‘The Fourth Estate’ Not ‘The Almighty’

The article attempts to deal with the question “What is the function of the media? Is it reporting facts or setting narratives?”

During much of his current term President Donald Trump had to fight accusations that he had had a secret covenant with the Russians, who helped him rig the 2016 presidential election. There were three prime accusations. The first was that a Russian organisation, ‘Internet Research Agency’ (IRA), which influences poll outcomes through social media campaigns, was deployed to run down his opponent Hilary Clinton and boost his election. The second was more serious and was about a possible hacking of the computers in the Democratic Party election offices by the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU. Had this been proven it would have turned out to be not just Trump’s own ‘Watergate’ but far worse! The third was about ‘obstruction of justice’.

This article is not about whether or not President Trump was guilty or not of the misdemeanours he was accused of but about their treatment by the American media. The accusations levelled by Trump’s political rivals were orchestrated by internationally visible sections of the American media like ‘CNN,’ ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’. Times’ journalists won two Pulitzer prizes for the ‘Trump-Russia’ stories!

The US Attorney General William Barr appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate the allegations.  The report Mueller submitted in March this year did not find any substantive evidence to prove the allegations. As Byron York observed in his September 10, 2019, ‘Washington Examiner’ opinion piece

‘the conspiracy-coordination allegation the Times had devoted itself to pursuing turned out to be false … TheTrump-Russia hole came up dry’!  

The story did not end there. Some of The New York Times’ readers and its own staff were not happy. York wrote ‘many on the Left faulted [The New York Times] for being insufficiently anti-Trump’! At this point, the issue spilled out of the media domain. It is no more about disseminating information or offering comment, however judgemental could it be. It is now more an ethical dilemma, a reflection of the media scene back home in India. Should a media organisation behave like a consumer goods supplier or restaurateur and cater to the tastes of a consumer – assuming a majority of readers the paper caters to are of a certain political leaning – or remain steadfast to an ideal of sticking to the truth? And remain neutral till the issue is settled one way or the other in the appropriate forums? The Times is now caught between the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis of its own making.

The paper conducted an internal town-hall meeting for its newsroom staff to assuage ruffled feelings. It was necessitated because of an uproar over a headline about the president’s alleged ‘racism’ and tweets from the paper’s staff. ‘Slate’ published a transcript of the recording of the Times’ town-hall meeting edited and curated by Ashley Feinberg. The Times’ Executive Editor, Dean Baquet and Publisher A. G. Sulzberger addressed the meeting.

A defensive Baquet seemed to find fault with the readers. He suddenly remembered that it was not the duty of the media to run political campaigns, but as an independent media hold administrations accountable! He pointed out the obvious: 

“They [the paper’s critics who want Trump’s head] sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president.”  

What should be worrying in this episode is the apparent political conditioning of the staff. Shouldn’t newspaper employees be trained to be neutral observers and faithful reporters rather than political instruments?

Both York and Feinberg felt that Baquet’s remark that “the story changed” was significant. York wonders whether having spent a lot of time and energy on the ‘Trump-Russia’ story (and failed) the Times would spend the next two years on the “Trump-is-a-racist narrative”?

The ‘The Fourth Estate’ in the headline does not refer to Geoffrey Archer’s eponymous novel but to Edmund Burke’s laudatory reference to the press.[1]

In Irving Wallace’s brilliant thriller, ‘The Almighty’, the protagonist inherits a newspaper, a fictional rival of ‘The New York Times’. The conditional inheritance stipulates that the paper which was way behind its traditional rival should surpass its circulation for at least one day in the succeeding year. In order to retain ownership, the protagonist recruits a gang of terrorists to stage events and then scoop them as news. He sets himself up as ‘The Almighty’!  

The present media might not go the whole hog to stage terror incidents to scoop stories, but they were, in the past, halfway there. The way they stoked war hysteria for George W. Bush to bomb Iraq in the second gulf war in 2003 to destroy elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was near enough. Are the Times’ and The Washington Post’s anti-Trump campaigns one of a piece with their earlier war campaigns?

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[1] In his 1787 speech in the British House of Commons, Edmund Burke reportedly said “There are three estates in Parliament (the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons) but in the Reporters' Gallery yonder there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech or witty saying, it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these times.” 

An earlier version of the article appeared in The Times Of India Blogs

Is Hindu majority chimerical? Is Hindu ‘majority’ really ‘minority’?

This is the English translation of the Editorial of Ṛṣipīṭham, Telugu magazine, published in its January 2019 issue. The magazine is edited and published by Brahmasri Sāmavēdam Ṣanmukha Śarma. Brahmasri Śarma is the foremost exponent of our Sanātana Dhārmic lore. His encyclopaedic knowledge and felicity of expression that makes complex tātvic principles intelligible to common people attract large audiences to his discourses in India and many other nations. Apart from public meetings he appears on several television channels to give discourses on our ancient wisdom. He is a prolific writer and produced many books on Sanātana Dhārmic literature. The translated version of the editorial is published with permission.  

In India that is Bharat Hindus are a numerical majority. At least it appears to be so. A closer look would reveal how chimerical this belief is. In point of fact Hindus are really a ‘minority’.

How? Firstly there are those who are de jure Hindus but de facto converts. Secondly there are those Hindus who have neither the desire nor diligence to live as Hindus or practise Hinduism. They are not only oblivious to the impending peril, but sadly are not consumed by a devotion to protect their Sanātana Dharma. They go through the motions, practising Hindu rituals on auspicious or somber occasions. They are insouciant to the perils threatening their Dharma and the Hindu places of worship. They are insouciant to the political bias of their leaders. They reason: ‘how does it really matter, whichever religion it is?’

Then there are those Hindus who boast of being atheists and lose no opportunity to deride Dharmic scriptures, traditions, rituals and temples in their social intercourse and writings.  

If we exclude these three categories, there is the residual, virtual minority that lives as Hindus and practises Sanātana Dharma. They are the real Hindus!

The contrast with the followers of other faiths could not be starker. There is unanimity of actions, behaviour, beliefs and thoughts among followers of other faiths. They exhibit an unshakable faith in their religion and the thought that no other faith is superior to theirs. They do not denigrate their scriptures or places of worship. Their devotion to their religion is so strong that they do not hesitate to denigrate, deride and suppress faiths other than theirs. Men and women, young and old all learn the ways of their respective faiths and religiously practise them. They acquiesce to their religious leaders even if they are venal or wanton. They stand as one to support them; to make them succeed in their collective goal, viz. preservation, propagation and advancement of their faith. They do not criticize organizations, which in the name of faith, resort to extremist or even terrorist activities. 

Thus the two principal faiths opposed to the Sanātana Dharma are clear in their mind about their purpose and assiduously and – religiously – work to achieve it. There is no ambiguity in their thought and purpose. Their intense desire is that their faith should rule the nation. And that the Sanātana Dharma should be stamped out in its homeland!

Their actions and efforts are focussed in that direction.

Observing their unanimity of thought and action, political leaders – although born Hindu – mollycoddle them and pander to their every wish; they give away national wealth as largesse to pamper them. They participate in the festivals of these faiths donning their traditional attires! But no leader of the other faiths appears in a festival of Hindus. If possible they create hurdles in Hindu celebrations.

The Hindu political leaders know fully well that the myriad caste formations in the Hindu faith never unite as each caste wants to dominate the others in wresting political power.

We have seen the bizarre spectacle of processions of green flags and ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans of certain interest groups emboldened by the results in the recent state elections. Neither the forces of law and order bothered to take action nor any politician stood up to condemn the anti-national activities. The issue is not about celebration of a certain political party coming to power but that the nature of the celebrations signifies an insidious threat to national security and integrity.

Such incidents are not just a threat to the survival of Sanātana Dharma but to peace, religious harmony and national integrity. What could the virtual minority Hindus do to remedy the situation? For the Hindus who seek peaceful, harmonious co-existence with others it is an existential crisis. They have suffered for over a thousand years under alien rule. Sadly the situation does not seem to be different today. In states like Kerala, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir and the north east they live in fear. In large tracts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu they live under the hegemony of other religions. There is a sense of insecurity among Hindus in all these areas.

It is not that these realities are unknown. They are widely shared with statistics in social media like Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube. They get shares, likes and forwards but just that. There is no concrete action or reaction to ameliorate the situation or improve the status of Hindus to the eminence they deserve.

The mainstream media conceals the facts. Worse it projects the opposite as truth.  The regional media considers its job done by promoting the interests of caste, regional or factional leaders.

Thanks to the doctored history that is taught in schools, colleges and universities today’s youth is oblivious to the atrocities that were perpetrated on Hindus for centuries in the past. Ignorant of the past, they are unable to view what is happening today in its proper perspective. Instead of trying to safeguard their ancient culture and faith they resort to NOTA peeved by the slightest inconvenience!

What should we do? Just pray the lord to save the Sanātana Dharma and the nation?

The myth of Nehru and the IITs!

The projection of Nehru as a visionary statesman was a carefully crafted enterprise and incorporated into it were many orchestrated myths. These include the establishment of institutions of excellence (officially Institutions of National Importance or INIs) like the IITs and IIMs. It is another matter though that by the time the first IIM was established in November 1961 Nehru had a job explaining about blades of grass and barren lands in the parliament and exactly a year before the Chinese ended his misery — of having to explain about blades of grass and barren lands in the parliament! 

Were there no institutions of excellence in ‘India that is Bharat’ (as the Constitution describes it) before the scientific-tempered Nehru waved his magic wand to fill the void? It would not please the secular historians if you said there were. But first let us look at what the scientific-tempered Nehru did to the ‘Ministry of Education’ itself, as the ‘Ministry of Human Resources Development’ was known then. 

A look at the range and sweep of functions that the Ministry handles is mind-boggling. To put it succinctly, it determines what we learn about our past; what we do with our present and how we shape our future. The Ministry has two broad divisions, the ‘Department of School Education and Literacy’ and the ‘Department of Higher Education’. The latter superintends a number of institutions which include the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the Central Universities, the IITs the IIMs, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) et al. 

In 2014 Abhishek Manu Singhvi was ‘astonished’ to learn that the newly appointed HRD minister was “not [even] a graduate”. Have you ever wondered about the educational qualifications of India’s first Education Minister, chosen by Nehru to superintend a ministry that was to superintend the institutions of excellence and, research and development in science, engineering, technology, not to speak of humanities and social sciences? 

Nehru’s chosen Education Minister was Maulana Sayyid Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad! That was a mouthful; wasn’t it? He was born in Mecca but his family relocated to Calcutta in 1890. What were his qualifications for supervising the crucial ministry of education? Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was ‘home-schooled and self-taught’! There need be no objection on that count. A ‘home-schooled and self-taught’ person could turn out to be a genius. But would Nehru have appointed a ‘home-schooled and self-taught’ ‘Shankaracharya’ as India’s education minister? 

Azad’s activities during and after the freedom movement should leave no one in doubt about his inclinations. He inveigled Gandhi and other Congress leaders into supporting the Khilafat movement in far away Turkey, a movement with which India had nothing to do. It was an ill-advised quid pro quo by the Congress leaders for co-opting influential Muslim leaders into the freedom movement; a quid pro quo the nation would live down to regret. Azad and fellow Khilafat leaders Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan along with others founded the Jamia Millia Islamia in Lucknow in 1920. It was later shifted to Delhi. The Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, the precursor of the Aligarh Muslim University had already been in existence since 1875. In another of those secular anomalies of ‘India that is Bharat’, these two institutions of higher learning, funded by the people of India, cater exclusively to the Muslim community. Azad proposed reserving houses vacated by Muslims displaced during partition for Muslims in India. He was in favour of Muslim personal laws as opposed to a uniform civil code (UCC).

Azad helped Nehru in 1936 in the espousal of socialism as party philosophy in the face of opposition from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Babu Rajendra Prasad and C. Rajagopalachari and in his re-election as Congress president in 1937. In 1946, Azad resigned as president in favour of Nehru. All in all, Azad was Nehru’s ‘twin-soul’ and confidante; worth rewarding with a key portfolio.  

Coming back to the institutions of excellence, were the IITs the first institutions of excellence, established by a visionary Nehru as his sycophants would have us believe?  The history of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) does not fit into the Indian Left Illiberals’ fictitious ‘India’s founding fathers’ narrative with Nehru as its over-arching visionary. 

During a voyage from Yokohama to Vancouver in 1893, Swami Vivekananda impressed the philanthropist-businessman Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata with his views on science:

“How wonderful it would be if we could combine the scientific and technological achievements of the West with the asceticism and humanism of India!”

Jamsetji Tata wrote to Swami Vivekananda five years later in 1898 about his idea of establishing an institution to promote research in science and technology and seeking his co-operation for it.  

A committee was constituted to prepare a blueprint for setting up the institution. Tata bequeathed a substantial part of his own wealth for funding it. Sadly Tata did not live to realise his dream project. He died in 1904. The Queen Regent Vani Vilasa Sannidhana of Mysore (who ruled the princely state on behalf of her minor son Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV) donated 371 acres of land for the institute and the IISc was inaugurated on May 27, 1909. Nehru was all of twenty years when the IISc was born. Ironically, the only linkage Nehru had with the IISc was that he died on the same day in 1964!

And now about the IITs! According to the website of the IIT, Kharagpur (the first IIT), the Honourable Sir Jogendra Singh (member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, Department of Education, Health and Agriculture) set up a committee in 1946 to “consider the setting up of Higher Technical Institutions for post war industrial development in India.” The twenty-two member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar recommended the setting up of four Higher Technical Institutions  in the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern parts of India. They were to be modelled on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thus was born the first IIT in May 1950 which initially functioned from Calcutta and later shifted to Kharagpur in September 1950. 

The IIT, Kharagpur began functioning in the Hijli detention camp (renamed Hijli Shaheed Bhavan) where many of our great freedom fighters were detained and some sacrificed their lives for the independence of the country. The hallowed history of the camp is marked by the martyrdom of two freedom fighters, Santosh Kumar Mitra and Tarakeswar Sengupta, whom the British shot dead on September 16, 1931. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose came to the camp, to receive the dead bodies of the martyred freedom fighters. 

The most sordid twist in the saga of the Hijli Shaheed Bhavan was that a part of it was converted into the “Nehru Museum of Science and Technology” in 1990. The martyrs were dumped on the wayside of history.   

Hinduism (Sanātana Dharma) In Peril?

This is the English translation of the Editorial of Ṛṣipīṭham, Telugu magazine, published in its December 2018 issue. The magazine is edited and published by Brahmasri Sāmavēdam Ṣanmukha Śarma. Brahmasri Śarma is the foremost exponent of our Sanātana Dhārmic lore. His encyclopaedic knowledge and felicity of expression that makes complex tātvic principles intelligible to common people attract large audiences to his discourses in India and many other nations. Apart from public meetings he appears on several television channels to give discourses on our ancient wisdom. He is a prolific writer and produced many books on Sanātana Dhārmic literature. The translated version of the editorial is published with permission.  

“This is the twenty-first century. We have been progressing technologically and scientifically. Globalization has erased national boundaries. Is it necessary in this day and age to harbor religious chauvinism? Does religion really matter? Let us eschew narrow-minded religiosity.  What the country needs is development. Basic necessities like food, water and infrastructure facilities like roads … these should get our attention rather than religion.” 

These are lofty ideals. As the poet said they are “Good sentences and well pronounced!” But they are preached only to Hindus. Or are only uttered by Hindus! There may be broadminded people in other faiths too but they remain mute. And remain faithful to their religious institutions.

How ideal would it be if everyone practiced their religion in individual or family settings without disturbing social harmony! But do we see such an atmosphere in India? The intolerance of non-Hindu religions towards Hinduism is a fact of everyday life that cannot be concealed. It is a perilous reality that the Indian polity has been ignoring.

A few months ago the pontiff of a non-Hindu religion clearly and unambiguously pronounced “We should elect a leader who accords precedence to our religion. Only our religion should rule the nation.” Another non-Hindu religion has been giving a similar call for long. It must be noted that no Hindu pontiff resorted to such pronouncements.

Does any public or media ‘intellectual’ ask “Should such calls be permitted in a nation that is constitutionally secular?” Neither do our political leaders condemn such demands. On the other hand they lose no opportunity to propitiate the proponents of non-Hindu religions. They offer to construct monumental places of worship for them and allot hundreds of acres of public land although such deeds are ultra vires of the Indian Constitution. They are allotting hundreds of crores for their religious festivals. While the Hindu places of worship are state-controlled and income from them expropriated, places of worship of non-Hindu religions are beyond the ken of common law. Governments cannot demand that income from their places of worship be used for ‘secular’, even developmental purposes. On the one hand Indian states grapple with deficit budgets and on the other they shower largesse on non-Hindu religious institutions.

The actions of some state governments and pronouncements of the highest judiciary have the effect of undermining ancient temple practices and traditions that stood the test of time for thousands of years. Even state governments led by parties that are ideologically atheist have succumbed to the diktats of non-Hindu religious interests to coerce Hindu organizations. Statutes are amended to appoint non-Hindus to temple management boards.[1] In the national congregation of a non-Hindu religion recently organized in Secunderabad, a resolution was passed to the effect that its adherents should work collectively to bring to power a government in which their religion has a veto.

In a recent bizarre incident, adherents of a non-Hindu religion who went to ‘bless’ a Hindu Chief Minister signaled that he should erase the tilak on his forehead, and he meekly obliged! Incidents such as these should have raised the hackles of Hindus but lamentably it did not happen.

A slogan painted in large letters on a sacred hillside on the way to a famous Siva shrine in Andhra Pradesh declared that the ‘god’s messenger’ of a non-Hindu religion was the ‘Lord of all’. When a few Hindu devotees sought to erase it, they were arrested by the police and cases booked against them as ‘rowdy sheeters’. The charge against them was that they were disturbing communal harmony! What did the original slogan-painters do? This incident shows not just the state government’s anti-Hindu approach but how it accords preferential treatment to non-Hindu religions.  

Curiously the two non-Hindu religions don’t take on each other. Their collective target is Hinduism. It is only hapless Hindus who convert to other religions. Forgetting that their ancestors were Hindus, adherents of these non-Hindu religions openly keep abusing Hindu gods and goddesses. In many organizations adherents of the non-Hindu religions coerce their Hindu subordinates to convert. If they do not obey they are penalized. Their career progression is hampered.

In organizations in which non-Hindus rule the roost, applications submitted by Hindus are often binned or action on them inordinately delayed. The situation prevails even in security and law enforcement departments. The oppressed Hindus are afraid of bringing the realities out into the open. Many of them quietly convert succumbing to allurements or coercion. This is not to say that non-Hindus should not occupy superior positions. All citizens of this country should enjoy equal rights and have equal opportunities. But shouldn’t people in positions of power discharge their duties justly instead of using their positions and powers as coercive weapons for spreading their religion? It is time Hindus woke up and refused to tolerate political leaders of whichever hue, who pander to other religions and coerce Hindus. It is due to corruption in the Hindu religious and endowments departments and aggression of other religions that the Hindu temples are in a pitiable state.

A religion based political party which committed atrocities against Hindus before independence (but for Sardar Patel they would have ‘ruled’ the erstwhile princely State) has been indulged by all political parties in power in ‘secular India! It continues to spew venom against Hindus. If anyone points this out they are labelled ‘Hindu chauvinist’. Those who call for ‘one nation, one community, one law’ are labelled ‘religious bigots’.

All in all it is a scary scenario for the Hindus. They should wake up; be aware of the impending danger and get ready for self-protection. If not their apathy would undermine the nation’s progress. If the Hindus do not act, they will be reduced to the status of second class citizens as in Kashmir and North Eastern states. They should remember that even if they decide to run away, there is no other nation in the world to give them asylum!

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[1] In a landmark judgement, the move to appoint non-Hindus to Hindu temple management boards has been struck down by the Kerala High Court. See “Devaswom Commissioner of Travancore/Cochin Devaswom Board Will Always Be A Hindu, Declares Kerala HC”. 2018. LiveLaw.in. November 25, 2018. Accessible from https://goo.gl/SGcCmG

Undermining Democratic Institutions: Fact And Fiction

Ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014, the charge of “undermining institutions” has been a constant refrain in what is popularly but not factually known as the mainstream media. He has been accused of “undermining” every known institution from the Indian Council of Historical Research to the Reserve Bank of India. The raucous babble reached its crescendo after Urjit Patel (a Modi appointee) announced his resignation for personal reasons as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The crescendo reached even a higher pitch after Shaktikanta Das a former IAS official was appointed as RBI Governor to replace Patel. Notwithstanding the fact that he served as the Revenue Secretary, the Economic Affairs Secretary and as a member of the Fifteenth Finance Commission, it was his educational qualifications that became the bone of contention.

It must be remembered that when Modi assumed charge as prime minister he left most of the ‘steel frame’ that he inherited in place except for a few minor changes. It is against this backdrop, it may be instructive to look back and review who “undermined institutions” the most. Jawaharlal Nehru ruled for nearly eighteen years since he became the interim prime minster in 1946 till his death in 1964. His daughter Indira ruled the nation for sixteen years, from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 till her death in 1984. Her son Rajiv ruled the nation between 1984 and 1989. His wife Sonia ruled by proxy between 2004 and 2014. Political chicanery of that magnitude – which amounts to nothing less than undermining the highest political office in the land – would not have been possible in any other democracy in the world.

Deception, Disinformation and Psychological Operations have been originally employed by intelligence agencies but politicians caught on to them fast. The Congress party has for long invested in an ecosystem of academic institutions and the media. They come in handy to discredit and disarm political rivals by deception, disinformation and psychological operations. Coming back to the issue of “undermining institutions”, here is a non-exhaustive list of examples of how institutions were undermined or worse sabotaged to suit political whims and fancies under various Congress leaders.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Let us begin with the reign of Jawaharlal Nehru who has been hailed as an epitome of democratic values.

Curtailing freedom of expression India’s best and brightest minds toiled for about three years to craft the longest written Constitution of the world. It was adopted on January 26, 1950. Even before the ink on the original Constitution dried, Nehru proposed the first amendment. The Americans amended their Constitution about thirty times in two hundred and forty years while we enacted a hundred and one amendments in seventy years. Whereas the American first amendment strengthened freedom of expression, Nehru’s first amendment, enacted on June 18, 1951 curtailed freedom of expression.

Curtailing powers of the judiciary The Indian first amendment did more. It created the Ninth Schedule which barred judicial scrutiny of legislations included in it.

Downgrading the Finance Ministry Enamoured as he was of the Soviet system of governance, he created the Planning Commission an extra-Constitutional body, which in a way reduced the importance of the Finance Ministry.

Dismissing state governments When Nehru used the Art. 356 of the Indian Constitution to dismiss the Kerala state government in 1959, he set a dubious precedent.

Undermining the Cabinet and Parliament Nehru took many decisions which have had long-lasting adverse effects without consulting the parliament or his own cabinet, thus undermining the institutions. The decisions include

Calling a ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947 when the Indian army was winning the war. The effect of this ill-advised decision was to lose a third of the state and altering international borders with India’s neighbours. Had India retained PoK, we would have retained Gilgit-Baltistan too. We would have had a border with Afghanistan. His decision to refer the issue to the UNO was equally inexplicable.

Dilly-dallying on Junagadh and Hyderabad against the wishes of the Cabinet. But for Patel’s timely action, these states would now have been part of Pakistan.

Concealing intelligence reports about the construction of a mountain road network in Aksai Chin by the Chinese.

Withdrawing unilaterally the extra-territorial rights in Tibet which India inherited from the British.

Sacrificing Tibet by accepting the Chinese claim that Tibet was a part of it.

[The last two ill-advised decisions removed a buffer state between India and China.]

Refusing to accept United Nations Security Council seat when it was offered on a platter to India but instead demanding that it be granted to China.

Refusing accession of Kalat and Nepal At the time of partition, a few neighbouring States wished to accede to India. These include Nepal and the Kingdom of Kalat which forms a large part of modern Baluchistan. Nehru rejected them. Oman which owned the port of Gwadar on the southwest coast of Baluchistan offered to sell it to India. Again for reasons best known to him Nehru rejected the offer.

The worst undermining of all was refusing to look after the needs of the Indian armed forces in terms of manpower recruitment and training and equipment.

Inducting dynastic succession. Nehru made his sister Vijayalakshmi ambassador to the United Nations and the USSR. His daughter Indira was unofficially Nehru’s personal assistant through his years as the prime minister. This made her privy to government documents despite the Official Secrets Act. Later he made his daughter the president of AICC.

Awarding himself the Bharat Ratna The award is recommended by the prime minister. But Nehru was the first recipient of the award in the year of its institution. Nehru’s apologists argue that Rajendra Prasad did it off his own bat to signal truce between them but nothing prevented Nehru from refusing to accept it. 

Indira Gandhi

Revocation of Privy Purses to the former Maharajas. It was a sovereign guarantee given to them by the Constituent Assembly. Her action amounted to undermining the authority of the parliament.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s she had had several judicial reverses. They include the Bank Nationalization case, the Privy Purses case and the Fundamental Rights case. Unlike her father who simply amended the Constitution in response to adverse judicial verdicts, she went a step ahead and undermined the judiciary itself. Within hours after the verdict in the Fundamental Rights case was delivered in 1973, she superseded several judges and appointed a pliant judge as the CJI.

Refusing to heed the judicial verdict about her parliament seat.

Declaring the (internal) Emergency which undermined democracy itself. Technically the (external) Emergency declared in 1962 after the Chinese invasion was still in force. Neither her father nor she saw it necessary to repeal it! Fundamental rights including the right to life suspended.

Dismissing state governments and Governors at will.

Her refusal to accept a split in the Congress party and her lust for power led to the 1969 Gujarat riots which lasted – six months – and resulted in the death of about 5000 people. The 1983 Nellie massacre in which 3000 Muslims were killed occurred in Indira’s reign. By the by, more than 90% of communal riots in India occurred during the reigns of Jawaharlal, Indira and Rajiv.

Making her son Snjay a supra-Constitutional authority. Chief Ministers danced to his tunes.

Her propping up Bhindranwale to undermine the Akalis and her war on the Golden temple.

Awarding herself the Bharat Ratna This time the fig leaf of Rajendra Prasad was not there.

An action that has long-lasting adverse effects was handing over the universities and other intellectual institutions to the left-illiberal elite as a quid pro quo for political support.

Rajiv Gandhi

His reign began with the Sikh genocide, in which between 8000 and 10000 Sikhs were killed. The genocide was a blot on democracy, and the biggest undermining of the institution of democracy.

Sacking his Finance Minister to alter the import policy (for importing PTA and other chemicals used in the manufacture of polyester fibre). This was to favour Dhirubhai Ambani. The policy declaration was a replica (or was it a template) of the 2G spectrum auction.

His grandfather sought to control freedom of expression through his first amendment. His mother used carrots and sticks to reign in the media. He sought to control the media through an amendment to the Posts and Telegraphs Act, but had to drop it due to widespread criticism.

He sacked his Foreign Secretary, A. P. Venkateswaran in a press conference

Sonia Maino (the de facto PM)

Creation of the institution of ‘UPA Chairperson’. It was an extra-Constitutional authority.

Creation of the extra-Constitutional NAC which was a supra-Cabinet superintending the work of the prime minister’s Cabinet.

Commissioning social “activists” like Teesta Setalvad to draft legislation (the impugned Communal Violence Bill) and school text books.

Now let us see the other argument about an IAS officer being appointed as the Governor of RBI. The following RBI Governors were from the IAS: B. Rama Rau, K. G Ambegaonkar, H. V. R. Iyengar, L. K. Jha, S. Jagannathan, R. N. Malhotra, S. Venkateswaran and Y. V. Reddy.

Finally, let us look at the argument that only economists should head economic institutions. In the years between 1970–1973; 1976–1983; 1985–1987; 1990–1997; 2000–2013 and 2017–2018 Americans won the Nobel Prize for economics. India’s Amartya Sen won it in 1998 giving us bragging rights! While the Americans won the maximum number of economics Nobel prizes or shared them with others, the American economy has had its ups and downs. The American economy saw recession in the years 1969-70; 1973-75; 1980-82; the early 1990s; the early 2000s and the worst in 2007-8. The 2008 collapse wiped out life’s savings of many Americans including Indian expatriates, making millions paupers overnight. So much for economists!

Is Astrology Science Or Superstition?

On the eve of the May 2014 general elections, several Telugu news channels conducted what they call ‘panel discussions’ on astrology. It would be a mistake to expect ‘panel discussions’ on television to be objective in which the two sides of the issues under discussion are debated and rational conclusions arrived at. There is nothing rational or scientific about the debates. The subjects are selected based on their topicality to arouse viewer interest and are subject to two limitations: the channel’s political worldview and the political correctness of the subject. Commercial interests of course, determine a channel’s political worldview. As for political correctness, it depends on whether there would be a backlash. Even the most intrepid champions of freedom of speech tread cautiously in the face of a suspected backlash. If they are sure there would be no backlash, they would go overboard flogging the issue. There is no need to state the converse.

In the discussions on astrology, a couple of ‘not very articulate’ astrologers were pitted against rabble rousing rationalists and asked to predict the outcome of the elections. Despite protestations that Jyothisha predictions should not be made without sufficient data they were made to predict electoral outcomes, only to be jeered at. The anchors saw to it that the odd articulate astrologer did not get enough air time. He was simply shouted down in cacophony.

The overt objection of the rationalists to astrology is that it is unscientific. If the objections were really ‘scientific’, they should have objected to such disciplines as craniometry (measurement of the head), phrenology (measurement of the skull) and nasal indices as predictors of race not to speak of the wholly unscientific Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT)—which was based not on historical or archaeological evidence but on comparative philology!

Their unstated, underlying objection could be that it is a Hindu discipline! The rationalists, with their pathological rather than logical hatred for everything Hindu forget that the original Jyothisha Vedänga concerned itself with astronomy, not astrology. The primary objective of this Vedic addendum (of the Rig and Yajur Vedas) was in the preparation of almanacs. The Indian almanac writers known as Siddhantis have been producing accurate almanacs for hundreds of years. The predictive discipline of astrology was a latter-day offshoot, just as psephology was an offshoot of political science which itself can hardly be described as science. The question that the faux rationalists should seriously introspect is, ‘Why do they unquestioningly believe in psephology while they equally irrationally disbelieve in astrology?’

What logical arguments do the rationalists offer in support of their contention that astrology is unscientific? Do they offer cogent reasoning and verifiable proofs? No, just an arrogant and unsubstantiated assertion that it is ‘impossible’! In the history of science, there are many examples which disprove the theory of ‘impossibility’ when subsequent discoveries upturned confident assertions. For example, in 1800, the English scientist, John Dalton proposed that the atom was the smallest particle of elements and was indestructible.

Eysenck and Nias list several ‘impossibility’ theories which fell flat when subsequent discoveries disproved them.[1] In 1933 Albert Einstein and Ernest Rutherford two of the world’s greatest physicists declared that the splitting of an atom could have no practical uses. Just twelve years later America dropped its bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many countries in the world today harness the energy released by the splitting of an atom for peaceful uses.

Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus, all dismissed the theory that oceanic tides were caused by the moon as ‘astrological nonsense’. Johannes Muller, a very reputed nineteenth century physiologist and the author of an authoritative monograph on the subject, declared that measuring the speed of a nervous impulse would never be possible. Only three years later Helmholtz had measured it quite accurately.

What is science and what are the criteria that should be satisfied for a discipline to be declared scientific? Eysenck and Nias suggest three methodologies. Sir Francis Bacon’s induction method involves collection of facts and a theory hypothesized based on them. The Vienna School of Logical positivism suggests that a theory is proposed which is then verified or disproved by research. Then there is Sir Karl Popper’s argument that no theory can be finally verified as, even after a theory is verified umpteen times, one more experiment might still disprove it. The catch in this proposition is that Popper believes that ‘a theory is scientific if it is open, not to being proved true (which it never can) but to being proved wrong’. The authors argue that none of these methodologies were ever applied to astrology before disqualifying it as science.

A generally accepted criterion for a scientific theory is that its results should be replicable, i.e. it should yield predictable results and that the same results should be obtained in repeated experiments. Let us consider the example of modern medicine to validate this theory. Medical magazines regularly publish clinical trial reports of medical, surgical, radiological or other procedures used in the treatment of diseases. The reports very rarely report 100% cure rates with several trials reporting as low as 60-70% success rates. This means the results of curative procedures used in modern medicine are not always replicable. In spite of this anomaly, none disputes that modern medicine is a scientific discipline. ‘Statistical significance’ (rather than absolute conformity) is an accepted criterion for validation of results in ‘double blind cross over’ clinical trials used to study the efficacy of medicines. A majority of rationalists appear to be unaware of such nuances in scientific criteria.

While Eysenck and Nias do not explicitly say that astrology is a scientific discipline, they do not dismiss it as superstition either. They argue that more data is needed to come to a definite conclusion and more research. They cite the work of Michel and Francoise Gauquelin to support their view. Eysenck and Nias describe the Gauquelins as ‘a rare combination, possessing both a detailed knowledge of astrology and a genuine scientific outlook based on a formal academic training.’ The Gauquelins were not astrologers but professional psychologists steeped in the ways of research. Their work in cosmobiology found a positive correlation between certain personality traits (which determine professional success) and planetary positions at the time of birth. Here is a brief account of the work of the Gauquelins that may be instructive:

The Gauquelins began their work by analyzing 576 members of the French Academy of Medicine, ‘who had achieved academic distinction by virtue of their research’. They found that the doctors were all born when Mars or Saturn had just risen or just passed midheaven. In order to validate the theory, the Gauquelins tried to replicate their experiment with another group of 508 doctors with similar antecedents. The replication conformed to the original observation.

Encouraged and intrigued by the results they extended the research to include other professionals in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Italy and reviewed 25,000 birth dates. When they contrasted 5,100 successful artists with 3,647 successful scientists they found quite interestingly that while the scientists were born when Saturn has just risen or was past midheaven, the artists tended to avoid being born under the planet.

Similarly when they reviewed the birth charts of 3,438 military leaders, in 680 cases (against 590 sufficient for statistical significance) they found that Mars considered the symbol of the god of war had risen or was past midheaven.

In order to confirm the results the researchers studied control groups selected from the general population and concluded that the planetary positions as mentioned occurred only for the births of the famous and distinguished. The results seem to indicate that these planets are ‘related to destiny, success and good fortune’.

A corollary to the observations already made was the predictability of certain character traits found in business leaders and successful sportspersons. It was found that those with birth times associated with Mars were seen to have greater determination and iron will. A study that reviewed the birth charts of 2,089 sportspersons, 1,409 actors and 3,647 scientists could predict personality factors like ‘extravert’, ‘introvert’, ‘unstable’ and ‘tough-minded’.

The researchers made quite a few other interesting observations in their studies. It is not possible to include them all here for want of space. However one point deserves mention. Invariably the results the researches obtained conformed to naturally occurring births and not artificially induced ones. This means that human hand cannot design destiny. It has to be ordained by the Gods!

Eysenck and Nias conclude that “the time has come to state quite unequivocally that a new science is in process of being born.”

It may be apt to remember what Bertrand Russel said on ‘the value of scepticism’: “When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain.”

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[1] Eysenck, H. J., and Nias, D.K.B. (1984). Astrology Science or Superstition? Penguin Books. New York.

Excerpted from ‘TWISTING FACTS TO SUIT THEORIES’ AND OTHER SELECTIONS FROM VOXINDICA. (2016). Authors Press New Delhi. pp. 434-439