-borne assailants turned up and hacked him to death.

Vithaldas, who runs a hardware and provision store next to Praveen’s and is also a member of the Bellare gram panchayat from the Congress, said most of them closed their shops around 6 p.m. as the area had been tense over the murder of a Muslim boy in Kalanja, a village nearby. It was the footage recorded by a CCTV camera at Vithaldas’s shop that led to a breakthrough in the case.

The man in the footage was the first arrest in the case – Mohammed Shafiq, 27, president of the Bellare unit of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), regarded as the PFI’s political wing. To date, 10 persons have been arrested in the case, all of them reportedly associated with the SDPI.

Shafi Bellare, secretary of the SDPI’s Karnataka unit, acknowledged that all those arrested in the case were party members but said they were being framed. Bellare police have invoked the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has joined the probe.

Interrogation of those arrested has revealed that Praveen’s murder was a retaliation for the murder of Masood, multiple police sources confirmed. However, Alok Kumar, ADGP (Law and Order), said the motive for the murder was still under investigation.

Masood died of an alleged assault by a gang of Hindutva activists and history-sheeters in Kalanja on July 19, which the police have consistently claimed is not a “communal case” but the result of a trivial fight. “The gang wanted to kill some Hindutva activist in the Kalanja-Bellare belt. Praveen Nettaru was a random target. They first recced Santosh, the elder brother of Abhilash, who was the person who banged a soda bottle on Masood’s head leading to his death. They recced more people and finally zeroed in on Praveen,” a senior police officer overseeing the probe said.

“Shafiq’s [accused of Praveen’s murder] father Ibrahim came to our house asking for a job and Praveen gave him a job in his chicken shop. I even asked Praveen why he had taken a Muslim on board and he said they were poor,” said Lokesh Poojary, Praveen’s uncle, who is also an RSS activist.

Ibrahim no longer worked at Praveen’s shop ostensibly due to an eye surgery but it is rumoured that he was sacked during the campaign against halal meat earlier this year. “Most of the [six] chicken shops in Bellare were owned by Muslims, which changed only recently with Praveen starting his,” said his friend Dinesh Hegde.

Police also said Praveen played a key role in getting the contract of a fish shop in the Bellare market to Hindus, which had traditionally been run by Muslims. According to the police, he was probably chosen as a target to avenge Masood’s killing as his activism had hit the Muslim community economically.

‘No communal angle’

Mohammed Masood was from Kasaragod, Kerala and had been staying at his grandfather’s house in Kalanja for nearly a month, painting walls with his uncle, before he was killed.

Trouble started for Masood when a Brahmin family gave him a three-month-old sick male calf that he brought home to rear, according to his elder brother Mohammed Mirshad. “He loved animals and was passionate about rearing them. He got medicines for the calf, built it a warm home, spending money when we are struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

People who rear cows in the region usually give away male calves mostly to Muslims in the area, who rear them and sell them to farmers or slaughterhouses. However, there is a ban on cow slaughter in the State now, with the BJP government enacting a stringent law in 2021.

“As he took the calf to graze in the evenings, Sudhir and Shivaprasad, who lived nearby, used to taunt him, [asking] if the calf would be slaughtered during Bakrid,” said his aunt Asma. The duo are associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal.

On July 19, Masood went to the shop in the village square to buy milk, where Sudhir, 29, was reportedly in an inebriated state. “Sudhir bumped into Masood and picked up a quarrel, claiming Masood hit him. Soon the two came to blows. I separated the two and sent Masood home,” said Khader, the shopkeeper.

Around 11 p.m., Sudhir had gathered his associates at the village square. Muhammed Shanif, 24, a resident of the village, saw his neighbour Sunil Kalanja among them. Kalanja, a Gau Raksha Pramukh of VHP, Sullia Prakhanda (Sullia taluk), convinced Shanif to get his friend Masood for a “settlement”.

“As soon as we came, they started beating him up. I tried to shield Masood from the blows but in the melee Abhilash [a local VHP office-bearer] smashed an empty soda bottle on Masood’s head,” a visibly shaken Shanif recounted.

The injured Masood fled from the scene even as the attackers dispersed. “After nearly two hours of searching, I found him lying unconscious near a well,” Shanif said. “I woke up Sunil and Sudhir and asked them to accompany me to the hospital. They came to a clinic in Bellare but dropped out as a crowd of Muslims gathered. We shifted Masood to a bigger hospital.” Masood succumbed to his injuries two days later, on July 21.

Bellare police have arrested eight persons in the case, including three rowdy-sheeters and two office-bearers of the VHP, Sullia Prakhanda. However, local police say there was no intention of murder and the accused in fact took the victim to the hospital themselves. “The unfortunate incident has happened due to personal animosity between two individuals and there is no communal angle to it,” Karnataka State Police said in a statement.

However, that is not how the Muslim community and activists from the area perceive the case. “Masood’s case was clearly a case of communal attack by Hindutva activists. But the police investigation refuses to see the context of the altercation,” said the SDPI’s Shafi Bellare.

The third murder

Following outrage over him not visiting Praveen Nettaru’s family, the Chief Minister landed in Mangaluru on July 28, two days later. While he was in the city, a gang of masked assailants in a car hacked Mohammed Fazil, 23, to death in Surathkal, on the outskirts of Mangaluru. This was the third murder in less than 10 days in the district.

Mangaluru city police have arrested a gang of seven members led by Bajrang Dal member Suhas Shetty for the murder. The police claim that a gang of disparate people came together to avenge the murder of Praveen and chose a random target in Fazil. All seven are either members of the Bajrang Dal or the Hindu Jagarana Vedike, police sources said.

Fazil had completed his MBA degree and a course in fire safety and was looking for a job in the Gulf. Meanwhile, he often went as a daily wager to Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd where his brother Adil worked as a driver. Police have evidence to show he had participated in several SDPI conclaves and put up social media posts claiming allegiance to the party. They suspect some of the accused in the case knew Fazil personally and he may have become a target for his SDPI links.

His father Umar Farooq, a driver, is inconsolable. “This is what they do before every election. The BJP doesn’t have anything to show for their work in government and before elections, they resort to communal murders to cover up their failures. This time, the menace snatched my son. He was an innocent boy,” he said as he broke down.

Violence and bias

The BJP had made the alleged murders of 24 Hindutva activists during the previous Congress regime under Siddaramaiah one of its main poll planks in the 2018 Assembly election. It had accused the Congress of supporting the PFI and the SDPI as the government had withdrawn 176 cases against their workers.

The then Home Minister, Ramalinga Reddy, had released a fact sheet in which he said that of the 24 Hindutva activists the BJP claimed had been killed, one was still alive; only 12 of the killings were of a communal nature, and in nine cases the accused were PFI and SDPI activists. The fact sheet also listed 11 murders of Muslims allegedly by Sangh Parivar activists.

“The BJP and the media often highlight the murders of Hindutva activists alone, trying to build a narrative of Muslims killing Hindus. But this is a cycle of violence between Sangh Parivar and PFI-SDPI, like that between Left parties and the RSS in Kerala. There is an ecosystem to get the accused to surrender, support them in jails and their families outside and legally fight the cases,” said Reddy.

Recently, a video clip of a speech of A.K. Ashraf, the PFI’s Karnataka secretary, has gone viral. In it he is heard as saying large-scale communal riots had stopped in Dakshina Kannada, the laboratory of Hindutva, as they had “taught” RSS families the pain of Muslim families that lost their dear ones to violence.

Multiple police officers who have served in the coastal region toldThe Hindu there is an overlap between the criminal underworld and the rank and file of Hindutva organisations. “Name any rowdy on the coast and he will be associated with some Hindutva group. It has now become aspirational to claim to be a Hindu don,” a senior police officer said.

Mangaluru police officials said Suhas Shetty, who had no rivalry with Fazil, killed him to “come to [the] limelight”. “Once he comes out on bail, he will capitalise on this case to emerge as a Robin Hood-like figure for Hindus. It never fails to work on the coast,” said a senior police officer.

The BJP, once it came to power in 2019, withdrew over 200 cases against Hindutva activists. The State government now faces accusations of bias in handling these three cases. While it invoked the UAPA and handed over the probe into the murders of Praveen and Harsha to the NIA, no such probes were ordered for the Muslims killed.

Further, no representative of the State government visited Masood and Fazil’s homes, even as Chief Minister Bommai went to Praveen’s house and handed over a compensation cheque of Rs. 25 lakh. Opposition leaders have visited all three victims’ houses. “Basavaraj Bommai seems to have forgotten that he is the Chief Minister for the entire State and not just BJP workers and voters,” said Farooq, Fazil’s father.

“The Sangh Parivar and the PFI and the SDPI are playing competitive communalism in collusion to derail the peace and progress of the coastal region,” said Muneer Katipalla, secretary, Democratic Youth Federation of India, Karnataka, a Left organisation.

While the BJP has always targeted the Congress for supporting the PFI and the SDPI, the party is now facing tough questions from its cadre as to why the State and Union governments have not been able to ban the organisations.

Strained social engineering

On the face of it, the rebellion brewing within the Sangh Parivar ranks seems like a demand for “hard Hindutva”. However, the BJP’s social engineering in the coastal region has also come under strain ahead of State elections next year. While Vokkaligas and Lingayats have dominated the caste politics of Karnataka, the coastal region – Uttara Kannada, Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts constituting 18 Assembly seats – is dominated by upper caste Bunts and Brahmins, Billavas and Mogaveeras (both OBC communities) apart from a significant population of Dalits, Muslims and Christians.

The BJP has support among Brahmins and Bunts along with Billavas (traditionally, a toddy tapping community), who constitute the muscle of Hindutva organisations like the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu Jagarana Vedike in the coastal region. However, the Billavas have begun asking uncomfortable questions.

“If you analyse the communal murders of the last 15 years in the region, Billavas will dominate the list of both murdered and murderers. But there is no upward mobility. Instead, we are the foot soldiers who pay a heavy price for other communities to remain in power. We have realised this… that is why there were no retaliatory murders for the deaths of Sharath Madiwala and Deepak Rao in the region (in the run-up to the 2018 elections), which was unthinkable before,” said a senior Sangh Parivar leader, a Billava himself.

With the Congress aggressively trying to woo back Billavas, a political constituency the party lost in the early 2000s, the BJP is in firefighting mode. “The BJP’s politics is clear: to keep Bunts and Billavas united, playing up their Hindu identity against Muslims, while Congress tries to break Billavas from Bunts and build a vote bank clubbing them with Mogaveeras, Dalits and Muslims. In this context, it is important that Suhas Shetty, a Bunt, has avenged the killing of Praveen, a Billava. The message is explicit and deliberate,” said a senior police officer.

But no one dares hazard a guess about where this cycle of retaliation will end.



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The power of that magical moment when India became free, which Mildred Talbot recorded, must never be forgotten

Independent India will turn 75 on Sunday, under the helm of an Adivasi President and a Gujarati Prime Minister, who, in their addresses to the nation (as yet undelivered as I write these words), will give voice to the extraordinary civilisational ethos of our country that they themselves personify. It is a very special moment in the history of this ancient land, one we are all privileged to be living through.

A rare privilege

My mind turns this week, though, to another very special moment 75 years ago — the moment of India’s celebrated “freedom at midnight”. I am privileged to have seen a remarkable document, a letter written on August 27, 1947 by a young American woman, Mildred Talbot, who had the rare privilege of being present at the Independence ceremonies of both India and Pakistan. Mildred, the wife of the admirable journalist, diplomat and Indophile, Phillips Talbot, died in 2004 at the age of 89. But she had agreed that I could share with others her first-hand impressions of the day, and I do so in homage to the occasion whose anniversary we all commemorate today.

Mildred’s seven-page, single-spaced typed letter is a personal reminiscence of the sights, sounds and encounters, not a political analysis (she left that to her husband, who was covering events for the Chicago Daily News). In sending me her “simple, unsophisticated account”, she mentioned that she had put her impressions down while they were still fresh “to get them out of [her] system” — only then, she wrote, did sleep become possible again. (It is striking that someone who, by nationality, had no direct emotional stake in the events she witnessed still found them so exciting that thoughts of what she had seen kept her awake for two weeks.)

From Karachi to Delhi

I shall skip past her account of the Karachi ceremony — which took place on August 13-14 within eyeshot of a bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi in a nearby circle — though some of her irreverent comments are worth quoting even now (“Jinnah, whose smile muscles seem to be permanently out of order...”). Karachi was still a Hindu-majority city, and large sections of the population were understandably subdued at Partition. Delhi’s mood was altogether more joyous. The Talbots arrived at the Constituent Assembly just in time after a hair-raising journey from Pakistan on the afternoon of August 14. Mildred describes Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous “Tryst with destiny” speech, recounts the now-forgotten exuberance of a delegate who marred the decorum of the occasion by shouting a cheer for the Mahatma, and then tells a story I have not come across elsewhere:

“At the moment when the clock was chiming the [midnight] hour there was a rude interruption which startled everyone. A conch shell was blown long and loudly from the rear of the hall. Involuntarily every head turned... It was revealing to witness the [...] relief [...] when they saw that it was one of the most highly respected members of the Assembly, a devout Hindu, simply invoking the gods to witness this ceremony... I happened to spot Nehru just as he was turning away, trying to hide a smile by covering his mouth with his hand.” The first harbinger of a Hindutva renaissance, or a simple reaffirmation of an ancient culture?

Mildred describes the pressure of the throngs outside the Assembly clamouring for a glimpse of their idol, Nehru, whom the police obliged “to slip out by a back entrance”. (As an American democrat, she was struck by the fact that when the crowds got out of hand, it was the VIP who changed his plans. As an Indian three-quarters of a century later, I know it would be the other way around today.)

There are numerous fascinating vignettes in her letter of the next morning’s Independence Day events: of Nehru’s horror at seeing a horse fall (he only turned his attention back to the ceremony when he saw the horse rise again and move); of the U.S. Ambassador’s irritation that U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s cable of congratulations had been omitted when other leaders’ greetings were read (it turned out that it had been misplaced); of Louis Mountbatten’s demeanour of “sincere pleasure”, a sharp contrast with his stiffness in Karachi (“Here he was relaxed and at home among friendly companions... his good wishes were obviously heartfelt.”) Mildred’s harrowing account of the evening’s ceremony, ruined by rain and by 5,00,000 people turning out for an event planned for 25,000, is too long to summarise here, but for one detail: amidst the chaos, Indira Gandhi looked “woebegone and bedraggled. Her sari was torn, her hair straggling, her fingernails ruined. And she was one of the dignitaries!”

When the flag was raised

But the highlight of Mildred’s account is of the morning of August 15, 1947 when the national flag was raised over the Council Hall: “The multitudes had gathered as far as the eye could see in the two-mile-long parkway approach to the Secretariat, on tops of buildings, in windows, on cornices, in trees, perched everywhere like so many birds. The raising of that first flag was the single most thrilling experience of the entire celebration.... The first who spotted it pointed like eager children; others... looked up and tried to push their way to a vantage point so they too could see this miracle. For a few minutes there was almost a subdued hush over the whole crowd; then a soft bass undertone slowly swelled until, perhaps when the flag reached the top... there was a breathtaking roar of cheering, shouting, and excited cries which others said penetrated to the hall inside and made their spines tingle. While I was being stirred by the sheer power and grandeur of the spectacle... the Indians either stood mute, immersed in their own overwhelming thoughts, or were shouting almost uncontrollably. It was a grand emotional experience that left most of us with shaky voices or complete inability to speak.”

These are the words not of an Indian nationalist but of a young American woman. Mildred wrote to an American friend two weeks after witnessing that first flag-raising: “The memory of the feelings that surged up within us as we watched their [i.e. the Indian masses’] excitement and awe still brings tears to my eyes.” Seventy-five years later, the memories of that first Independence Day have faded in all but a minuscule percentage of our population. But the power of that magical moment when India became free, and the hopes raised of what we would make of that freedom, must never be forgotten.

Today we contemplate a different India, when the hopes of that midnight moment are sought to be transmuted by rising intolerance and increasingly belligerent majoritarianism, to a very different idea of what this land is all about. And yet, re-reading Mildred’s letter makes August 15, for me, a day to remember that original moment, and to rededicate ourselves to its promise. It is the promise of an inclusive, pluralist, democratic and just India — the India that Mahatma Gandhi fought to free. As the nation celebrates the sweet nectar of an “Amrit Mahotsav”, let us not forget that original vision. It is one that every Indian can still do his or her own part to fulfil.

Shashi Tharoor is the Sahitya Akademi award-winning author of 22 books, including most recently ‘Pride, Prejudice and Punditry: The Essential Shashi Tharoor’. He is the third-term Lok Sabha MP for Thiruvananthapuram



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India’s focus should be on investment in human capital, on older adults living with dignity, and on healthy population ageing

The United Nations’ World Population Prospects (WPP), 2022, forecasts India becoming the most populous country by 2023, surpassing China, with a 140 crore population. This is four times the population India had at the time of Independence in 1947 (34 crore). Now, at the third stage of the demographic transition, and experiencing a slowing growth rate due to constant low mortality and rapidly declining fertility, India has 17.5% of the world’s population. As per the latest WPP, India will reach 150 crore by 2030 and 166 crore by 2050.

A sea change

In its 75-year journey since Independence, the country has seen a sea change in its demographic structure. In the 1960s, India had a population growth rate of over 2%. At the current rate of growth, this is expected to fall to 1% by 2025. However, there is a long way to go for the country to achieve stability in population. This is expected to be achieved no later than 2064 and is projected to be at 170 crore (as mentioned in WPP 2022).

Last year, India reached a significant demographic milestone as, for the first time, its total fertility rate (TFR) slipped to two, below the replacement level fertility (2.1 children per woman), as per the National Family Health Survey. However, even after reaching the replacement level of fertility, the population will continue to grow for three to four decades owing to the population momentum (large cohorts of women in their reproductive age groups). Post-Independence, in the 1950s, India had a TFR of six. Several States have reached a TFR of two except for Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Manipur and Meghalaya. All these States face bottlenecks in achieving a low TFR. These include high illiteracy levels, rampant child marriage, high levels of under-five mortality rates, a low workforce participation of women, and low contraceptive usage compared to other States. A majority of women in these States do not have much of an economic or decisive say in their lives. Without ameliorating the status of women in society (quality of life), only lopsided development is achievable .

Demographic dividend

A larger population is perceived to mean greater human capital, higher economic growth and improved standards of living. In the last seven decades, the share of the working age population has grown from 50% to 65%, resulting in a remarkable decline in the dependency ratio (number of children and elderly persons per working age population). As in the WPP 2022, India will have one of the largest workforces globally, i.e., in the next 25 years, one in five working-age group persons will be living in India. This working-age bulge will keep growing till the mid-2050s, and India must make use of it. However, there are several obstacles to harnessing this demographic dividend. India’s labour force is constrained by the absence of women from the workforce; only a fourth of women are employed. The quality of educational attainments is not up to the mark, and the country’s workforce badly lacks the basic skills required for the modernised job market. Having the largest population with one of the world’s lowest employment rates is another enormous hurdle in reaping the ‘demographic dividend’.

Another demographic concern of independent India is the male-dominant sex ratio. In 1951, the country had a sex ratio of 946 females per 1,000 males. After aggressively withstanding the hurdles that stopped the betterment of sex ratios such as a preference for sons and sex-selective abortions, the nation, for the first time, began witnessing a slightly improving sex ratio from 1981. In 2011, the sex ratio was 943 females per 1,000 males; by 2022, it is expected to be approximately 950 females per 1,000 males. It is a shame that one in three girls missing globally due to sex selection (both pre-and post-natal), is from India — 46 million of the total 142 million missing girls. Improvement in sex ratio should be a priority as some communities face severe challenges from a marriage squeeze (an imbalance between the number of men and women available to marry in a specific society) and eventual bride purchase.

Life expectancy at birth, a summary indicator of overall public health achievements, saw a remarkable recovery graph from 32 years in 1947 to 70 years in 2019. It is welcome to see how several mortality indicators have improved in the last seven decades. The infant mortality rate declined from 133 in 1951 (for the big States) to 27 in 2020. The under-five mortality rate fell from 250 to 41, and the maternal mortality ratio dropped from 2,000 in the 1940s to 103 in 2019. Every other woman in the reproductive age group in India is anaemic, and every third child below five is stunted. India stands 101 out of 116 nations in the Global Hunger Index; this is pretty daunting for a country which has one of the most extensive welfare programmes for food security through the Public Distribution System and the Midday Meals Scheme.

Serious health risks

The disease pattern in the country has also seen a tremendous shift in these 75 years: while India was fighting communicable diseases post-Independence, there has been a transition towards non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the cause of more than 62% of total deaths. India is a global disease burden leader as the share of NCDs has almost doubled since the 1990s, which is the primary reason for worry. India is home to over eight crore people with diabetes. Further, more than a quarter of global deaths due to air pollution occur in India alone. With an increasingly ageing population in the grip of rising NCDs, India faces a serious health risk in the decades ahead. In contrast, India’s health-care infrastructure is highly inadequate and inefficient. Additionally, India’s public health financing is low, varying between 1% and 1.5% of GDP, which is among the lowest percentages in the world.

India is called a young nation, with 50% of its population below 25 years of age. But the share of India’s elderly population is now increasing and is expected to be 12% by 2050. After 2050, the elderly population will increase sharply. So, advance investments in the development of a robust social, financial and healthcare support system for old people is the need of the hour. The focus of action should be on extensive investment in human capital, on older adults living with dignity, and on healthy population ageing. We should be prepared with suitable infrastructure, conducive social welfare schemes and massive investment in quality education and health. The focus should not be on population control; we do not have such a severe problem now. Instead, an augmentation of the quality of life should be the priority.

Aditi Chaudhary and Nandlal Mishra are doctoral fellows at the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai



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India must continue to try to designate terrorists and not lose faith in the process

By choosing to place a “technical hold” on the joint India-U.S. proposal to designate Jaish-e-Mohammad deputy chief Rauf Asghar a global terrorist on the United Nations Security Council 1267 Committee listing, China has swung another blow to its ties with India, which are already at a fragile point. Despite 16 rounds of military commander talks at the Line of Actual Control, India and China have failed to resolve the standoff that began with the PLA amassing troops, and transgressions along the LAC in April 2020. The two sides sparred in the maritime sphere this week, after India made its concerns over the proposed docking of a Chinese satellite tracking ship at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port clear to the Sri Lankan government. And while bilateral trade has recovered from the COVID-19 downturn, Chinese technology majors in India are being raided by the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax authorities under suspicion of a range of financial crimes. At a time when bilateral trust is already in such deficit comes China’s decision to stop an important terror listing, just two months after Beijing similarly stopped the designation of Lashkar-e-Taiba deputy chief Abdul Rahman Makki. To take such measures on an issue that it knows India has always been extremely serious about, given the number of major attacks perpetrated on Indians by the LeT and JeM, right from the 1990s, is insensitive at the least, but part of an unfortunate pattern by China, which has held up several such listings in the past. Asghar is wanted for his role in freeing his brother Masood Azhar in the most dastardly way, by organising the hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, and holding nearly 200 civilians hostage on the Kandahar tarmac, and other attacks. He is now reportedly in Pakistani prison, convicted on terror-related charges, and is on both the U.S.’s and India’s domestic ‘most wanted terrorist’ lists.

It is important, however, for India to persevere with attempts to designate both Makki and Asghar, as well as other terrorists responsible for attacks on Indians, without losing faith in the process. One option is to keep the international pressure up, and garner more co-sponsors for the listing, which was reportedly approved by 14 of 15 UNSC members. Another would be to work on changing 1267 Committee procedures, so that they don’t allow one country to hold back such important terror listings without due cause. A third may even be to open dialogues with both China and Pakistan bilaterally on the issue, leveraging Pakistan’s need to be removed from the FATF grey list later this year as well as China’s interest in Pakistan’s economic recovery, to ensure the listings are accomplished. Eventually, if the goal behind the UNSC listings is to ensure that perpetrators of terrorist acts are held accountable, the emphasis must be on working through all avenues.



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Free speech is constantly under threat from religious and caste groups

In quashing a criminal case against actor Suriya and director T.J. Gnanavel, the Madras High Court has spared them the ordeal of facing vexatious proceedings for allegedly insulting a section of society in the acclaimed filmJai Bhim . The FIR cited Section 295A of the IPC, a provision that makes it a crime to commit “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings” on the basis of a complaint that the film insulted the Vanniyar community. A magistrate had forwarded the complaint to the police for the registration of a first information report by concluding that it disclosed a “cognisable offence”. The High Court has rightly concluded that the magistrate had acted mechanically as the order did not even mention what offence was made out in the complaint. In this case, it is quite strange that a perceived insult to a caste was seen as outraging “religious” feelings. It indicates the perfunctory manner in which caste and religion can be conflated with one another by those claiming to be hurt or insulted by others. The court has noted that except for a contention that the film was made in a manner that is likely to incite violence and hostility towards a particular community, there was no specific instance stated in the FIR.

The casual resort to criminal prosecution for perceived insults to religion or any other social segment has become an unfortunate feature of contemporary life. Some years ago, the Supreme Court had to intervene to quash a criminal complaint against cricket star Mahendra Singh Dhoni for being featured in the likeness of a deity on the cover of a magazine. Section 295A has been interpreted by a Constitution Bench in 1957 to the effect that it only “punishes the aggravated form of insult to religion” when something is done with a deliberate and malicious intention to outrage the religious feelings of a class. However, in practice, groups and individuals use some imagined slight to themselves as a pretext to infringe the right to freedom of speech and expression by objecting to films, plays and public performances. In many cases, the police tend to give greater credence to such complaints than they deserve and cite the possibility of a disruption of law and order to clamp down on the screening or performance rather than protect free speech. Constitutional courts do intervene time and again to protect freedom of expression, but often such relief comes after a delay. Books have been pulped and performances and lectures have been cancelled based on threats and complaints more often than needed. These developments can only mean that the fight for free speech has to be fought anew from time to time.



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Lydia's ability to find the extra gear in the middle of a sprint and strong finish made her a worthy competitor. She broke a million hearts when she beat Usha in the 100 metres final at the Delhi Asiad of 1982.

One of the most exciting rivalries on the athletics track was set up in the 1980s between Asia’s greatest women athletes, India’s sprint queen PT Usha and Philippines’s Lydia de Vega, dubbed as the continent’s fastest by her fans. So when Lydia lost her lengthy battle against breast cancer earlier this week, Usha was among the many who took to social media to pay tribute. The edge-of-the-seat races between Usha and Lydia can be viewed in pre-High Definition footage but only a trip down memory lane can paint the true picture of the fierce rivalry.

Recalling her five gold medals at the 1985 Asian Athletics Championships in Jakarta, Usha talked about a sly attempt by Lydia’s coach, her father Francisco, to sabotage Usha’s bid. Francisco told Usha and her coach OM Nambiar that an athlete could participate in only three events, hoping Usha would skip the 100 metres. The other camp also accused Usha of doping. India’s sprint queen was clean but getting tested by anti-doping officials after virtually every final drained her out. There was mutual respect, too. Usha still cherishes the chain of silver medallions Francisco gifted her.

Lydia’s ability to find the extra gear in the middle of a sprint and strong finish made her a worthy competitor. She broke a million hearts when she beat Usha in the 100 metres final at the Delhi Asiad of 1982. Post the Los Angeles Olympics, where Usha finished fourth in the 400 m hurdles, coach Nambiar believed Usha’s time had come.

True to form, Usha won both the 100m and the 200m during the gold medal rush at the Jakarta Asian Championships. Lydia was left to lick her wounds after bagging a bronze. A year later, at the Asian Games, fans were in for a treat. Lydia pipped Usha in the 100, while Usha got the better of the Filipino in the 200. Born just two months apart in the same year and peaking around the same time to become torchbearers of track and field in Asia, both Usha and Lydia will continue to inspire the next generations of women athletes.



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Considering the then economic environment, and the considerable uncertainty that the pandemic had injected in the aviation sector, some airlines did in fact support the imposition of these pricing restrictions.

In the early days of the pandemic, the Union government had imposed capacity and price restrictions on domestic airlines. While restrictions on capacity were put in place to contain the spread of Covid, from the government’s point of view, the rationale to impose both price floors and ceilings was two-fold. One, to prevent a price war among the airlines so as to protect the financially weaker airlines during an economically turbulent period. And two, to prevent consumers from price gouging as airlines sought to recoup their losses during a period of demand and supply mismatches.

Over time, the government did do away with the restrictions imposed on capacity — in October last year it allowed for 100 per cent capacity utilisation — but the restrictions on pricing were kept in place. On Wednesday, the civil aviation ministry announced that the last remaining restrictions on pricing will be removed with effect from the end of this month. This is a long overdue corrective.

The price restrictions, imposed in May 2020, when the airlines had resumed their operations after the two-month lock-down, were based on the duration of flights. The seven price bands ranged from Rs 2,600 for flights under 40 minutes to Rs 8,700 for flights over three hours. Last year, these prices were adjusted upwards, though marginally.

Considering the then economic environment, and the considerable uncertainty that the pandemic had injected in the aviation sector, some airlines did in fact support the imposition of these pricing restrictions. But by intervening in the functioning of the market, by making commercial decisions which should be the prerogative of airlines, these price caps ended up distorting the market, having unintended consequences on both demand and supply. While various justifications have been marshalled in favour of the imposition of this policy during the pandemic, the reality is that price restrictions by the government are the norm, not the exception. Across a range of sectors, ranging from urea to medical devices, price restrictions are prevalent, despite their well-known economic consequences.

The easing of the last of the Covid-era restrictions comes at a time of fresh developments in the airline sector. Air India has been recently sold off to the Tatas. A new airline, Akasa Air, has been launched. And Jet Airways is reported to have secured the permits to restart operations. At this juncture, the government must desist from playing an interventionist role, it must limit itself to facilitating the growth of the sector.



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Notwithstanding the recent moderation in inflation, steady economic recovery within India as well as a worsening balance of payment situation will likely force the RBI to raise repo rates by another 35 to 60 basis points in the remaining months of the current financial year.

India’s retail inflation print for July came in at 6.7 per cent. While this is considerably higher than the Reserve Bank of India’s target inflation rate of 4 per cent and even outside its comfort zone (2 per cent to 6 per cent), the July number brings relief. That’s because retail inflation has shown a steady deceleration since it hit an eight-year high of almost 8 per cent in April; it grew at 7 per cent in May and June.

Another reason for comfort is that the RBI had pencilled in an average inflation rate of 7.1 per cent for the second quarter (July, August and September). A 6.7 per cent print in July raises hopes that India might have seen off the worst of inflation for the time being. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das hit the nail on the head when, on August 5 while announcing the latest monetary policy stance, he said: “The inflation trajectory is now poised at a decisive point. While there are incipient signs of a confluence of factors that could lead to further softening of domestic inflationary pressures, there remain significant uncertainties”.

The overall print of 6.7 per cent hides wide differences both across commodities as well as geographies. For instance, fuel inflation soared by almost 12 per cent in July. While housing inflation was below 4 per cent, food price inflation came in at 6.8 per cent — down from 7.8 per cent in June. But within this broad rubric, prices of vegetables grew by almost 11 per cent, while prices of spices and edible oils grew by almost 13 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively. Inflation also varied across states. For example, the inflation rate was as low as 4.1 per cent in Delhi and as high as 8.9 per cent in Telangana. Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, and West Bengal are the other states where consumers were still experiencing inflation rates in excess of 7.8 per cent, while Himachal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka witnessed a sub-5 per cent spike in the price level.

However, policy challenges remain. For one, despite some moderation, inflation is likely to be above 6 per cent for the current financial year; not to forget the fact that it was above 6 per cent in the last quarter (January to March 2022) of the last financial year. Since May, when the RBI reacted to April’s inflation spike by calling an unscheduled review, repo rates have gone up by 140 basis points to reach the pre-pandemic level of 5.4 per cent.

Notwithstanding the recent moderation in inflation, steady economic recovery within India as well as a worsening balance of payment situation will likely force the RBI to raise repo rates by another 35 to 60 basis points in the remaining months of the current financial year. However, each effort to bring inflation back to the 4 per cent level will also come at the cost of economic growth.



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Sujatha Rao writes: During the Covid-19 pandemic, the overcrowding of hospitals with anxious patients, the stress on families, desperate for credible advice, brought to the fore the need for family doctors and a resilient primary health system

Since Independence, India has been striving to establish a comprehensive primary healthcare care system. The Bhore Committee Report of 1946, the Kartar Singh Committee Report of 1973, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) of 2005 and the Ayushman Bharat Mission of 2019 are significant landmarks in this endeavour. The system today comprises a multi-tiered structure with a 30-bed community health centre operated by four specialists at the block-level and a community worker at the village-level. The services cover 12 diseases/needs.

The NRHM was a game changer. Backed by political imagination and a three-fold increase in budget, the mission set standards for physical infrastructure, human resources and service delivery — the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS). The focused approach resulted in substantial gains — institutional deliveries went up from 41 per cent in 2005 to 89 per cent in 2021, the maternal mortality ratio went down from 407 per one lakh women in 2,000 to 113 per one lakh women in 2021 and the infant mortality ratio reduced from 58/1,000 live births in 2005 to about 28/1,000 live births in 2021. With increased availability of drugs, diagnostics and doctors, the healthcare system’s footfall has registered an impressive improvement in states like Bihar and UP. The embedding of a million foot soldiers in the community is a major achievement.

Despite these efforts, however, less than 10 per cent of the facilities match up to the IPHS. One reason for the deficit is that public spending on healthcare is barely 1.1 per cent of the GDP. The other reason is the wavering political support for primary care. As a result, the primary healthcare system continues to be plagued with gaps and deficiencies and the current facilities serve two to ten times the population they are designed to cater to.

The Covid pandemic once again highlighted the need for an effective primary healthcare system. The overcrowding of hospitals with anxious patients, the utter confusion and the stress on families, desperate for credible advice, brought to the fore the need for family doctors and a resilient primary health system. It is not as if policymakers have been unaware of the need for close-to-home facilities to address everyday healthcare needs. The UK’s GP (general practitioners) system has been a part of the public health discourse in the country for nearly a decade. The barrier has, however, been the lack of understanding of how to transplant this system to India, given the wide differences in the history, culture and conditions of the two countries.

Kerala seems to have quietly begun the reform process. In 2014, the state set up a pilot in three PHCs under guidance from and help of the Imperial College, London along with support from DFID. The reconstruction process started with the acceptance of the basic but often-ignored fact — the facility design must cater to community needs. This meant assessing the demographic and epidemiological ground realities and acknowledging that the 70-year-old PHC structure did not have the institutional capacity to manage chronic diseases — the deficit had to be plugged urgently because most such diseases last several years and treating them requires a holistic approach.

Renaming the facilities as family health centres underlined the centrality of the family in the endeavour. A series of coordinated interventions were made — changing timings, redesigning the centres and equipping them with patient and people-friendly facilities, providing intensive training to the staff to undertake new functions and responsibilities, improving diagnostic facilities, computerising data to make processes paper less, triaging patients for maximum utilisation of doctors time, referral of patients to higher levels of care and ensuring post hospitalisation follow-ups. The PHCs in Kerala provide a wide range of drugs and medical services, including nebuliser treatment for asthma patients. It’s the only state where mobile teams provide palliative care at home. Almost 550 FHCs are functioning in the state.

This comprehensive approach has been enabled by a tripartite partnership between the state’s health department, women’s collectives and community-level bodies. While the local bodies provide the funding, the volunteer base comes from the collectives and the health department delivers the services. Kerala appears to be the only state to revamp its primary healthcare system along the foundational principles of comprehensive primary care — a community-anchored delivery system, a continuum of care, and patient-centred, protocol-driven, evidence-based treatment.

The state’s task is, however, not over. Reform needs deepening, and the accountability framework needs to be strengthened. In other words, the doctors, paramedics and frontline workers must be held responsible for the health and well-being of every member of the families that are under their charge, and this responsibility has to be backed by financial and non financial incentives. Such interventions can be particularly useful in reducing the insulin dependence of a diabetic through sound case management and effective counselling on lifestyle changes — proper medications, diet, exercise, and yoga. A proactive primary healthcare system such as this can help early in the diagnosis, reduce hospitalisations and bring down severe morbidity and mortality. Achieving these goals is of immense importance in cash-strapped and low-resource settings, especially because the cost of healthcare escalates threefold, the higher one goes up the care ladder.

But then what Kerala is attempting is not what Bihar, UP or Assam should. Interstate differentials in morbidity patterns are wide and health systems need to be tweaked according to a state’s disease burden. National policy, therefore, needs to be nimble and allow for differential strategies — a single system may not be apt for the entire country. The sooner the Centre accepts the principles of flexibility, decentralisation and provides the space for innovation to states and districts to plan, design and implement primary care in accordance with local needs, the better it would be — the Centre’s role should be limited to measuring outcomes.

The question is not only about increasing financial resources but resetting the approach and changing the design. We have spent 75 years struggling to have a sound primary healthcare system, one that prevents illness as well as heals. It’s time to speed up the effort.



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Fali S Nariman writes: Disarm your opponent with humour and faint praise, and never attack them with anger or derision

I would like to congratulate this newspaper on The Ideas Page on August 10. Both ‘Notes from the House’ by Liz Mathew and ‘Why Nitish worries BJP’ by Ghanshyam Tiwari were wonderfully nostalgic and excellently expressed. They have helped stimulate my own memories of the (now) old Parliament building — when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister, and Nitish Kumar was Union Minister for Railways (from March 2001 – May 2004). Although then Prime Minister Vajpayee always spoke in Hindi it was, for me, easily understandable Hindi and I vividly recall one such occasion mentioned below.

It is customary that when a Prime Minister of India returns from a foreign visit, the first thing he or she does is make a statement in each of the Houses of Parliament (if in session), and MPs, picked by the Chair, are customarily asked to put questions to the Prime Minister so that further information can be elicited.

On one such occasion, I, as a nominated member, was one of the fortunate few to be named by the Chair, Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, along with two members belonging to different political parties. One of these two members posed his questions, and I too put a couple of questions to the Prime Minister who was sitting in his allotted seat in the House. The third MP was a former diplomat-turned-parliamentarian, the distinguished K Natwar Singh. He belonged at the time to the Congress Party, which was then in Opposition and his questions were very critical of the government and full of some invective as well.

Natwar Singh spoke in crisp English: “Mr Chairman Sir, I have six questions for the Prime Minister”, he forcefully began. And he set them out one by one. While raising each question, he raised his voice as well. A decibel louder, and each time, angrier than when he had asked the previous question! When the Prime Minister rose to answer the questions, and, ultimately, came to the six questions posed by Natwar Singh, I was left wondering how he would deal with the pointed and somewhat inconvenient questions addressed to him.

But the Prime Minister — who spoke in fluent but understandable Hindi (even to the angrezi wallahs!) in response to the questions addressed to him in English said that Natwar Singh was a great parliamentarian and that he (Vajpayee) had known him for many years. He noted that the Congress MP was very intelligent as well and always knew his facts. He then added: “Lekin unko gussa bahut jaldi aa jataa hai” (he gets angry very quickly). That riposte brought the House down. The six questions remained unanswered because they got dissolved in laughter! And there was much laughter in the House in those days, from 1999 to 2005.

Atalji was an astute statesman to his fingertips. Courageous when required, diplomatic when necessary. He taught me a great lesson — that it pays not to be angry or to lose one’s temper when speaking in Parliament. It is always advisable to scotch your opponent with faint praise.

This is one of the things I learnt in my six-year sojourn in Parliament — to disarm your opponent, and never attack them with anger or derision. And I am eternally grateful to Atalji — who had a boyish and lovable sense of fun — for having taught his colleagues in the House that they are better appreciated when expressing their sense of joy rather than indulging in a sense of humour at some other Member’s expense.

The writer is a constitutional jurist and senior advocate to the Supreme Court

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Suhas Palshikar writes: The individual as a political unit finds herself, and her rights, dwarfed by an expanding state and faltering institutions.

Celebrations around August 15 are mainly about freedom. This year is even more special as it marks 75 years of Independence and, as such, deserves a more nuanced commemoration. While freedom from foreign rule is a cherished gift we acquired 75 years ago, we must remember that the celebrations on August 15 are and should be as much about democracy as about our national self-respect and identity. India’s freedom was not merely an assertion of nationhood. Implicit in that nationhood was also an idea about how to conduct the affairs of the nation. While our ability to sustain independence gives us pride and satisfaction, our ability to consolidate democracy should be a matter of deep concern and introspection. As we pause to review the life of India’s democracy, we witness many a contradictory feature. In fact, it may not be an exaggeration to say that our democracy is marked by contradictoriness.

This contradictoriness emanates from the celebrations themselves. The celebrations are about the nation. They are also about the abstract idea of the people. Yet, we are on the path of limiting both the scope of the nation and the expanse of what constitutes the people. The present juncture is marked by attempts to shrink the nation to one community. This tends to result in exclusion rather than inclusion. The nation envisioned 75 years ago was certainly not confined to any one community but today, the entire nationalist rhetoric is marked by exclusion and an overemphasis on community identity. The famous phrase “we the people” will continue to be invoked but it will refer to only a select section as the people. Apart from privileging one community over others, the idea of the people is also beset with the exclusion of the physical peripheries of the nation. Besides, a new hierarchy between the nation and democracy is emerging. In this hierarchy, democracy is secondary to the nation. This also undermines the importance of the idea of the people because once democracy is sidelined, people exist only as constituents of the nation rather than as having agency.

The second contradiction is about the foundational document. India takes pride in a Constitution, which is both a stabilising and revolutionary document. There are celebrations of that document but the adoption of its spirit in social and political practice is half-hearted. More worryingly, the stabilising dimension of the Constitution is used to make the state all-pervasive and transform governance into full-time, all-round regulation of the idea of citizenship. This is reflected in the governance practices of the present regime but it also predates it. The two most revolutionary elements of the Constitution — fundamental rights and directive principles — are conveniently set aside from time to time in favour of setting up a state that is more a menace to citizens than their friend and benefactor. Our legislative choices, executive practices and judicial interpretations have undermined the Constitution from time to time. The ornamental status of the Constitution fails to serve its true purpose — imposing strict limits on those who hold power — and draws attention away from the task of rebuilding society. In fact, the objective of rebuilding society is denied primacy. From the extant document, a new Constitution is thus extracted as an instrument of regulation and control rather than freedom and well-being.

Third, democracy depends on a web of institutions. India cannot complain about the paucity of institutions — we have institutions aplenty. The Constitution gave us many institutions and subsequently, Parliament has added to them regularly. Ironically, a majority of the new institutions we create tend to serve the purpose of controlling citizens. The enabling role of institutions is lost. In any case, our true contribution is not in creating institutions but rather in their talented mishandling — transforming them into instruments of oppression at worst and repositories of power and privilege at best. Today, even as we witness a serious erosion of most institutions, we must also admit that even in the past there has been a failure to ensure autonomy and efficiency of institutions of governance. This is partly because of the common understanding that “politics” means interference in institutional functioning. Our public life generally manifests a robust disrespect toward institutions to the degree that politics often resembles shades of populism. In the name of people and people-power, norms and institutions are sacrificed. This is often seen, both by the public at large and by the political power holders, as a legitimate expression of popular sovereignty.

Four, while adult suffrage brought about political equality in one stroke, our politics is marked by deep inequalities. The threshold for being able to “do politics” is so high that ordinary citizens find it difficult to engage with public life. One sure way of entering the public arena is the family route. Unless there is a family connection, entry into politics is tough. And once someone enters politics, that person immediately becomes a distinct species. The political class has constituted itself into a special category and while it invokes the idea of people fairly regularly, its practices manifest a chasm between the people and the politician. Even at the most local level, a politician holds prestige, power and resources compared to “ordinary” men and women. Needless to say, this political inequality is exacerbated by and in turn, enhances various other inequalities. Is it not contradictory that while we celebrate being the largest democracy, we are also a substantively and politically unequal society?

Finally, what about the basic unit — the individual — that contributes to the formation of the category called the people? Democracy hinges on the balance between the people as a collective and the individual. But in India’s democratic life, the idea of the individual seldom carries weight. Within communities, individuals are secondary; individual freedoms such as freedom of expression are seen both by the public and rulers as unnecessary; the fundamental principle of the right to life and liberty is ignored in practice and in jurisprudence pertaining to arrests and bail and even the primary idea of the burden of proof is easily ignored in the name of the almighty state. Between the state and the individual, the state is imagined as the higher altar of power, virtue and wisdom.

The anniversary of our freedom is an occasion to remind ourselves of these contradictions and to realise that democracy in India operates within them. This pathology of contradictoriness makes our democracy both weak and vulnerable. These are certainly not contradictions that have arisen today. The present generation has inherited them from those present early in the post-independence moment. However, what makes these contradictions jarring at the present juncture is the relationship between them and the present regime. This regime is a product of these contradictions and, in turn, it exploits them in order to draw sustenance for itself. This portends an aggravation of the contradictions. The best way to celebrate 75 years of our nationhood is to remind ourselves of the contradictoriness of democracy that we practice.

The writer, based in Pune, taught political science and is chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics



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It's one among many love letters Aamir Khan has written to himself, seeking a utopia that only a few are comfortable with

To the mildly sensible Indian citizen, the everyday struggle of being a member of a religious minority may come as no surprise. On a day when they feel terribly sensible, they might follow the National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) suit, and make do with a selective representation of history by evolving with the times. This citizen could be Atul Kulkarni, Advait Chandan, or Aamir Khan — the writer, director and actor, respectively, of Laal Singh Chaddha, which hit the big screen on August 11.

The NCERT, which dropped the 2002 Gujarat riots from its Class 12 Political Science syllabus earlier this year, explained its stance by stating that it wanted to “rationalise the course content, and avoid overlaps”. Perhaps the makers of Laal Singh Chaddha also underwent similar epiphanies, except that Kulkarni and Chandan’s carefully “curated” historical accuracy falls flat. The 2002 riots do not even warrant a passing mention in the film. For a film that has been 14 years in the making, produced by one of the leading actors in India, and the plot of which unfolds against crucial historical events and political standpoints, this appears to be a deliberate, big miss, almost like an erasure.

The process of selection and omission of historical events within a work of art invariably brings up the question of representation. History, as we know it, is the memory of the collective. It is the memory of a community, which is passed from one generation to another, through interpretations in art, politics, and popular culture. The early 20th-century French filmmaker and theorist Germaine Dulac puts the responsibility of art in general, and cinema in particular, in perspective when she says, “It isn’t enough to simply capture reality to express it in totality, something else is necessary in order to respect it entirely, to surround it in its atmosphere and to make its moral meaning perceptible.” A tool of mass communication, perhaps even more than an NCERT textbook, cinema carries on its shoulders immense responsibility.

One also wonders if it’s the choice of subject — the story of Robert Zemeckis’ 1994-film Forrest Gump — that has rendered Laal Singh Chaddha rather weak. Forrest Gump is not without its faults — the neurodivergent protagonist is obedient at best and repetitive at worst. At this point, comparisons between Gump and Chaddha are inevitable. As the plot tightens against the backdrop of real events unfolding in the second half of the 20th century, Gump’s character advances through life, Bildungsroman-style. He lives through the assassinations of a few US presidents, survives the Vietnam War and is projected as a war hero, becomes the nationwide champion of ping-pong, owns the restaurant chain Bubba Gump Shrimp and has stakes in Apple Inc. In the Indian context, Chaddha’s story begins to unfold in post-Emergency India. Chaddha is witness to India winning the 1983 cricket world cup, Operation Blue Star, the 1984 riots, LK Advani’s rath yatra, protests against the Mandal Commission, Kargil war, Bombay blasts, even Milind Soman’s infamous nude photoshoot with Madhu Sapre. The neurodivergence is nothing but a mild inconvenience in both cases.

However, in the case of Gump, the film’s preoccupation with conflict is not something that is dealt with in isolation. The historical events that unfold in the backdrop of Gump’s life are not merely events, they are explanations for the choices characters like Jenny make. Unlike Laal Singh Chaddha, Forrest Gump contextualises the characters.

Also Read |International media reviews Laal Singh Chaddha: Film hailed for handling its ’emotional beats tactically’, Aamir Khan fails to impress

Lately, many critics have called out the caveats in Forrest Gump, and its portrayal of what is perceived as the fruits of being a law-abiding citizen who stays clear of dissent. In both films, the neurodivergence of the protagonist is used to justify his apolitical nature. Even so, Laal Singh Chaddha, at best, comes across as one among the many love letters Khan has written to himself, seeking a utopia that only a few are comfortable with.

Laal Singh Chaddha is a cosy, comfortable film for the obedient Indian, who knows that the nation is polarised, but who is himself or herself safe owing to religion, caste or class.

anuradha.vellat@expressindia.com



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In the 75 years of Independence, India has changed dramatically in a variety of ways. For a Dalit like me, there’s no better way to explain this than write about Tofapur, my mother’s place of birth. Situated in Azamgarh district, east Uttar Pradesh, the village was – and continues to be – embedded in my consciousness since my childhood. In 1965, barely half a dozen Dalit families, including my maternal grandfather’s, lived on their own. Most Dalit families subsisted almost like serfs. The adults got to work around 3.30am during the sowing, harvesting seasons in October and November, March/April.

After a gap of over three decades, I visited Tofapur in early 2008. I was working on a project with Prof Devesh Kapur, then head of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania. The project studied changes in occupation, lifestyle and food habits among Dalits after the 1990s reforms. It also mapped the changing socio-economic dynamics with the upper castes in the village.



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India is two days away from celebrating its 75th year as an independent country. But for some Indians, the founding promise of political equality seems years away. A 24-district survey by the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front has found many kinds of discriminatory behaviours against Dalit panchayat presidents: denied access to their office, not provided with documents they need, stopped from sitting on chairs, and disallowed from hoisting the tricolour. Then there are schoolchildren all over India refusing midday meals cooked by Dalits, gruesome atrocities against Dalits, and a thousand invisible hurdles that dictate where and how they can live and work.

It’s not that the state has stinted in its efforts at inclusion. Like in public education and public jobs, panchayat raj institutions also mandate a quota for scheduled castes. But this has been undermined in many states, with requirements of having a middle school education, or the right number of children, or a toilet in their homes, which inevitably disqualify the socially marginalised. The whole point of democratic participation seems foreign to many in a society still riddled with pre-modern hierarchy and domination. If good sense and state rules and laws don’t work in the face of entrenched prejudice, then perhaps fear will – those who deny basic constitutional rights to others must be seen to be paying heavily for it.



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India’s higher education regulator is working on a proposal to integrate engineering and medical entrance exams into the undergraduate common university entrance test, and the driving logic is no different from what drove both NEET and JEE’s evolution. These two common entrance exams had to overcome huge resistance to go full throttle, but they have clearly proved the doomsayers wrong, setting up a more efficient and less painful pipeline to scarce seats than the glut of separate exams they replaced. At the same time, the many agonies inflicted by a dramatically expanded CUET-UG this year call for proceeding with care.

Higher education institutions that will be impacted by the CUET-NEET-JEE integration include some of India’s most cherished centres of excellence. Only through consultations with them as well as with other key stakeholders will NTA be able to arrive at robust alternative testing. For example, NEET has very high biology standards and JEE a very high math threshold. Both these test Class XI as well as XII syllabi while CUET quizzes only the Class XII syllabus. But reconciling these divergent needs is quite doable with proper groundwork and NTA shouldn’t be reinventing the wheel either. Learn from South Korea, a quality education exemplar and which channels all its university intake through a single-day, five-session exam.

Of course, no other country’s system can simply be duplicated in India. Processes have to be developed to work across our own diverse local contexts. Harrowing CUET glitches have driven home costs of under-preparation on this front. Any CUET-NEET-JEE integration will be looking at upwards of 43 lakh applicants compared to around 5 lakh for South Korea’s CSAT. Don’t sabotage the noble goal of saving students from a multiplicity of exams through slapdash implementation.



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On August 15, Bharat will complete 75 years of Independence. Amrit Mahotsav programmes are already being organised to commemorate the occasion.

We are in a festive mood; but this does not mean we have resolved all our problems. Some old issues are pending and a few new ones are emerging. Despite this, the joy of Amrit Mahotsav celebration is natural and justified.

After many centuries, on August 15, 1947, we regained the right to self-governance. The period of colonisation was long and so was the battle for Swaraj. Bharatiya society fought against foreign rule in a comprehensive, all-pervasive fashion. All sections of society contributed to the cause in keeping with their ability.

Along with various armed and unarmed movements, there was also the beginning of social awakening about the evils that turned out to be obstacles in the path of attaining our freedom.

Due to these comprehensive efforts, we attained a position to self-govern on August 15, 1947. After sending the British rulers off, we took the reins of the country’s administration to run it according to our will and choice, and using our very own people. Given this, the enthusiastic celebratory mood around Amrit Mahotsav is obvious and appropriate.

This is also an opportunity to revisit known and lesser-known stories of struggles and sacrifices made by people from various sections of society. (Many such events are mentioned in history and folklore). The character, devotion and inspiration of our freedom fighters who sacrificed everything to protect the interests of fellow nationals can and should be the guiding force for us.

At the same time, we should remember our objectives and responsibilities and equip ourselves to fulfill them by quickly getting into action.

Why does a country need Swarajya or self-rule? Can good governance under foreign rule ever allow us to realise our national objectives? The answer is ‘NO’. The expression of Swa (selfhood) is the natural aspiration of each individual and nation; this becomes the inspiration for Independence. Thus, human beings can experience Su-Rajya (good governance) only where there is Swa-Rajya.

As Swami Vivekananda said, each nation evolves and exists to make a certain contribution to the world. This can be done only by an independent country. Therefore, being independent and capable is a precondition for a country to fulfill its destined role.

Several great leaders have also explained the purpose of Bharat’s Independence. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, through his famous poem, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high”, described his expectations of an independent Bharat.

Mahatma Gandhi, through Hind-Swaraj, elaborated on his ideas of free Bharat. Veer Savarkar in his epic poem dedicated to Swatantrya Devi, the Goddess of Independence, envisioned that she would bring excellence, nobility and progress. BR Ambedkar, while presenting the draft Constitution to the Constituent Assembly articulated the purpose of Independence and our duties to realise the same.

Along with the Amrit Mahotsav celebrations, we should introspect on a few questions: What is the content of Swa (selfhood) that will fulfill the purpose of our national Independence? What will be the nature of our power on the global stage? How can we prepare society for our global role? We need a churning and absolute clarity on the eternal ideals of Bharat and its contemporary manifestation. This was the driving force behind our freedom struggle till 1947.

Bharat has a distinctive message to the world based on experiments, experience and truth, reflected in eternal vision, thinking, culture and action, which is comprehensive, integral and inclusive. Here, diversity is not seen as differences but as the expression of the same unity. For being one, one need not be the same. The mindset of painting everyone in the same colour leads to uprooting and discord. An unconditional affection, standing firm on our fundamentals and still respecting the uniqueness of others is the only way to organise our society in one thread.

Our motherland is the common factor that binds us. Our eternal culture gives us the wisdom of being erudite, benevolent and compassionate towards each other. It also teaches us how to purify both our minds and the environment around us. Since time immemorial, our common, brave and ethical forefathers guided us to adopt the right path. We should utilise this treasure, with its own peculiarities, but minus narrow selfish and divisive interests. We need to consider national interest as the sole foundation of all our actions. We have no option but to organise the entire society on these lines.

Besides social awakening, each of us needs to display exemplary conduct to get rid of the evils that have infected our society over time – whether they be discrimination based on caste, region, language and sect or petty selfish interests arising out of material or social aspirations. Only an egalitarian and exploitation-free society can possess the strength to protect its freedom.

Some forces, internal and external, are indulging in instigation and division through confusion created in society for their petty interests. An alert, organised and powerful society does not give space or shelter to such elements.

There are certain essential preconditions for the success of a democratic system. One, the existence of synergy between national interest, political ideologies, and the merit of individual candidates. Two, the basic knowledge and natural habit of following laws, obeying the Constitution, and civic discipline. We can see the erosion caused in these fundamental values due to political factors.

People are losing control over their tongue to score brownie points in a debate. On social media, such incontinence has become the norm — and it is also a reason for disharmony. Every one of us, including leaders, has to create an atmosphere where civic discipline and restrictions imposed by the law are respected and followed.

No change is possible without both individuals and society being competent. We need to follow four principles for the necessary systemic modifications based on the idea of Swa: Clarity about Swa (our selfhood), unconditional patriotism, individual and collective discipline and unity. Factors such as material knowledge, skills, qualifications and a favourable administrative and political atmosphere can work in the desired direction.

This Amrit Mahotsav of our national Independence is an occasion for us to resolve to take Bharat to the pinnacle of its glory. It is a juncture to ponder over the relentless hardship behind this Independence. We need to make similar efforts to adjust the present system as per our Swa.

While continuing with the celebratory enthusiasm, let us accelerate on this path of perseverance, clarity, and determination.

Mohan Bhagwat is Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

The views expressed are personal



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For a deeper understanding of Nitish Kumar’s decision to restore his aborted 2015-2017 alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), one is prompted to recall a conversation with him way back in 1996, the year when Karnataka’s HD Deve Gowda became the compromise choice for Prime Minister in the Congress-backed United Front regime.

The RJD’s Lalu Yadav was at his prime then in Bihar and Kumar’s Samata Party, a breakaway Janata Dal faction which later evolved to be Janata Dal (United), had contested elections in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Talking informally, Kumar sardonically said that Yadav, his friend-turned-rival, would have been PM had he not fallen out with him: “Humse jhagde nahi hotey tou pradhan mantri ho gaye hote.” It seemed the reason why his party tied up with the BJP was the same for which he and another prominent Samata face, George Fernandes exited the Janata Dal. The reference point was Lalu’s socio-political autocracy which afforded little or no space to other identities, with the Yadav hegemony on his watch resented deeply by other social identities, including Kumar’s smaller but influential Kurmi clan.

Nitish Kumar explained his choice of the BJP as an ally with the comment: “I needed to survive to be in another battle…”

We must, while we read this, remember that it was then the BJP of AB Vajpayee whom LK Advani accepted and backed as PM for his Nehruvian traits of being an assimilator of contesting ideologies. There wasn’t a better face than him in the Hindutva ranks at that point to assemble allies the party needed to build and run a coalition.

Has Nitish learnt from Lalu’s mistakes?

That begs the question whether Kumar has befriended Lalu to desist from political rivalries that cost the latter the PM’s office. Was it his survival instincts that made him dump the Modified BJP which was pursuing Hindutva expansionism of the kind it has made standard practice in adjoining Uttar Pradesh?

The answer was there perhaps in Kumar’s first comments on being sworn in as CM the 8th time: “Modi ji won the 2014 polls; he should worry now for elections in 2024.” The allusion was to his own failed bid to stop Narendra Modi, then Gujarat CM, from becoming PM eight years ago. So much so that he refused to share stage with him before walking out of the National Democratic Alliance in 2013.

The polls due two years from now could, in his perception, be different. Unlike 2014, when he contested alone and won just two seats, he’d be heading the formidable JD-U-RJD-Congress-Left combination in the state that sends 40 members to Lok Sabha.

But to forecast Nitish as the Opposition’s pan-India face will be like placing the cart before the horse at the current juncture. His acceptability will certainly be higher among most anti-BJP formations, barring perhaps the ambitious Mamata Banerjee. Their relations soured over a recruitment drive by the Railways Ministry that he then headed under AB Vajpayee.

The coalition test

There are many a slip between the cup and the lip in politics. To stay on course as a contestant for the top job, Kumar will first have to make the alliance work and deliver on its promises.

Tejasvi Yadav, his deputy from the RJD, has ostensibly evolved into a more mature politician since 2017. Much will depend on how deftly he controls his Yadav support base from going berserk and hurting the alliance the way it dented his father’s image in his heydays. A slip-up on that score will help the saffron forces draw the extremely backward (Ati Pichada) out of Kumar’s court to their side of the playfield.

“A leader who cannot give an effective coalition on his home turf cannot be trusted with a national front with multiple stakeholders,” admitted an RJD leader. He hoped nevertheless that partners in the new Bihar line-up will learn from their past mistakes to do better. “They’ll have to watch out their actions. The BJP is dispirited but it’ll be resolute in pushing its exclusive agenda; it’ll not hesitate to use probe agencies to embarrass and destabilise the coalition.”

Congress’s stamp on Nitish and the domino effect

In building the national electoral edifice for which the foundation seems to have been laid (or so it appears) in the key Hindi-speaking state, the Congress, though a minor player in Bihar, will have a crucial role. If it cedes space to Kumar, it will attain the moral high to trigger a domino rush on the anti-BJP side.

For that to happen, the grand old party which is the largest among Opposition formations despite its shrunken state, would need to stay level-headed even if it registers victories in states where polls are due before the general elections. Internally, the party gives itself a fighting chance in Himachal and Karnataka, if not in Gujarat.

A major drawback on the drawing board is the Congress’s feeble challenge to the BJP in straight contests in parliamentary polls where the Modi factor worked wonders in 2014 and 2019. A disturbing guide to that is the party’s abysmal show in the Lok Sabha polls in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh within months of winning the 2018 assembly elections. An exception to that was Punjab which the party has since lost to Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party.

The road ahead is bumpy

Right now, it may seem a long shot. But a formal position for Nitish in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) architecture could sharpen his war cry if other things work out, especially the governance issues in Bihar and a broad agreement on his candidature among potential allies across India.

As the Opposition’s face, Kumar cannot be to the UPA what Andhra leader Chandrababu Naidu was to the United Front as its convener post-1996. That role would have to be performed by a weighty leader from another party, such as the NCP’s Sharad Pawar or any other acceptable candidate who isn’t vying for the PM’s slot. The road ahead isn’t smooth, therefore. It’s bumpy.

That brings one to deciphering as to how inclined is Kumar to throw the gauntlet to Modi? The reality is that his party, short of sounding the bugle, had set the ball rolling a year ago, in August 2021. In the manner of a nuclear-capable state which could make the bomb but hasn’t, the JD (U) showcased its leader as PM-qualified.

It was the first authoritative expression of Kumar’s discomfort with the BJP, which got the Lok Janshakti Party’s Chirag Paswan to do the hatchet job of selectively fielding candidates against JD-(U), to restrict Its numbers in the assembly. The result — a reversal of the BJP-JD (U) equation in Bihar, relegating the latter to the status of a junior partner after the 2020 assembly elections.

Kumar then had attributed the PM-material buzz to “workers’ chatter” at the JD-U national council meet. But could he have been unaware of the resolution the council passed underscoring his prime ministerial attributes? Certainly not. For that’s how signalling is done or a discourse molded in politics. Till before he junked his alliance with the RJD to set up a government with the BJP, he was widely seen as the Opposition’s answer to Modi. The effort now is to revive the promise which vanished with his 2017 embrace of the Hindutva party.

In seeking to reverse the clock, Kumar has put the battle bomb on the table. Time will tell how many among the non-BJP parties willingly make a wager on him.

HT’s veteran political editor, Vinod Sharma, brings together his four-decade-long experience of closely tracking Indian politics, his intimate knowledge of the actors who dominate the political theatre, and his keen eye which can juxtapose the past and the present in his weekly column, Distantly Close

vinodsharma@hindustantimes.com

The views expressed are personal



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On August 15, India will celebrate 75 years of Independence. It’s an occasion to assess our successes and failures as a nation, but also to ask what sort of country have we become. These are not issues that can yield definitive answers. Each person is likely to have his own and for him, it’s the correct one. In that spirit, let me share my thoughts. If nothing else, they might provoke your own.

We have a lot to be proud of. Despite divisions of caste, creed, ethnicity, language, cuisine, and culture, which even in the mid-60s prompted western critics to prophecy the end of India, we remain a united country. We have also survived and, despite the Emergency, even flourished as a democracy. Our elections are fair, governments change, and public protests can check powerful administrations. Unlike Pakistan and Bangladesh, military rule is unknown to India.

In terms of literacy and life expectancy, India in 2022 bears no comparison to 1947. Literacy has increased over four times. Life expectancy has more than doubled. Though there’s a lot more we still need to do, what we’ve achieved is praiseworthy.

Arguably a greater achievement is that a food deficit country, which often lived ship-to-mouth, is today one of the world’s biggest producers of food. We top the world in milk, and are second in the production of rice and wheat. We’re also the world’s largest exporter of rice.

Our space programme, our Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — which taught 13 of the world’s top CEOs — as well as our renowned cricket tournaments and film industry, make us unique among Third World countries. None can boast of anything similar.

Unfortunately, our errors, lapses, and wilful mistakes are equally great. Successive governments failed to give education and health the importance they deserve. Though we built dams and steel mills, the stress on socialism kept us mired in the Hindu rate of growth and failed to excite the entrepreneurial spirit of our people. Although we claim to be non-violent, 1984 and 2002 show how hollow that boast has often been.

In 1947, countries like China, South Korea and Thailand had economic conditions and national incomes comparable to ours. Seventy-five years later, we’ve been left behind. If the reforms of the 1990s had happened three decades earlier, the story could have been very different.

Conclusions can be invidious, but if you’re looking for one, let me hesitantly offer a suggestion. If we are justified in claiming India has achieved a lot, we would be unwise to forget how often we’ve stumbled or simply walked the wrong path. Frankly, it’s a bit of both.

This brings me to the question: What sort of country are we today? Many of the old problems continue. Dalits and Adivasis were, and remain, among the most deprived. We have failed to wipe away their tears. Though banned by law, untouchability has not been eradicated. Starvation and famine may be history, but nearly 25% remain below a ludicrously minimalist poverty line. In fact, the truth is for the last decade, we haven’t bothered to find out.

We have also added to our problems. In the last eight years, we’ve become intolerant of dissent, majoritarian in our attitude, and distinctly prejudiced in our treatment of our Muslim fellow citizens. Today, we hear public threats of genocide, whilst the government deliberately chooses to be silent. That would have been unimaginable in the 1940s and ’50s. Of this, we can only be embarrassed, but few choose to even acknowledge it.

So, what will we emphasise tomorrow? No doubt it’s our achievements we will remember. That’s understandable. But even if we don’t speak about it, let’s not forget where we went wrong. These were occasions when we failed to live up to our commitments or continued with economic ideologies that should have been discarded or, worst of all, turned our back on the ideals of our Constitution. In short, these were instances when we let ourselves down. Tomorrow, we must promise not to repeat such mistakes.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story

The views expressed are personal



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After the intense heat of summer, the coming of the monsoons in India has a magical seduction. Suddenly, the sky darkens, dark black clouds appear, and then the first miraculous raindrop hits the parched earth. It was for such a moment that the poet Bihari (1595-1664 CE) wrote:

Lagey saawan maas bidesh piya

Mere ang pe boond pare sarsi

Shath kama ne jor kiyo sajani

Bandh toot gaye chaitya darsi

(The monsoons are here but my beloved is away

A raindrop touches my body suddenly

Cruel Kama wrought his spell, O friend

The strings of my garment snapped abruptly)

Such poetry is not only about the fulfilment of love, but also of biraha — pangs of separation from the beloved. In the West, a beautiful day has to be sunny. For us, a romantic day is when the clouds have hidden the sun, and there is the promise of rain. In the fifth century CE, Kalidasa, in his play Meghdoot, immortalised such a cloud by making him the bearer of the exiled Yaksha’s message to his wife, Alaka, in the Himalayas.

In more recent times, who can ever forget the song Zindagi bhar nahin bhoole gi woh barsaat ki raat, from the eponymous film Barsaat Ki Raat, where the ethereal Madhubala meets Bharat Bhushan, on a rain-filled night? Or, Raj Kapoor and Nargis, singing Pyaar hua ikrar hua, in the 1955 film Shri 420, the rain cascading around them as they share an umbrella.

The monsoons are also a time for steaming cups of tea and garam-garam pakodas and the whiff of bhutta (corn on the cob) being roasted on a makeshift fire along the roadside. The other day, as the sky darkened, I listened to raga Malhar. I wonder at the genius of our musical legacy. How can a raga so wonderfully correspond to the mood of the monsoons? As the dark clouds gather, I listened to the slow elaboration of the raga, and the skies came pouring down when the raga reached its drut or fast tempo. It was quite an unforgettable experience. The lines of this poem came to me:

Yun barasti hain tasawwur pe purani yaadein

Jaise barsaat mein rimjhim ka sama hota hai

(Like the drizzle in the monsoons

Old memories rain down on me)

Of sabhya samvad or civil discourse

I have often been struck by how discourse and dialogue were an institutional legacy of our civilisation. The three foundational texts of Hinduism — the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahmsutras, are all dialogues. There are no implacable certitudes, no injunctions for obeisance, no religious commands. On the other hand, there is an emphasis on resolving differences in views through civilised debate.

One such famous debate took place between Adi Shankaracharya (788-820 CE) and his contemporary, also an outstanding scholar, Mandana Mishra. Shankara’s philosophy of Advaita (non-duality) was based on the jnana marga (the path of knowledge), while Mandana believed in karma kanda, the theory that following religious rituals in the prescribed manner is the correct path.

The two viewpoints were diametrically opposed. But Shankara went to Mandana Mishra’s home and invited him to a debate. The debate took place for weeks, with Mandana’s wife, Uma Bharti, as the umpire. In an age without instant media and the internet, all of India followed the debate by word of mouth. In the end, Adi Shankaracharya won, and Mandana Mishra became his disciple.

Alas, in today’s India, we seem to be forgetting our own legacy, and believe in black or white polarities, where anybody opposing you is an untouchable enemy. There was a time though when political leaders may have differed with each other on policies, but were able to articulate these with civility and respect for their democratic opponent. That was the time when Parliament saw outstanding debates, replete with wit and repartee, and in the spirit of a sabhya samvad (civil discourse).

Raksha Bandhan: An intrinsic cultural expression

In a globalised world that most people believe has become a homogenous village where everybody is a clone of the other, the truth is that cultures are still incredibly diversified, and often opaque to the foreign gaze. The differences in cultural behaviour often go unnoticed, but are substantive markers of where your roots are.

Festivals bring this out clearly, and India’s annual calendar is full of them. This week, we have the festival of Raksha Bandhan, where a sister conveys her love for her brother by tying a rakhi on his wrist, and brothers renew their pledge of love and protection for their sister. The festival is very popular, especially in north India, and siblings look forward to it with great anticipation.

Today, women are far less dependent on their brothers for support, but the festival has essentially a sentimental and emotional value, an occasion for the family to celebrate together and reiterate their bonds as a family.

Pavan K Varma is an author, diplomat and former parliamentarian

Just Like That is a weekly column where Varma shares nuggets from the world of history, culture, literature, and personal reminiscences with HT Premium readers

The views expressed are personal



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If I were in school now and having to explain my current absence, this is how my leave letter would go: Dear Madam, Kindly permit me to absent myself for the next three days as I am bedridden, a consequence of watching several promotional interviews of movie people in quick succession which have left me with numbness on the left side of my face, severe pain on the right side of my lower body and some disturbing changes in my bowel movement…

Honestly, though, film folk, you’ll have to come up with new things to say in your coming interviews. For far too long, you’ve got away saying — with great authority, mind you — stuff that makes no sense whatsoever.

Author-backed role: Almost every film interview has an actor looking up at the ceiling, meditatively scratching his chin, and proclaiming he has an author-backed role. As a struggling author myself, I’ve always wondered what this meant. Why would the author back only one particular role? Isn’t it the author’s duty to back all ‘roles’ equally? Could it then mean the author was stepmotherly with the other roles in the film? Which makes me wonder if this particular fictional character created by the writer resorted to some unfair trade practices to get himself the author’s backing. Like giving him an interest-free loan, fixing his faulty plumbing, applying tick medicine on his uncertain Rottweiler, or worse still, bad-mouthing his co-characters in the script, all to ingratiate himself to the writer? Or does this character have some incriminating stuff on the author? 

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I play a cop: If only I had a buck for every time an actor said this. Or “I play a software engineer, bubbly girl or professional ear-wax remover”. I’ve never got what “playing a cop” meant. Being a policeman is a job. How can an actor play a job? I can understand if an actor were to say “I play a duckbilled platypus in this movie”. That, for me, is an accurate description of a role. You don’t need further explanation. But when they say they are playing a cop/lawyer/journalist, it tells me nothing unless they say “I play a cop… who is morbidly obese, has mommy issues, likes to do yoga wearing nothing but his holster and insists on speaking in Bhojpuri in romantic situations”. Then I have something to grapple with.

Director’s actress: This declaration, too, leaves me flummoxed. And I’ve heard it so often. I mean, as an actor/actress, who else could you be? The director is the guy or gal who, er, directs, right? So, by default, isn’t everyone a director’s actor, actress, art director, make-up assistant or key grip? Or are there a bunch of plumber’s actors, art director’s light boys, focus puller’s producers and financier’s audience operating in the movie industry that I know nothing about? To me, director’s actress means you haven’t read the script, don’t know if the movie you’re currently doing is a horror film or a historical, and come to the set with not a thought in your head, and expect the shlub who calls himself the director to do everything for you.

Performance-oriented role: This is the fraternal twin of the author-backed role. If an actor has been signed up for a movie, I would think his only job would be to perform, right? I’ve never heard, say, a pilot declaring her job was flight-oriented. Or the driver of a hearse saying his job was funeral-oriented. Why then do actors say this? Does this mean they have done other roles where their orientation was something other than performance? To be truthful, Satish Shah did do one of the best non-performance-oriented roles ever in the movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. He played a corpse.

Similarly, I beseech film folk not to say these things, too, after the end of a shoot. “It was like a picnic.” That really doesn’t augur well for us, the paying audience. If you all had a picnic instead of doing your jobs, then you had it at our expense. Similarly, “we were all like one big family”. Well, then, the movie you are about to show us is going to be as much fun as a sangeet ceremony is to a non-family member forced to view the video.

And when the movie bombs, and the reviewers troll you, for god’s sake, stop saying “You don’t know how hard we worked on this project for three years.” So did my carpenter. For one-and-a-half years, using the finest of material, he worked on a bookshelf I’d wanted. When it was done, it didn’t have a single right angle. Let me assure you, I didn’t give him five stars.

Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a humour writer, columnist, novelist, playwright and screenwriter



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Instead of August 15, 1947, our Independence Day could well have been June 30, 1948. That was the hurried decision of Prime Minister Clement Atlee. Hurried, because acute nervousness descended on Westminster at the disturbing news from India. A mutiny had broken out in the Royal Indian Navy and it was spreading like wildfire. The pros and cons of this historic event are in Pramod Kapoor’s meticulously researched book 1946: The Last War of Independence, Royal Indian Navy Mutiny.

The Congress was so gripped by paranoia that its government in West Bengal, as late as 1965, tried every trick in the book to stop Utpal Dutt’s Kallol from being staged. Despite the Congress’ obstructions, the play was staged at Minerva theatre to record audiences.

One can understand the British empire’s desire to suppress the uprising. The puzzle is the Congress’ conspiracy of silence. A riveting part of the book is the conspiracy before the spark was ignited by the “privates” (non-commissioned personnel) and sailors. Who were the politicians involved? Where did the conspirators meet? How did they escape the British intelligence net comprising largely “loyal” Indians?

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In his advance praise for the book, filmmaker Shyam Benegal introduces an episode about one Balai Dutt, “barely out of his teens”, among the mutiny’s leaders. Later, Dutt, a staunch Communist, rose to become an advertising executive in Lintas, which Benegal joined as a copywriter. 

The book places something of a dampener on the romantic image many have nurtured of our national leaders — Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel — as “fighters” against the British. All of them appear more sympathetic to the British than to the ratings who ignited a massive rebellion against discrimination and poor rations. It was a popular uprising against the British. Why was the Congress opposed to it?

What must have rung alarm bells in London and conservative Indians like Gandhi, Patel and Jinnah was the fact that the uprising’s leadership was with the Communist Party of India. Leaders like S.A. Dange, who later became the party’s secretary-general, were in the vanguard as were left-wing Congress leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali. Nehru’s dilemma was acute. He was anxious about the Congress’ leftists: what if they deserted the party, weakening him?

After extensive planning by the “plotters” (writes Kapoor), “the fuse was ignited on Monday, 18 February”. Kapoor extracts a quote from historian Sumit Sarkar’s Modern India: “The afternoon of 20 February saw remarkable scenes of fraternisation, with crowds bringing food for the striking ratings at the Gateway of India and shopkeepers inviting them to take whatever they needed.” And the Congress opposed this? The mutiny spread to 78 ships, 21 shore establishments and over 20,000 ratings. “In less than 48 hours, it crippled one of the most formidable navies of the Second World War. There were pitched battles. Hundreds were killed.”

It severely impacted the leadership of the Congress and Muslim League. Freedom, they seemed to think, would come as a reward for good behaviour, not by scaring the British — such as by sinking their armada.

On the opposite side was a mesmerising, vocal galaxy — Prithviraj Kapoor, Salil Chowdhry, Balraj Sahni, Zohra Sehgal, Utpal Dutt, Aruna Asaf Ali, Minoo Masani, Ashoka Mehta, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Josh Malihabadi, Sahir Ludhianvi, and a host of others.

The Hindustan Standard of February 28 had its front page cluttered with the reactions of Congress leaders. Gandhi’s reaction was a banner across five columns. Aruna Asaf Ali’s call — “I would rather unite Hindus and Muslims at the barricades, than on the constitutional front” — invited a rejoinder from Gandhi. Gandhi’s response: “The barricade life has to be followed by the Constitution.” According to Gandhi, Aruna “betrays want of foresight in disbelieving the British declarations and precipitating a quarrel in anticipation”.

The same page has Maulana Azad, then Congress president, arguing that “the national spirit must not be suppressed”. Sardar Patel, on the other hand, was worried about “the mass awakening being exploited” by others.

Who are the “others”? That is the crux of the matter.

That the Royal Indian Navy, the pride of the empire, was so vulnerable was disconcerting enough. What really set the cat among the pigeons in Westminster was the rapid gains being made by the Communists both in India and across the world. 

Although the Telangana uprising occupied newspaper headlines only in July 1946, intelligence reports on the massive underground network was available to the British much earlier. Beyond India, Mao’s revolution was in its final stages when the mutiny erupted in the Navy.

In the 1940s-50s, as colonialism was receding, imperialism was being challenged by the Communist expansion in Korea, particularly after the Chinese crossed the Yalu river in 1950. In 1957, the first Communist government through the ballot box was installed in Kerala. Then came the Communist governments in West Bengal and Tripura. These events happened much later, but the imperial establishment had sensed that the wind was blowing in one direction. As soon as the mutiny expanded, Clement Atlee’s government in London dispatched the Cabinet Mission, replaced Lord Wavell as Viceroy by Lord Mountbatten, and set June 30, 1948, as the final date for Independence.

Lord Mountbatten swiftly brought the date forward to August 15, 1947. He was quick to grasp the message from London: hand over power to the leaders the British had cultivated, the leaders who were “people like us”. Considering the Leftist wave sweeping the world since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, there was every danger of the ground being cut from under feet of the “moderate” politicians in India with whom the British Raj had struck a rapport.



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Tomorrow Independent India would be 75 years old. If the British would not have partitioned India it would have been a civilisational continuum from Teknaf on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border to Torkham on the Pakistan Afghanistan border. A true subcontinent and not a truncated one. Would it have been a sustainable entity with two heavy provinces Bengal in the East and Punjab in the West crowned of by the wild lands of the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, given that India before Partition was envisaged as a nation with strong states but a weak Centre?

Would an un-partitioned India have survived the centrifugal tendencies that a constitutionally weak Centre would have brought along with it? Would Partition or balkanisation inevitably have happened if not in 1947 but at a point in time not too distant into the future just as East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan in 1971 after a horrific genocide unleashed by the latter’s army and its militias?

These and many other similar questions that now lie buried in the undulating wasteland of time are interrogatories that should agitate the collective mind space of a diverse array of scholars across various fields. For in their answers may lie the key that could still integrate the South Asian landmass, ignite and unleash the collective potential of two billion restless souls filled with ions of creative energy.

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This brings us to a related question. Did India really need to be partitioned? Are Hindus and Muslims really separate people and nations who can not live together as scholars and leaders across the religious divide opined and articulated in the six decades leading up to the Partition of India? Did the sharp inflection points between the Hindus and Muslims as a consequence of over 70 invasions by Muslim invaders between AD 1000 and AD 1700 finally find expression when a more cunning but religiously different imperialist “the firangi” became India’s overlord especially after the failure of the Mutiny of 1857 or the first war of Independence?

For the narrative that commenced in 1888 with Sir Syed’s articulation in Meerut was finally wrapped up by Savarkar at Nagpur in 1943. It provided the intellectual and ideological ballast for the two-nation theory that came to part fruition in 1947. It would be instructive to visit what many of these ‘eminences’ had opined ad nauseam.

Sir Syed Ahmed Khan stated on March 14, 1888, Meerut, now, suppose that all English, and the whole English army, were to leave India, taking with them all their cannon and their splendid weapons and everything, then who would be rulers of India? Is it possible that under these circumstances two nations — the Mahomedans and the Hindus — could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not.

Bhai Parmanand, a prominent Hindu Mahasabha leader, declared in 1908-09, “The territory beyond Sind should be united with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier Province into a great Musalman kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time Mussalman in the rest of India should go and settle in this territory.”

Lala Lajpat Rai, the great nationalist, wrote in the Tribune on December 14, 1924, “Under my scheme the Muslims will have four Muslim States: (1) The Pathan Province or the North-West Frontier; (2) Western Punjab (3) Sindh and (4) Eastern Bengal. If there are compact Muslim communities in any other part of India, sufficiently large to form a province, they should be similarly constituted. But it should be distinctly understood that this is not a united India. It means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a non-Muslim India.”

Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 presidential address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League Allahabad, December 29, 1930, “Personally, I would go farther than the demands embodied in it. I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West…”

In his presidential address to the 19th Session of Hindu Mahasabha  at Karanavati in 1937, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar articulated, “The so-called communal questions are but a legacy handed down to us by centuries of a cultural, religious and national antagonism between the Hindus and the Moslems. When time is ripe you can solve them; but you cannot suppress them by merely refusing recognition of them. It is safer to diagnose and treat deep-seated disease than to ignore it. Let us bravely face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.”

The Lahore Resolution March 23, 1940, underscored: “Resolved that it is the considered view of this session of the All-India Muslim League that no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to Muslims unless it is designed on the following basic principle, namely, that geographically contiguous units are demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North-Western and Eastern Zones of India, should be grouped to constitute “Independent States” in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah in his Presidential Address to the Muslim League in 1940 at Lahore stated: “The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature[s]. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.

Finally, Savarkar on August 15, 1943, declared at a press conference in Nagpur on August 15, 1943, “I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah’s two-nation theory. We, Hindus, are a nation by ourselves and it is a historical fact that Hindus and Muslims are two nations.”

 Two hundred million Muslims have now lived cheek by jowl with Hindus and other communities for 75 years. It should be reason enough to bury the Frankenstein of this noxious legacy ten fathoms deep. Why are we trying to validate the logic of Partition in India seven-and-a-half decades later? Would this not turn India’s “Amrit Kaal” next 25 years leading up to the Independence centenary into a Vish Kaal? Think!



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