Did historians blow 'Sati' & 'Jauhar' out proportion?

Secular History & Nationalism - I

If there was one thing we as a nation failed miserably, it is in forging a spirit of nationalism. The US which came into being only two hundred years ago is proud of its nationalism but we with a history of over five thousand years do not have a national ethos, national pride or national spirit. It would be nearer the truth to say that there is a concerted attempt to prevent India from forging a national spirit. A fabricated concept called ‘composite culture’ was sought to be projected by negating the nation’s achievements in the social, political, scientific and spiritual fields in the first four thousand years. Another aspect of the fabrication was to magnify and attribute all social ills to the original Hindu culture and all reformatory thought to the artificial construct called syncretic or composite culture. This series examines how some of the ills were sought to be stripped out of context and blown out of proportion.     

Eulogizing the social reforming zeal of Gurazada Appa Rao, K. Rosaiah, former A. P. Chief Minister and present Tamil Nadu Governor, made a stunning observation. He said, ‘… if we went back a little, the abominal practice of Sati comes to mind’.

Rosaiah was delivering his speech as the Chief-guest at the 150^th birth anniversary of the Telugu social reformer and writer, Gurazada Appa Rao. Appa Rao became famous for his play, Kanyä Sulkam, literally, ‘bride-fee’. The play centred on the practice of buying brides prevalent among some sections of the Brahmin society. The Brahmins were reviled for a variety of ills that plague the society today and many orthodox practices, by the left-liberal intelligentsia. This was despite the fact that it was the Brahmins who not only preserved our cultural traditions through troubles and tribulations for over five thousand years but also initiated many social reform movements.

One of the social ills for which the Brahmins were - unjustly and without any basis in fact - blamed was the treatment they meted out to their women. In spite of the prevalence of such misconceptions, according to scriptures a Brahmin (even today) is ineligible to participate in religious rituals without his woman. Therefore elderly widowers had to remarry in order to be eligible to practise their profession - priesthood. Those families which had the means did not offer their daughters in marriage to elderly widowers but poor families did, sometimes in exchange for money. The money came in handy for performing another girl’s marriage or for other necessities of living. It was a practice born out economic and social necessities. It was a practice of a minuscule section of society, as Brahmins constitute not more than 2% -3% of the population. And only those Brahmins who were into their traditional role as priests had a problem with widower-hood. Nevertheless it was a bad practice which the social reformer Appa Rao sought to highlight through his play.

If one were to go by Rosaiah’s observation about Sati it was an everyday happening in Andhra Pradesh, even if it was in the past! One needn’t have bothered if some lesser mortal were to make a statement like that. People in public life have to make speeches everyday and quite a few of them are given to uttering gibberish. Either Rosaiah (or his speech writer) might have remembered a snippet from the history textbook of his school days, and used it to enliven the speech. It is in this context that one ponders over questions like ‘why is history taught in schools?’

What are the objectives of teaching history? One would expect that the prime objective of teaching history is to inculcate in the young minds a pride in their glorious past and a spirit of nationalism. At a purely academic level, W. H. Davis listed the following as the three main objectives for teaching history: ‘first, to present the past to the pupil in an intelligible fashion, capable of interpretation; second to inculcate historical-mindedness; and third to inculcate intellectual tastes.’ (‘Some Attainable Objectives in the Teaching of History.’ The High School Journal. Vol. 12. No. 4. Apr. 1929. pp. 132-134. University of North Carolina Press. Accessible from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40363669)

If the objective of teaching history is to ‘present the past in an intelligible fashion, capable of interpretation’, does the history that is taught in our educational institutions factually represent the practice of Sati? Or did the British practice of concocting ‘atrocity literature’ colour our thinking?  

‘An Advanced History Of India’ by R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri and Kalikinkar Datta (1950. Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London) has eleven references in all to ‘Sati’. A reference to the subject of Sati in the early Magadhan epoch, circa sixth century B.C.E. has this to say: ‘Widow marriage and Levirate had not fallen into disuse even in the Ganges valley and burning of widows was not sanctioned by the orthodox lawgivers.’ (p. 75).

After Alä-ud-din Khalji’s expedition against Mewar resulted in the latter’s rout and ‘when further resistance seemed impossible’, the Rajputs of Mewar ‘preferred death to disgrace and performed […] that horrible rite, the Jauhar […] to find security from dishounour in the devouring element.’ (Ibid. p. 302). However the practice of Jauhar consisted of the mass immolation not only of women, but also children, the elderly and the sick, at a time when their fighting men died in battle against the Muslims. It was also pointed out that the practice of Sati was prevalent only among the higher social orders.

We must admit ‘social codes of conduct and honour’ are products of the times. Several examples illustrate this point. The practice of Levirate in which a brother marries the widow of his childless brother (in order to maintain his line) was a Biblical practice and described in the Old Testament. It was common practice in ancient Greece for a king who won a war to kill his opponent and take his wife. The mythological story of Oedipus who, because of a prophesy, ‘kills his father and marries his mother’ was used as a subject by quite a few Greek dramatists like Homer, Aeschylus and Euripides.

At times, ‘social codes of conduct and honour’ can spread horizontally and become contagious. For instance, see this in Majumdar et al.: ‘Some Muslims of aristocratic Hindu origin, or living in a Hindu environment, assimilated the Hindu customs of Sati and Jauhar’ (p. 402).

It is therefore necessary to exercise abundant caution while teaching about such ancient social practices to young minds. They were more an aberration than a norm. 

RIP

Book Review

Deva, Mukul, 2012. RIP. Westland. Chennai. Pages 286. Price: Rs 200/-

RIP is the story of the India of our times. It is the story of corruption of our politicians and civil servants. It holds a mirror to their vulgar greed that makes them stop at nothing including eliminating whistle-blowers, and even partners-in-crime if they were thought to be a 'security risk’. In spite of jumbling locations and people, the scams and the dramatis personae the novel depicts are too recent to be missed. The names were thinly disguised. Then there is the dowager, ruling party president who inherited the mantle from her dead husband, a former prime minister.

From Bofors to Adarsh Society, (through fodder, 2G, CWG et al.) the book weaves every scam and political persona involved in them into its intricate, riveting plot. It includes Anna Hazare’s ‘Indians Against Corruption (IAC)’ movement too. The only surprise perhaps is the title. It does not mean, as one would have thought ‘Rest in Peace’, but ‘Resurgent Indian Patriots’. ‘RIP’ itself may be a take-off from Anna Hazare’s IAC. But unlike Hazare’s docile, middle-class followers who abhor violence and are not given to direct action, Deva’s ‘Resurgent Indian Patriots’ do not baulk at taking direct action and meting out exemplary punishment to the guilty.   

The theme is not entirely new. Venality and corruption, or rather meting out vigilante justice to the venal and corrupt in public life has been the subject of several movies. The Hindi movie, Aan, Men in Action portrayed the politician-civil servant-underworld nexus and to some extent the issue of corruption. Movies like Bharatiyudu (Tamil, Telugu and Hindi), Aparichitudu (Tamil and Telugu) and Tagore (Telugu) dealt with the subject of corruption and vigilantism. It was in Aparichitudu, Bharatiyudu and Tagore that retributive justice in a violent form was mooted as an antidote to corruption. If Bharatiyudu and Aparichitudu had one-man vigilante armies, Tagore mooted the idea of an anti-corruption army named ‘Anti Corruption Force (ACF)’, similar to the ‘RIP’ in the novel. The success of these movies reflects the public mood. If the viewing public cheered and approved a violent form of vigilantism it was because they were vexed and saddened by their impotence to rid the society of the scourge of corruption.

In RIP, a team of former army commandos sets out to purge corruption. The corrupt politicians hit back by setting the official law enforcement agencies (isn’t the CBI to do their bidding?) and another set of former army commandos to chase them. Therefore the first set of (vigilante) commandos have the second set of (mercenary) commandos and the official CBI on their back, as they pick and choose targets to strike. Then there is the beautiful woman who links the two commanding officers as they vie for her charms. From the caveman to the modern man, men have been vying for beautiful women and a story which has this element never failed to charm readers. The female protagonist in RIP is a beautiful television anchor, fighting for her divorce, and by chance caught between her former husband and new beau.

The book is peppered with a large number of idioms – disproportionately large number – and appears to be a laboured attempt to write idiomatic English. It is however not devoid of jumbled expressions (calling it a night) and borrowed jargon from SAS, the elite British army commando unit (break a leg).

Mukul Deva strikes a chord with the clichéd common man when he says that his book was ‘[…] born out of an extreme sense of anger and shame. Anger at the appalling, naked greed so shamelessly displayed by the Indian political class. And shame that they happen to be fellow Indians.’ He certainly resonates with a majority of our countrymen (and women) when he says he would ‘certainly not condemn anyone who rid our country of such leaders.’ The book is definitely worth a read and not priced very high either.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews programme at Indian Bloggers 

Indian Secularism Islamizing India?

The phrase, ‘Indian Secularism’ is best recognised though least understood. Like Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous jibe about the ‘Indian Civil Service’, Indian Secularism is neither Indian in ethos nor true to its western definition. Its meaning varies with place, time and context. Its inclusiveness is exclusive! This means members of a minority community are ipso facto deemed secular whereas members of the majority community have to prove themselves at every turn to be eligible for the secular tag.

‘Indian Secularism’ eludes definition! It can only be exemplified and contrasted! For example, its more vocal proponents make a yearly ritual of doing the rounds of television studios for condemning the destruction of an inanimate, disused structure on December 6, 1992. But they are willfully oblivious to the forced exile of 5,00,000–7,00,000 Hindus from Kashmir beginning January 19, 1989. There was not a squeak when the might of the Indian state failed to enforce an arrest warrant against Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid for over twenty years. But ‘the law should take its course’ debates were aplenty in television studios when the Sankaracharya of Kanchi was arrested on Diwali eve in 2004. They were not able to condemn Akbaruddin Owaisi’s seditious speech without in the same breath invoking Praveen Togadia and calling for his arrest. The government of Andhra Pradesh had to arrest Swami Kamalananda Bharathi, the President of Hindu Devalaya Parirakshana Samithi to balance the arrest of Akbaruddin Owaisi, although in his speech the former was only reacting to the latter’s rabid utterances.

If one were to name a remarkable failure of India as a nation, it is its inability to forge a national identity. The more poignant aspect of the failure is that its leaders not just failed to bring about national integration but actually worked to stratify its myriad fragments. Someone said in a lighter vein that Coca Cola and fast food define the cultural identity of American youth. On a more serious note, democracy and free enterprise, innovation and competitiveness, military and scientific achievements define America’s national pride. For the proponents of Indian Secularism the concept of national pride is anathema. For them national pride is synonymous with jingoism. For them the antidote for jingoism is an artificial construct called composite culture that negates a glorious past stretching backwards for thousands of years.

It is in this context that some recent press reports make for disturbing reading. According to one of the reports, ‘a major chunk of the over 20,000 foreign preachers that descend on Indian shores every year’ preach radical Islam. Organisations like Tableeghi Jamaat Nizamuddin Markaz, which controls the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), Islamic Research Foundation, Ahl-e-Hadis, Jamait Ulema-e Hind invite these preachers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Further, according to Syed Mohammed Ashraf of the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board, the lure of petro-dollars and the inability of the government of India to intervene have been contributing to the radicalization of Indian Islam. (“Wahabi Islam Gaining Ground in the Country”. The New Indian Express, Hyderabad. January 14, 2013. p.7). The government’s inaction seems to be particularly surprising because according to Indian laws foreign nationals visiting India on tourist visas are not allowed to preach religion.

A second report (“Most Muslims Held for Terrorism are Innocent”. The New Indian Express,  Hyderabad. January 14, 2013. p.2) relates to a convention on ‘Politics of Terror Targeting Muslim Youth’ (sic). The convention which has by now become an annual ritual was addressed by the usual suspects, left and left-leaning politicians. That the subject matter of the convention amounts infringement in the activities of the law enforcement agencies is only one aspect. There is a subtle attempt to form a coalition of Muslims, Dalits and Tribals and pit it against the rest of the society, a tactic employed by Western evangelists to weaken the Hindu society. One of the speakers in the convention made an outrageous demand that the Government should issue a ‘conduct certificate’ to those acquitted by the courts to the effect, that they were wrongly arrested in the first place!  

Does secularism mean Hindu subservience?

The two hot debating topics this December first week were the demolition of a disused building in Ayodhya twenty years ago and the current Gujarat election. The Ayodhya anniversary has by now become an annual ritual which (especially) the English language media religiously (pun intended) runs through, dusting its old footage or commissioning new quotes from old columnists. The debate such as it is, is like a restricted club whose membership is closed to outsiders. It is like the yarn about investigating a murder that occurred during an Italian card game in New York. The investigator asks the first guy, ‘who fired the shot?’ and he replies, ‘I dunno. I didn’t see it. I was sitting with my back to the door, you see.’ The second guy says the same thing and all others say the same thing. It was one card game in which everyone sat on the same side of the table!

As the debate could have only one side, any new columnists would have to conform by spewing old arguments of the old columnists, but if possible, in new a idiom. Or face ostracism from what is known as the mainstream media. Even the few columnists who have a contrary view would have to shroud their views in a lot of verbiage as to practically make them unintelligible or at least sound neutral. Or pass them as social science theories. Columnists with a Hindu moniker have to be doubly careful to pass the test of secularism. Others are not hampered by any such shibboleths. Thus, to be admitted to the club while a columnist with a name like a Misra or a Sarma would have to constantly invoke the dangers posed by the ‘Hindu right’ to the ‘secular fabric’ of the nation, a Manu Joseph could be brazen about his concept of secularism. Joseph first dismissed the notion that India is secular in his December 5 column in the International Herald Tribune (India Is Not A Secular Republic). To make matters clear even for the dimwitted, Joseph elaborated his concept of secularism in his column of the same day in New York Times (Secularism in Search of a Nation):

“…what it really meant, without spelling it out, was that Hindus, who make up the majority of the nation, would have to accommodate themselves to the ways of the other religions, even if this meant taking some cultural blows.”

In order to leave no one in doubt, as to what he meant by ‘taking cultural blows’, Joseph elaborates:

“So, Hindus would have to accept the slaughter of cows, which they consider sacred (some Indian states have banned cow slaughter); …”

For Joseph this was not enough.

“… the Muslim community’s perceived infatuation with Pakistan;”

Having demolished an oft repeated if clichéd ‘the idea of India’, shibboleth chanted by the secular intelligentsia, he comes to the nub:

“…the conversion of poor, low-caste Hindus to Christianity by evangelists; and the near impossibility of getting admitted to some prestigious schools and colleges run by Christian organizations because so many places are reserved for Christian students.”

The last bit about ‘the near impossibility of getting admitted to some prestigious schools and colleges’ is a placebo thrown in to mask his main demand that India be made a grazing ground for number-starved Churches in the west. There was a time when Christian run schools and colleges were in demand but there is no such mad scramble for them now as non-Christian (calling them Hindu might offend secular sensibilities!) institutions offer quality education comparable to or even better than them.

As Joseph was writing in an American newspaper read mainly in America would he consider tendering the same advice to the Americans? For instance, being a secular nation, America should have taken the cultural blow of ‘the World Trade Centre being brought down by a few misguided youth’ and not waged a war first on Afghanistan and then on Iraq. Or that America should really not bother about some of its jobs being Banglored. Or that twenty-first century America should really be not so conservative. If it were not so why would a Bobby Jindal or a Nicky Haley would have had to go to such great lengths to conceal their ethnic identities and fabricate new ones!  

After all this din, the Indian mainstream media would have redeemed a bit of its credibility if it expended a wee-bit of its energies in mourning a humanitarian disaster that is comparable only to the holocaust. None bothered (or dared) ask, ‘if the day on which a disused structure was destroyed is to be described a black day and commemorated every year, what about the day on which an estimated 450,000 Hindus were exiled in their own homeland?’ Why do lofty ideals like secularism and composite culture do not have the same connotation in India’s northern-most state? If December 6 is to be celebrated as a ‘black day’ every year why don’t we commemorate January 19 the day on which the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits commenced in 1989 and did not stop till virtually all of them were driven out? By not speaking about it if not against it are not our intelligentsia and media guilty of complicity?

The Bankster

Book Review

Subramanian, Ravi. 2012. The Bankster. Rupa Publications. New Delhi. Pages: 358. Price: Rs 250/-

To an Indian, The Wall Street Journal’s commendation of the author, ‘Meet the John Grisham of banking’ might appear a bit patronizing, but it is nevertheless true. In ‘The Bankster’ Ravi Subramanian turned out in every bit, an ‘edge of the seat thriller’ from as wry a subject as banking. For, what would you expect from a bank - its premises buzzing with customers rushing in and out cashing cheques or buying drafts?

Although nationalized banks in the pre-liberalisation, pre-competition era were walled-in by bureaucratic procedures and riven by trade unionism, many of them provided a cordial ambience. Regular customers were recognized and personalized service was the norm. After liberalisation many non-banking financial institutions in India barged into banking. A number of multinational banks too entered the market. The accent of the private players, both national and international is on aggressive marketing. But in spite of their glitzy interiors and automated procedures, somehow the personalized service that one experienced in the banks of an earlier era has been missing.  

Subramanian brought out in vivid detail the inner mechanisms of a multinational bank, including internal intrigues, coups and a bit of adultery. One would like to believe the last bit was included in the story only to embellish it and it is not really prevalent on a scale that would subvert the functioning, norms and ethics of the banking sector. The story revolves round a few central characters, Vikram, the head of retail banking, Tanuja the head of HR, Indrani, the president of the bank, Nikhil a branch manager, Harshita a conscientious Relationship Manager and Zinaida her unscrupulous counterpart of the Indian subsidiary of Greater Boston Global Bank known as GB2 within.

The author skillfully wove into the story some contemporary events. Recently a multinational bank has been in the news in the UK and the US for its role in money laundering. The same bank was involved in India in a legal battle for betraying the confidence of a client, who happens to be a popular actress. In the novel, an amoral Relationship Manager sold an unsuspecting customer a unit linked insurance product as a fixed deposit. The same Relationship Manager was also a major conduit in a money laundering operation. Her superiors ignored her malfeasance not only because she was producing results but also because she had no qualms about dangling her charms to seduce them.

In the real life case a Relationship Manager does the client in by investing her money in stocks over and over again to achieve his metrics and making profits for the bank. His indiscriminate and reckless investment of her funds in the stock market not only diminished her net worth because of his poor judgement in picking stocks, but when she actually did make a profit she had to pay a fortune as capital gains tax on short term gains.

By now everyone knows how some commercial interests in the west have been using greedy NGOs in India as Trojans to subvert power and irrigation projects in India. The agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu and the one against an irrigation project in Madhya Pradesh are cases in point.  

Apart from funneling funds for such subversive activities, some employees of the bank (in the novel) play a part in circulating counterfeit currency using the bank as a conduit. All these illegal activities make for a deadly cocktail for some of its players. There were murders and chases. Technology plays a major role in solving the crimes. The author was successful in keeping a veil over the identity of the villain till the very end. The book is a good read for a cosy weekend or a journey. The only complaint this reviewer has is about is its language. It is full of banking patois and cliché-ridden. 

This review is part of the Book Reviews programme at Blogadda.com 

Congress’ Communism & Empress SoniaG’s Upkeep

Cho Ramaswamy's Tuglaq (the protagonist in the eponymous movie) says, ‘It is not possible to make the poor rich. Therefore make the rich poor and all will be equal!’ It is an unstated dictum of the communist proletariat. The communist elite (vlasti in Russian) had a different take on Marxist philosophy as George Orwell so vividly depicted in his Animal Farm. Irrespective of how they live, quite often the vlasti echo the proletarian edict, more to show that their heart is in the right place rather than because of an ardent belief that ‘all men should be equal’. Therefore it is no surprise to hear Mani Sankar Aiyar often cavil about Antilia, Mukesh Ambani’s 27-floor residence in Mumbai’s southern suburbs. Flaunting his knowledge of the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality of wealth distribution) he often cites Antilia as an example of the deep chasm that exists between the rich and the poor in India. He did so again in the television debate, ‘Is India ripe for a revolution?’ hosted by Tim Sebastian on Bloomberg / Headlines Today recently. (Indian television anchors have much to learn from Sebastian, but that is a different matter altogether.)

Antilia

One way to look at Mukesh’s opulence is to attribute it to his business acumen, hard work and intelligence. For, although he has inherited a large part of his wealth he must have worked hard to grow the rest. In a democratic society which at least theoretically provides equal opportunities to all, one should not grudge Mukesh his success. Much has been said about Mukesh’s father Dhirubhai’s business acumen. His life is the stuff that made it to case studies in business schools. The less uncharitable (but probably more accurate) view is to attribute Dhirubhai Ambani’s success less to business acumen and more to his ability to network with the ruling establishment. Even this may be characterised as business acumen, but to put it bluntly Dhirubai was able bribe his way through the Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi administrations to tweak government policy to suit his business interests. Dhirubhai’s Reliance Industries was perhaps the first example of crony capitalism on a gigantic scale. It had all the ingredients: funnelling funds through invisible sources, stock exchange skirmishes and manipulation of government policy. V. P. Singh who took on Dhirubhai to alter government policy on import of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) lost his job as Finance Minister! (See For this fighter, life was a big battle). On hindsight one might even suspect that the Bofors scam could have been a decoy. This being so, why does Aiyar constantly invoke Mukesh as a negative example of economic distortions knowing fully well that the seeds of the Ambani empire were sown during Congress regimes? More importantly, the Ambani empire reached its exponential growth stage during the regimes of Aiyar’s deities, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Be that as it may, if opulent living reflects a ‘vulgarity of greed’ to use an expression coined in the Films Division (of the I & B ministry) documentaries of the emergency era, how much does it cost to put up MPs like Aiyar in Lutyen’s Delhi? How much does empress Sonia’s upkeep cost the people of India?

[N.B.: What follows are only ‘back of the envelope’ calculations based on certain realistic assumptions.]

According to a recent Economic Times report, bungalows in Delhi’s Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone (LBZ) cost between Rs 111 and Rs 170 Crore. (See Delhi's most expensive realty deal: Torrent Group buys bungalow in Lutyen’s Zone for Rs111 crore). As No.10 Janpath is in an even more exclusive zone, it may be safely rated at the top end of the scale, i.e. Rs 170 Crore, assuming of course that it is of the same area and not bigger! At 1% of the price as rental value the bungalow costs Rs 1.7 Crore a year (as rent) to the people of India. [A] One might safely assume an expenditure of Rs 30, 00,000 per annum on staff and maintenance. [B]

Her electricity bills come to Rs 2. 49 Lakh a year. [C] (See Sonia Gandhi's power bill: over Rs. 7 lakh for 3 years). We are relieved to know, that of the Rs 7.47 Lakhs incurred in three years, she herself has paid all of Rs 0.09 Lakh whereas the Lok Sabha Secretariat paid Rs 7.38 Lakh!

As an MP she is eligible to salary and perquisites of Rs 36. 45 Lakh, excluding house rent which is already computed above. [D] (See SALARYOF MP'S - Indian Parliament members salary)

She is entitled to Z+ security which consists of 36 personnel of the NSG. An NSG Z+ team consists of various ranks from IG to constable. Assuming an average salary of Rs 3 Lakh per commando, the team cost Rs 1.08 Crore per annum. [E]

The total of [A]+ [B]+ [C]+ [D]+ [E] = Rs 3.47 Crore per annum. Based on a similar computation, Rahul’s expenditure to the exchequer (only salary and security included) comes to Rs 1. 45 Crore.

It is interesting to note that (if our rental computation is right) Sonia exceeds her rental allowance by 700% and her electricity allowance by 400%.

Is it not pertinent to ask, how many households in India can incur an expenditure of Rs 4.92 Crore per annum, especially in a country in which the BPL is set at just Rs 11, 520?