SECULAR VALLEY AND POLARISED JAMMU

MY RESPONSE TO NEERJA CHOWDHARY:

Bangalore

24th December, 2014

Dear Ms.Neerja Chowdhury ji,

I read with interest your article, "STALLED IN THE VALLEY...." in today's Times Of India. Please permit me to make a few observations on the contents of the article.

It is clear from the general tenor of your piece that "secular" writers like you still find it hard to accept the Modi phenomenon and his most under-estimated capacity to deliver victories in state after state and almost reach his target of "CONGRESS MUKT BHARAT". (Arnab Goswami is certain that the congress is totally decimated)

When the BJP lost the bye-elections in UP and Bihar, the euphoria in the secular media was palpable. Many media pandits had declared, in ugly displays of confident clairvoyance, that people have become wiser after backing the BJP to the hilt in the parliamentary elections and the "Modi wave" has evaporated. 

The splendid and even unprecedented victories in Haryana and Maharashatra could silence the media only to a small extent, because it (the media) was dead sure that Modi is on the decline and was confident that six months of "misrule" and non-performance coupled with an overdoze of Hindutva agenda were sure to end the successful run of victories in state elections, because the media also believed that it was all due only to Modi's "achche sitaare"! 

The BJP and Modi are quite capable of collaring the twin issues of 370 AND AFSPA, because Mufti and his party know BJP cannot wish away Article 370 and AFSPA can be moderated and made less oppressive. Besides, the idea of "self rule" is vague, impractical and unconstitutional.

And, Neerja ji, please stop bandying the "idea of India" theme in season and out of season, because there is no such thing as one single idea of India. India, in my humble opinion, is a whole bundle of "ideas".

I may also say that you are totally wrong in saying that Muslim polarisation took place in Kashmir because of the Hindu polarisation in Jammu. If there was no Muslim polarisation in the valley, how were the Pandits driven away wholesale from the valley in 1990? And if the polarisation of Muslims hasn't remained undiminished, why are the Pandits not allowed to return to their homes and businesses? 

AND I SEE IN THIS A CLEAR ATTEMPT TO ACCUSE MODI OF CAUSING HINDU POLARISATION IN JAMMU. I WOULD ADVISE THE SECULAR MEDIA NOT TO BURST THE ALREADY SPENT POLARISATION PATAAKI.

Yours sincerely, 

B.V.SHENOY  

Stalled in Kashmir Valley, a lower  than expected score in Jharkhand, the Modi momentum has slowed

December 24, 2014, 12:00 AM IST

 Neerja Chowdhury

The Modi juggernaut continues to move ahead, but not at the pace it had hoped for. That is the upshot of the two ‘JK’ elections (Jharkhand and J&K). With BJP all set to form a government in Jharkhand, another state from the Hindi heartland comes under its control. It may have hoped to do better than just get around 40 seats, whereas in the May Lok Sabha polls it had led in 56 assembly segments.

In J&K, it has more than doubled its figure, from 11 to 25 seats, which was also the number of assembly segments in which it had led during Lok Sabha elections. So it has maintained its hold even in the assembly elections where local factors normally hold sway, as PDP found, down to 28 seats from the 41 assembly segments it had led in for 2014 general elections.

BJP may well join the government led by PDP, which has emerged as the single largest party. Both BJP and PDP are exploring a tie-up and “keeping all options open”, though both parties, at the time of writing, are divided on the idea of an alliance.

A policy of polarisation has played a key role in the leap BJP has taken in both states, in Jharkhand between ‘adivasis’ and ‘non-adivasis’, a pitch which has brought BJP electoral dividends though a counter-tribal consolidation has also taken place and benefited JMM, helping it win around 18 seats even though it was in government and faced popular dissatisfaction.

In J&K, the Hindu polarisation in Jammu created a counter-polarisation in the Valley to keep BJP at bay. Statements by BJP leaders about doing away with Article 370 and having a Hindu CM from Jammu pressed panic buttons in the Valley about BJP changing the special character of J&K if it came to power. This counter-polarisation benefited PDP the most but not to the extent it had expected, with NC and Congress also mopping up some seats.

There is another clear message of the two ‘JK’ elections – that alliances are going to be key for non-BJP parties in the future if they want to fight BJP or even retain their turf. Clearly, unity among non-BJP parties in the future if they want to fight BJP or even retain their turf. Clearly, unity among non-BJP forces – JMM, Cong-ress, RJD, JD(U) and JVM – in Jhar-khand would have enabled them to give a tougher fight to the saffron party. But JMM had calculated that on its own, it had better chances of being part of whichever government came to power and emerge as the kingmaker. This did not happen.

With the hung nature of J&K assembly, PDP and BJP together seem the most viable combination for a stable government, though it would entail walking on razor’s edge for both parties, given their sharp ideological differences, be it on Article 370 or the abrogation of AFSPA or the idea of ‘self-rule’ to which PDP is committed.

On the plus side, their coming together may help bridge the yawning gap that has been created between a Muslim-dominated Valley and a Hindu-dominated Jammu in the country’s only Muslim-majority state. This has not only security implications but also a bearing on the very idea of India, where religions and communities have coexisted to make for a plural ethos. Although polarisation between these two regions has taken place in the past, as during the 1983 elections, never has the divide been as sharp as it is today. And a government which represents only one region can unleash forces which widen the divide. Even the militant Hurriyat, when they talked about ‘azadi’, used to speak about the whole of J&K and not one part of it.

There is undoubtedly a flip side to this story. Such an alliance would not go down well with PDP’s support base in the Valley – unless Mufti Mohammad Sayeed can show dramatic results very soon, on the job front and on moving the stalled dialogue process forward.

Amit Shah’s job is over, of delivering seats to the party. And now it is over to Narendra Modi. Much will depend on the kind of vision that the PM has about J&K, the equation he can establish with Mufti, who is a seasoned politician but who could also play a behind-the-scenes role to defuse tensions with Pakistan, which have a bearing on the Kashmir problem.

Mufti had enjoyed a rare rapport with Atal Bihari Vajpayee, even as he led a PDP-Congress government bet-ween 2002-05, the period when major initiatives were put into motion to ease the situation in the state, and Vajpayee had spoken about finding a solution to the Kashmir tangle within the ambit of insaniyat.

It goes without saying that the formation of such a government will be contingent on the ability of the PM to curb the hyper-activism displayed by saffron voices in recent weeks and to take along RSS. But it also represents a window of opportunity, which comes but rarely, which many believe could even help Modi emerge not just a leader of India but of South Asia.

One last word about the increased voter turnout in these elections. There was a time when people in J&K felt that Delhi would never allow them to choose their elected representatives. The 2014 elections in J&K, as also in Jharkhand, connote a deepening of faith in our democratic processes.

DID GANDHI PRACTISE SHAVAASANA & NEHRU SHIRSHAASANA?

Bangalore

3rd July, 2015

Dear Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi, 

I was not amused to read your article, "Mastering the drill of democracy" in the Hindu of 26th June, 2015. Though the piece is a week old, some comments made by you therein do call for counter-comments/rebuttals and outright rejection. Please hear me out in the following few paragraphs:

1.Both Tsar Nicholas I and Indira Gandhi were evil dictators born into aristocracy, while Modi's background is utterly humble, simple and without the least pretension to greatness. Therefore the comparison you have drawn is, to say the least, tortuous and hence very regrettable.  

2. Watching and enjoying military drills might have given the Tsar rapture, ecstasy and even an orgasm everytime he saw the drills, But calling Modi a drill master is far-fetched, crooked and evil.

3. Comparing Modi also to Indira GandhI, because as you claim, she too was a drill master AND a compulsive- obsessive order-monger is again a hair-brained fantasy, because Modi has none of Indira Gandhi's failings, AND for all her orderliness and love for anything military, her regime, which you prefer to call a "power machine", was totally corrupt, inefficient and above all oppressive, all of which Modi's is NOT, even by a long shot.

4.Yes, Gandhiji did practise shavaasana and also didn't make a "shibboleth" of it. As if to compensate this, Gandhiji also slept naked between two young, naked girls to prove to the world his queer notions of control over his sexual 'urges! 

AND GANDHIJI ACTUALLY DID EXPOUND IT FOR MASS ADOPTION!

WHAT WOULD ARNAB GOSWAMI HAVE SAID, IF GANDHIJI WERE TO DO IT TODAY? ANY WAGERS, GOPAL GANDHIJI?

5. Also, Nehru's much eulogised practice of doing daily shirshaasana didn't do him much good, because he seemed to have done little else (besides smoking and drinking) to keep fit and healthy and in the end, suffered a paralytic stroke.

6. Your objection to Modi "expounding" yoga for mass consumption or Baba Ramdev making yogaasanas popular through TV shows is incomprehensible and can only be explained away as your hate-filled reaction to the success both have achieved in their own individual style, to make yoga, a universally acclaimed system of making body and mind healthy through physical exercises and dhyaan, in a unique, ancient Hindu way. 

If the nation adopts the yoga and becomes healthy and less violent, why should the Gandhis-real as well as fake-crib and run away to distant America, as if they are afraid to face the truth?

India, with a history of 5000 years behind it, has lived through the last 1000 years in shameful slavery, repeated, avoidable and largely self-inflicted defeats on the battle-field, resulting in abject subjugation by fanatic conquerors, religious proselytisers and plain robbers. Even after becoming a free nation, none of our rulers ever gave a clarion call for the nation to become strong, intellectually and physically, and be fit to forge ahead in a highly competitive world. 

Swami Vivekananda, to give credit where it is due, even if belatedly, did give the call, "ARISE, AWAKE, AND STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED", transforming a Kathopanishad shloka into a rejuvenation call for an enslaved nation, but it came when India was in the clutches of a self-defeating mood of slavery.

Therefore, nothing would have been found amiss or out of place if Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as the leader of a 1.25 billion strong nation, had given this message on the great International day of Yoga:

We have been a weak nation, a nation of do-gooders and pacifists, of men who are afraid of the noise of crackers, the smell of smoke. Men of withered wills and sunken chests. It is time we built up our sinews, physical and mental, time we toned up our tissues, tightened our tendons. We must retrieve Bharat from the shambles that our so-called liberal leaders of the last six decades have left us…They were not leaders but mis-leaders who tell us that being muscled-up is mean, being belligerent is bullying. In fact such peacemakers and liberals are dangerous anarchists. Let us march, not saunter, stand and sit in neat rows, not haphazardly, observe mauna rather than chatter away and if we have to speak, let us speak on the glory of Bharat Mata…’

I for one would have loudly applauded. Perhaps, Periyar would certainly have denounced it as a Brahmanical conspiracy to once again subjugate the non-Brahmins. But, today, does anybody really care if 'Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Periyar, Jayaprakash Narayan would have recoiled from the message'?

Yours sincerely, 

B.V.SHENOY. 

Mastering the drill of democracy

• GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
• 
  

The human mind connects the seemingly unconnected but, as one invariably discovers, tellingly.

When I saw and read reports of hence our Prime Minister vilthe great Yoga Day assemblage on what used to be called King’s Way, now Rajpath, in our national capital, I thought of two ‘unconnected’ persons. The first was Tsar Nicholas I (1796-1855). And the second was Indira Gandhi. Both were ‘strong’ personalities credited with ‘an iron will’, exemplars of dogged determination, single-minded purpose. But the similarities did not end there. Both disliked dissent and suppressed it.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi

But why did the yoga procedures of that day remind me of them? Tsar Nicholas had faced a revolt the very day he ascended the throne. He crushed it ruthlessly but also set up, reflexively, the largest and most insidious system of spies and informers Russia had known. He also developed another very particular fascination. This was for things martial, for watching and enjoying drills. “It was specially at large-scale military reviews,” says his biographer Riasanovsky, “that Nicholas I experienced rapture, almost ecstasy.” Nicholas I is said to have been a handsome man, attentive to physical fitness and to how he appeared, in terms of looks and attire, to others. Quite logically for him, the Tsar regularly, almost compulsively, arranged for parades by uniformed men standing in chessboard order, moving and marching in brassy orchestration. Tsar Nicholas came, in fact, to be called ‘drill-master’. The size of his empire grew with the shape of his army, though he suffered serious reverses, and economic stagnation. This did not trouble him, for he could get in the drills he saw, his ‘ecstasy’.

A power machine

Indira, as a child, loved organising ‘armies’ which grew from a home-game to serious proportions when, still an adolescent, she ‘founded’ the Bal Charkha Sangh and the Vanar Sena to ‘help’ the Congress’s campaigns in Allahabad. Decades later, in 1962, when her noble father — too noble, some may say — as Prime Minister was still coming to terms with the Chinese action, she was at embattled Tezpur, right among Indian jawans, offering them and the people of the area, solidarity and practical help — a semi-military initiative of compelling significance. She was being a ‘drill-master’ too. The moment was epiphanic. But the ‘drill-master’ in her had another dimension. She believed in bringing whatever she had control over into a certain ‘order’, her order. Almost from the day she became Prime Minister, she sensed dissent among senior Congressmen which she proceeded to crush, systematically. She set up an intricate web of informers, political and professional, who helped her retain and tighten her order, her control. The government of India under her became much more than a constitutional entity; it turned into a power-machine, with all its ramifications, particularly the military, the para military set-ups, the police and her network of informants and spies functioning like well-oiled, well-keyed, robots. A great rise took place in the eminence of ‘pure’ and applied science accompanied by a somewhat hush-hush mutuality between the government’s science laboratories and its defence strategists. The spectacular military intervention in East Pakistan leading to the birth of Bangladesh and Pokhran I leading to India’s nuclear weaponisation, had to happen under Indira, the drill-master.

As also, 40 years ago this day, the National Emergency. Paranoia has an ally in megalomania.

But to return, for a moment, to yoga and to last week’s drill-mastering of that ancient science of self-healing.

I do not wish to go as far back as Vivekananda but we do know that Gandhi practised the shavasana and Nehru the sirsasana. Both spoke of the efficacy of the two methods but neither made a shibboleth of it, much less expound it for mass adoption. Baba Ramdev’s public and televised dissemination of yoga turned what was essentially a personal health regime practised by millions in the privacy of their homes or learning institutions into a commodity for mega-consumption, with actual ‘yoga’ products for sale on the sides. The Yoga Day exposition on Rajpath has taken the Baba’s commercial potting of it beyond commodification to what can be called a political massification. Why ‘political’?

Retrieving Bharat

The question takes us back to Nicholas I and Indira Gandhi. Like those two historical figures, Prime Minister Modi has a sense of ‘order’. He backs that up with an attentiveness to his own fitness, punctuality, ‘turnout’. By personally leading, like an adept instructor, the phalanx gathered on the Rajpath lawns, he has choreographed yoga into an opera of mass power. But not just of power as in wholesome personal strength. Rather, power as in a collective mission, a mass drill that goes beyond personal well-being into a national nostrum, a national mission that bears an unmistakable family resemblance to the drills by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. And what is the mission’s message?

Quite simply, this: ‘We have been a weak nation, a nation of do-gooders and pacifists, of men who are afraid of the noise of crackers, the smell of smoke. Men of withered wills and sunken chests. It is time we built up our sinews, physical and mental, time we toned up our tissues, tightened our tendons. We must retrieve Bharat from the shambles that our so-called liberal leaders of the last six decades have left us…They were not leaders but mis-leaders who tell us that being muscled-up is mean, being belligerent is bullying. In fact such peacemakers and liberals are dangerous anarchists. Let us march, not saunter, stand and sit in neat rows, not haphazardly, observe mauna rather than chatter away and if we have to speak, let us speak on the glory of Bharat Mata…’

Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Periyar, Jayaprakash Narayan would have recoiled from the message. They would have seen it as macho, aggressive. And because of the unmistakable Hindutva rhetoric concealed in it, deeply divisive. But Indira Gandhi, I suspect, would have seen it as clever. He is tapping India’s sentiments, tapping them into action, hand it to the man!

Emergency’s script

Forty years ago, the Emergency spoke the same script. Jayaprakash Narayan, campaigning against despotism and corruption, was vilified as an anarchist. His movement was dubbed as anti-national, anti-progress. Dissent became treason, opposition became heresy. And overnight, posters came up: ‘Batein kum, kam ziyadah’ (Speak less, work more). And an old Sanskrit word was set flying on a new political string: Anushasan, discipline. The ‘call of the hour’ was anushasan, with Acharya Vinoba Bhave getting roped into the act to describe the period as ‘Anushasan Parva’, the Discipline Moment. Inevitably, newspapers fell silent, All India Radio became a trumpet. Spies crept out of woodrot to belittle, walls acquired hi-fi ears to betray truth-tellers, corners found whispering tongues. A kind of ‘yoga’ was unleashed — bhayayoga, the yoga of multiple fears in which mauna (silence), sushupti(willed stupor), and savata (immobility) featured strong. And a divinity was ideationally superimposed on pictorial blitzes of the nation’s ‘saviour’, Indira Gandhi.

There were no Yoga Day type drills organised at the time but ‘spontaneous’ rallies were called to hail the proclamation, hail the Emancipator. Even as mass leaders were jailed, sections of the middle class welcomed a sudden improvement in the punctuality of train movements, attendance in government offices, the check on profiteering that followed. ‘Honesty’ at shopfloors and workplaces became visible. But all ‘for the present’, because it was imposed by fiat, monitored by fiat, by fear, by bhayayoga.

Audi alteram partem (Hear The Other Side) is ever a good principle. So, be it said that the Emergency saw a set of wholesome developments, all for reasons of Realpolitik. It made poverty eradication central to our national discourse. It made good governance seem actually realisable. It reset certain governmental priorities. Of which protection of the natural environment was significant. And it made national security a matter of everyone’s, not just the military’s, concern.

But its real legacy has been wholly unintended. It has made India conscious, as never before, of civil liberties, of the right to freedom of expression. The Emergency, by robbing India awhile of the soul of Republicanism, has made it a truer Republic than it was before 1975.

If today we can talk about the Emergency in the past tense, it is because the nation’s collective spine did not go into a forward-bending dhanurasana (bow-position) and because the ‘media vertebra’ , despite censorship, stayed particularly unbent. And because the judiciary, despite the demoralising judgment in ADM Jabalpur v/s S S Shukla retained its core independence, thanks to the conscience-keeping Justice H.R. Khanna.

A person who has recovered from a stroke values the faculties of motor ability, mental comprehension and speech more than one who never lost it.

The Constitution as amended in 1978 has made a proclamation of the 1975 type National Emergency impossible. What we have to be wary of is something as bad — the robotisation of our minds into a ‘yogic’ acceptance of one drill — majoritarianism — and its masterful drill-master.

(Gopalkrishna Gandhi is Distinguished Professor of History and Politics, Ashoka University.)