Saturday, December 5, 2009
che and hayek
Can one admire che guevara and friedrich von hayek, both at the same time ? Yes. I do. And you would be mistaken to assume that I haven't understood what each or either one of them stood for. They may have occupied opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, though both remain worthy of admiration.So that's that. Haha.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
An essay
What’s the correlation between mandir and mandal?
It is necessary to first differentiate between the social under- currents which constituted both movements and their political manifestations. Like for example if you consider the Indian freedom struggle to be a movement then its manifestation would be the Independence Day or the total grant of political freedom. Logically extending that analogy, the implementation of recommendations of Mandal Commission By V.P.Singh can be considered a manifestation or a culmination of the social empowerment movement which was brewing even before independence. So also the demolition of the babri masjid and the rath yatra can be considered a manifestation of the Ram Jamnabhoomi movement which also traces its roots well into the British Raj .
Social empowerment has always been the foremost objective of all our social reformers right from Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar to Mahatma Gandhi. Though its foremost figurehead has justifiably been considered Babasaheb Ambedkar. Right after independence the constitution had reserved 22.5 % of all jobs in all central and state governments for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. It further had , in many of its articles , directed future governments to extend reservations to the “ Other Backward Classes ”. Even in the 1950s was a commission constituted under Kaka Saheb Kalelkar to identify the backward classes and sugest steps for their upliftment. But its report was shelved .
And then in 1979 another commission was set up by the janata government under the chairmanship of Mr. B.P.Mandal , a former chief minister of Bihar. It used the 1931 census for arriving at the caste composition of the country and submitted its report to Indira Gandhi in 1980. (The janata government had by then been booted out.) .But in the intervening two decades India had changed. The so called backward classes of the rural hinterland were no longer so backward. In fact they had come to occupy the political center-stage. And the revolution in agriculture in the 60s and the 70s had also given them immense financial clout. But in spite of all this , in their minds, there still persisted a strong sense of being excluded from the entrenched centers of power . The urban middle class still refused them access to the urban institutions of the elite, the universities, institutes of technology and management, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, defense services and cushy jobs in private corporations, or so they felt.
It’s not as if everything was silent on this front till Mandal came about. There had been riots in Gujarat over the issue of reservations as early as 1983 – 84. South India, especially has been the hotbed of anti-brahmin movements and especially adept at ruthlessly curtailing access to the Brahmins to virtually everything from admissions in universities to government jobs. In fact there had been serious anti-brahmin riots in the erstwhile province of Madras in 1915. During the 60 s the Dravida parties of the south had succeeded in imposing reverse reservations. Instead of reserving a certain percentage of seats/jobs for the backward classes they had especially restricted Brahmin candidates to applying for an even tinier percentage of seats.
And so the divisions in Indian society were fast turning it into a pressure cooker with attitudes getting rigidly ossified in an already polarized society. The pressure to implement the mandal commission report was already great in 1984, but , Indira Gandhi , being Indira Gandhi could successfully resist them . She accepted the report ( to everyone’s surprise ) but then quietly buried it. Her assassination in 1984 created a huge wave of sympathy for Rajeev and the Indian electorate literally handed him a heaven’s mandate in effect immunizing him from the political pressures of caste and class and simultaneously set the stage for V.P.Singh.
The Babri masjid was a dilapidated crumbling structure on an old hillock in the town of Faizabad in U.P. It is believed to have been built in 1528 by Mir baqi , a general of the then mughal emperor Babar. It too had a long history of strife precisely because its location is believed by many hindus ( though not all . Some really do not care ..) to be the birthplace of Ram. It has been forcefully occupied by a Hindu sect called the Bairagis in 1853 leading to serious riots. The Bairagis were evicted but returned in 1934 to again occupy the mosque. They also succeeded this time in destroying all the three domes of the mosque. The British government of the time was so incensed that it imposed a collective fine of 1,25,000 rupees on the hindu community and had the domes rebuilt. And so it went on till 22nd of December 1949 when a small statue of Ram was surreptitiously installed in the mosque directly beneath the imam’s pulpit.
This was really explosive and had it not been for some quick thinking by the government the consequences would have been horrendous. The magistrate was suspended and the gates to the mosque were locked allowing no one to enter. The stalemate continued till 1983 when the Vishwa Hindu parishad was formed by the RSS. On the 1st of February 1986 the VHP managed to get a court order which allowed the gates to be reopened for the purpose of cleaning the neglected statue of Ram. And so was born the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in its latest avatar .
It’s a common misconception that the BJP was the creator of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement . It wasn’t. The credit ( or the blame depending on how you see it ) should go to the VHP. The BJP was never at the forefront of hardline hindutva . So also its original incarnation the Jan sangh. They were primarily political parties with always an eye on the polls. In fact the VHP was especially created to provide an extremist counterweight to the BJP’s dithering moderates. The RSS playing the roll of the patriarch minding the activities of both . The period between 1983 and 1989 was spent incubating an extreme nationalism at the grassroots. During this time was also being nurtured that rabidly fanatic virulent organization – the bajrang dal.
The 1986 decision of opening the mosque gates was really the watershed. What prompted such a decision? Its roots can be traced to a landmark decision handed down by the supreme court in 1985 regarding the alimony to be paid to a middle aged muslim woman . Her name? Shah Bano Begum. The supreme court had set aside the provisions of the shariat and tried to bring Muslims under the ambit of the law of the land. The muslim personal law board was appalled and there was an outcry prompting Rajeev Gandhi to bring about and pass a bill in parliament overturning the supreme court. The highest court of the land had been humiliated. What prompted him to take such a step ? Probably he felt a need to assuage the feelings of Muslims especially after giving in to the demands of the student leaders in Assam who had been protesting for seven long years. Their demands being the prevention of Muslims illegally immigrating from Bangladesh and also the identification of existing illegal immigrants and the suspension of their voting rights.
So basically he offended the Muslims to please the assamese and in trying to assuage the feelings of Muslims threw himself vulnerable to the charges of minority appeasement and offended the Hindus. And so to appease the Hindus opened the gates of the babri masjid and allowed the Hindus to pray. In the end the outcome was predictably what is so usual in such cases. You try to please everyone and you end up pleasing none. Finally you also end up getting blown up by suicide bombers because there are even others you seem to have offended. Coming back to the point, in Feb 1989 the VHP was ready to make a move and it publicly declared so by announcing its plan for a shilanyas pujan at the disputed site on the 9th of November. However the BJP had already aligned with VP and was not ready to upset the political applecart when it had got a whiff of power. Even the RSS was reluctant to go the whole hog and so restrained the VHP. In August the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad high court passed an interim order freezing the status quo on the disputed site. On the prodding of the RSS and the BJP the VHP gave a signed undertaking to the high court stating that it would respect the verdict. And so it hung in a balance.
But then VP in his paranoid insecurity caused it all to collapse. Not that he is to be entirely blamed . Mandal was long overdue. Where VP erred was in letting his insecurities and his lust for power overpowering his political sensitivities. What should have been done in a phased out gradual manner was rammed down the nation’s throat with precipitate, almost criminal, haste. The need to educate the electorate on such a sensitive issue was ignored. Crass political motives (Neutralizing Devilal and company) formed the base of a decision which above all needed wisdom and fortitude. The Mandal decision was announced on the 7th of August 1990. The middle class revolted in a way never before seen in the nation’s history. Sharing power with VP started seeming more a liability than an asset. So one major contributing factor for the VHP’s restraint was no more.
The mandal decision also put the BJP in a quandary. Its power base had always been the petty bourgeoisie, the small trader, the bania. It belonged neither to the urbane upper classes nor to the rural lower classes. The small town middle and lower middle class was the foremost supporter of the BJP. But its support never seemed enough to propel the BJP into power on its own. But that had gradually changed since 1983. The BJP had been piggybacking on the efforts of the VHP and the RSS without ever publicly endorsing their policies. And it had reaped rich dividends by not only consolidating its middle class base but by also making significant inroads into the rural hinterland. Now if it were to support the reservations , it risked alienating its middle class base . Conversely if it were to oppose reservations the rural constituency would wash its hands off the BJP. It had tried to carefully nurture a power base of its own and now mandal threatened to split it right down the middle. Moreover the sangh parivar extremists were already breathing down its neck. What to do? Why not put two and two together and come up with a solution so chilling it sent shivers down the republic’s spine. 30th October 1990 (3 months AFTER Mandal). Ayodha . Bolo Shri Ramchandra ki jay!!!!
So it would be proper to maintain that though both movements have largely been independent of each other for a major part of their histories. Though their modern manifestations have been intertwined due to the ruthless competitiveness of electoral politics . And though both movements would have come to a head at some time or the other would it be wrong to say that the precipitate implementation of the Mandal Commission Report really caused a cascade of events that directly led to the demolition of the babri masjid ? Rather were it not for the mandal commission implementation in Aug 1990 the VHP would still be making plans of shilanyas pujas and god knows what else . It really required the support of a mainstream political party ( BJP) based on hard nosed political calculations of mandal to really bring the Ram Janmabhoomi movement to a climax then and there. Without mandal the BJP would not have acted as it did and without the active support of the BJP there would have been no culmination of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. So mandir wasn’t diluted by mandal , it was exacerbated by it.
It is necessary to first differentiate between the social under- currents which constituted both movements and their political manifestations. Like for example if you consider the Indian freedom struggle to be a movement then its manifestation would be the Independence Day or the total grant of political freedom. Logically extending that analogy, the implementation of recommendations of Mandal Commission By V.P.Singh can be considered a manifestation or a culmination of the social empowerment movement which was brewing even before independence. So also the demolition of the babri masjid and the rath yatra can be considered a manifestation of the Ram Jamnabhoomi movement which also traces its roots well into the British Raj .
Social empowerment has always been the foremost objective of all our social reformers right from Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar to Mahatma Gandhi. Though its foremost figurehead has justifiably been considered Babasaheb Ambedkar. Right after independence the constitution had reserved 22.5 % of all jobs in all central and state governments for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. It further had , in many of its articles , directed future governments to extend reservations to the “ Other Backward Classes ”. Even in the 1950s was a commission constituted under Kaka Saheb Kalelkar to identify the backward classes and sugest steps for their upliftment. But its report was shelved .
And then in 1979 another commission was set up by the janata government under the chairmanship of Mr. B.P.Mandal , a former chief minister of Bihar. It used the 1931 census for arriving at the caste composition of the country and submitted its report to Indira Gandhi in 1980. (The janata government had by then been booted out.) .But in the intervening two decades India had changed. The so called backward classes of the rural hinterland were no longer so backward. In fact they had come to occupy the political center-stage. And the revolution in agriculture in the 60s and the 70s had also given them immense financial clout. But in spite of all this , in their minds, there still persisted a strong sense of being excluded from the entrenched centers of power . The urban middle class still refused them access to the urban institutions of the elite, the universities, institutes of technology and management, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, defense services and cushy jobs in private corporations, or so they felt.
It’s not as if everything was silent on this front till Mandal came about. There had been riots in Gujarat over the issue of reservations as early as 1983 – 84. South India, especially has been the hotbed of anti-brahmin movements and especially adept at ruthlessly curtailing access to the Brahmins to virtually everything from admissions in universities to government jobs. In fact there had been serious anti-brahmin riots in the erstwhile province of Madras in 1915. During the 60 s the Dravida parties of the south had succeeded in imposing reverse reservations. Instead of reserving a certain percentage of seats/jobs for the backward classes they had especially restricted Brahmin candidates to applying for an even tinier percentage of seats.
And so the divisions in Indian society were fast turning it into a pressure cooker with attitudes getting rigidly ossified in an already polarized society. The pressure to implement the mandal commission report was already great in 1984, but , Indira Gandhi , being Indira Gandhi could successfully resist them . She accepted the report ( to everyone’s surprise ) but then quietly buried it. Her assassination in 1984 created a huge wave of sympathy for Rajeev and the Indian electorate literally handed him a heaven’s mandate in effect immunizing him from the political pressures of caste and class and simultaneously set the stage for V.P.Singh.
The Babri masjid was a dilapidated crumbling structure on an old hillock in the town of Faizabad in U.P. It is believed to have been built in 1528 by Mir baqi , a general of the then mughal emperor Babar. It too had a long history of strife precisely because its location is believed by many hindus ( though not all . Some really do not care ..) to be the birthplace of Ram. It has been forcefully occupied by a Hindu sect called the Bairagis in 1853 leading to serious riots. The Bairagis were evicted but returned in 1934 to again occupy the mosque. They also succeeded this time in destroying all the three domes of the mosque. The British government of the time was so incensed that it imposed a collective fine of 1,25,000 rupees on the hindu community and had the domes rebuilt. And so it went on till 22nd of December 1949 when a small statue of Ram was surreptitiously installed in the mosque directly beneath the imam’s pulpit.
This was really explosive and had it not been for some quick thinking by the government the consequences would have been horrendous. The magistrate was suspended and the gates to the mosque were locked allowing no one to enter. The stalemate continued till 1983 when the Vishwa Hindu parishad was formed by the RSS. On the 1st of February 1986 the VHP managed to get a court order which allowed the gates to be reopened for the purpose of cleaning the neglected statue of Ram. And so was born the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in its latest avatar .
It’s a common misconception that the BJP was the creator of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement . It wasn’t. The credit ( or the blame depending on how you see it ) should go to the VHP. The BJP was never at the forefront of hardline hindutva . So also its original incarnation the Jan sangh. They were primarily political parties with always an eye on the polls. In fact the VHP was especially created to provide an extremist counterweight to the BJP’s dithering moderates. The RSS playing the roll of the patriarch minding the activities of both . The period between 1983 and 1989 was spent incubating an extreme nationalism at the grassroots. During this time was also being nurtured that rabidly fanatic virulent organization – the bajrang dal.
The 1986 decision of opening the mosque gates was really the watershed. What prompted such a decision? Its roots can be traced to a landmark decision handed down by the supreme court in 1985 regarding the alimony to be paid to a middle aged muslim woman . Her name? Shah Bano Begum. The supreme court had set aside the provisions of the shariat and tried to bring Muslims under the ambit of the law of the land. The muslim personal law board was appalled and there was an outcry prompting Rajeev Gandhi to bring about and pass a bill in parliament overturning the supreme court. The highest court of the land had been humiliated. What prompted him to take such a step ? Probably he felt a need to assuage the feelings of Muslims especially after giving in to the demands of the student leaders in Assam who had been protesting for seven long years. Their demands being the prevention of Muslims illegally immigrating from Bangladesh and also the identification of existing illegal immigrants and the suspension of their voting rights.
So basically he offended the Muslims to please the assamese and in trying to assuage the feelings of Muslims threw himself vulnerable to the charges of minority appeasement and offended the Hindus. And so to appease the Hindus opened the gates of the babri masjid and allowed the Hindus to pray. In the end the outcome was predictably what is so usual in such cases. You try to please everyone and you end up pleasing none. Finally you also end up getting blown up by suicide bombers because there are even others you seem to have offended. Coming back to the point, in Feb 1989 the VHP was ready to make a move and it publicly declared so by announcing its plan for a shilanyas pujan at the disputed site on the 9th of November. However the BJP had already aligned with VP and was not ready to upset the political applecart when it had got a whiff of power. Even the RSS was reluctant to go the whole hog and so restrained the VHP. In August the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad high court passed an interim order freezing the status quo on the disputed site. On the prodding of the RSS and the BJP the VHP gave a signed undertaking to the high court stating that it would respect the verdict. And so it hung in a balance.
But then VP in his paranoid insecurity caused it all to collapse. Not that he is to be entirely blamed . Mandal was long overdue. Where VP erred was in letting his insecurities and his lust for power overpowering his political sensitivities. What should have been done in a phased out gradual manner was rammed down the nation’s throat with precipitate, almost criminal, haste. The need to educate the electorate on such a sensitive issue was ignored. Crass political motives (Neutralizing Devilal and company) formed the base of a decision which above all needed wisdom and fortitude. The Mandal decision was announced on the 7th of August 1990. The middle class revolted in a way never before seen in the nation’s history. Sharing power with VP started seeming more a liability than an asset. So one major contributing factor for the VHP’s restraint was no more.
The mandal decision also put the BJP in a quandary. Its power base had always been the petty bourgeoisie, the small trader, the bania. It belonged neither to the urbane upper classes nor to the rural lower classes. The small town middle and lower middle class was the foremost supporter of the BJP. But its support never seemed enough to propel the BJP into power on its own. But that had gradually changed since 1983. The BJP had been piggybacking on the efforts of the VHP and the RSS without ever publicly endorsing their policies. And it had reaped rich dividends by not only consolidating its middle class base but by also making significant inroads into the rural hinterland. Now if it were to support the reservations , it risked alienating its middle class base . Conversely if it were to oppose reservations the rural constituency would wash its hands off the BJP. It had tried to carefully nurture a power base of its own and now mandal threatened to split it right down the middle. Moreover the sangh parivar extremists were already breathing down its neck. What to do? Why not put two and two together and come up with a solution so chilling it sent shivers down the republic’s spine. 30th October 1990 (3 months AFTER Mandal). Ayodha . Bolo Shri Ramchandra ki jay!!!!
So it would be proper to maintain that though both movements have largely been independent of each other for a major part of their histories. Though their modern manifestations have been intertwined due to the ruthless competitiveness of electoral politics . And though both movements would have come to a head at some time or the other would it be wrong to say that the precipitate implementation of the Mandal Commission Report really caused a cascade of events that directly led to the demolition of the babri masjid ? Rather were it not for the mandal commission implementation in Aug 1990 the VHP would still be making plans of shilanyas pujas and god knows what else . It really required the support of a mainstream political party ( BJP) based on hard nosed political calculations of mandal to really bring the Ram Janmabhoomi movement to a climax then and there. Without mandal the BJP would not have acted as it did and without the active support of the BJP there would have been no culmination of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. So mandir wasn’t diluted by mandal , it was exacerbated by it.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
what?
the joys of eating a half-fry. and pray what's a half-fry? its an egg fried on a pan. a perfect half-fry is a one which is more or less circular in shape . its fringes are burnt goldeny brown . like the sun's corona during a total solar eclipse. and the yolk is half raw. viscous liquidy. its the easiest breakfast to make. you take an egg and crack it onto a frying pan which already has butter sizzling on it for quite some time. passionately screeching for the egg. and then you eat it. the eating too has a technique to it. you start nibbling at the edges with pieces of bread . and thus nibbling you slowly proceed onto the center . here a little caution is advised. you dig into the walls of the semi-liquid yolk only when you feel you are ready. coz then it spills all over the plate. like a dam burst . or a flash flood. all the yellow goeeyyee stuff flowing hither thither . like pyroclastic flows. so be prepared to slurp it up . don't be embarrassed at all. that's how it's done. and you're through. one more thing. do brush your teeth vigorously coz an apple a day may keep a doctor away,but a half-fry at breakfast will keep everyone away.
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