Anti–CAA Agitprop And Weathercock Intellectuals

Have you ever wondered what the biggest failure of India’s intelligentsia was? Let me tell you a story. It is a small anecdote from the tumultuous days of the French revolution between 1789 and 1799. A newspaper reporter was interviewing a leader of the revolution in a Paris café. As they were sipping coffee and chatting, a wildly howling mob shouting slogans stomped by along the adjoining street. The reporter wondered aloud what the procession was all about. On hearing this, the leader shouted “Oh my God, I am supposed to lead the procession” and ran out. At times when mass movements acquire a momentum of their own, revolutionary leaders might have to follow the mobs while pretending they were leading. But the intellectuals of a society are not weathercocks but its leading lights. They do not—and should not—sometimes follow while pretending to always lead. They should possess the moral fibre and intellectual integrity to pursue ideals even if they are unpopular.

The words honesty and integrity are interchangeable but are paired to amplify the meaning, in a figure of speech called synonymia. The word integrity is derived from the mathematical word integer, meaning a whole number, undivided and complete. There can be no partial honesty or fractional integrity. In the case of public intellectuals it is an all or none phenomenon. Lamentably many of our public intellectuals fail in this test.

As a test of the principle, consider the idea of freedom of expression. If a society cannot provide the protection needed for free expression of ideas, it is the public intellectuals who should hold themselves responsible for their failure to create the ambience for free flow of ideas. Is the principle of freedom of expression absolute or are there limits to it? If the public intellectuals champion absolute freedom on one occasion, but argue alibis for scuttling it on another occasion for political reasons, their vacillation cannot advance the cause of freedom of expression. It keeps the society splintered by competitive populism. If the public intellectuals swing with political winds they cannot expect the society to conform to abstract ideals.

Consider the ongoing agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019. Let us look what citizenship means under various Indian laws. We will try to explain it in plain language devoid of legal lingo.  

The issue of citizenship is dealt with in the very beginning of the Indian Constitution (in Part II) just after nation and the powers of the national government are defined. Articles 5 to 11 are related to citizenship. While Part II confers citizenship to residents in the territory of India when the nation was formed, it also allowed for conferring citizenship to those Indians who remained in Pakistan at the time of partition and, those who went there after partition but wanted to return to India—before July 1948.

The Citizenship Act of 1955 defines natural and acquired citizenship in clauses 3 to 7. It flows from Part II of the Constitution and is enacted to amplify and encode rules and regulations for conferring citizenship. Here briefly are the modes that confer citizenship:

1.     Citizenship by birth (Clause 3)

2.    Citizenship by descent (Clause 4)

3.    Citizenship by registration (Clause 5)

4.    Citizenship by naturalization (Clause 6)

5.  Special provision as to citizenship of persons covered by the Assam Accord (Clause 6A)

6.    Citizenship by incorporation of territory (Clause 7)

There is no ambiguity about the nature or cause of partition of the country. Pakistan and its later splinter Bangladesh were formed as the Muslims of undivided India wanted a separate state for themselves. Many non–Muslims remained in Pakistan after partition either because they were complacent about their status despite the religious nature of the newly formed state or because of an inertia that held them back from making the long journey to India. It was also possible that they stayed back as they reposed faith in the assurances given by leaders of the nascent state who promised them complete religious freedom.  

What happened to them in the subsequent decades too needs no recounting. To put it simply their populations were decimated. Many of them had to flee to India, the only country in which they felt they could seek asylum.

All that the CAA does is to provide relief to persecuted minorities fleeing Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who would otherwise be defined as ‘illegal migrants’ under Section 2 (1) (b) of the 1955 Citizenship Act. It does not take away the rights of anyone nor does it seek to strip bona fide Indian citizens of their citizenship. It does not abrogate the Clause 6 (Naturalisation) of the principal act by which anyone from outside can seek citizenship. There is a sunset clause in the CAA. It limits the ‘relief’ to those who entered India before December 31, 2014.

The conduct of the opposition parties has no surprises. Their objective is to usurp power, no matter how divisive and fraught with long–term consequences their modus could be. It is the conduct of the public intellectuals that should surprise. 

Those who are making a public spectacle of reading the Preamble in agitations across the country should carefully read the wording of Article 11 of the Constitution. It confers unqualified power to the Parliament to make provisions with respect to acquisition and termination of all matters relating to citizenship. Here is what it states:

“11. Nothing in the foregoing provisions of this Part shall derogate from the power of Parliament to make any provision with respect to the acquisition and termination of citizenship and all other matters relating to citizenship.”

Is the ongoing agitation mere tilting at windmills or a machination of deception, disinformation and psychological operations (known as Dee–Dee–PsyOps in the parlance of intelligence agencies), intended to intimidate the central government against bringing in progressive legislations like the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) and the Supreme Court hearing petitions against the abrogation of Article 370 and the CAA?

Pseudo-Experts Failed Pseudo-Seculars!

Excerpted from “Ram Janma Bhumi In High Court–How Pseudo-Experts Failed Pseudo-Seculars!” (pp. 362–385) In “Twisting Facts To Suit Theories & Other Selections From Voxindica”

Imagine a murder trial in progress in a court room. The prosecution introduces a forensic expert whose testimony establishes the time and cause of death. Imagine the defence counsel cross-examining the forensic expert, as part of normal court room procedure. Here is a snatch of the imaginary cross examination:

Defence Counsel: Would you please tell the court doctor, the exact time when the murder was committed and the cause of death?

Forensic Expert: Certainly. It was committed between 3.30 PM and 5.30 PM on the fifteenth of this month. The cause of death was stabbing with a blunt knife.

DC: How could you be so certain?

FE: You know; I was brought in as a forensic expert in this case.

DC: You are a forensic pathologist, then?

FE: No, I am not.

DC: Have you conducted any post-mortem examinations in the past?

FE: I have not conducted any.

DC: Have you conducted any surgeries?

FE: I have not conducted any surgeries.

DC: Are you a surgeon?

FE: No, I am not.

DC: Pardon me doctor, if you are not a forensic pathologist or a surgeon what is your specialty?

FE: I am a physician.

DC: If you are not a forensic pathologist, how did you tell with certainty the time and cause of death?

FE: You see, in the hospital where I work, doctors meet in the canteen during breaks. I was informed by a pathologist colleague who works in our hospital and who has read about the case in the newspapers, about the possible time and cause of death. I have also gone through various newspapers which published details of the case. It was based on these that I am able to tell with certainty, the time and cause of death.

DC: Does it mean that you cannot specify the time and cause of death based on your own study or your own knowledge.

FE: No. But I am a doctor. Based on what I have heard and read, I can tell the exact time and cause of death.

The Defence Counsel could have established that the doctor appeared as a witness in the case only to help his ‘old boy network’. But lengthening the imaginary ‘cross examination’ would test the patience of the reader. The imaginary scene is to help readers appreciate the type of ‘pseudo-experts’ fielded in the Ram Janma Bhumi case and how their testimonies were ripped apart in the cross examination. The pseudo-experts asserted that the mosque was not built on any temple debris and in fact no temple was destroyed, not only in Ayodhya but anywhere in the lands ruled by the Mogul invaders. Even normally reticent judges could not help chastising the witnesses in the case.

Death Penalty: Inconsistent Sentencing, Political Mercy Pleas, Erroneous Convictions. Abolition, A Systemic Correction

Inconsistent Death Penalties

Had the wheels of justice ground faster—instead of at the proverbial snail’s pace—this man would have been hanged by now. The convict from a remote village in the Nanded district of Maharashtra was accused of killing his wife and four children in 2007. The District Sessions Court awarded him death sentence which was upheld by the High Court and the Supreme Court. His review petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2012, which it now ‘recalled’ observing that all the courts relied on an ‘extra-judicial confession’ and ‘ignoring medical evidence’. His sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. (Choudhary, Amit Anand. “SC admits mistake in awarding death sentence, commutes it to life sentence.” The Times Of India. October 2, 2019. https://bit.ly/31SNFSW

In May 2019 the Supreme Court had acquitted six persons whom it sentenced to death ten years before in a case involving dacoity, gang-rape and murder of five persons of a family in Nashik in 2003. The case escalated through the tortuous judicial processes and the Apex court confirmed the death sentences on April 30, 2009. In its latest judgement the Court observed that the accused were

“… from the lower strata of society and are very poor labourers … false implication cannot be ruled out since it is common occurrence that in serious offences, sometimes innocent persons are roped in.” (Mahapatra, Dhananjay. “6 awarded death by SC in 2009, acquitted in 2019”. The Times Of India. May 5, 2019. https://bit.ly/2oVJbwu)

A google search for “SC admits mistake”, prompted by the first report cited above, yielded five results. Here are the remaining three: “SC seeks Centre's reply on plea challenging mandatory death penalty under SC/ST Act” (The Times Of India. May 10, 2019. https://bit.ly/2MmvHBH); “Decade after awarding death, SC commutes sentence to life imprisonment for delay in deciding mercy plea”. (Choudhary, Amit Anand. The Times Of India. February 22, 2019. https://bit.ly/2LUYpuA) and “SC reverses man’s death sentence; revives debate on extreme penalty” (Mahapatra, Dhananjay. The Times Of India. November 28, 2018. https://bit.ly/2pTbbRP). All these cases were reported by The Times Of India between November 2018 and October 2019. 

Socio–Politics Of Mercy Petitions

On March 8, 1993, an APSRTC bus from Hyderabad was on its way to Chilakaluripeta in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. In the pre-dawn hours, it was waylaid by two dacoits, Sathuluru Chalapathi Rao and Gentela Vijayavardhan Rao, as it cleared the town of Narasaraopeta and was just twenty kilometres from its destination. The duo brandished deadly weapons and threatened the passengers to hand over their valuables. One of them carried a can of petrol and sprinkled it from the back of the bus to the front entrance. They threatened to set fire to the bus if their demands were not immediately met. Whether some passengers resisted or whether the dacoits panicked was not clear but the duo closed the door and carried out their threat. They set fire to the bus and twenty-three sleeping passengers were engulfed in flames and charred to death. Several others sustained serious burn injuries. The culprits were arrested ten days later and the case culminated in the Supreme Court which upheld the death sentence on August 28, 1996. The Supreme Court judgement which narrated the gruesome details of the crime was reported in the India Kanoon portal: “Gentela Vijayavardhan Rao And Anr vs State Of Andhra Pradesh on 28, August, 1996” (https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1517391/). George Fernandes and Rajni Kothari filed a mercy petition. President Shankar Dayal Sharma rejected it. Mahaswetha Devi filed a second mercy petition. The Supreme Court stayed its own sentence in view of the pendency of the mercy plea. Finally, President K. R. Narayanan commuted their sentence.      

 

On August 14, 2004, Dhananjay Chatterjee an ‘impoverished guard’ in a Kolkata building was hanged. “Although bearing a Brahmin name, Dhananjay Chatterjee was far from being a member of the Kolkata bhadralok, or intellectual elite…His execution followed a shrill campaign…”, wrote N. Jayaram:  “How India hanged a poor watchman whose guilt was far from established” (Scroll.in. July 21, 2015. https://bit.ly/35d7FSe). An emerging 24/7 news channel added its bit to the shrillness of the campaign. The misfortune of birth status added to Chatterjee’s misery of poverty. He had spent fourteen years in jail before he was hanged. President, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam rejected his mercy plea. However, it must be said in his defence that although the President is vested with the authority to pardon a criminal under Art. 71 (1) (c) of the Constitution, in practice, the President merely follows the recommendation of the Home Ministry. The case did not arouse ‘the quality of mercy’ in the conscience of civil rights activists. No NGO or civil rights group knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court to open it in the small hours to hear a revision plea. No newspaper headlined the next day “And they hanged Dhananjay Chatterjee”! 

 

If the frenzy of misplaced social vigilantism took its toll in Chatterjee’s case it was the political frenzy that impacted the Indira Gandhi assassination case. This is not to say that the assassins did not deserve death sentence. One of the assassins, Beant Singh fired thirty-three bullets into her body. He was killed instantly when her ITBP security guards opened fire. A second assassin Satwant Singh fired twenty-three bullets but was seriously injured in the crossfire with a bullet lodged in his spine. In normal circumstances, his condition would have rendered him ineligible for hanging. A plea to the Supreme Court to allow him to recover was disallowed. A medical team hastily removed the bullet to ‘ready’ him for the hanging. (Bhatnagar, Rakesh. “The accused did not want to be defended”. DNA. October, 30, 2009 https://bit.ly/2Iw5T5c). Ram Jethmalani pleaded in vain that the case against the third assassin, Kehar Singh was flimsy and highly circumstantial and did not ‘prove guilt beyond all reasonable doubt’. The President disallowed mercy petitions with utmost dispatch. 

 

The partisan approach of civil rights groups, political parties, state legislatures and the ‘intelligentsia’ in seeking mercy for convicts has not escaped the attention of the Supreme Court. Balwant Singh Rajoana, who was sentenced to death for killing Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, did not file a mercy plea but the NGO ‘Lawyers for Human Rights International’ sought a review of the trial court verdict. The Punjab state legislature passed a resolution seeking mercy for Rajoana. Similar resolutions were passed by the Jammu & Kashmir legislature in the Afzal Guru case and the Tamil Nadu legislature in the Rajiv Gandhi assassins’ cases. On the other hand, the Court pointed out; poor people like Dhananjay Chatterjee who does not have societal support always got a raw deal with respect to mercy petitions. (“Why wide disparity in treatment of mercy pleas? SC asks” The Times Of India. May 27, 2012. https://bit.ly/31Q51jf). The Supreme Court, however, agreed that there was subjectivity and it was individual perceptions of the judges that decide whether a convict should be awarded death sentence or life imprisonment. (Mahapatra, Dhananjay. “Judges' perception dominant factor in death or life sentence: SC”. The Times Of India. Jan 25, 2011. https://bit.ly/30MffzX).

Abolition, A Systemic Correction

It is the grey areas in the administration of criminal justice that cause these anomalies. If all are equal in the eyes of the law, why was the mercy plea of Dhananjay Chatterjee rejected and the one in the Chilakaluripeta bus burning case entertained? The contrast is stark. A person whose crime might not have been ‘proven beyond all reasonable doubt’ was sent to the gallows but the sentence of the duo who murdered twenty-three people in cold blood was commuted. In the Neeraj Grover murder case (2008) a small time film actress (whom Grover, creative head of Synergy Adlabs was helping to find a foothold in the film industry) and her boyfriend were accused of committing the crime. The duo cut up Grover’s body into 3oo pieces, packed them in gunny bags and was carrying the body to burn it deep in a forest. Mumbai tabloids published other macabre details of the crime and its aftermath. According to one, after the boyfriend stabbed Grover, with the dead body lying in the next room, the duo had sex twice before their ‘next operation’. The actress was sentenced to three years, not for murder but for trying to destroy evidence. She was released by the end of the trial. The boyfriend was sentenced to three years for destroying evidence and ten years for culpable homicide, with both sentences to be run concurrently. In the Naina Sahni murder case (2013) the accused, Sushil Sharma cut up her body and tried to burn the pieces in a restaurant tandoor. He was not awarded death sentence. In the Jessica Lal (2010) and the Priyadarshini Mattoo (2010) cases too no death sentences were awarded. In two ‘high profile’ murder cases in Hyderabad the well-heeled accused, to use an Americanism, ‘walked’.

In an article in the ‘Journal of Law and Criminal Justice’, Arvind P. Bhanu mentioned that fourteen retired judges wrote to the President that “Supreme Court had erroneously given the death penalty to 15 people since 1996”. (“Arbitrariness in Capital Sentencing System: No Disappearance of Furman-Like Challenge”. Journal of Law and Criminal Justice. December 2014, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 187-199). The Law Commission Report on Death Penalty (No. 262, 2015) pointed out that the differences in the quantum of punishment was due to the interpretation of ‘mitigating circumstances’, such as age. According to it, the data collected “substantiate the picture of inconsistent, arbitrary and judge-centric application of the death penalty.” (p.149). The following portion of the report is worth citing verbatim:

“Numerous committee reports as well as judgments of the Supreme Court have recognized that the administration of criminal justice in the country is in deep crisis. Lack of resources, outdated modes of investigation, over-stretched police force, ineffective prosecution, and poor legal aid are some of the problems besetting the system. Death penalty operates within this context and therefore suffers from the same structural and systemic impediments. The administration of capital punishment thus remains fallible and vulnerable to misapplication. The vagaries of the system also operate disproportionately against the socially and economically marginalized who may lack the resources to effectively advocate their rights within an adversarial criminal justice system.” (pp. 223-224)

The report, however, takes into consideration concerns regarding terrorism and makes the following caveat:

“… [C]oncern is often raised that abolition of death penalty for terrorism related offences and waging war, will affect national security. However, given the concerns raised by the law makers, the commission does not see any reason to wait any longer to take the first step towards abolition of the death penalty for all offences other than terrorism related offences. The Commission accordingly recommends that the death penalty be abolished for all crimes other than terrorism related offences and waging war.” (p. 226)

The inconsistencies and vagaries in the application of law need no further elaboration. It is a systemic failure and needs systemic correction. Is it time the death sentence is abolished for all crimes except terror-related cases? The most compelling argument for the abolition of death sentence is that it is irreversible, even if at a later date fresh evidence surfaces to prove the innocence of the accused. It is also advisable to make the definition of ‘life sentence’ not amenable to subjective interpretation. In serious crimes like homicide, a ‘life sentence’ should mean ‘till the normal end of a life, without remission’. In serious crimes against humanity it may be necessary to avoid philosophical distinctions such as whether it is ‘retributive’ or ‘reformative’. The punishment should be seen only as a ‘deterrent’ till such time the society evolves to a level when a further revision could be considered.

Playing God, Ungodly?

How would it be if it were possible to ‘order’ the birth of a baby girl who would grow to be as beautiful as Venus and as intelligent as Marie Curie? Or the birth of a baby boy who would grow to be as handsome as Adonis and as intelligent as Einstein? How would it be if it were possible to choose the colour of the eyes, hair and skin tone? Does the idea sound outré, utopian? Recent scientific advances indicate that the idea of ‘designer babies’ is neither all that outré nor all that utopian. It is a possibility in the not too distant future. It is the ethics of the issue that should worry mankind. Is genetic engineering ethical or even desirable?

Man ‘created’ angels, gods and goddesses in his own image. It is for this reason they are referred to as anthropomorphic gods. In his ‘creation’ man made gods and goddesses the most beautiful creatures; again beauty being a product of his own imagination. The creation of anthropomorphic gods is but an expression of man’s endless quest to replicate nature or improving upon it. It was an enticing subject that drew artistes and scientists alike. In general the artistes were wary of the dangers of replicating or improving upon nature. Here are a few examples. Mary Shelly’s 1918 Gothic novel ‘Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus’ described the horrors that would result in tinkering with nature. So did Aldous Huxley’s dystopian ‘Brave New World’ (1932) and Ken Follett’s science-fiction ‘The Third Twin’ (1996), but to a less horrific degree.

But the scientists would not be deterred. For as long as the history of science could be traced, maverick – for want of a better word – ‘scientists’ in many nations conducted experiments with the objective of transmuting base metals into gold, to find a universal solvent and to find a potion that would extend longevity. The ‘scientists’ were collectively known as alchemists. Although for long they were dismissed as charlatans and although they did not achieve the objectives they set out to do, their work had advanced science as far as the purification of metals.

In recent times genetic engineering has been focusing on four areas of human development. They are muscle enhancement to improve athletic performance; memory enhancement to improve intellectual performance; growth hormone treatment to improve physical stature and selection of sex and genetic traits of children. The selection of sex is already a reality. It must be noted that gender screening tests are illegal in India. There are several companies in the USA which already offer ‘sex selection’ with certain pre-conditions that would preclude its possible misuse. The process/product is offered to only those couples who have one child and who desire to have a child of the opposite sex to ‘balance their families’.

The theory of eugenics is as old as Aristotle. It appears the fourth century BCE philosopher had suggested that ‘men should tie their left testicles prior to intercourse if they wanted a male child’! In ‘The case against perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering’ (2007), Michael J. Sandel discussed both the pros and cons of genetic engineering. As societies evolve, old mores give way to new norms. Sandel cites a character from the 1981 British historical film, ‘Chariots of Fire’. It was the story of two athletes, Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Prior to 1924, employing professional coaches for training to compete in amateur sport was scoffed at. It was considered ‘ungentlemanly’. Abrahams defied the custom as he felt that it was just a cover for anti-Semitism. The point being made is that today employing coaches is an accepted norm. In fact it is unimaginable for any athlete to go into high level competitions without a personal trainer.

Much of the opposition to genetic engineering stems from the negative connotations associated with eugenics. The objective of eugenics was to increase the proportion of healthy and intelligent individuals in the general population. Conversely the poor and unhealthy were prevented from conceiving by forced sterilisation. It is generally assumed that forced sterilisations as a measure of eugenics were practised only in Nazi Germany. According to a report published in the website PsychCentral.com, by the 1930s thirty states in the USA had sterilisation laws. Between 1927 when Carrie Buck, the first victim of the Virginia sterilisation law was sterilised and the 1970s, 65,000 Americans with ‘mental illness or developmental disabilities’ were sterilised. When the Buck case reached the Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” (See Tartakovsky, Margarita. ‘Eugenics & The Story of Carrie Buck’. July 8, 2018. Accessible from http://bit.ly/2mZHs8Q).

To forestall genetic engineering for ethical considerations amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Scientists believe that the key to finding remedies for diseases like thalassemia and cancer is in genetic engineering.

When the banking industry introduced information technology tools in the 1980s doomsday predictors hollered that it would lead to thousands going out of employment. We live in a world of over the counter (OTC) remedies and food supplements for growth and beauty enhancement. Not an hour passes when we don’t see bamboozling advertisements about them on television. Bariatric surgery and cosmetic surgery for beauty enhancement are fairly common with only the cost being the limiting factor. Would it be the only limiting factor for ‘made to order babies’ too? Or are ethics involved?

Should we in the end accept and live with advances in genetic engineering or heed the warning of Mary Shelly and Aldous Huxley about ‘Promethean hubris’? The last word in the debate is yet to be pronounced!

The article first appeared in TheTimes Of India Blogs 

‘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?