lest we forget 25/6...

25/6/75 was the day Emergency was enacted in India under Indira Gandhi's premiership. A black day for Indian Democracy, it is important to recollect some of the characteristics and see how we score today.

If you look up, "India Emergency" on the WiKi, the page gives the criticism and accusation on Emergency period that includes the following:

Criticism and accusations of the Emergency-era may be grouped as:

• Detention of people by police without charge or notification of families
• Abuse and torture of detainees and political prisoners
• Use of public and private media institutions, like the national television network Doordarshan, for propaganda
• Destruction of the slum and low-income housing in ...Delhi.
• Large scale and illegal enactment of laws

The Emergency years were the biggest challenge to India's commitment to democracy, which proved vulnerable to the manipulation of powerful leaders and large parliamentary majorities.

Now, look up the most recent news items and try and categorize the governance in recent times. 

- Tribals being evicted in the name of industrialization, 'development' and growth in almost every part of the country, in other parts there is either blissful negligence to address or deliberate ignorance of issues of the marginalized (which are as good as clamping a death warrant on them)

- Detention and Intimidation of people who protest the State, despite having a active Judiciary 

- The smear campaign that the government ran against Baba Ramdev, Anna Hazare, et al continues unabated, thank God we do have some lever of independent media, however, they are shrinking in space by the day and there seems to be growing list of issues in which a general gag order is being placed through friendly suggestion and coercion to the media rather than a overt order to shut up (that is if you forget the bumping off of a random journo here and there).

- Laws that are slated for enactment (and many that are already in the process of getting implemented) in the coming days in the Parliament, will all pave way for a unchallenged corporate take over of the key services of the State, including education, food security,  health care, housing, social security and definitions of 'development'. 

I was too young to understand what was Emergency all about when it happened, but, whatever I have read since then gives me the impression that we seem to be dangerously close to the phenomena of emergency, except for some amount of independent media and an active judiciary now (and, of course, the uncensored internet!).  The images of very unlikely leaders who protest against the State and gather the public around them is similar. If the declaration of Emergency was a bold move by a desperate PM, the current PM has seems to invoke all that went under such a situation through gentle persuasion, blatant denial, covert brute force and bad cover up operation where it is visible. People never seemed to matter less to a government. The corruption charges against Indira Gandhi that the Allahabad High Court found valid is a speck of dust in comparison to the cosmos of corruption of the current set-up. 

There were many who supported Emergency (and regret/explain it for the rest of their lives). We need to ensure that the ranks of such is not swelling currently, while there are many who are touched by the large scale movements, there are many who are happily busy with their lives, to them, it is important to remind what happened during 25/6/75, lest history revisit us in a different form! 

Judges are humans too...

Three years ago the Law Minister said, 'have a heart', to a lady reporter about why Judges needed to take their spouses on official foreign visits and went on to say, 'you are a women, you should understand!' (my blog entry on that here).Few months ago the entire nation heard Niraa Radia that a SC judge has been 'taken care of'. Two days back a Judge of the Kerala High Court said, that the former CJI was 'approachable', whatever that meant. 

Now, it transpires that the Government was planning to gag the Honourables in its own quirky way. The news item (link) on the foreign visit by the Judges has been ridiculed by the Delhi HC. I haven't read the guideline itself and am unable to comment. The two questions that I have in relation to this news are:

1. What if the Government sends the Judges on 'sponsored trips' that are hosted in other countries by 'private individuals/interests' (that is such a round about way to avoid the word, 'corporate'!), can the Judge say 'no' to the government?  - such a programme was organized for the Judges about 8 years ago to USA, to understand the complexities of the new bio-tech related cases that may come up in India. We all know who 'teaches' bio-tech in USA with its revolving door policy.

2. What will prevent the Judge from receiving such a largesse in India itself? - after all it is a free country. So, what measure is being proposed by the government to ensure that the Judge is not invaded by foreign nationals or for that matter, Indians, with their 'hospitality'! We had amongst other things, the Tihar Raja calling a sitting Judge of Chennai HC on his phone for a favour. The Judge was bold enough to state it in the open court the next day, but, what is the protection the 'competent authority' in the government gives the Honourable Judges against such invasion?

I do think that the Judges should voluntarily accept these regulations and indeed turn it back on the bureaucracy and politicians. As equally powerful pillars of Democracy, they stand to be influenced by the global corporate establishment as much as the Judiciary, if not more.  

frenzy, cheap and dirty - Congress response to Baba Ramdev...

Lets face it, the issue is not of Baba Ramdev. 

The issue is a Minister sitting in a Cabinet meeting called by the Prime Minister to discuss how to tackle Baba Ramdev's fast against corruption, while every newspaper across the country has carried the said Minister's photo in the morning on corruption charges! 

The issue is the anger of the common man against an insipid, uninspiring and unimaginative (except when they define the BPL) government with a even more unimaginative, uninspiring and insipid Congress party heading it. 

The newspapers spoke of 'Ministers grovelling before the Baba', well, don't we know? it has grovelled before the Government of USA for the Nuclear Deal, it has grovelled before the DMK several times over for protecting its own government and the nakedness of the DMK King and his entire family,  it has grovelled before the Supreme Court, the Sri Lankan Government...it is so bereft of any accomplishments of any kind that the Congress party chief is left to celebrate only the swearing-in of Mamta Banerjee and Indian cricket team winning the world cup in recent times. She had nothing to do with either of these and that made her perfectly happy!!

The way the government has responded to the Baba is setting a much lower standard for itself than what it had done during the earlier fast by Annaji Hazare. The reaction is obviously poorly orchestrated (how they miss someone now in Raj Bhavan, Kolkatta), so, we have Manmohan Singh in a frenzied move, trying to browbeat the Baba by sending 4 Cabinet colleagues, lead by the moral professor Pranab Mukherjee himself (who can be a candidate for next Papacy)...apparently the Baba was not impressed and it created a very bad media item. So sad for the frenzied effort.

The cheap is the babu-neta nexus response. A series of news releases in the last week has been directed at NGOs, from IT to ED to every government agency that is involved in regulation, vaguely indicating and in a veiled manner threatening the civil society from in any way jumping into to inconvenient political activism. Of course, the media too has been roped in with the usual line of argument being adopted. Simplistic and cheap, 

(a) he is a Baba, so he must be RSS; RSS = communal = bad; Baba = RSS = bad

(b) he goes around in a private jet = he must be rich; rich in India = against poor; so, Baba = against poor

(c) he talks much in television = famous; most famous televised = dumb; Baba = must be dumb

(d) He has differences of opinion with Annaji; differences in politics = undercutting each other; so, Baba = against Anna

(e) he is a yadav (oh yeah! every "progressive and secular" media story has mentioned his pre-monastic name with the caste title in tow) = he cannot be more intelligent than Lallu or Mulayam; Baba = small town lower caste ambitious politician (this is mostly implied through the choice of visuals that are endlessly looped in media and choice of questions posted to others, never articulated directly)

(f) he runs a business = he has to be corrupt; Baba = corrupt

(g) Baba is against large corporates, so, he must be anti-development, he is not popular like a cricketer or a movie star = he should be countered by movie stars and cricketers (this will happen in the coming days) and other 'intellectual' public personalities (they can net several i am sure)

This cheap campaign, (again poorly orchestrated) has lead the Manmohan Singh government to look absolutely cheap and foolish. Every one of the 'perception' that they would like to promote and respond of the Baba are applicable to many in the Congress several times over and every time they make such points and try to pull down the Baba or Annaji, they pull down themselves deeper into a grave.

The outright dirty in Congress has been fully 'inside' outsourced to Diggy Maharaj! he epitomises the foot-in-the-mouth diseases that has plagued Congress for more than a year now. 'Baba is not as clean as Anna', says Maharaj, thereby declaring who has the right to cast a stone on him (and his party). He has issued several 'warnings' to the Baba (while others in his party are busy saying, 'regardless of how corrupt they are, we are wedded to DMK'), cribbed about how the Baba charges for teaching yoga (while his party is fine with K-family swindling the nation through every crevice they could sight in the government) even calling Ramdev's ashram a land grab according to reports, (while his Party's another senior partner has all but sold an entire state of Maharashtra to the land grab mafia). 

The issue is not Baba Ramdev or Annaji. The issue is corruption as a culture of governance and polity that has been perpetuated by the successive governments of any colour in all states. A culture that has inhibited corporate, academia and media too leaving very thin margins for truth and fair deal to survive in society. Truth and fairness is what every citizen aspires for despite his or her social, political and economic standing. The acceptance of this corrupt culture has been mandated to succeed in any endeavour that involves the State. For too long, 'chalta hai!' attitude has penetrated our governance! Some time somewhere, people should stop and say, 'nahin chale ga!', that this shall not go on - not because they hate these politicians, nor because they want to cleanse the system, but, an expression of self-preservation of the Nation, to retain sanity, sustain faith and hold on to a vision that was articulated by self-less giants of the past.

The government may arrest Baba, it can justify the same in the "nation's interest", such measures have been done before and will be done again. 

The government can continue with the smear campaign, this too has been done before and will done, and, with the Baba, the media is already playing the government's (no newspaper carried all the demands of the Baba's team!!) side. 

But, when will Congress and the Government wake up to the real power that propels the Annajis and the Babas? the anger of the ordinary people and their intention to now step out and be counted. That cannot be addressed by any number of frenzied, cheap or dirty campaigns.

Hind Swaraj times...

Interestingly, Baba Ramdev's demands letter submitted to the Prime Minister (one of the versions that has appeared on-line) has a reference to this small book written by Mahatma Gandhi in 1909. 


In the Appendix submitted, it states:
3. To end foreign laws, customs and culture prevailing in the independent Bharat so that every Indian can get economic and social justice.  We should follow Mahatma Gandhi’s book named Hind Swaraj mentioning that after independence we need to remove British system and adopt Bhartiya system.


It is important to know that one of the fundamental disagreements between Gandhi and Nehru was over the views Gandhiji expressed regarding the future development and governance of India in the book Hind Swaraj. Gandhiji time and again had reiterated that he stood by what he said in this book written much before his arrival in India or leading the Indian freedom struggle. 


Some of the important differences are part of the publication "Quintessential Gandhi" published  by Samanvaya in 2005. Later republished in English and Tamil by Kizhakku Padhippagam.


Here below are few excerpts that may be of interest and quite relevant in the context of the on-going debate:

The key … is to realise that it [Hind Swaraj] is not an attempt to go back to the so-called ignorant, dark ages. But it is an attempt to see beauty in voluntary simplicity, poverty and slowness. … the modern rage for variety, for flying through the air, for multiplicity of wants, etc., have no fascination for me. They deaden the inner being in us. Therefore, even whilst I am travelling at the rate of 40 miles per hour, I am conscious that it is a necessary evil, and that my best work is to be done in little Sevagram … and in the neighbouring villages to which I can walk. But being a highly practical man I do not avoid railway travelling or motoring for the mere sake of looking foolishly consistent”.

Harijan, October 14, 1939.

Gandhi's vision of Hind Swaraj was countered, however, b many, including by one of his young close associates, Jawaharlal Nehru, as early as 1928. Provoked by Gandhiji's letter (dated January 4th, 1928), Nehru elucidated the reasons for his dissent as follows: 

You know how intensely I have admired you and believe in you as a leader who can lead this country to victory and freedom. I have done so in spite of the fact that I hardly agreed with anything that some of your previous publications – Indian Home Rule, etc., - contained. I felt and feel that you were and are infinitely greater than your little books… Reading many of your articles in Young India – your autobiography, etc., - I have often felt how very different my ideals were from yours. ”

Letter from Jawaharlal Nehru, Allahabad, January 11, 1928.

"...You misjudge greatly, I think, the civilization of the West and attach too great an importance to its many failings. You have stated somewhere that India has nothing to learn from the West and that she had reached a pinnacle of wisdom in the past. I certainly disagree with this viewpoint and I neither think that the so-called Ramaraj was very good in the past, nor do I want it back. I think that western or rather industrial civilization is bound to conquer India, maybe with many changes and adaptations, but none the less, in the main, based on industrialism. You have criticized strongly the many obvious defects of industrialism and hardly paid any attention to its merits. .... It is the opinion of most thinkers in the West that these defects are not due to industrialism as such but to the capitalist system which is based on exploitation of others”.

Letter from Jawaharlal Nehru, Allahabad, January 11, 1928.

Gandhiji seems to have been taken aback by such an outburst and wrote to Nehru:

The differences between you and me appear to me to be so vast and radical that there seems to be no meeting ground between us…I suggest a dignified way of unfurling your banner. Write to me a letter for publication showing your differences. I will print it in Young India and write a brief reply”.

Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, January 17, 1928.

But Nehru was not prepared to have a public discussion of his views.

Seventeen years later in 1945, similar differences relating to the shape of indenendent India’s polity arose again between Gandhiji and Jawaharlal Nehru. In Oct 1945, Gandhiji had said:

You will not be able to understand me if you think that I am talking about the villages of today. My ideal village still exist only in my imagination. Men and women will live in freedom, prepared to face the whole world. … Nobody will be allowed to be idle or to wallow in luxury. Everyone will have to do physical work. Granting all this … a number of things … will have to be organized on a large scale. Perhaps there will even be railways and also post and telegraph offices. I do not know what things there will not be. Nor am I bothered about it. If I can make sure of the essential things, other things will follow in due course”.

Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, October 5, 1945.

I believe that if India, and through India the world, is to achieve real freedom, then sooner or later we shall have to go and live in the villages - in huts, not in palaces. Millions of people can never live in cities and palaces in comfort and peace. Nor can they do so by killing one another, that is, by resorting to violence and untruth. I have not the slightest doubt that, but for the pair, truth and non-violence, mankind will be doomed. We can have the vision of that truth and non-violence only in the simplicity of the villages”. - Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru, October 5, 1945.

Nehru however demurred again as in 1928 and wrote:

The question before us is not one of truth versus untruth and non-violence versus violence…I do not understand why a village should necessarily embody truth and non-violence. A village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally and no progress can be made from a backward environment. Narrow-minded people are much more likely to be untruthful and violent”.

Nehru to Gandhi, October 1945

Indeed as freedm seemed imminent, the elite openly began to be drawn to modernity and its institutions.

Eighteen years later, however, when India had been launched on the Western road by the British and the Indian elite, Jawaharlal Nehru spoke in a somewhat sombre mood in September 1963, conceded:

My mind was trying to grapple with the problem of what to do with more than 5,50,000 villages of India and the people who live there. …If we were to think purely in terms of output, all the big and important factories in India are not really so important as agriculture. ...what Gandhiji did was fundamentally right. He was looking all the time at the villages of India, at the most backward people in India in every sense, and he devised something. It was not merely the spinning wheel; that was only a symbol. He laid stress on village industries, which again to the modern mind does not seem very much worthwhile.

…People think that he was against machinery. I don’t think he was against it. He did not want machinery except in the context of the well-being of the mass of our people. What he suggested – cottage industry - was something which immediately benefitted the people, not only in regard to employment but also in production”.

Speech by Jawaharlal Nehru, to a seminar on ‘Social Welfare in a Developing Economy’, New Delhi,

Septmeber 22, 1963.

In the Indian Parliament in December 1963 again he spoke:

I begin to think more and more of Mahatma Gandhi’s approach. It is odd that I am mentioning his name in this connection. I am entirely an admirer of the modern machine, and I want the best machinery and the best technique, but, taking things as they are in India, however rapidly we advance towards the machine... the fact remains that large numbers of our people are not touched by it and will not be for a considerable time. Some other method has to be evolved that they become partners in production, even though the production apparatus of theirs may not be efficient as compared to modern technique, but we must use that, for otherwise, it would be wasted. That idea has to be kept in mind. We should think more of the very poor country men of ours and do something to improve their lot as quickly as we can. This problem is troubling me a great deal”.

Reply to the Debate on Planning, Lok Sabha, December 11, 1963