India’s election Can anyone stop Narendra Modi ? - The Economist.

He will probably become India’s next prime minister. That does not mean he should be

·          

WHO does not marvel at the prospect of India going to the polls? Starting on April 7th, illiterate villagers and destitute slum-dwellers will have an equal say alongside Mumbai’s millionaires in picking their government. Almost 815m citizens are eligible to cast their ballots in nine phases of voting over five weeks—the largest collective democratic act in history.

But who does not also deplore the fecklessness and venality of India’s politicians? The country is teeming with problems, but a decade under a coalition led by the Congress party has left it rudderless. Growth has fallen by half, to about 5%—too low to provide work for the millions of young Indians joining the job market each year. Reforms go undone, roads and electricity remain unavailable, children are left uneducated. Meanwhile politicians and officials are reckoned to have taken bribes worth between $4 billion and $12 billion during Congress’s tenure. The business of politics, Indians conclude, is corruption.

No wonder that the overwhelming favourite to become India’s next prime minister is the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Narendra Modi. He could not be more different from Rahul Gandhi, his Congress party rival. The great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first premier, Mr Gandhi would ascend to office as if by divine right. Mr Modi is a former teaseller propelled to the top by sheer ability. Mr Gandhi seems not to know his own mind—even whether he wants power. Mr Modi’s performance as chief minister of Gujarat shows that he is set on economic development and can make it happen. Mr Gandhi’s coalition is tainted by corruption. By comparison Mr Modi is clean.

So there is much to admire. Despite that, this newspaper cannot bring itself to back Mr Modi for India’s highest office.

Modi’s odium

The reason begins with a Hindu rampage against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, in which at least 1,000 people were slaughtered. The orgy of murder and rape in Ahmedabad and the surrounding towns and villages was revenge for the killing of 59 Hindu pilgrims on a train by Muslims.

Mr Modi had helped organise a march on the holy site at Ayodhya in 1990 which, two years later, led to the deaths of 2,000 in Hindu-Muslim clashes. A lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist group in whose cause he has vowed lifelong celibacy, he made speeches early in his career that shamelessly whipped up Hindus against Muslims. In 2002 Mr Modi was chief minister and he was accused of allowing or even abetting the pogrom.

Mr Modi’s defenders, and there are many, especially among the business elite, point to two things. First, repeated investigations—including by the admirably independent Supreme Court—have found nothing to charge their man with. And second, they say, Mr Modi has changed. He has worked tirelessly to attract investment and to boost business for the benefit of Hindus and Muslims alike. Think, they say, of the huge gains to poor Muslims across India of a well-run economy.

On both counts, that is too generous. One reason why the inquiries into the riots were inconclusive is that a great deal of evidence was lost or wilfully destroyed. And if the facts in 2002 are murky, so are Mr Modi’s views now. He could put the pogroms behind him by explaining what happened and apologising. Yet he refuses to answer questions about them. In a rare comment last year he said he regretted Muslims’ suffering as he would that of a puppy run over by a car. Amid the uproar, he said he meant only that Hindus care about all life. Muslims—and chauvinist Hindus—heard a different message. Unlike other BJP leaders, Mr Modi has refused to wear a Muslim skullcap and failed to condemn riots in Uttar Pradesh in 2013 when most of the victims were Muslim.

The lesser of two evils

“Dog-whistle” politics is deplorable in any country. But in India violence between Hindus and Muslims is never far from the surface. At partition, when British India fractured, about 12m people were uprooted and hundreds of thousands perished. Since 2002 communal violence has died down, but there are hundreds of incidents and scores of deaths each year. Sometimes, as in Uttar Pradesh, the violence is on an alarming scale. The spark could also come from outside. In Mumbai in 2008 India suffered horrific attacks by terrorists from Muslim Pakistan—a nagging, nuclear-armed presence next door.

By refusing to put Muslim fears to rest, Mr Modi feeds them. By clinging to the anti-Muslim vote, he nurtures it. India at its finest is a joyous cacophony of peoples and faiths, of holy men and rebels. The best of them, such as the late columnist Khushwant Singh (seearticle) are painfully aware of the damage caused by communal hatred. Mr Modi might start well in Delhi but sooner or later he will have to cope with a sectarian slaughter or a crisis with Pakistan—and nobody, least of all the modernisers praising him now, knows what he will do nor how Muslims, in turn, will react to such a divisive man.

If Mr Modi were to explain his role in the violence and show genuine remorse, we would consider backing him, but he never has; it would be wrong for a man who has thrived on division to become prime minister of a country as fissile as India. We do not find the prospect of a government led by Congress under Mr Gandhi an inspiring one. But we have to recommend it to Indians as the less disturbing option.

If Congress wins, which is unlikely, it must strive to renew itself and to reform India. Mr Gandhi should make a virtue of his diffidence by stepping back from politics and promoting modernisers to the fore. There are plenty of them and modernity is what Indian voters increasingly demand (see article). If, more probably, victory goes to the BJP, its coalition partners should hold out for a prime minister other than Mr Modi.

And if they still choose Mr Modi? We would wish him well, and we would be delighted for him to prove us wrong by governing India in a modern, honest and fair way. But for now he should be judged on his record—which is that of a man who is still associated with sectarian hatred. There is nothing modern, honest or fair about that. India deserves better.

From the print edition: Leaders

एक कविता ... हाँथ में हाँथ, हम थामे जिधर .- विजय शंकर सिंह

(in Roman below)

हाँथ में हाँथ, हम थामे जिधर

कदम दर कदम, बढ़ते चले

राह में से राहें, निकलती गयीं ,

हर राह तेरे दर तक, पहुँचती गयी .

बेसब्री से ढूंढा, जो तुझ को ,

भटकता रहा दर ब दर, दर ब दर ,

झुकाया जब सिर, तू मुझको दिखा ,

व्यर्थ, तुझ को मैं, खोजता ही रहा .

थक कर बैठा जो , गुमसुम सा मैं ,

भीतर कोई खिलखिला कर हंसा ,

ढूँढ़ते क्यों हो मुझ को, तुम दर ब दर ,

देखो ज़रा नज़रें उठा कर इधर .

जो नज़ारे तुम्हे दिख रहे चार सू ,

वे मुझ से ही तो सब आबाद हैं ,

आओ ज़रा अब मेरा हाँथ थामो ,

आँखों में मेरे , धीरे से झांको .

खामोश दरिया , जो तुम्हे दिख रहा है ,

सदियों से ,  भीतर , कुछ उबल रहा है ,

यह किस्सा है दुनिया का , न जाने कब से ,

ढूंढते हैं उसी को , जो खोया ही नहीं है .

-vss.

Haanth mein haanth ham thaame jidhar

Haanth mein haanth thaame jidhar,

kadam dar kadam ham badhte chale,

raah mein se raahen nikaltee gayeen,

har raah tere dar tak pahunchtee gayee.

Be'sabree se  dhoondhaa jo tujh ko,

bahataktaa rahaa dar ba dar, dar ba dar,

jhukaayaa jab sir, tu waheen mujhko dikhaa,

vyarth mein tujh ko main khojtaa hi rahaa.

thak kar baithaa jo gumsum saa main,

andar se koi, khil'khilaa'kar hansaa.

Dhoondhte kyun ho mujh ko tum dar ba dar.

Dekho zaraa saa nazren uthaa kar idhar.

Jo nazaare tumhe dikh rahen chaar soo.

Wey mujh se hee to sab aabaad hain.

Aao zaraa ab meraa haanth thaamo,

aankhon mein mere dheere se jhaanko.

Khaamosh dariyaa jo tumhe dikh rahaa hai,

sadiyon se bheetar kuchh ubal rahaa hai.

Ye kissaa hai duniyaa kaa na jaane kab se.

Dhoondhte hain usee ko, jo khoyaa hee nahin hai..

-vss. 

दरख़्त - विजय शंकर सिंह

हवा  जो  दरख्तों की,  

सांस  थी ,                      

रात  हुयी  बारिश  में,  

धुल  गयी ,

अब  पेड़,  

चुपचाप  और  गुमसुम ,

खामोशी  की  चादर,  

ओढ़े  खड़ें  हैं ,

साधनारत,

या मूक किंकर्तव्यविमूढ़ ? 

मैं , जो  इस  सन्नाटे  और  वीराने  से ,

ऊब  चुका  हूँ  ,

लबरेज़  हूँ  आक्रोश  से ,

सब्र चुक गया ताप  से,

थक  गए  हैं  स्वर ,

आँखे  अन्धकार को  छीजती  हुयी ,

रोशनी  की  तलाश  में  मुब्तिला  हैं .

फूँक   मार   कर ,

जान  डाल  रहा  हूँ ,

इस  दरख़्त  में ,

जो  हरा  भरा  तो  है ,

पर  हो  चला  है  ठूंठ  सा ,

मेरी  कोशिश ,जो  नाकाम तो है ,

पर नातमाम नहीं, 

एक  भी  पत्ते  में ,

हल्की  सी  जुम्बिश भी  नहीं अभी ,

ग़ुरूर  और  अहंकार  में  डूबा,

सारी   शाखें, पत्ते, खुद   ही  में  समेटे,

खुदगर्ज़, 

ठस, अकर्मण्य,और  अना  से  भरा ,

ये  दरख्त,

व्यंग्य  से  मुस्कुराता  है,

मुझे  देख  कर.

मेरी  साँसों  की सामर्थ्य   पर ,

मेरी  फूँक  की ताकत  पर .

मैं  पूरी  हिम्मत  से ,

सीने  में  भर  कर  हवा ,

फूँक पर फूँक  मारने  की  कोशिश  में  हूँ ,

पर  दरख़्त  तो  दरख़्त ,

आस  पास  खड़े  पेड़  भी ,

देख  कर  चुप  हैं , मुझे 

पर  मैं  चुका नहीं  हूँ  मेरे  दोस्त ,

जिजीविषा  जीवित  है  अभी ,

हवाएं कुछ साथ हैं मेरे   ,

और  मैं ,

दरख़्त  को  तंद्रा  से  निकालने  के  लिए ,

फूँक  मारता रहूंगा ,

तुम  मेरे  साथ  रहोगे न,  

मेरे दोस्त .

-vss

A Poem… EMOTIONS…

Emotions are strange feeling,

Emotions give you

a path to travel this world.

But the floodgate of emotions

can destroy you.

Can depress you.

Can land you in a terrific blackhole.

Can caged you in a dark chamber

without a wayout.

Control your emotions.

Ride on your sentiments,

It should be like a river.

Which is passing through a beautiful landscape,

A lovely, lush, eye catching pathway.

Let the emotions enrich you,

like a milky way of river.

Let the fields of your  thoughts

be nourished by your sentiments.

But the flooded river

always brings misery and havoc,

It can destroy the beautiful banks of life.

It can perish the lovely green carpet of the earth.

Flow like a beautiful river.

With calm,  cool and serene nature.

You have to flow,

till you get an ocean to disappear !!

-vss.

An Ambedkar for our times ANAND TELTUMBDE.

Today, Ambedkar certainly outshines every other leader in terms of public acceptance. However, the incidences of casteism also show parallel growth. This paradoxical phenomenon can be explained only by separating the real Ambedkar from the unreal one

In an interview published in Outlook (March 10, 2014), Arundhati Roy says, “We need Ambedkar — now, urgently” — it was in connection with the publication of a new annotated edition of Ambedkar’s text, The Annihilation of Caste, brought out by Navayana, a New Delhi-based publishing house. Ms. Roy wrote a 164-page essay titled “The Doctor and the Saint” as an introduction to the book, which has now become 415 pages thick, expanding the core text of just about 100 pages.

Behind the controversy

Her introduction has already created an unseemly controversy in Dalit circles, reminiscent of the debate in the 1970s in the wake of incipient Dalit literature, about who could produce Dalit literature. The protagonists of Dalits insisted that one had to be born a Dalit to do that. The controversy now reflects a similar identitarian obsession that one had to produce a caste certificate (Scheduled Caste) to introduce either Ambedkar or his text. It is intriguing however why such a controversy has cropped up only in the case of Ms. Roy especially when scores of non-Dalits have written on Ambedkar and his writings earlier. Is it because of her celebrity status or of her infamy as a Maoist sympathiser as perceived by middle class Dalits? The latter is more probable. For them, anything even remotely connected with communism is enough to evoke despisal and disapproval.

Whatever be the motivation behind this uproar, it is surely unwarranted. Ignoring the outpouring of nasty “one-liners” in social media, the main objections, at a reasonable level, to her writing this piece appear to be her undue projection of Gandhiji to introduce Ambedkar or to her being qualified to do the job in the first place or even her purported introduction not being an introduction to the text that followed. Even if one concedes the validity of these viewpoints, they need not have been expressed with such vehemence and negativity. As a matter of fact, the creative writer in Ms. Roy chose not the text per se but the stand-off between Ambedkar and Gandhiji in the context of Gandhiji’s reaction to the text in his magazine Harijan. She imagined that she could bring forth the problem of castes far more effectively if she used the contrast between Ambedkar and Gandhiji, who best represented moderate Hindu society, than dealing with the subject matter in a dry and mechanical manner. As for the qualification, while she took great pains to understand the issue she wrote on, her writings never reflected any aura of authority beyond a commonsensical objectivity necessitated by her style. Perhaps, and therefore, they appeal more to common people than to the so-called intellectuals.

Ambedkar, real and unreal

The most interesting argument however came not from Dalits but, paradoxically, an upper caste journalist (“B.R. Ambedkar, Arundhati Roy, and the politics of appropriation” by G. Sampath,Livemint, March 18, 2014). Challenging Ms. Roy, it said that if she wanted the bauxite under the Niyamgiri hills to be left to the Adivasis, why did she not leave Ambedkar who has been the only possession of Dalits to Dalits themselves? Interestingly though, the implication of the argument can be dangerous insofar as any engagement of the “other” defined as such on the basis of caste can be dismissed as illegitimate. May be, Ambedkar symbolises the cultural good of Dalits, but still, to ghettoise him to Dalits alone will mean downright disrespect to him and incalculable harm to the cause of Dalits. Niyamgiri left to the Adivasis implies a progressive interrogation of the prevailing developmental paradigm, while leaving Ambedkar to Dalits will mean retrogressive destruction of the annihilation-agenda of Babasaheb Ambedkar.

The controversy has surprisingly gone past the main point — that it is the bland business logic of the publisher that has fundamentally drawn Ms. Roy into writing the introduction. With her stature as a Booker Prize awardee, later amplified by her fearless pro-people stands on various issues on various occasions, the book was sure to go global. Moreover, it can well be imagined that her writing would certainly create a controversy, as has happened before. All this would mean a bonanza for any publisher in boosting sales of the book. Whether Navayana had consciously thought it out this way or not, these established product strategies of a publisher cannot be grudged by anyone as, after all, s/he has to follow the grammar of business. Notwithstanding the “anti-caste” tag Navayana tends to wear of late, publishing adulatory and cultish literature on Ambedkar is not the same thing as supporting the annihilation of castes. Once this controversy raked up by a few dies down, the vast majority of Dalits would rather take pride in the point that even Arundhati Roy joined them in worshipping their god. Every such form of Ambedkar adulation has indeed been reinforcing the caste identity and directly distances the annihilation project.

The acceptance of Ambedkar does not necessarily equate itself with the spread of an anti-caste ethos. Today, Ambedkar certainly outshines every other leader in terms of public acceptance. No other leader can rival him in the number of statues, pictures, congregations, books, research, organisations, songs, or any other marker of popularity of/on him. Curiously, his picture has become a fixture even in movies and television episodes. However, the incidences of casteism as indicated by cases of caste discrimination, caste atrocities, caste associations and caste discourses, etc. also show parallel growth. This paradoxical phenomenon can be explained only by separating the real Ambedkar from the unreal one, cast into the icons constructed by vested interests to thwart the consciousness of radical change ever germinating in Dalit masses. These icons package the enigmatic real Ambedkar into a simplistic symbol: an architect of the Constitution, a great nationalist, the father of reservations, a staunch anti-communist, a liberal democrat, a great parliamentarian, a saviour of Dalits, a bodhisattva, etc. These icons of the harmless, status quo-ist Ambedkar have been proliferated all over and overshadow a possible, radical view of the real Ambedkar.

Which Ambedkar?

Notwithstanding the intrigues behind the promotion of such icons by vested interests with active support from the state, the evolution of Ambedkar, the pragmatist sans any ideological fixation, all through his life, makes him intrinsically difficult to understand. A young Ambedkar who theorised castes as the enclosed classes, the enclosure being provided by the system of endogamy and exogamy, expecting the larger Hindu society to wake up and undertake social reforms like intermarriage in order to open up castes into classes is in contrast to the post-Mahad Ambedkar, disillusioned by the rabid reactions from caste Hindus, turning his sights to politics to accomplish his objective. Were his threats of conversion to Islam for a separate political identity for Dalits, or to force caste Hindus to consider social reforms? Then there is the Ambedkar of the 1930s, anxious to expand his constituency to the working classes sans castes, who founded the Independent Labour Party (ILP), arguably the first Left party in India, and walked with the communists but at the same time one who declared his resolve to convert to some other religion to escape castes. What about the Ambedkar of the 1940s, who returns to the caste, dissolves the ILP and forms the Scheduled Castes Federation, shuns agitational politics and joins the colonial government as labour minister or the one who wrote States and Minorities, propounding state socialism be hardcoded into the proposed Constitution of free India? Or Ambedkar, the staunchest opponent of the Congress or the one who cooperated with the Congress in joining the all-party government and accepted its support to get into the Constituent Assembly? Or even the Ambedkar who developed the representation logic culminating in reservations, expecting that a few advanced elements from among Dalits would help the community progress or the one who publicly lamented that educated Dalits had let him down? Or the Ambedkar who was the architect of the Constitution and advised Dalits to adopt only constitutional methods for a resolution of their problems or the one who disowned it in the harshest possible terms and spoke of being the first person to burn it down? And finally, the Ambedkar who kept referring to Marx as a quasi benchmark to assess his decisions? Or the one who embraced Buddhism and created the ultimate bulwark against communism in India to use the words of one of his scholars, Eleanor Zelliot, or even the one who would favourably compare Buddha and Marx just a few days before bidding adieu to the world, saying their goal was the same but that they differed in the ways of achieving them — Buddha’s being better than Marx’s? These are just a few broad vignettes of him, problematic in typifying him in a simplistic manner. If one goes deeper, one is bound to face far more serious problems.

Ambedkar is surely needed as long as the virus of caste lingers in this land but not as a reincarnation of the old one as most Dalits emotionally reflect on. Not even in the way Ms. Roy would want him to come now and urgently. He will have to be necessarily constructed to confront the far messier problem of contemporary castes than that obtained in his times.

(Anand Teltumbde is a civil rights activist with CPDR, Mumbai.)

A milestone for Pakistan

After 25 hearings at a special court, former President and Chief of the Army Staff Pervez Musharraf was indicted on March 31 for high treason, contrary to expectations that a civil court would not try a military dictator. For a country ruled for the most part by the Army this is a first, and its Defence Minister described the day as a milestone for democracy. Few imagined that Prime Minister Muhammed Nawaz Sharif would initiate proceedings relating to high treason against Mr. Musharraf, and his supporters — some of them still in the government — were dismayed, to say the least. The high jinks by the Musharraf defence team did nothing to improve his case in court, and at one point Justice Faisal Arab and his Bench rose in disgust at the behaviour of counsel. The court gave Mr. Musharraf a long rope by allowing him to seek exemptions on the grounds of security and health, and only issued a non-bailable warrant as a last option after he repeatedly failed to appear before it. There was a feeling that this trial was turning farcical and that the court was unable to exercise its authority.

The dramatic appearance of Mr. Musharraf and the overnight change of his defence counsel signalled a new phase in the trial. Not only were the charges read out to him, but the court was firm that the power to take any decision for him to go abroad either to visit his ailing mother or to seek medical treatment was vested with the federal government. He was not under custody and as such the court could not regulate his movement. The government in the past had refused to take his name off the Exit Control List, and despite speculation of a safe passage and a Saudi-brokered deal it remains to be seen if he actually leaves the country. That is not as significant as the fact that a military dictator who not only abrogated the Constitution but amended it illegally has been brought to book. The transgressions of former military dictators are now the subject of history and they all ruled with impunity. This civilian government which has been trying to enforce the rule of law — not an easy task in the best of times — has sent a tough message that it has the courage and the conviction to do so. Whether the trial will play out to its logical conclusion and how long the process will take remain to be seen. But a blow for civilian authority has been struck, even if critics dismiss it as symbolic, and this could mark a new phase in the lopsided civil-military relations in Pakistan. The government should build on this and strengthen the foundations of liberal democratic governance where the military and civilian authorities are not at loggerheads with each other but are part of a system where each has a clearly defined role to play.
-
The hindu.