28 32 54

The manifesto for a india needs A right-wing rudrama devi

dharmic liberalism rainbow coalition the warrior queen of andhra

December 2015 125

Vol 59 Issue 35

Who Is A
‘Liberal’?
Kashmir
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L e t t e r s
Was Nehru really interested in
uplifting Indian people ? He spent
a lot of energy on becoming an
international leader when Indians
were starving. He should have given
the PMship to visionaries like Rajaji or
implementors like Patel.
Nehru’s Troubled Legacy
Even Jaichands and Mir Jaffers
are remembered after centu-
ries, and so shall the Nehru-
Jinnah duo be remembered,
likewise. The list of Nehru’s
incompetence and foolishness
is too long to list and given the
pathetic state of Indian histo-
rians, as usual, folklore shall
hold sway. Many of Sardar
Patel’s achievements are been
wrongly attributed to Nehru.
Although I can only wish that
Patel should have made sure
that the Lutyen oligarchy does
not thrive, but maybe he was
cunningly stalled by Nehru by
scan this QR code attempting to put Gandhi’s
with your assasination at his doorstep,
SMART PHONE
Anyway, the tide is turning and
the rest will soon be history.
— Cool Guy
The important thing is that we
Indians stop deifying historical
figures and political figures.
Partners: This is especially true of the left
liberals. Rather we should re-
member that there are lessons
to be learnt from the failures
— Gopi Thomas
and successes of the past. With
regard to Modi too, it is time
we indulged in constructive
criticism of his actions as prime
minister rather than deifying or
demonizing him.
— Denny Crane
He did not pass on, he foisted
on people what they should
have been spared of. We are
not critics of but victims of you,
Panditji. The quotations from
his last “testament”, in fact,
expose how utterly dishon-
est and insufferably arrogant
Nehru was:
“ have discarded much of past
tradition” and yet wants “a
handful of my ashes be thrown
into the Ganga at Allahabad “,
and calls it a “last homage to
India’s cultural inheritance”
He wants for himself all the
benefits of such an inheritance
and he does all that he can
to damage it. A typical com-
mie parasite. An honest man
would, after showing his in-
imical tendency, would at least
refrain from making use of it.
That is all good (“Good
News From The East”,
November 2015),
but...Bangladesh
needs to form
Autonomous areas
for Hindus in South-
West Bangladesh and
Autonomous areas
for Buddhists in the
Chittagong Hill Tracts.
Unlike Nehruvian parasites.
Only with empowered
— Jishnu
minorities with total
No Longer An Icon
control over their
I find it impossible not to be
overwhelmed by the impact of respective areas can
this article (“Why Nehru Is No
Bangladesh counter
Longer An Icon”, November
2015). It opens up vistas and the Jamaat and move
avenues of thought that are of
its economy to the
the greatest significance. The
sheer quality of the analysis next level.
and the breadth of knowl-
— IndiannotAmused
edge are astounding. Chacha
Nehru’s iconic image has taken
a hit from which it can never
revive..
— Mohinder Rawat
This is a stunning tour de force
by a writer from whom I expect
nothing but the best. This is a
landmark essay and will be re-
ferred to for many years. I am
convinced that Nehru’s image
will be impossible to salvage..
—Cyrus Katrak
As shown very clearly by Frie-
drich Von Hayek in his brilliant
book, The Road To Serfdom, socialism
for a layperson like me, in I had never heard of
its essence, is robbing Peter,
somebody deciding in his Rokeya Begum before
‘infinite’ wisdom to pay Paul (“The First Feminist”,
and Paul being paid. Period.
Nehru and his acolytes de- November 2015).
stroyed India and condemned Dear Ms Gupta,
several generations of Indians
to poverty and want. I hope your series on these
someday we can have an hon- extraordinary women
est and accurate appraisal of
Nehru’s policies. is truly inspirational.
—Rajiv Gupta
— Shazia Khan
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 1
 December 2015 In this issue
Vol 59 Issue 35

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

C o v e r S t o r y

20 O u t r a g e
04 U n r e a s o n
32
Jaithirth Rao
Manish Sabharwal
Surjit S Bhalla
Swapan Dasgupta

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Sandipan Deb
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Prasanna Viswanathan

PUBLISHER AND CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER

Amarnath Govindarajan

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

N. Muthuraman

CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Pranab Dutta

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR - CIRCULATION

Sunil Balakrishnan

NATIONAL AFFAIRS EDITOR

Surajit Dasgupta
Associate EDITOR
Biswadeep Ghosh

BOOKS AND CULTURE EDITOR

Antara Das

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Aravindan Neelakandan
Jaideep A Prabhu
Rajeev Srinivasan
Seetha
Who Is A ‘Liberal’? Paris, Je T’aime
The horrific attack on innocent music lovers in Paris on 13 November
A Right-Wing Rainbow
Today, the Indian Right has a breathtaking opportunity that may not come its way
A Liberal is open to new ideas, yet has a few immutable core principles and values. He has convictions provoked reactions from cartoonists across the world. Swarajya pays tribute again for a long time if it fluffs it. To seize that opportunity, the conservative Right
SENIOR SUB EDITOR
Arush Tandon, Poulasta Chakraborty but is aware of the imperfections of his knowledge. But is such a human being possible? to these brave free sane voices. and the liberal Right have to bury their differences and work together.
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The Best Bet For Harmony The Road To Damascus

Saibaba Colony, Coimbatore 641038.
Published at 43 Nehru Nagar, M.D The illustrations used on the
Gardens, Civil Airport Post, Kalapatti Road,
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, INDIA 641014. cover and in the cover story
are by Sir John Tenniel, from
The success of the BJP-PDP democratic experiment will provide a role The Western pursuit of “democracy” in Syria has been the usual the original editions of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland
model for the Islamic world going through extreme turbulence. disastrous blend of naivete and realpolitik. (1865) and Alice Through The
Looking Glass (1871).

2 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 3
 O u t r a g e

The horrific attack on innocent music lovers in Paris provoked reactions from
cartoonists across the world. Swarajya’s tribute to these brave free sane voices.

Paris, Je
T’aime

Charlie Hebdo’s cover on the Paris attacks They have weapons.

F––k them. We have champagne!

4 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 5
6 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 7
 i d e a s
Remember
Jaithirth Rao
Sarajevo
Both India and Pakistan think they are on a roll. This may be a good
time, therefore, to remember 1914, when both Austria and Serbia were
on a high, leading to disastrous consequences.
I
ndia is on a high. We have the
highest growth rate in the world.
We may have fiddled our time series
statistics a little bit and of course
we are nowhere near the scorching
double-digit growth rates that China en-
joyed for three decades. But we are happy
with our growth rate. We are also thrilled
that our Prime Minister has become a pal
of the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Micro-
soft and so on. NRIs all over the world are
very happy. And being the kind of fellows
they are, they say so in Madison Square,
in Dubai and in Wembley, apart from
of course inundating social media with
their proud messages.
We have some problems with tur dal
and with law and order in rural Karna-
taka and rural UP. But then, for us, that
is just par for the course. Low inflation,
high growth, increasing FDI, declining
current account deficit—come on, let’s
not be churlish, let’s feel good about all
this. We also have some newfound re-
spect in the world. Obama came to Delhi
for the Republic Day; Cameron is flat-
tering us; the princes of the UAE turned
up on the tarmac to meet and greet our
leader. Everyone wants us to join the UN
Security Council. Never mind that some-
how we never end up joining that defunct
and comical body. Our Soft Power, which
is not just about NRIs, is unmatched. Just
look at Bollywood. My friends: We are
on a Roll.
Pakistan is on a high. Decent growth
rates, an active Karachi Stock Exchange,
an improving power situation (you can
bet that just before the next election,
power cuts and brownouts will drop
dramatically) and above all, significant
foreign policy successes. The US has
been driven out of Afghanistan, like the
8 D e ce m b er 2015
Soviets were before them. Pakistan, its
proxies, its allies and its friends are there
and getting stronger by the day. Our God-
given obligation to dominate the hills and
valleys on both sides of the Durand Line
cannot be denied or wished away.
Who was Durand anyway? He was just
another ignorant infidel.
Most importantly, Pakistan’s all-
weather alliance with the rising hegemon
of the world—China—gains strength
even as the declining hegemon—USA—
keeps smacking Pakistan on the wrists.
Who cares? China is willing and able to
supply Pakistan with uranium, nuclear
plants, bombs, missiles and much more.
China is building awesome roads and
awe-inspiring ports in Pakistan. The sun
of the US has set. China is on the ascend-
ant and Pakistan is now a closer friend,
comrade, ally and protégé of the new
giant—closer even than North Korea,
which of course is also a dearly beloved
friend of Pakistan’s.
The strategy of cracking down on
some violent groups, while nurturing
other groups like the LET, is paying off.
Others may call them terrorists, but we
know that many of them are Soldiers of
Faith, chivalrous Knights of our great na-
tion. People criticize Pakistan. But mere
words cannot hurt a great country. No
one does anything. No one will do any-
thing. No one can do anything. We have
atom bombs—plenty of them. And now
that we have miniature bombs, we are
that much stronger. We have definitely
arrived. Chinese leaders visit us and that
makes up for the fact that other world
leaders are too scared to come to our
country. And what if the English cricket
team will not come to Pakistan? Did we
not beat them handsomely in the UAE?
We are simply the best! The best!
Going back to 1914, as a purely aca-
demic exercise, one can think of some-
thing similar.
Austria-Hungary is on a roll. Vienna
is the centre of the artistic world (think
Gustav Klimt), the world of the mind
(think Freud) and the world of music
of course. We are the torchbearers of
Soft Power. But that’s not all. Austrian
banks are doing well. The Austrian Stock
Exchange is vibrant. Austria is the friend
and ally of Germany, the rising star of
Europe and indeed of the world. There
are undoubtedly parts of the empire
which are a tad unsafe, a tad poor and a
tad forgotten (think Bosnia, or for that
matter, Herzegovina)—but let’s not be
churlish—Austria-Hungary is a power to
reckon with.
Serbia is on a roll. After centuries,
we have a country that is ours. And we
are hell-bent on making sure that our
companions (in race, in ethnicity and in
faith) across the silly borders that still ex-
ist, join us in the great Pan-Slavic dream.
We will not rest until the Slavs achieve
their God-given obligation and destiny of
being united and defeating the Turks on
one side and the Austrians on the other.
In order to do this, we encourage violent
groups. Others refer to them as terror-
ists and assassins. We know that they
are Soldiers of Faith and Knights of the
great Slavic nation. We are not afraid of
silly countries like Britain. The power of
Mother Russia stands with us. Is not the
Tsar the champion of all Slavs? We will
continue with our strategy of funding
and directing terror attacks against the
effete Austrians. We will provoke them
into a fight—and then teach them a les-
son. We have the power, the army, the
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
weapons. We are simply the best!
The denouement of 1914-18 left the
Austro-Hungarian empire chopped into
pieces and turned Vienna into a pro-
vincial city where Orson Welles found
dubious drug dealers. It also left the
Pan-Slav dream underachieved, only to
be repeatedly cruelly defeated in 1941 and
then again in 1990.
Obviously, no two situations are
identical. No two countries can be made
to fit a simple historical pattern. The only
lesson one can pick up is that “being on a
high” is simply not smart.
Whatever we may say to ourselves, the
Indian growth rate is not all that great.
We need sustained double-digit growth
rates—sustained for two decades, not
for a year or two. Without that, we are
not going to make an appreciable dent
in our poverty. We need a less predatory
State—one which encourages business
and entrepreneurship, both domestic and
foreign, which does not use the taxman
to attack and destroy wealth-generating
activities, which does not stifle the econ-
omy with hostile actions at the ground
level, even while sounding positive from
30,000 feet up in the air.
We need to be realistic about China
and Pakistan. Preaching moral sermons
to either of them will get us nowhere.
With China, we can and we should figure
If Austria had not responded in rage to a Serbian
terrorist act, it would have been the beneficiary.
out where our interests overlap, even
if that’s only in some limited areas. We
should strengthen those spheres. With
Pakistan, we can and probably should
maintain a symbolic level of cordial-
ity—certainly not attacking their visiting
musicians, but allowing them to sing. We
should keep our rhetoric levels low and
work on our economy, without hysterical
distractions. Beyond this, we can and we
should expect no positive outcome.
The fact is that they are on a high.
And when they are on a high, it is un-
likely that they will bother about what
the world says. It will take them years
to work it out that their new ally, China,
is as unreliable and selfish as their old
ally, the US. If and when that happens,
perhaps our relations with Pakistan will
improve.
Understanding the complacent ar-
rogance of the Austrians, the love of
terrorism on the part of the irredentist
Serbians and their mutual inability to get
beyond childish rhetoric and meaning-
less truisms should help us in navigating
through the difficult decade ahead of
us with wisdom, humility and a relent-
less focus on what really matters—our
economy, which, let us face it, should
be chugging along twice as fast as it is
today. We should not be on a needless
high. Heads-down intelligent decisions
that help us liberate our own economic
energies, and hard work—this and this
alone should be our mantra.
There is every possibility that terror-
ist attacks will increase with the specific
intent of derailing our economic story.
We can and should prevent these attacks.
When we fail in preventing them, which
doubtless will sometimes happen, we
must respond efficiently, not clumsily.
We must then get back to building our
economy, shrugging off the cowardly at-
tack. If Austria had not responded in an-
ger to the act of a Serbian terrorist group,
the beneficiary would have been Austria.
We must always remember this.
The author is the former CEO of MphasiS, and
was head of Citibank’s Global Technology Divi-
sion. He is currently the Executive Chairman of
Value and Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC),
an affordable housing venture. Rao is a mem-
ber of the Editorial Advisory Board of Swarajya.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 9
 U n r e a s o n
The Left And
Shanthu Shantharam
Scientific Sense
If the “left-liberal” scientific community observed an even-keel
approach, it would have demonstrated the scientific temper that it
deludedly says is absent in India under the Modi government.
A
t last, the contagious
disease of returning State
honours has afflicted the In-
dian scientific community
as well. Lo and behold, none
other than Dr Pushpa Bhargava leads
the pack by offering to return his Padma
Bhushan award as he feels that India has
become unlivable since the Modi dispen-
sation took office.
As is well known, the Padma awards
lost their sheen a long time ago because
of the political influence with which they
gets distributed every year. It should be
noted that many deserving people have
received those awards, but that norm
was thrown out of the window long ago.
Return of these awards should not rankle
anyone as it is a non-event. In fact, no one
is losing sleep over it. As the Kannada
poet-saint Purandara Dasa’s song goes, it
is like “throwing the tank water into the
same tank”.
Following artists, cinema directors
and historians, a group of 130 scientists
wrote to President Pranab Mukherjee to
take suitable action to stem the alleged
tide of intolerant acts in the country.
The Inter-Academy Panel on Ethics in
Science (IAPES) also voiced its concerns
about the lack of scientific temper as ex-
hibited by the actions of certain sections
of society (read Hindutva outfits). When
one gleans through the list of scientists
who have affixed their signatures, almost
all of them are unknown to the public
save for Dr Pushpa Bhargava who has
the knack of keeping himself in the
limelight for all and sundry reasons.
IAPES demands exemplary punishment
for those whose acts erode human and
civilizational values as if these terms
have been defined by some court. No
10 D e ce m b er 2015
matter how much these worthies in arts
and science communities say that this
is not against the present government of
PM Modi, it is all against PM Modi. It is
just like when someone says that it’s not
about the money, you can bet it’s about
the money. The problem is that within
60-odd years of establishing the Indian
republic, we have become so deeply
accustomed to the Nehruvian socio-polit-
ical system and have created an industry
of such creepy and crony socialism that
in spite of so many miseries, there is also
comfort in it because it ensures that no
one else is getting ahead. In India, most
often, people feel satisfied even if they
don’t progress, as long as others do not
progress either. This is like cutting one’s
nose to spite the face.
The truth is that none of these award
wapsi folks have been happy ever since
Modi was elected to the highest office in
the country. Starting the day after his
swearing into office, they have launched
a campaign to unseat him, but they have
to wait until 2019 for that. But these peo-
ple have already started the 2019 election
campaign and they don’t miss a single op-
portunity to denigrate him and besmirch
his reputation. India’s scientific com-
munity is not known to show its political
face much and they do not normally react
to political happenings in the country.
This time seems to be a singular excep-
tion. By nature, scientists are politically
and publicly reticent people immersed in
their closed cozy world of science. They
rarely get into the politics of the day.
Scientific research enterprise is a time-
consuming affair and they do not wish to
waste their precious time in any kind of
political tamasha.
It is really very surprising that India’s
scientific community has indulged in
a petition to the President now, who
can anyway only pass it along to the
government of the day. If the scientists
were really serious of protesting about
intolerance, they should have submit-
ted a petition to Governors in the states
in which the abhorrent incidents took
place as it is a law and order situation, a
subject completely in the domain of state
rights. The government of PM Modi is
quite correctly not saying much about
these award wapsis. It is the privilege of
the awardees to do whatever they want
with their awards. The government of the
day has nothing do with it as the awar-
dees were chosen by select committees of
earlier governments. When most of these
scientists are unknown to the public,
the public will not lose sleep over their
returning the awards. Of the half a dozen
film makers returning their awards, the
crazy world of cine goers might not have
heard of even one of them, and why they
got the awards in the first place. The
same applies to the scientists.
It has not occurred to the public that
at the rate at which people are rearing
to return their awards, it may be a good
idea to place a large waste paper basket
in the heart of Delhi for anyone to throw
his/ her award into it where most of
them have anyway eminently belonged.
Dr Bhargava is prone to megalomania,
and cannot suffer too long without some
kind of publicity. The award-wapsi
movement came at a time when he had
not been in the news for a long time.
This is not the first time he has returned
something. In the past, he resigned his
membership of all academies of sciences
in the country as he thought he deserved
a lot more than that and that he did not
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
want to belong to any club that would
allow him to become one. Frankly, no one
shed a drop of tear for his abandoning the
science academy memberships. No one
misses him in the world of science either
in India or elsewhere.
Ever since he retired from the Centre
for Cellular and Molecular Biology
(CCMB), Hyderabad, he has been strug-
gling to keep himself relevant to the
nation, but to no avail. He desperately
wanted to become the Secretary to the
Department of Biotechnology, and has
been frustrated for no one ever consid-
ered him for the job. He has a streak of
anti-establishment tenor in him, which
is why he was asked to resign from the
Knowledge Commission by Sam Pitroda.
The then PM Dr Manmohan Singh did
not bother to acknowledge his letter of
resignation at the time. Did India suffer
because Dr Bhargava resigned from the
Knowledge Commission, or for that mat-
ter the work of the Commission itself?
He will quickly go against any organi-
zation, if he does not get his way. He had
built up his reputation (read notoriety)
by dubiously claiming to be the father of
modern biotechnology in India, a laugh-
able notion to say the least. He even went
on to claim that he coined the phrase
“genetic engineering”, another false-
hood. Only the ignorant media and the
non-governmental activists believe that
he has a great scientific standing that can
In Silicon Valley, Modi spent considerable amounts
of time wooing IT giants to come and invest in India.
Was all this because he has no scientific temper?
be used to further their cause. No one in
the field of modern molecular biology has
heard of Dr Bhargava’s contributions
in gene-splicing technology. This is the
problem with many Indian scientists
who seek fame or notoriety by claiming
to have thought of a Nobel prize-winning
idea long before the prize gets awarded to
X, Y or Z. If one cannot do real scientific
research by slogging in the lab, one
cannot claim ownership of the idea just
because he or she had discussed it across
a dining table or in some bull session.
Bhargava’s penchant for megalomania
was such that when he was the director
of CCMB, he used to convene scientific
meetings just to think up Nobel Prize-
winning ideas, as if such ideas appear
if one only thinks deeply. His cherished
the deep desire to grab a Nobel for some
idea emanating from his laboratory. He
remains a deeply disappointed soul that
his Nobel dream has not come true to
this day. If one wants to see evidence his
boastfulness, just visit the entrance lobby
of the CCMB—you will see a larger-than-
life mural of him on the wall. Without a
doubt, he established the CCMB, one of
the most modern research laboratories
of India in biological sciences, thanks to
Rajiv Gandhi’s largesse, and a reflection
of Bhargava’s closeness to the Congress.
He was amply rewarded with a Padma
award, which he now wants to return.
It is a good gesture—at least one Padma
award will be spared of ignominy.
When Dr Bhargava was not really in
the public eye about a dozen years ago,
he jumped on the anti-GM bandwagon to
make himself relevant. He merrily joined
hands with the anti-GM lobby to be in
the news. The only reason he opposes
GM crops technology is that it gives him
a platform to be in the limelight. Other-
wise, this is the same Dr Bhargava who,
when he was the director of CCMB, did
not want any plant science research done
there. But, all of a sudden, in his retire-
ment days, he becomes an expert of plant
molecular biology and genetic engineer-
ing, and finds all sorts of baseless scien-
tific faults with GM crops and wants the
moratorium on it to continue. He praised
former Union Environment Minister
Jairam Ramesh as a national hero for
imposing a moratorium on Bt brinjal. Dr
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 11
 i n n o v a t i o n n a t i o n

Jati As Social
ment does not have the scientific temper.
Somebody needs to check to verify if
Bhargava was partly responsible for
inserting the “scientific temper” clause
in the Constitution. Given his boastful-

Horsepower
ness and false claims, Bhargava’s word
cannot be taken for granted. Can anyone
say that Indians are being told what to
wear, what to read and how to live by the
central government? This is the kind of
Rajeev Srinivasan
irresponsible nonsense Dr. Bhargava is
perpetuating in The Caravan interview.
The Modi government has not uttered Though there are many ill-effects of the jati system, it has at least two
a word save for Arun Jaitley’s honest
positives—resilience and social capital. It is one of the reasons that
assessment of award wapsi that it is
manufactured dissent. Dr Bhargava
of all the civilizations that Islam encountered when they swept out of
harps too much on scientific temper or Arabia, the Hindu civilization is the only one they could not wipe out.

lack thereof in the government and in the
country. He seems to think that scientific
temper means everyone should think and
talk like him. People are smarter than
that, but people like Bhargava will never
know that. Dr Bhargava alluded to PM
Modi’s reference to the elephant-headed
God Ganesha as an example of organ
transplantation. Modi, by no means,
suggested that organ transplantation
was done in ancient India; it was merely
a reference to the ability to imagine stu-
S
ome time ago I attempted
to crowdsource ideas about
Indian innovation, and posted a
query on Twitter. I am grateful
to those who suggested Indian
products, but also processes.
@chandrasuren mentioned the eri system
of interconnected water bodies in Tamil
Nadu; @kannan9900 suggested rainwa-
ter harvesting techniques; @india_jain
asked on Twitter whether there were,
or ever had been, any benefits from the
“caste system”. Now Bhalla is a very
smart person, but the tone of his query
and subsequent tweets suggested that
he was convinced there were none. To
be honest, I am not even sure what the
“caste system” is: “caste” is derived from
a Spanish/Portuguese word, “casta”, an
imperial construct from South America,
read it, and it has no relevance whatso-
ever in daily life. (Of course, all Commu-
nists read it and quote it frequently).
Be that as it may, I was first exposed
to this question of the value of jati some
20 years ago when Hinduism Today asked
my friend Bapa Rao and me to write a
debate about it. Naturally, being filled
with Kerala Communist propaganda and
subaltern perspectives, I railed against it,

Dr Bhargava seems to think that scientific temper
means everyone should think and talk like him.
Bhargava has been singularly disin-
genuous and intellectually fraudulent by
ignoring mountains of scientific evidence
and the opinions of leading scientific bod-
ies and academies to protest against GM
crops. If he had done even a day’s worth
of research in plant sciences, he would
have staked a claim to be the father of
India’s Green Revolution as well.
Dr Bhargava, in an online interview
to Atul Dev in The Caravan (November
11, 2015) says that Modi’s government
has lost its path to democracy. Is he
serious? What path to democracy? Who
has dismissed the government and taken
over the country? He talks of Hindu
religious dictatorship. He must be really
hallucinating. Can anyone living and
breathing in India today make any sense
of this nonsense uttered by Dr Bhar-
gava? He accuses Modi’s government of
lacking scientific temper by completely
forgetting how Jairam Ramesh scuttled
GM crops technology without an iota of
scientific evidence. The most unscientific
thing was the UPA1 and UPA2 stalling
GM crops without any scientific basis. As
this moratorium suits Dr Bhargava, it is
scientific temper for him.
He seems to forget that when Naren-
dra Modi went to visit Japan and Aus-
tralia, he personally sought out stem cell
researchers and plant genetic engineers
to explore the ways and means of bring
the fruits of those technologies to India
for India’s growth and development.
When he went to Silicon Valley, he spent
considerable amounts of time wooing
IT giants to come and invest in India.
Was all this because he has no scientific
temper? This writer had met Mr Modi for
more than an hour in Gandhinagar when
he was CM of Gujarat. He was the only
politician who really intently listened to
my presentation on modern plant genetic
engineering, and fully understood the
success of Bt cotton in Gujarat. He was
really smart and asked me pointedly: Are
there any ready technologies for harness-
ing the vast bio-resources on the Gujarat
coastline? Bhargava is speaking through
his hat when he says that Modi’s govern-
pendous things and bring them to reality.
Just look at Bhargava’s opposition to GM
technology. He is completely out of his
depth here.
It is true that just as there loony
lefties, there also loony rightists and fun-
damentalists in a pluralistic democracy
like India, but that does not mean there is
no any scientific temper in the country.
India has a population of a billion and a
quarter, and by sheer theory of probabil-
ity, one can and should expect a certain
minority of lunatics who have crazy
ideas about life and the world. That does
not mean the majority of the country
is like that. If the scientific community
and Dr Bhargava observe an even-keel
approach to all that is happening around
the country, then they would have dem-
onstrated the proper scientific temper
that he is so aggrieved about.
Dr Shantharam is an Adjunct Professor of
Biotechnology, University of Maryland—Eastern
Shore, Princess Anne. A former biotechnology
regulator with the United States Department of
Agriculture, served as a biotechnology consult-
ant with the World Bank, Asian Development
Bank, UNIDO and UN-FAO. He is also a Visiting
Professor at the Seed science Center at Iowa
State University, Ames.
talked of God as an anchor tenant for
retail space, as a subset of the central role
the Hindu temple played in traditional
life: as mall, banker, relief centre; and
@ShriRajKashyap about the role of self-
organized guilds and networks.
All these, and many others, are in-
triguing ideas that I hope to expand upon
eventually. It is clear that India evolved
several self-regulatory and localized
mechanisms for managing the affairs of
citizens. Some are surprisingly forward-
looking: we know the superlative
organization and drainage systems of the
Indus-Sarasvati civilization; but relative-
ly few know about the democratic system
of local self-governance as inscribed on
the walls of a temple at Uthiramerur,
Chingleput district, Tamil Nadu
(@chandrasuren mentioned this too). I
have not done a comparative analysis
of the Magna Carta with Uthiramerur,
but my impression is that, as usual, the
western alternative gets all the good
propaganda.
‘caste’ is not the same as either jati or varna
Speaking of propaganda, the jati system
has been the recipient of continuous and
destructive disinformation for several
hundred years. Recently @surjitbhalla
where the European conquistadors
imposed a hierarchical system on the
mestizos, mixed-race people, with the
degree of whiteness determining power,
position and prestige.
Naturally, when white conquistadors
showed up in India, they started using
the same term, and casta became caste
in English. I suggest that it was a square
peg in a round hole: the jati system has
nothing to do with the system of privi-
leges that conquering whites imposed on
native populations (and a similar system
of minutely defining “black-ness” that
existed in the American South, where
a slave was a mulatto, a quadroon, an
octoroon—half-white, quarter-white, one-
eighth-white—and so on).
As usual, whites arbitrarily assumed
that what existed in India was similar to
something they already knew, although
the two were like chalk and cheese. Simi-
larly, they held that Hindus had a single
Law Book (just as Christians had the
Bible) and for no logical reason, anointed
the Manu Smriti as that book. This of
course ties back into the negative picture
of jati and varna animosity that has
caused the Manu Smriti to be condemned
as a fount of intolerance; although in fact
I do not know a single Hindu who has
and poor Bapa had the unenviable task
of supporting “caste”. But that debate
forced me to rethink “caste”, and to won-
der if jati had actual value.
It must be self-evident that jati has
some value, in a Darwinian sense. The
very fact that it has persisted for mil-
lennia means that it must be useful, or
else societies would have evolved it out.
Today, jati survives conversion: al-
though the Abrahamic religions profess
egalitarianism, the travails of Christian
Scheduled Caste converts show the
continuation of jati. Yes, there are many
inter-jati marriages, but even in “enlight-
ened” Kerala, or especially in Kerala,
everybody uses jati and religion as a
bargaining chip.
Besides, there is no society on earth
without some sort of stratification based
on some characteristic, often money. The
old-money types of the US Northeast are
all proud that their ancestors came over
on the Mayflower. I had good friends
among a family of Winslows there, and
it was clear they were an endogamous
group—they all sent their children to the
same private schools like Philips Ando-
ver Academy and then to the Ivy League,
and they all ended up in lucrative jobs on
Wall Street. If you are an outsider, you

12 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 13
 will find it difficult to break into this set,
forget marriage!
I am sure there are similar equiva-
lents of hierarchy in every society. In
France, it is those who have gone to the
top universities; in Japan, those who
studied at Tokyo University. There is a
natural human tendency to form cliques
based on certain characteristics. There
is a little flexibility: for instance, if you
make money, you can join the blue-
bloods of Boston (ironically called “Bos-
ton Brahmins”). Joseph Kennedy made a
fortune from bootlegging alcohol during
the US’ Prohibition, and lo, his offspring
were “in”, though of wrong ethnicity
(Irish) and faith (Catholic), both of which
are anathema to the WASPs.
Similarly, it appears that jatis, which
began from a rather sensible division of
labour in a relatively static society, were
able to move up and down the hierarchy
at one time. There was flexibility: as oc-
cupations fluctuated in importance, the
associated jatis went up and down the
prestige ladder. As usual, it was the Brit-
ish who messed up this system complete-
ly: their census fixed a jati somewhat
arbitrarily in some varna. For instance,
I believe kayasthas are Brahmin in some
territories, and Shudra in others. At any
rate, the census helped ossify the hitherto
somewhat fluid jati system.
In sum, what we see today as
Hinduism is a multi-nodal system. If a node (jati) If you make money, you can join the blue-bloods of Boston (ironically called
“casteism”, the “caste system” etc, are goes down, the system remains unaffected “Boston Brahmins”), and your children can walk into Harvard University
to a significant extent imagined con-
structs. I do not deny that there have
been instances of horrendous oppression: theory. Monolithic systems are known tial to the survival of the overall system. iour: the network itself gains “intelli- of Antwerp as the global arbiters of the will always deliver.
in my native Travancore, this resulted to be highly vulnerable to single-node If you destroy a number of nodes, the gence” and may produce self-sustaining diamond trade. Humans have an innate need to be-
in massive conversions. Nevertheless, failure. That is to say, if your system is system will be damaged for sure, but it behaviour; just as a hive of relatively Kinship and trust are the bases of long. Jati is an innovation that uses this
the uncompromising condemnation of set up so that all the other nodes depend may well resile and survive. This is the simple individual bees can exhibit emer- these jati-based networks. IIM Banga- drive for many positive (but alas, also
jati that’s popular in certain circles is on one very important central node (that rationale behind building mesh computer gent intelligence of a surprisingly high lore Finance Professor R. Vaidyanathan negative) things. A flexible system of jatis
more an effort to attack Hinduism than would in effect be a star-network), it is networks, where no one node is critical; level. The jatis thus formed an intelligent (India Uninc), renowned journalist S. where occupational value determines its
anything else. a simple matter to sabotage that central if any node is down, there are alternate network that adapts to perturbations. Gurumurthy and Professor P. Kanaga- market price was a good idea. An ossified
node, and the system fails catastrophi- paths around that node. Thus, in a time of socialism, with the pie sabapathi (Indian Models of Economy, system still seems to function pretty well;
Resilience and social capital cally. That was the model that Muslim In the case of Hinduism, the jati not growing, it has become a collective Business and Management), have all and I am not sure that jati will disappear
Now let’s consider whether there are in invaders used: they knew that just as served as the node. If your allegiance bargaining tool. commented on the positive benefits of with urbanization. Non-commensality
fact any positives in the jati system. I can Mecca/ Medina are their central nodes, was to a particular jati, in essence the The other aspect of jati in modern jati-based networks. People are much in dining has; but other aspects remain.
think of at least two. The first is resil- if other religions have their own, they destruction of other jatis had little effect days goes back to the idea of social capi- more liable to trust those whom they I am not sure simply ranting and raving
ience. The second is social capital. would be able to destroy them with ease. on you. In one sense this is bad because tal. It is an observed fact that some jatis have kinship with, and willing to loan about it is going to disrupt jati.
To consider resilience, think of the In the case of the Buddhists, there was of the lack of unity of purpose, but on have done better in the rough and tumble them small amounts of money. And that
fact that of all the civilizations that the the simple matter of burning the viharas the other hand, the system is resilient. I of modern India than others. It appears trust is almost never violated, because Rajeev Srinivasan has worked for innovative
Muslims encountered when they swept and slaying all the monks, and Buddhism think this baffled Muslim invaders. Ini- that those jatis that chose the path of excommunication would be intolerable. companies such as Bell Labs, Siemens and Sun
out of Arabia, the Hindu civilization is was completely eradicated—as in the tially they thought the centre of Hindu- economics have thrived, but those that The value of kinship in a traditional Microsystems in strategy and product manage-
the only one that did not get wiped out. case of the sack of Nalanda. ism was Somnath, so they sacked it; and chose the path of politics have suffered. society like India cannot be overempha- ment. He has taught innovation at several IIMs,
Great, established cultures such as Egypt But this didn’t work in the case of the nothing happened. Then they thought the An oft-cited example is of the Gounders sized. In Tribes, Joel Kotkin talks of how and is a member of the Think Tank working
and Persia, and all the Buddhist cultures Hindus because Hinduism turned out to centre was Benares, and they sacked it; of Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, who have built Gujarati diamond merchants will ship a on India’s national IP policy. He has been a
of Central Asia were completely erased in be a distributed system, or a Complex again Hinduism did not vanish. up a multi-billion-dollar textile empire million dollars worth of uncut diamonds conservative columnist for almost 20 years,
a very short time. Adaptive System. A distributed system Complex Adaptive Systems show not based on self-help. Similarly, the Jains of through a courier with no contract, no and has degrees from IIT Madras and Stanford
The reason has to do with systems has many nodes, none of which is essen- only resilience, but also emergent behav- Surat have overtaken the Hassidic Jews more than a handshake; and the courier Business School.

14 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 15
 h o w t o
Tracking Crime
Prithwis Mukerjee
In Digital India
Ushahidi is a free open-source software developed in Africa for
reporting—or “crowdsourcing”—information about “incidents” and
crimes. It can do wonders for our primitive police system.
A
nybody who has filed
a General Diary (GD) or a
First Information Report
(FIR) in a police station
in India would know the
utter futility of the “recording” process.
A handwritten document with a couple
of carbon (or photostat) copies is handed
over by the complainant to the police-
man and these get stored first in a file
and then the files are placed in a sack and
stored in some dark and dusty room. The
only proof of the existence of this docu-
ment is a number, again entered manu-
ally, in a ledger that is kept in the police
station. These dark, dusty rooms spread
across thousands of police stations in
India containing sacks of files that in
turn contain the handwritten documents
and are the only source of information
about crimes and incidents that happen
in India. The people who are directly
concerned with these GDs and FIRs may
keep a copy in their personal custody
and provide it to whoever asks for it but
for anyone else, including the govern-
ment itself, retrieving any document is
almost impossible unless there is intense
pressure from either courts or politi-
cians. Even if anyone has the authority
to do so, there is no easy way for anyone
to look up the contents of any GD or FIR,
evaluate complaints for authenticity or
correctness or know what the police did
to address the concerns of the complain-
ant. As a result, Indian crime statistics is
a matter of speculation and guesswork.
Which is a shame, because this
extreme opacity in or inaccessibility
of police records leaves us with a very
incomplete picture of the crime situation
in the country. Except in the case of well
known and spectacular crimes, no one
16 D e ce m b er 2015
knows what is really happening in the
country and, what is worse, no one has
a clue about whether the police are at all
doing anything about the thousands of
FIRs that are being received every day.
We may argue of course that the police
is understaffed, overworked and so they
really cannot follow up on every possible
crime. But that does not mean that the
nation should be in the dark about the ex-
act status of crimes and resultant action.
Let us know at least what proportion of
crimes are actively addressed by the po-
lice. Thirty per cent? 3 per cent? 0.03 per
cent? At the moment, no one knows.
Using computers to record and store
this information should, in principle, be
straightforward because the technology
required to do so is both inexpensive
and simple—a basic data entry system
is all that we are looking for. However,
anyone who has been to a police station
in India would have no illusions about
the challenges involved. First, there are
hardly any computers, and second, most
policemen, including officers, have very
little experience with even basic office
automation tools like word processors
or spreadsheets. The ambient level of
computer literacy in a police station is
several orders of magnitude lower than
what we generally take for granted in a
modern corporate office.
However, the advent of mobile
phones and then smartphones has had a
qualitative impact on the availability of
computing resources in the hands of even
the commonest of citizens and, hence by
extension, policemen. In particular, the
ability to send SMS messages is quite
widespread and Uber has shown that
even barely literate taxi drivers can
operate a fairly sophisticated app on a
smartphone. Armed with this confidence,
we can now explore technologies that
citizens and the police themselves can
use to record incidents of crime across
the country.
Ushahidi is a free open-source soft-
ware that has been developed by an epon-
ymous company based in Africa with the
aim of reporting, or “crowdsourcing”,
information about “incidents” in a col-
laborative manner. Developed as a re-
sponse to the election-related violence in
Kenya, the system has the ability to accept
information from a variety of sources—
SMS, Twitter, email and smartphones
apps and record it in a structured and
searchable database. Subsequently, the
information on incidents can be filtered,
routed to appropriate people, or simply
geo-encoded with latitude-longitude
information and displayed on a Google
Map. One of the important features of
this system is that it is designed for areas
where networks are weak and systems
are primitive—something that describes
large parts of India. This system has been
deployed at over 90,000 locations in many
parts of the world.
An Indianized version of Ushahidi can available from GPS or the mobile tower.
be deployed by the central government, Not all reports of incidents can be There is no easy way to look up the contents of any
and both private citizens and policemen
should be encouraged to freely post infor-
automatically treated as a GD or an FIR.
People will play pranks, post imaginary FIR, evaluate complaints or know what the police
mation about “incidents” as and when
they happen using any of the tools that
or fictitious incidents or may even make
genuine mistakes. This can be sorted
did to address the complainant’s concerns.
are available. The immediate benefit is out at three levels. First, we can have
that the data is available in a persistent automated systems that filter out pranks; people report the same event, the BPO rejected, the person making the post will
digital format and this can be processed second, we can have a BPO-style opera- staff or the police officers will take a call be informed and will have the right to
locally and tracked centrally. tion where a human being will look at on whether this is a reinforcement of visit a physical police station and file
The identity of the person posting the post and decide on its utility, and evidence or malevolent people working a GD or FIR in the traditional manner.
the information can be inferred from finally we can have a small, central group in concert. Once the GD/ FIR is accepted, Incidentally, even at the police station,
the KYC-compliant phone number from of professional police officers who will it will be communicated, by email or fax, the police officer will record the GD/ FIR
where the post originated and the loca- look at and decide on the importance to the local police station for necessary with the same app on a smartphone or
tion from the geo-spatial information or seriousness of each post. If multiple action. On the other hand, if a post is tablet, but since his identity and credibil-
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 17

The Henry Classification System which is currently used all over the world to
track fingerprints had its genesis in the 1890s in the Calcutta Police.
ity are guaranteed, such a record need
not be scrutinized any further but will be
automatically accepted.
So all the data on all incidents of
crime will automatically accumulate in
one digital database that can be analyzed
for information and trends. However,
only those that pass the test of credibility
will classified as a GD or FIR and then
worked upon as required.
The best part of such a system is the
ease with which it can be deployed. Basi-
cally we are looking at equipping all po-
licemen with a smartphone—something
that a vast majority of them would have
anyway. Almost every police station
in the country, except those located in
the truly remote parts, would also have
access to mobile telephone towers and
mobile data service, so data connectivity
would not be an issue.
Only at one central location would we
need to set up an Ushahidi server and
have a pool of people available 24x7 to
monitor and classify the information that
is flowing in. What is also required, and
perhaps this is most important, would be
a process, designed by a team of expe-
18 D e ce m b er 2015
rienced and competent police person-
nel, that will ensure that information
received on the Ushahidi server is clas-
sified correctly and sent to the relevant
police station as soon as possible using
email or fax. A mechanism to review the
action taken would also be a good idea
but then the Officer-in-Charge of the local
police station may resent this oversight
mechanism.
Once the basic structure is in place,
many refinements are possible. The
smartphone apps can be enhanced to take
pictures of crime scenes or scan docu-
ments, geocode them with location and
time information and automatically at-
tach it to the report. Should these reports
be eventually accepted as GDs/ FIRs,
then these images will automatically
be treated as evidence in subsequent
proceedings.
Law enforcement officials all across
the world use a large number of very so-
phisticated computer systems to record,
monitor and solve criminal cases. Police
stations in India are, in comparison, very
primitive and have very rudimentary
systems in place and this reflects in the
AUTHENTIC BELGIAN WAFFLES
quality of law enforcement. But strangely
enough, in the not too distant past, the
police in India were regarded as global
thought leaders for their use of scientific
techniques in solving crime!
The Henry Classification System that
is currently used all over the world to
bRU
track fingerprints had its genesis in the SSE
1890s in the Calcutta Police where Hem
LS W
AFF
Chandra Bose and Azizul Haque created LE T
OPP
the system that was named after Sir ED W
Edward Henry, who was then the Inspec- ITH
FRE
tor General of Police of Bengal. After its SH S
success in Calcutta, the same system was TRA
WB
adopted at Scotland Yard in London and ERR
IES,
subsequently all over the world. WH
It would be wonderful indeed if our IPPE
D CR
police can once again start using sophis- EAM
ticated tools to improve the quality of law AND
enforcement in India. BEL
GIA
N CH
The author is an engineer by education, a pro- OCO
LAT
grammer by passion, a teacher by profession, E SA
an imagineer by intention. He teaches at Praxis
UCE
Business School, Kolkata, and has authored
The Road to pSingularity which explores the
intersection of computer science, genetics and
Advaita Vedanta. Follow @prithwis on Twitter pHOENIX mARKET CITY, BANGALORE
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
/BELGYUMCAFE - /BELGYUMWAFFLES - WWW.BELGYUM.IN
 C o v e r S t o r y

An ideal Liberal is open to new ideas, and yet has

a few immutable core principles and values. He
V. aNANTHA
NAGEswarAN has convictions but is aware of the imperfections of
his knowledge and the limitations imposed by his
ignorance. But is it possible that human beings with
all these qualities exist?

Who Is A
‘Liberal’?
In an earlier article, the author
had written that India’s self-styled
liberals are guilty of growing the
national stock of intolerance,
hatred and bigotry.
I
ndira Parthasarathi, the veteran
Tamil writer, wrote a novel in the 1970s
titled Maaya Maan Vettai (Hunting The
Imaginary Deer). The story was about
how the system swallowed the idealism
of a well-meaning non-resident Indian
returning to serve his country. A line
from the book is still fresh in my memory: “Too
many ideals have been mindlessly frequently
spouted and have lost their meanings.”
I recalled that line as I surveyed the Indian
public political and intellectual discourse over
the several weeks in the run-up to the Bihar
elections. Charges of intolerance made by sev-
eral individuals—some well-meaning and some
not—against the Indian government met with
responses from many individuals sympathetic
to the government in social media. The govern-
ment, for the most part, presented the image of
a hapless spectator. The timing and the inten-
sity of these “liberal” outrages before elections
rob them of much of their credibility and legiti-
macy. Now that the next election is some time
away, we have a chance to assess what “being
Liberal” and “Liberalism” are truly about.
We examine the ideal liberal stance and the
reality at three levels.
Universal principles and values
At one level, liberals stand for values and prin-
ciples that transcend narrow national, group or
sectarian considerations. If it were true, then
liberals would uphold principles without tak-
ing sides. Typically, within countries, liberals
would switch sides between different groups
depending on the issue at hand but not switch
principles depending on calculations of politi-
cal and personal interests. If their values and
principles were not confined to national bound-
aries or borders, then their support for liberal
causes, and concerns over and criticisms of il-
liberalism would transcend borders too. Illib-
eral thoughts and practices would meet with
their opprobrium and condemnation regard-
less of their source. Even a casual and cursory
overview of the situation tells us that this sel-
dom prevails in practice, either in India or out-
side. Liberals search for social roots of heinous

20 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 21
 Ideally, liberal
attitudes
imply a
detachment
and lack of
certitude that
are necessary
for mature
debate
crimes perpetrated by some groups while, in
the case of some other groups, they are plain-
tiffs, prosecutors, jury, judge and executioners.
The selection of causes Liberals take up and the
causes they ignore betray considerations other
than liberal principles at work. Selective liber-
alism is, then, bigotry in an intellectual sheath.
In theory, a Liberal is at the opposite end
of bigots. A bigot is one who is intolerant to-
wards those who hold different opinions from
oneself. However, selective intolerance is yet
another form of intolerance. In the Indian con-
text, as many were hyperventilating after the
dastardly murder of a Muslim in a village in Ut-
22 D e ce m b er 2015
tar Pradesh, I wrote the following in an article
titled “The Question That India Should Be Ask-
ing” published on swarajyamag.com:
“Selective outrage at bigotry is bigotry. It in-
censes the bigot who is being selectively target-
ed because he is being selectively targeted and
because it emboldens the bigot who is spared.
So, one bigot is incensed and another bigot is
encouraged. This is the seminal contribution of
India’s self-styled liberals to the cause of good
governance. In other words, they are guilty of
growing the national stock of intolerance, ha-
tred and bigotry.”
Subsequent non-reactions from Liberals to
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
murders of Hindus in other parts of the country
only reinforce the perception that what passes
for liberalism in India is not to be confused with
the literal meaning of being a Liberal or what
constitutes Liberalism.
Support for the underdog
At the second level, Liberals are champions of
the less privileged, in contrast to Conservatives
who prefer the status quo or the established
order. In this framework, Liberals hold them-
selves above notions of fairness, democracy
and freedom of expression simply because they
identify with causes that are widely perceived
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman
on adversial collaboration.
to be in the service of the underdog—the mate-
rially poor, religious and racial minorities, in
the main. That places them above rules—con-
sistency, evidence, facts, fairness and symme-
try—that are meant to regulate the conduct of
ordinary mortals in their pursuit of causes that
are less noble than these. The presumption that
they know what is best for the world underpins
most of their arguments and methods. There is
no place for other views. The illiberalism or the
intolerance that characterise the methods of
who consider themselves Liberal has been both
an eternal and universal paradox.
The most recent manifestation of this is
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 23
 playing itself out on American university cam-
puses. In recent weeks, there has been plenty of
debate over incidents of political correctness
from Yale to Claremont McKenna College to
University of Missouri. The issues are varied
and yet, those championing the causes of the ex-
cluded, underprivileged and racial minorities
have forced administrators to resign for dar-
ing to suggest that there could be other ways of
looking at the issues. This prompted the follow-
ing tweet by Patrick Chovanec, a well-known
China analyst and a former academic in China:
“An increasing number of people in the US
seem to believe they are so self-evidently right
that they shouldn’t need to persuade anyone.”
Another academic wrote that “inroads to au-
thoritarian behaviour, even in the service of a
noble cause, always lead to the use of authori-
tarian behaviour against the people who first
look to it as a line of defence.”
Role of the State in society
At the third level, Liberals have a particular
A Liberal view of the role of the State in societies and in
should be
economies. They prefer the State to stay away
from legislating on matters that are for individ-
fighting uals to decide on. Group and societal norms and
conventions cede ground to individual prefer-
bigots, who ences. On the other hand, on economic matters,
are intolerant
they want the heavy hand of the State to inter-
vene. Conservatives on the other hand assume
of those who that there are universal and eternal values and
principles that are binding on all members of
hold different society. On economic matters, they prefer the
opinions from
State to stay away, leaving it to individuals
in the marketplace to sort things out between
themselves themselves and figure out the most appropriate
way of engaging in economic transactions.
Both sides are inconsistent in their own
ways. Clearly, it is about some groups consid-
ering themselves to be eternal economic un-
derdogs such that the State must come to their
rescue, redistribute and alter the material and
power balance while leaving them free to do
what they want, with their personal lives. Other
groups prefer the State to enforce social norms
but not economic rules such that the existing
power and material balance are preferred.
At all the three levels, the theoretical and
the desirable qualities of a Liberal and what
obtains in practice are worlds apart. It is unsur-
prising, therefore, that in an article titled “Nar-
endra Modi—India’s Nixon?” published in The
Hindu Business Line on February 10, 2013, sen-
ior journalist T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan de-
fined a Liberal thus: “So who is a liberal, then?
A liberal, by my reckoning, is a person desig-
nated as a liberal by other liberals, usually on a
single communal sub-criterion. As a result, the
most liberal person can be labelled illiberal by
24 D e ce m b er 2015
liberals and the most illiberal as liberal….Most
Indian liberals are wannabes. They are anxious
to ‘belong’ and see selective liberal-certified il-
liberalism as the entry ticket to a certain type
of social acceptability.”
Who then is a true Liberal?
In his description of the ideal economist,
Keynes perhaps defines a liberal individual too.
In his 1924 obituary of his former tutor, econo-
mist Alfred Marshall, he wrote: “The master-
economist must possess a rare combination of
gifts... He must be mathematician, historian,
statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He
must understand symbols and speak in words.
He must contemplate the particular, in terms of
the general, and touch abstract and concrete in
the same flight of thought. He must study the
present in the light of the past for the purposes
of the future. No part of man’s nature or his in-
stitutions must be entirely outside his regard.
“He must be purposeful and disinterested in
a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorrupt-
ible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth
as a politician.”
A Hindu philosopher explained the concept
of Sthitha Prajna as described by Lord Krishna
to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Among other
things, he/she is one who does what is neces-
sary for the betterment of humanity with a
completely tranquil mind, unperturbed. A per-
son whose mind is tranquil will not react to
situations in a way that causes harm to others
because he sees everybody as his own self.
The discussion above gives us clarity on the
ideal Liberal. He/she is open to new ideas and
persuasions and yet has a few immutable core
principles and values. He considers facts and
his assessment is fair, consistent and symmet-
ric, unbiased by situations and personalities.
He is grounded and yet capable of reflection
and contemplation of the particular, the gen-
eral, the abstract and concrete. He understands
that prescriptions for a stable and well-func-
tioning society and economy are more a func-
tion of the context than they are of eternal theo-
ries. He serves humanity with humility and
with a tranquil mind. He has convictions but
is aware of the imperfections of his knowledge
and the limitations imposed by his ignorance.
Hence, he avoids hubris.
Is it possible that humans with all these
qualities exist? It is not possible, because hu-
mans are not cognitively wired to be Liberal.
three reasons why humans can’t be liberal
One reason is loss aversion. Humans feel in-
tense pain when they lose something. Scores
of studies have shown that humans experience
pain disproportionately more when they lose
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 25

Dan Ariely, professor of
psychology at Duke University,
asks us to think about the
question of the extent of control
we have over our decisions.
V. Anantha Nageswaran is
co-founder of the Takshashila
Institution
26 D e ce m b er 2015
something that they possess than when they
forego a gain. That applies not just to posses-
sions but also to opinions. Once formed, opin-
ions are owned. That is why humans are loathe
to changing them or letting them go. Changing
one’s views or opinions is akin to losing some-
thing. So, liberal or not, humans are prone to
holding on to views much longer than desir-
able. Ideally, however, liberal attitudes imply a
degree of detachment and lack of certitude that
are necessary for mature debate.
Second, liberty and liberal attitudes are all
about empowering humans with choices and
the freedom to make those choices without any
coercion by others—groups, communities or
the State. “Choice” and the absence of coercion
figure prominently in the discussion of liberty
and liberalism. But, that flies in the face of per-
vasive consumer marketing and advertising.
Human cognitive limitations are not only well-
documented but well-exploited by marketing
companies. The most obvious human frailty is
succumbing to framing. Framing the same is-
sue in different ways elicits different responses
from humans. Two, when presented with deci-
sions that are less than straightforward, hu-
mans lean towards the choices that are made
for us. In a provocative and insightful TED
presentation, Dan Ariely, professor of psychol-
ogy at Duke University, asks us to think about
the question of the extent of control we have
over our decisions. Nobel laureate Daniel Kah-
neman’s bestselling Thinking Fast And Slow is
all about how little we know of how our minds
work and how little influence we have over it.
Third, there is the impossibility of con-
structing counterfactual scenarios. In real life
and in real time, it is impossible to conduct
counterfactual experiments. The impossibility
of doing so is an inherent feature of social sci-
ences and economics. Ceteris paribus is impos-
sible as other things never remain the same or
stay constant. Closely related to this impossibil-
ity is the context-specific nature of most of the
rules and norms of society. They evolve over
time and with changing contexts. Very few are
immutable. Indeed, that is what RBI Governor
Raghuram Rajan alluded to when he told the
graduating class at IIT Delhi recently that they
should identify their core personalities with
very few ideas, holding a vast majority of them
open to challenge and revalidation at all times.
Recognising and acting on our flaws
Awareness of our cognitive limitations is the
first step towards taking ego out of the equation
and taking a truly liberal stance in a given situ-
ation. But, it is only one of the necessary condi-
tions and not sufficient at all to becoming a Lib-
eral, which is either a lifelong quest or a quest
spread over many births, if you are a believer in
reincarnation as I am.
Absence of certitude and the willingness to
hold very few immutable and non-negotiable
ideas and principles suggests an attitude of
humility that avoids the dangers of hubris. Hu-
bris is an affliction shared by intellectuals with
leaders in positions of power. Lord David Owen,
former British Foreign Secretary, had started a
trust called Daedalus Trust, to examine symp-
toms and afflictions of hubris among corporate
and national leaders. Among the various symp-
toms of hubris listed on the site are:
• Display of messianic tendencies
• Excessive confidence in one’s own judge-
ments and contempt for others’ opinions
• Unshakable belief they would be vindicated
• Accountable only to history
Most leaders—the autocratic and authori-
tarian ones included—would be tickled to know
that they share these four symptoms (among
others) with today’s Liberals.
How should Liberals avoid becoming bigots,
assuming it is not already too late for some of
them? The following can help:
• Having a sense of humour
• Ability to laugh at oneself
• Awareness of one’s insignificance in the con-
text of Evolution and of the Universe itself
• Willingness not to take oneself too seriously
beyond a point, and
• Surrounding oneself with critics who would
keep one’s feet to the ground.
In India, the Tamil sage Thiruvalluvar had
dedicated one chapter (10 couplets from 441 to
450) to the idea of surrounding oneself with
wise men who would keep kings grounded and
ensure that they rule the kingdom well, in the
interests of all the subjects. It is not hard to ex-
tend the logic to all human beings and particu-
larly to those who are in positions of intellec-
tual leadership. Here are two samples:
“A King wise enough to have men of greater
wisdom than he to advise him shall be a power-
ful ruler.” (Thirukkural No. 444)
We can state that a Liberal wise enough to
befriend those with greater wisdom than he
would go on to become a true Liberal.
“Persons who have acquired their knowl-
edge by deep study, and by listening to other
learned men, will definitely have an intuitive
diffidence about their knowledge (and aware-
ness of their ignorance), will be aware of where
they could possibly be wrong or uncertain and
hence will avoid making fools of themselves.”
(Thirukkural No. 417)
Indirectly, the great sage counsels lack of
certitude. Humility will follow naturally from
that. How does one achieve this? Like every-
thing else: by practice.
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
Men at work on becoming liberal
Two men, who are still with us today, adopt a
unique practice that shows their heightened
state of evolution. One is Daniel Kahneman. He
simply seeks out those who disagree with his
views and collaborates with them. His collabo-
ration with psychologist Gary Klein, whose ide-
as on intuition differed profoundly with those
of Kahneman, resulted in several papers being
published together. In the process, he and Klein
ironed out most of their differences, managing
to advance the field in the process.
Kahneman is not the only example. Robert P.
George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
at Princeton University, is a man Republican
Presidential candidates consult regularly. Yet,
his best friend is Professor Cornel West, who
is to the extreme Left. George arrives at his an-
swers by befriending West and others who disa-
gree with him. This is what he says: “The best
thing that’s happened in my academic life the
past decade is that I regularly teach with Cornel
West, who is as far to the left as I am to the right,
but we love each other, and he’s got exactly the
same attitude I have” about the inherent value
of discussion, “and the same fears I have, that
he’ll fall in love with his own opinions. It’s the
best thing in the world, because you have these
two cats who want to get at the truth.”
The advice he has for students is this: “Culti-
vate friends you disagree with,” as well as those
with whom you agree, because together you’ll
locate the soft spots in your own thinking and
find common ground to build on.
Can Indian journalists and academics on
the so-called Right and the so-called Left col-
laborate? Well, they can as long as they are not
in “it” for ego but for national interest. A big
“ask”, perhaps.
Among journalists who questioned their
own liberal instincts, in recent times, was Ra-
fael Behr who writes for The Guardian. In his 8
September piece, he conceded that death penal-
ty by drone strike was a challenge for all liberal
minds. It was about the killing of an ISIS terror-
ist—Reyaad Khan, a young British citizen—by
a drone strike. He concluded that all his liberal
scruples made him crave a better way if only he
could find a better way. That was an intellectu-
ally open and honest piece. It would have been
easy for him to denounce his government and
its methods as inhuman, taking an unrealisti-
cally lofty moral high ground. He resisted that
temptation. Intellectual laziness is harder to re-
sist than the laziness that instigates us to avoid
physical labour.
So, where do we start? The best way to start
is to remember what Aristotle said:
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 27
 C o v e r S t o r y
“Dharmic Liberalism Is Hari Kiran Vadlamani is a serial
and social entrepreneur. Deeply passionate
Classical Liberalism +
about art, philosophy, and Indology, he
has set up three foundations for pursuing
his passions. The Indic Academy is a not-
Social Liberalism +”
for-profit think thank that aims to nurture
and nourish scholarship in Indology,
and arm and groom public intellectuals
in developing a Dharmic narrative. The
Advaita Academy is a not-for-profit that
seeks to preserve and promote the wisdom
of Advaita Vedanta by providing an
online platform for qualified teachers/
gurus as well as establishing a gurukul
for training students desirous of becoming
teachers/ gurus. Creative India is an
advocacy platform for making India a
global soft superpower through various
institutional and individual initiatives.
Over the last decade, he has produced,
mentored and acted as a facilitator to
several creative and intellectual initiatives
by likeminded artists, scholars and public
intellectuals.
Excerpts from an interview by Dr
Kausik Gangopadhyay, Associate
Professor in the area of Economics at
the Indian Institute of Management,
Kozhikode.
What is Dharmic Liberalism?
Liberalism has broadly evolved in two
streams of thought—classical liberalism
and social liberalism. Classical liberal-
ism emphasizes Right to Life, Liberty
and Property. Social liberalism stands
for Justice and Equality of opportunity
to everyone. Together these two streams
stand for Liberalism today.
However, these two concepts do not
talk about duties of the individuals. They
are more focused on the rights, whereas
Dharmic Liberalism talks about duties
of individuals; so it is “Classical-Social
Liberalism Plus”.
What is your definition of Dharma?
Dharma has different connotations start-
ing from universal order, law, justice,
duty etc. In the context of Dharmic Lib-
eralism, it’s used both as an individual
duty to conduct oneself legally and ethi-
cally while pursuing his or her goals, but
also as a universal duty to preserve and
protect the universal order itself. In the
context of a State, dharma is to ensure
liberty, equality and justice.
Dharma is an Indic word while Liber-
alism is a western movement. Many
28 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
would be uneasy about this combina-
tion…
Liberalism has acquired different con-
notations across different countries and
within a country across different time
periods. Over the years, it has changed
several shades as people try to define
themselves better as to what they stand
for. So you have various adjectives defin-
ing Liberalism: Economic Liberalism, So-
cial Liberalism, Conservative Liberalism
etc. So when I use Dharmic as an adjec-
tive to define a Liberal, it is defining the
Liberal further wherein dharma plays a
defining role to my being a Liberal.
From a guna point of view, dharma
is sattva guna and Liberalism is rajas.
When you do your duty with a sense
of service, with an attitude of seva to
your nation, or the world, then you are
predominantly sattvic in your disposi-
tion. Likewise, when you pursue your
right to liberty and material happiness,
the predominant guna in play is rajas.
So a Dharmic Liberal is equally endowed
with both the gunas. Such a person is
simultaneously Universalist and an
Individualist.
Similarly, being Liberal is about your
ego; being Dharmic is about humility.
So you can say it is a combination of be-
ing humble and being confident of your
abilities at the same time. Strains of this
thought can be found in the concepts
of “Servant Leadership” and “Level 5
Leadership”.
Let me explain this concept further by
using Option Theory. Being a Liberal is
about your rights. You believe that as a
taxpayer you have paid a premium and
therefore have a call option, that is, a
right to pursue your economic and emo-
tional goals without any obligation. On
the other hand being Dharmic means you
are writing a put option; that is, you will
deliver your duty and serve your nation
or the world when required but without
collecting any premium. For a Dharmic,
the gift of a fulfilled life itself is deemed
to be the premium.
Dharma is a difficult concept to define
in English. Since the same word can have
multiple meanings based on the context,
it is best we use the word dharma itself
and call it Dharmic Liberalism.
Is Dharmic Liberalism the Indian ver-
sion of the US Conservative Right?
Not at all. On the contrary, it is a form
of Liberalism that promotes the right
to pursue the freedom of thought and
expression, security and emotional hap-
piness within the universal framework
of dharma.
It may be pointed out here that
Sanatana Dharma is not a dogma but it
is dynamic, contextual, and therefore,
flexible. One is not constrained by the
tradition or the scriptures to react to pre-
sent day situations. Therefore, it is not
a conservative thought as defined in the
western political framework, where their
scripture dictates the social ethics that a
believer has to adhere to.
The beauty of Sanatana Dharma is
the diversity of opinion that is possible.
From the same shruti, six rishis have
come up with their own interpretations
in the form of six darshanas.
Since they are all named after a
specific rishi (unlike the Vedas which are
shruti), it is obvious that they have come
“Being Liberal is
about your ego;
being Dharmic is
about humility. So
you are humble
and confident at the
same time”
out of a gurukul and launched their own
school of thought. Is that not freedom to
think for yourself? To evolve your own
thought freely and without any restraint?
This is the essence of Sanatana Dharma:
non-dogmatic and allowing each indi-
vidual to be a seeker.
You have defined it as “classical
and social liberalism plus”. Can you
elaborate what is that “plus”?
This “plus” is rooted at many levels. In
the context of Liberalism, typically there
is no mention of duties and responsi-
bilities from an individual. Liberalism
connotes to one a sense of entitlement.
In Dharmic Liberalism, individuals are
expected to perform their duties. Let me
present a chart explaining this (Editor:
Please see next page).
We introduce two concepts: Individual
Dharma and State Dharma.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 29

State
Dharma
Liberty Equality Justice
Principles enshrined in the
preamble to the Constitution
To understand Individual Dharma,
one can go back to the Vedantic concept
of purusharthas which was conceptual-
ised at an early stage of human civiliza-
tion when there was no king, no govern-
ment. Here I would like to paraphrase
from the teachings of Pujya Swami
Dayanand Saraswati.
Pursuit of happiness can be catego-
rised under four main headings, collec-
tively known in our scriptures as “four
purusharthas”. These are:
Dharma Ethics
Artha Security
Kama Pleasure
Moksha Liberation
Artha and kama are pursuits we share
with other living beings, but dharma
and moksha are unique to human beings
as we are the only self-conscious being
with the faculty of free will. Unlike other
living beings who are driven by instinct,
we are guided in our pursuit of artha
and kama by a set of changing personal
values.
All individuals have a choice over
both the end and the means and they
have to conform to certain values. These
values can be derived by observing how
one wants others to behave with refer-
ence to oneself. They are based on how
30 D e ce m b er 2015
Dharmic
Liberalism
Duty to serve and
protect the nation
Fraternity Dharma
Right to pursue economic
and emotional freedom
legally and ethically
Universal duties for preserving Sanatana Dharma
Help in peace Protect
and natural
disasters Environment
Manushya
Yajna
Bhuta
Yajna
Of the five yajnas to be done every day, three are universal,
and two relating to god and ancestors are personal
one wants oneself to be treated. In other
words, the end and the means must be
based on the golden rule of reciprocity.
These values are part of common sense
ethics, and are collectively called dhar-
ma. These values apply to irreligious per-
sons too. Therefore dharma occupies the
foremost part among the four categories
of human goals because pursuit of artha
and kama have to be governed by ethical
standards.
Similarly, when we talk of liberty
of thought and expression, of freedom
to pursue happiness, they have to be
governed by a sense of ethics, a sense
of dharma. Like dharma precedes artha,
kama and moksha, dharma also has to
precede the liberty to pursue happiness,
dharma has to precede the right to eco-
nomic and emotional freedom.
From Individual Dharma, let’s now
turn to State Dharma and its relationship
with the individual.
As a citizen of India, I am deemed to
have signed a contract with the State—
our Constitution. What is that contract?
Does it resonate with my values? What
are the principles of that contract?
The preamble to the Indian Constitu-
tion talks about four key values: Liberty,
Justice, Equality and Fraternity. There
Purushartha
Pursuit of
Happiness
Artha
Sanatana Dharma is non-dogmatic, non-
Traditional exclusivist way of life, so one can respect
Thought traditional thought and accept only after
examination for contemporary relevance.
Brahma
Yajna
are several articles in the Constitution
that I may not necessarily agree with.
But they are comparatively less impor-
tant at this stage. We want to restrict to
our evaluation to the first principles.
Apart from these four values, do we
want any other values? To my mind,
these four are fulfilling and all-encom-
passing. Therefore no additional values
are required to express Dharmic Liberal-
ism. The first three are definitely part
of Liberalism as we understand today.
So far as fraternity is concerned, it is a
sense of belonging to the country and
protecting the integrity and security of
the country. Therefore an individual fol-
lowing Dharmic Liberalism has a duty to
his country.
He must serve and protect his country.
Let’s look at the universal issues
beyond the nation-state. Every individual
owns a duty to protect Sanatana Dhar-
ma, the Universal Order. What disturbs
this order? Violence and damage to the
environment. So a Dharmic Liberal has
a duty to promote global peace, respond
to natural disasters and also protect the
environment. He can do this in his own
limited individual way.
Lastly as an individual, I must offer
my respect to our past and traditional
thoughts. If I am readily respecting the
past scientific thought, I should not ex-
clude the traditional social and cultural
thought. We should never dismiss our
past traditional social thought merely
because of its ancientness. Again, the
beauty of Sanatana Dharma is its non-
dogmatic and non-exclusivist way of life.
This option is not available to people
who follow other theologies, forcing them
Kama Moksha
to take a view which may personally
not resonate with them in the current
context. Such flexibility in the Indic way
of life in itself should make us respect our
traditional thought, examine its relevance
to the current context and decide for our-
selves whether to accept it or not.
Actually if you look back at the
concept of “Pancha Yajna” that includes
Brahma-yajna, Deva-yajna, Pitru-yajna,
Manushya-yajna and Bhuta-yajna, you
will find a very useful parallel. Brahma-
yajna is about respecting traditional
thought, Bhuta-yajna is about caring “Like dharma precedes artha, kama and
for the environment. Peace and assist-
moksha, dharma also has to precede the right to
economic and emotional freedom”
ing people in natural disaster is called
Manushya-yajna.The other two yagnas,
Deva-yajna and Pitru-yajna are about
honouring one’s own God and ancestors.
They belong to the personal domain of an the government must ensure protecting religious phrase communicating the duty
individual. the integrity of the country. There is no of an individual to surrender, respect,
You can find the environmentally other role for the government besides and protect the larger cosmic force or
conscious people in say California, who the above. The government has to be order which is the Sanatana Dharma.
are careful about their carbon footprint, efficient. So he covers social and economic
eat organic food, wear cotton clothes and Here I would like to recall the mission policies the government has to pursue,
drive electric cars or cycle to their work- statement of Swarajya when the maga- and rights and duties for an individual in
place, are actually doing Bhuta-yajna! zine was launched. Rajaji had this to say : pursuit of his goals. This is nothing but
Only they do not call it by that name. “There is before the country the great Classical Liberalism-Social Liberalism
They have made it part of their lifestyle problem of how to secure welfare without Plus—Dharmic Liberalism.
and way of life, which is exactly what surrendering the individual to be swal- On a different note, if you see the
Sanatana Dharma is all about. lowed up by the State, how to get the best trends being published by Pew Research,
return for the taxes the people pay and a significant portion of the American
What is the role of Moksha in your how to preserve spiritual values while population identify themselves as “spir-
framework of Dharmic Liberalism? working for better material standards itual but not religious”. As I mentioned
For the individual, a dharmic pursuit of of life. This journal will serve all these before, they are increasingly concerned
material security and sensory pleasure purposes.” about universal issues such as peace,
comes as a primary requirement. At the In this one statement, Rajaji has environment and reverting to traditional
secondary stage, when he realises that packed in his entire political ideology. knowledge systems. So on one hand,
external objects, people or situations only If you read carefully the highlighted they have reached the height of mate-
give him temporary happiness, he turns portions, “securing Welfare” is ensuring rial prosperity through their individual
to the pursuit of spiritual happiness and equality of opportunity and justice for efforts, but on the other hand they are
that is moksha. all; “without surrendering the individual emotionally unfulfilled and are turning
From a political ideology point of to be swallowed by the State” and better to spirituality and are being sensitive
view, moksha is not relevant here. “material standards” is ensuring his to universal issues. In a way, they are
liberty to pursue his economic goals; “Spiritually Liberal”, which is nothing
What is the role of government under “best return for taxes” defines an ef- but being a “Dharmic Liberal”.
Dharmic Liberalism? ficient government, what is now called
Government must ensure freedom of as “minimum government maximum (Hari Kiran Vadlamani is a board mem-
expression, ensure rule of law, make laws governance”, and lastly “how to preserve ber of Kovai Media Pvt Ltd, the publishers
to ensure equality of opportunity. Lastly, spiritual values” is a power-packed non- of Swarajya.)
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 31
 I d e o l o g y

India Needs A Rig ht-wing Rainbow

Seetha Today, the Indian Right has a breathtaking opportunity that may
not come its way again for a long time if it fluffs it. To seize that
opportunity, the conservative Right and the liberal Right have to bury
their differences and work together.

O
ne and a half years after Nar-
endra Modi became the head of
India’s first unapologetically
right-of-centre government, is
there a rightist ecosystem begin-
ning to develop in India? Could a broad coali-
tion of different hues of liberal-conservative
thinking be coming together into some kind of a
right-wing rainbow?
Three years back, either scenario would
have been unthinkable. Though right-left dis-
tinctions have become meaningless, broadly
the “left” space was occupied by those who be-
lieved in some form of socialism (from the be-
nign to the extreme variety), were social and
cultural liberals and claimed they were “secu-
lar” (which only meant that they were against
majoritarian communalism). They dominated
the entire intellectual arena—the academia and
with, and wary, of the other. What they had
in common was a discomfort with the left, for
which they were both objects of derision. As a
result, both groups were largely on the defen-
sive, though there were some aggressive ele-
ments among them.
This is changing, making the two scenarios
at the start of the article possible.
Certainly, being right-of-centre is no longer
something to be apologetic about. This started
happening well before May 2014, but has defi-
nitely picked up pace since then. Earlier, be-
cause of the electoral successes of the left-of-
centre groups, both the liberal-right and the
conservatives were jeered at for not resonating
with the masses. That more or less ceased with
the stupendous success of Modi in the 2014 elec-
tion, riding on a liberal economic agenda focus-
ing on inclusiveness as well as the work done

the media—and manipulated the historical,
cultural and economic narrative. Though their
monopoly on the economic discourse was chal-
lenged (not very successfully) by the economic
right—where is the liberal Economic and Politi-
cal Weekly?—they still could drown out contrar-
ian voices.
The non-left space was occupied by two
broad groups. One was the classical liberals and
libertarians—believing in free markets, indi-
vidual freedom, minimal government interfer-
ence, whether in the economy or in social and
cultural matters.
The other was the conservative-nationalistic
group, whose economic ideology was more mer-
cantilist and protectionist, which was socially
orthodox, chauvinistically nationalistic and
unabashedly majoritarian. This is largely the
Hindu right (strangely in India, Muslim and
Christian fanatics sharing the same attributes
as the Hindu fanatics are put in the left-liberal
bucket) and many of those in this group are ei-
ther active BJP supporters or voters.
The divisions between the two right-wing
groups was watertight, each uncomfortable
by the sangh parivar foot soldiers.
There also appears to be a certain amount
of fluidity among the two rightist groups now,
a faint readiness to engage with each other to
expand the space for a right-of-centre discourse,
instead of wasting resources fighting the left
coalition individually. Both groups see Modi’s
ascent to power as an opportunity to break the
stranglehold of the left on the intellectual space,
with the liberal right focused on pushing its
agenda of minimum government and further
liberalization of the economy.
This was evident at the second India Ideas
Conclave in mid-November organized by the
India Foundation. The India Foundation is
closely linked to the BJP (its governing board
is overwhelmingly peopled by party leaders)
and ideological fellow travellers do make up
the bulk of the attendees. However, those who
attended the first conclave last year noted that
there was a larger participation from the liberal
right this time around.
The theme of this year’s conclave was
“Learnings from Civilizations”, and given that
former RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav, a direc-
tor at the Foundation, was one of the key organ-
izers, one would have expected the conference
to push a strong Hindu line. But barring one
session on Rise of Radicalism, which focused
only on Islamic radicalism, and another on the
RSS and its cultural agenda, there was no overt
Hindutva tone to the conference.
Writers Patrick French and Tavleen Singh
did face some aggressiveness from the audi-
ence when the former was sympathetic to those
returning their awards and the latter said the
right did not have academic and intellectual
heft, but there was no nastiness. By and large,
there was acceptance of the fact that it was nec-
essary to address the glaring lack in the right-
wing intellectual space that Singh had pointed
to. Yes, the issue of beef bans and provocative
statements by BJP and RSS leaders were glossed
over, but one can hardly expect a conference to
criticize its own organizers.
What was also striking was that a significant
number of young BJP members—urbane, west-
ernized men and women in their twenties and
early thirties—were more akin to the liberal
The conservative-
right. These were not the right-wing goons and
bullies that often make it to the headlines. They
wanted Modi to remain focused on economic nationalistic
reforms and not to encourage the social and cul-
group’s economic
ideology is
tural bigots in the larger sangh parivar. They
toed the party line as disciplined members but
in private conversations, it was evident that
they would not eventually evolve into Hindutva mercantilist and
hardliners, though they were ever ready to take
protectionist,
socially orthodox,
on and demolish Congress/ leftist arguments.
In fact, they were actually dispirited that the
Modi government has not yet been very suc-
cessful in changing the discourse that had been chauvinistically
set by the left.
nationalistic and
unabashedly
That lament was echoed at another confer-
ence, Liberalism in India: Past, Present and Fu-
ture, on Delhi, a couple of days after the India
Ideas Conclave concluded in Goa. This one had majoritarian
the liberal right discussing approaches to hot-
button issues like reservations, religious and
cultural freedom, welfare-ism, human rights
versus security, how to make liberalism reso-
nate with the masses and the like. Conversa-
tions on the sidelines focused on how to expand

32 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 33

It is necessary the space for the liberal point of view.
to address the
The establishment of right-wing think tanks
(the India Foundation, the Vivekananda In-
glaring lack in ternational Foundation, to name just two),
the launch of an unapologetically ideological
the right-wing Swarajya in the media space, the fact that the
intellectual space
rightist point of view is not only being articu-
lated by more and more people but is also get-
that Tavleen Singh ting forums to air them, all shows that a funda-
mental shift in India’s intellectual landscape is
pointed to taking place. The left hold on India’s mind is
beginning to be prised open.
Unfortunately, the wariness between the two
right-wing groups has not disappeared entirely.
The liberal right’s willingness to work along
with the conservative right has been put under
strain by the latter’s confrontational stance on
social and cultural issues. Many who belong to
this group are not comfortable with the constant
glorification of the civilizational heritage that
the Hindu right indulges in, especially when it
is in the form of wild claims, unsubstantiated
by any evidence, about ancient Indians having
invented flying machines and nuclear bombs.
The traditionalist right, for its part, feels
the liberal right is being opportunistic, using
Modi to push its own economic agenda (which
it does not agree with) and sees the liberals as a
westernized elitist bunch, rejecting its cultural
and civilizational roots, and with limited value.
The social liberalism that the liberal right ad-
vocates is something the traditional right just
cannot reconcile with.
Both groups need to get over this mutual dis-
trust and realise that they need to work more
closely with each other.
For this, the conservative right has to rec-
The author is a Contributing ognize that the liberal right alone will be able
Editor of Swarajya to bring the fence-sitters over to this side. Be-
34 D e ce m b er 2015
ing contemptuous towards them is not go-
ing to work, especially when many of its own www.metismfo.com
supporters are uncomfortable with social and
cultural bigotry and intolerance, even as they
defend it against leftist attacks. The majority
of the youth—even those who are not from ur-
ban, western-educated backgrounds—value in-
dividual freedoms and reject oppressive social
structures and hierarchies.
The appeal to cultural values has to be put in
a more modern context. The liberal right does
not deny the appeal or importance of cultural
values; it just objects to a forced uniformity
being imposed on the country. The conserva-
tive right must appreciate the fact that the lib-
eral right condemns minority communalism
as much as majoritarian communalism. More
importantly, the liberal right is more articulate
and can take on the left-seculars in debate far
more cogently and coherently than the tradi-
tional right can.
The liberal right, for its part, also needs to
stop turning up its nose at even the saner ele-
ments in the conservative right. It need not—
indeed, should not—compromise on social and
cultural tolerance, but there is no point in being
snooty towards the glorification of India’s civi-
lization by the conservative right. At the India
Ideas Conclave, the three speakers at a session
on Indic Economics were all from the liberal
right—one of them was a Christian—and they
quoted from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata,
Kautilya’s Arthashastra, and ancient and medi-
eval Indian history to make a compelling case
for minimum government, a liberal economic
order and a tax payer-friendly tax system. Business and Wealth Advisory
There are many lunatic claims, no doubt, but
there are some genuine claims as well, which Family Governance & Wellness
can be backed by scientific evidence and this
distinction has to be kept in mind, instead of a Succession Planning
wholesale rejection of all claims.
The left-secular ecosystem is a formidable
Lifestyle Management
one built over 60-odd years with State patron-
Inheritance Management
age. Forget dismantling it, even breaking its
monopoly is not going to be an easy task. Dis- Charity / Philanthropy
crete efforts by different groups will not pro-
vide that challenge. Moderate elements within
the sangh parivar and BJP as well as the more
pragmatic elements within the liberal right
need to work together more closely than they
are doing right now. The left-secular brigade
co-opts anyone who is non-right into its broad
coalition. A similar coalition of the right needs
to emerge.
Today, the Indian right has a breathtaking
opportunity that may not come its way again
for a long time if it fluffs it. To seize that oppor-
tunity, the two hues of the right must form a
right-wing rainbow. 78/132, Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai, Mylapore, Chennai 600004
They cannot afford not to.
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V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
 K a s h m i r
The Best Bet
Madhu Purnima
Kishwar
For Harmony
The success of the BJP-PDP democratic experiment will provide a role
model for the Islamic world, going through extreme turbulence and
open warfare between the forces of democracy and annihilation.
L
ONG BEFORE THE recent
dastardly petrol bomb attack on
Kashmiri truckers, resulting in
the death of young Zahid Rasool
Bhat, by goons posturing as a
cow protection brigade, Kashmir Valley
was already on the boil. The state and
Central governments do not seem to be
working in a coordinated manner to deal
with the fast-growing Islamist radicaliza-
tion of Kashmiri youth that makes even
a hardliner like Syed Ali Shah Geelani
appear a moderate in comparison. The
radicalized section of the youth, though
minuscule at this time, does not hide its
fascination for outfits like the ISIS.
Unlike the old generation of seces-
sionists, the neo-militants are not just
anti-India—they are also anti-democracy,
which they openly condemn as being
un-Islamic. This process of virulent
rejection of democracy and adoption of
a jihadi ideology has been brewing for
over two decades now. Although it was
conceived and nurtured in the womb of
the Pakistan-backed secessionist move-
ment, the current phase of radicalization
has gone far beyond the demand for a
plebiscite to a desire for establishing the
global supremacy of Islam through total
annihilation of all that stands in its way.
Democracy is seen as an inimical distrac-
tion in this project.
It is noteworthy that the separatist/
secessionist movement arose as a protest
against the thwarting of democracy
in Kashmir by the National Confer-
ence (NC) with the tacit backing of the
Congress at the Centre. Although Sheikh
Abdullah facilitated the accession of
Kashmir to India, after coming to power,
he and his party did not allow democracy
to take deep roots in Kashmir. His brand
of authoritarianism did not brook even
36 D e ce m b er 2015
token opposition. Abdullah acceded to In-
dia but did not allow Kashmiri Muslims
to integrate with India either psychologi-
cally and emotionally. To enhance his
bargaining power vis-à-vis the Centre,
Sheikh Abdullah kept the secessionist
option alive.
Whenever faced with the slightest re-
sistance from the Central government, he
would tilt towards Pakistan and revive
the azadi slogan. Though he was popular
enough to sweep the polls, he could not
stand anyone standing against his party
to offer even a nominal challenge. He got
away with it because of his mass appeal
and also because Nehru bestowed the
halo of martyrdom on him by putting
him under house arrest on suspicion that
he was hobnobbing with Pakistan. By
the time his son Farooq tried the same
formula for winning the 1987 election, the
people were through with their uncondi-
tional romance with the Abdullah family.
At the time of the 1987 election, the
Muslim United Front (MUF) emerged as
a noticeable challenge to the hitherto un-
questioned power of the NC by occupying
the same political space and constituency
that the NC once occupied. It is note-
worthy that NC was originally named
Muslim Conference when it was founded
in 1932. It changed its nomenclature to
National Conference only in June 1939.
Right from its inception, Sheikh Abdul-
lah used the historic Jamia Masjid, the
traditional seat of temporal and religious
power in Kashmir, and the megaphone
for mobilizing Kashmiris to support the
Muslim Conference.
When Sheikh Abdullah renamed his
outfit and called it National Conference,
Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, the founder
of the Pakistan-propped Awami Action
Committee, took control of the mosque
and used it as his base for political
mobilization. Sheikh Abdullah made the
revered Hazrat Bal shrine the citadel of
NC mobilization. Friday sermons at these
mosques by the two political rivals had
little to do with religion or spirituality
and everything to do with politics. But
today neither Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who
inherited the mantle of controlling this
mosque from his father, nor the Abdullah
family would dare challenge the young-
sters carrying ISIS flags demonstrating
outside these two bastions of religiopo-
litical power.
In 1987, Geelani and others who joined
the Muslim United Front (MUF) stood for
election against the NC to seek legiti-
mate political space through democratic
means. MUF thus emerged as an anti-NC
force seeking to assert the right to dissent
with and oppose the authoritarian poli-
tics of NC through democratic elections. ously deprived Kashmiris of free and BJP or PDP must live up to the huge trust and
responsibility reposed on them by the people of J&K
The brazen rigging of the 1987 election by fair elections. That has consolidated
the NC with the backing of the then Rajiv into anti-India sentiment because the
Gandhi-led Central government, and Centre was seen as being complicit in
subsequent repression let loose against the misdeeds of NC leaders and their eration of NC voters have not switched the PDP have come from weaning away
opponents led to the anti-NC sentiment kin. The Abdullahs deftly manipu- their loyalties. That is how, even in the the youth from the separatist camp. That
turning into anti-India sentiment. lated this situation by projecting an 2014 elections, the National Conference is why the likes of Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz
That was a godsend for Pakistan, image that they alone stood between got nearly 10 lakh votes. Farooq and other militant leaders fero-
which astutely channeled this anger into secession to Pakistan and accession to ciously hate the PDP; its success makes
a full-fledged anti-India insurgency. India. But if ever the Central govern- how pdp is weaning away youth from jihad them irrelevant and marginalizes their
Since then, Kashmiri politics has got ment tried to curb their misdoings, But the young voters are virulently very existence. They work towards its
polarized into: they raise the banner of “azadi”, thus anti-NC, which they consider a puppet of failure to prove that the Indian democra-
• The pro-NC opinion that oscillates be- adding fuel to the Pak-lit secessionist Delhi. It is in this context of the youth’s cy is incapable of meeting the aspirations
tween the demand for more autonomy fires. growing estrangement from the NC and of Kashmiris.
and secession depending on the From 1989 onwards, the NC support India and the increasing appeal of mili- Mufti Mohammad Sayeed Sahib was
convenience of its leaders. As recently base among the youth began steadily tant Islam that is quintessentially inimi- the first politician in Kashmir to come
as October 20, 2015, Farooq Abdul- declining because they denied legitimate cal to democracy that the PDP emerged out openly against the gun culture with
lah publicly justified and endorsed space to their political aspirations. Their as a saviour of democracy in 2002. The his clarion call, “Na bandook se na boli
Jinnah’s demand for the Partition of vote base is today largely confined to the PDP’s electoral base has been wrenched se, baat banegi boli se” (Neither guns nor
India in 1947. older generation that saw Sheikh Abdul- from all those elements that had turned bullets will work; dialogue is the only
• Anti-NC sentiment in response to the lah as a symbol of Kashmiri Muslim anti-NC and, therefore, gravitated to- way to solve problems). That became the
highly corrupt and autocratic rule of aspirations. wards militancy. guiding philosophy of the PDP. Muzaffar
the Abdullah family, which continu- The Sheikh and Farooq Abdullah gen- The nearly 11 lakh votes secured by Hussain Baig added the intellectual grav-
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 37

The youth of Kashmir hugely influence politics; they
were sucked into street protests in their schooldays.
itas to it by crafting the “Healing Touch”
policy of the PDP, while Mehbooba Mufti
implemented it on the ground under the
most adverse circumstances.
Mehbooba began the process of reach-
ing out to alienated youth at the peak of
militancy in the late 1990s when most
Congress and NC leaders had abandoned
the Valley. Whenever a young man was
killed by the armed forces on suspicion of
being a militant or by terrorists for being
an informer for security forces, Mehboo-
ba was the first one to reach and commis-
erate with the parents, widows and chil-
dren of the deceased. She cleverly owned
the symbol of the Muslim United Front
by claiming their legacy. She travelled to
the remotest of villages at great personal
risk to apply balm to the wounds of griev-
ing families who faced a very precarious
social situation.
If the army killed their sons on ac-
count of being suspected militants, they
would be socially ostracized because
of the fear of becoming targets of army
wrath. If militants killed them on suspi-
38 D e ce m b er 2015
cion of being army informers, they would
likewise be treated as outcasts. At such a
time, the PDP lending a sympathetic ear
to such families and offering even token
forms of financial help meant a great
deal. Such gestures also encouraged the
families of active militants to put pres-
sure on their sons to abjure the path of
violence and put their faith in democracy
for redressal of their grievances.
On coming to power in 2002, the PDP
also provided a far more responsive and
relatively efficient governance with cor-
ruption under far greater check than had
even been the case under NC rule. Even
at the risk of annoying its cadres, the
PDP-led coalition government ensured
that new recruitments, whether for jobs
of schoolteachers or other government
departments, were mostly merit-based.
That was very unlike the situation
during NC regimes when it was taken
for granted that government jobs were
reserved for NC members, but they too
had to “purchase” them.
Within three years of PDP rule, the
state witnessed the setting up of three
new universities: Mata Vaishno Devi
University in Jammu district, Baba
Ghulam Shah University in Rajouri, and
Islamic University in Kashmir Valley.
an accessible government
The PDP’s was also the most accessible
state government J&K had ever wit-
nessed. During the phase of militancy in
Kashmir, the government had ceased to
exist. Most Kashmiri politicians, includ-
ing the Abdullahs, literally abandoned
the Valley and spent most of their time
either in Delhi or abroad. Even other
political representatives stayed low
key under security cover. They stopped
engaging with their respective constitu-
encies. Thus, people were left totally
at the mercy of a corrupt and uncaring
bureaucracy and the security forces.
There was a total clampdown on politi-
cal dissent, which only helped swell the
ranks of militants.
The PDP brought about a sea change
in the political atmosphere with its high-
est leadership being easily accessible
to ordinary citizens. Instead of remain-
ing confined to a high security zone,
CM Sayeed himself chose to live in the
heart of the city and started travelling
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
to every nook and corner of the state, to
listen and respond to people’s grievances
and demands. Mehbooba Mufti as party
president was also on constant move and
available on the phone to all and sundry.
The youth in particular connected
to her with enthusiasm and she began
building a whole new cadre of youngsters
as a counter to NC hegemony, while Mu-
zaffar Hussain Baig as Deputy Chief Min-
ister and Finance Minister took charge
of providing effective administration.
During those three years of PDP rule,
there was a close connect between prom-
ises made and delivery on the ground,
especially with regards to development
work. Even while in government, the
PDP ensured that separatists did not get
the opportunity to exploit and capitalize
on stray cases of human rights abuses by
the police or security forces. The moment
any such unfortunate incident came to
light, the seniormost leaders of the PDP
rushed to the area, not just to commiser-
ate with the family and placate local sen-
timents but also offer instant financial
compensation and support.
That this hard work paid off in reviv-
ing faith in democracy is evident from
the fact that, in the municipal elections
of 2003, the vote percentage went up to 88
per cent in several constituencies. The
Chief Minister himself travelled all over
the state urging people to make demands
on the system to make it responsive.
pdp as a bridge to the mainland
Another noteworthy aspect of the PDP-
led government from 2002 to 2005 was
that the Chief Minister constantly acted
as a bridge of goodwill between the
Centre and the state government. That
too was in sharp contrast to the strategy
followed by National Conference lead-
ers who spoke with different tongues,
depending on the audience.
In Delhi, they would project them-
selves as the only saviour of India’s claim
to Kashmir. But in Kashmir, they stoked
anti-India sentiments by targeting the
Centre as a hostile entity that did not
allow “autonomy” or self-governance in
Kashmir. Whenever things got too hot for
them in the Valley due to their misman-
agement, they raised the demand for a
plebiscite.
Whatever its other flaws and limita-
tions, PDP effectively marginalized the
demand for referendum and secession,
and shifted the focus to governance. Un-
like the NC, the PDP did not use strong-
arm methods against separatists. It
released almost all of them from jail and
allowed them the freedom to hold demon-
strations, condemn the government and
whatever else, so long as violence was
eschewed.
Earlier, all those with grievances
against the government would land up at
the doors of separatists. But Mehbooba
Mufti ensured that her door became the
first and most preferred option for all
those with a genuine grouse for which
they actually wanted a solution.
how pdp blundered
However, the Muftis couldn’t handle his
party’s relationship with the Congress,
their alliance partner, once Mufti Saheb
had to give way to Ghulam Nabi Azad as
Chief Minister in 2005. That was as per
the agreed upon terms and conditions of
the Congress-PDP alliance in 2002.
The manner in which Mehbooba led a
hysterical campaign, outperforming even
separatists in militant rhetoric, over
the Amarnath land row damaged her
credentials, not just among the Hindus of
Jammu region, but also in the rest of the
country. She earned for the PDP the dubi-
ous distinction of being a party of “soft
separatists”.
She justified her militant stance by
saying that if the PDP had allowed the
issue to be monopolized by separatists,
the party would have been wiped out in
the forthcoming assembly elections. That
is not borne out by the fact that Muzaffar
Hussain Baig won the Baramulla seat
with a comfortable margin even though
he took an open stand against his party’s
cynical position vis-à-vis the land row.
The truth is that by bringing down the
Ghulam Nabi Azad government on this
spurious issue, which was originally
raised by the NC as a trap for the PDP,
the latter actually paved the way for the
former’s return to power as an ally of the
Congress in the 2009 assembly elections.
The PDP paid a heavy price for that
indiscretion because, after the 2009 elec-
tions, the Congress chose to ally with and
prop up an NC-led government. But true
to habit, the NC government was not only
scam-ridden but also extremely gross in
handling political discontent, leading
to a massive youth-led agitation in 2010
that resulted in 114 killings of teenagers
in police firing. The Valley witnessed an
endless series of strikes and a revival
of militancy, especially among teenag-
ers. The Congress-led government at the
Centre gave blind support to Omar Ab-
dullah’s misdoings instead of acting as a
corrective, which led to a massive revival
of anti-India sentiment.
The May 2014 parliamentary elections
resulted in a resounding defeat for the
NC with all three MP seats being won by
the PDP. In the December 2014 assem-
bly elections, the NC and Congress lost
power with the PDP winning 28 seats,
most of them in the Valley, while the BJP
made a clean sweep in the Jammu region
winning 25 seats. The voter turnout at
65 per cent was higher than the national
average. The two parties had taken on
a high-pitched adversarial position
towards each other during the campaign.
Therefore, it took them several weeks
to sort out their differences and cobble
together an uneasy alliance that left a sig-
nificant section of their respective cadres
befuddled and confused.
strains in coalition and mutual
misunderstanding
Mufti Saheb gave his tenure a rocky
start by thanking Pakistan for allowing
peaceful polls in the state. That caused
a huge embarrassment for the BJP and
annoyed the army no end because it was
their hard work that had kept the terror-
ists at bay. The CM added further fuel to
the fire by claiming credit for releasing
the jihadi Masarat Alam as a gesture of
the “Healing Touch” policy, even though
Alam had been released on the orders of
the Supreme Court.
When the media and the BJP went
ballistic, Mufti Saheb had to eat humble
pie and re-arrest Alam on fresh charges.
That lent strength to separatists who
charged that Mufti was a mere puppet in
the hands of the BJP high command. On
the other hand, the BJP rank and file felt
justified in mistrusting the PDP for its
pro-Pak, pro-militancy proclivities. The
memories of the role played by Mehbooba
Mufti during the Amarnath land row
agitation added fuel to the fire of deep
mistrust.
A major reason for the mutual ten-
sions in the BJP-PDP alliance is that the
BJP cadres and leaders are not really
well-versed with the politics of the Val-
ley and do not understand the vital role
being played by thev PDP in favour of
India. The PDP support base mostly
comprises the youth, which is and has
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 39
 been virulently rejecting the NC. If the
PDP did not exist, the 11-lakh-odd votes
secured by the party would not have
gone either to the NC or the Congress.
They would have added to the numbers
that heed the boycott call of separatists.
Today 65 per cent of Kashmir’s popula-
tion is below 35 years of age. The youth of
Kashmir has a much higher influence on
the state’s politics as compared to other
states because they are excessively po-
liticized and have been sucked into street
protests since their schooldays.
Despite all its limitations, it is only
the PDP that is engaging with this vola-
tile group and directing their discontent
as well as aspirations onto a democratic
platform. Within PDP, Mehbooba Mufti
has emerged as the anchorperson for this
mobilization. While the separatists want
to keep the youth on the boil and forever
traumatized, Mehbooba approaches them
as a caring sister qua mother figure and
acts as a healer and hope giver.
In the process of marginalizing the
separatists, she has to often steal the
wind from their sails by protesting
louder than them against occasional
cases of human rights abuses even when
her party is in power.
That often gets interpreted as Mehboo-
ba and the PDP being indistinguishable
from separatists. This misunderstanding
is a major cause of tensions between BJP
cadres and the PDP. The leadership at the
top that cobbled together the alliance has
not taken the trouble to explain to their
cadres, the rationale and compulsions
under which both sides are operating.
the importance of being mehbooba
There is no doubt that Mehbooba has the
tendency to go overboard on sensitive
issues, which often gives credence to the
negative stereotype painted of her by op-
ponents. By contrast, Muzaffar Hussain
Baig is among the rare Kashmiri leaders
who know how to address the concerns
of people outside Kashmir even while
safeguarding the legitimate interests of
Kashmiri Muslims. He understands and
responds sensitively to the concerns of
Kashmiri Pandits, people of Jammu and
Ladakh, as well as the people of India
outside the state in a manner that bridges
the emotional divide engineered by
unscrupulous politics over the previous
decades.
But whatever her limitations, BJP
cadres and leaders need to understand
40 D e ce m b er 2015
Mehbooba’s unique qualities. At a time
when most mainstream male politicians
had abandoned Kashmir, she ventured
unarmed into remote insurgency-infested
villages where even security forces were
afraid to go. She built PDP’s political
base bottom up—and that too in the most
turbulent of times. Mufti Saheb and
Muzaffar Hussain Baig were no doubt the
brains behind the PDP. But the actual
groundwork has been done primarily by
Mehbooba.
The importance of Mehbooba can be
better understood if we take into account
the politicians challenging her. Pitched
against her are the likes of Yasin Malik,
Masarat Alam, Asiya Andrabi, and Syed
Ali Shah Geelani. All these separatists
are brazenly acting at the behest of Paki-
stani agencies and are on the payroll of
the ISI. They thrive on organizing “atroc-
ity-mongering tourism” for national and
international media. These worthies
justify terror attacks and instigate the
youth to take to arms to destroy India at
the behest of Pakistan.
The growing tribe of Asiya Andrabis
castigates democracy as being anti-Islam
and supports Hafiz Sayeed’s jehadi ideol-
ogy, which is fast moving closer to the
ISIS brand of bestiality.
These are the forces coercing Kash-
miri women to adopt burqa and hijab,
which militate against the liberal ethos
of traditional Islam in Kashmir. They
ban music, dance and whatever else can
bring some joy and cheer into social life.
Their main agenda is to cultivate a sense
of victimhood and instigate the youth
into nihilistic destruction.
By contrast, Mehbooba is galvanizing
the youth to stand up for democracy and
aspire towards a constructive future. She
appeals to Kashmiri pride as opposed to
Islamic separatism. She challenges the
Wahhabi version of Islam by her own
example. She and her family are Sufi
by conviction. They even visit and owe
allegiance to Hindu spiritual gurus. Her
two daughters have all the freedom that
youngsters in other parts of India have.
They don’t even cover their heads, leave
alone wear burqa or hijab.
This is the first time Kashmir has
thrown up a genuine grassroots-based
woman leader—that too at a time when
the state is tilting towards Salafism that
denies women basic human rights. She is
the only self-made woman leader in the
entire Islamic world who is triumphantly
challenging the Salafi version of Islam.
Even as a symbol, the rise of Mehbooba
Mufti in a Muslim-majority state under
siege by Pakistani terror brigades is a
tribute to Indian democracy and tradi-
tional Kashmiri culture.
She is the most befitting response
to the many Pakistan-propped Asiya
Andrabis. By mistrusting Mehbooba
Mufti and trying to squeeze her role,
the BJP cadres would be expanding the
space for murderous separatists. The BJP
hotheads would also do well to remember
that PDP is the only force that has never
internationalized the Kashmir issue—
something even the supposedly main-
stream NC is guilty of doing. Neither
Mehbooba nor any other PDP leader has
ever gone breast beating to America or
Europe demonizing India as the separa-
tists routinely do. If they have grievances
or complaints, they insist on a hearing
within India.
Mehbooba is not much of a favourite
with the Pakistani establishment because
she doesn’t sing its tunes and is actively
weaning away the separatist cadre. That
is why the likes of Yasin Malik hate her
with frightening ferocity. By contrast,
they have a cozy relationship with the
NC because the Janus-faced scam-ridden
politics of the Abdullah clan creates a
rich soil for the growth of pro-Pak mili-
tancy and general estrangement with In-
dia. But PDP politics aims to strengthen
people’s faith in India’s democracy.
When PDP first came to power in 2002,
I had asked one of the senior JKLF lead-
ers why Yasin Malik hates PDP so much.
The answer I got speaks volumes: “When
the NC is in power, they water the roots
of terrorist/separatist politics while pre-
tending to oppose it by merely trimming
the branches. However, when the PDP is
in power, they don’t oppose us in words,
they may even appear soft on us, but they
are cutting our roots even while making
a show of being soft on us.”
The people of J&K gave a historic elec-
toral verdict in 2014 requiring the BJP
and the PDP to work together to bridge
the regional and communal divides in the
state. Both the parties need to understand
the compulsions and limitations of each
other, instead of creating difficulties for
the alliance. They need to take each other
into confidence and evolve joint strate-
gies for dealing with contentious issues
being raised by vested interests.
Total lack of experience of governance
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
among the BJP’s first-time MLAs and
ministers and the oppositionist mindset
cultivated over decades of being a mar-
ginal opposition makes the task doubly
difficult. On the PDP side too, there are
plenty of greenhorns and hotheads who
keep rattling the fragile alliance. The
inexplicable sidelining of able and sea-
soned administrators like Muzaffar Hus-
sain Baig in preference to inexperienced
and unreliable ministers like Haseeb
Drabu has also made PDP performance
in administration much weaker than it
was during 2002-2005.
Similarly, gross mishandling of the
cow slaughter issue by BJP leaders has
created an easily avoidable crisis for the
two alliance partners.
the task for modi
The fact that Prime Minister Narendra
Modi appears to have forgotten all the
grand promises he made to the youth of
Jammu & Kashmir that he would work
to make it a “super state”, only serves to
strengthen the hands of troublemakers in
the Valley. The inexplicable delay in de-
livering the promised development pack-
age from the Central government has also
created a wave of disenchantment with
the current dispensation.
Had the Rs 80,000 crore package been
given to J&K within the first couple of
months of the new government assuming
power, it would have created good faith
in the Valley, set into motion the much- Mehbooba appeals to pride, not separatism,
needed development work and strength-
ened the PDP-BJP alliance.
challenging Wahhabi-ism by her own example
Now the same package is being treated
with disdain, because NC and the sepa- ance partner. warfare between the forces of democracy
ratists have had the time to define the Voices are growing louder on both and the forces of annihilation. It will also
terms of the discourse and build up hys- sides that this alliance should be provide a major fillip to the Prime Minis-
teria against the PDP as being a puppet of scrapped. At a time when all other ter’s initiative to strengthen bonds with
the BJP. In such a situation, PM Modi’s political parties are hellbent on polar- the Muslim world bypassing Pakistan.
open snub to CM Mufti Mohammad izing Muslims against the BJP, which The Congress is desperate to sabotage
Sayeed at the joint rally they addressed in effect translates into the widening of this alliance and take Kashmir back to
in Srinagar on November 7 has created the Hindu-Muslim divide, the coming to- the dark days of the insurgency. If this
a furious wave against the alliance with gether of the BJP-PDP coalition—that too alliance fails, the Congress can go around
separatists on the offensive. in the sensitive state of Kashmir—pro- triumphantly declaring to the world that
Even if Modi did not like Mufti’s vides both these parties an opportunity the BJP is incapable of inclusive politics.
advice regarding reopening the dialogue to set into motion a historic new trend On the other hand, the success of this
with Pakistan, there was no need to of constructive engagement between the coalition would be the most befitting
humiliate the CM in front of his people. If people of Kashmir and the people of the response to the ideology that created
nothing else, Modi should have respected rest of India. Pakistan. History will not forgive either
Mufti’s age and experience and handled The success of this democratic experi- of the two parties if they fail to live up to
the matter more deftly. Apart from ment in Kashmir—as a Muslim majority the huge trust and responsibility reposed
damaging the prospects of the alliance, state in a Hindu majority India—will also by the people of J&K in the alliance.
Modi damaged his own image by coming provide a role model for the rest of the
across as arrogant and disdainful of his Islamic world, which is going through The author is a professor at Centre for Study of
party’s most vulnerable but valuable alli- unprecedented turbulence and open Developing Societies and Founder MANUSHI.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 41
 H i s t o r y

Aravindan neelakandan

Ambedkar,
Democracy,
Upanishads
For a proponent of modernity in the colonial environment,
Christianity should have been a natural choice for Ambedkar. But
he zeroed in on Buddhism. Part Eight of our history of Hindutva.

The full text of Dr Ambedkar’s
Riddles In Hinduism
H
ow can we understand Dr B.R.
Ambedkar in a holistic manner?
We can do that “only” if we under-
stand him in the deeper contexts
of the definitive moments of his
socio-spiritual evolution. One of the earliest
and wholehearted supporters of Dr Ambedkar
was Shridhar Pant Tilak, son of Lokmanya Ti-
lak. This brilliant young man defied the trus-
tees of Kesari and invited Dalit youths to Ti-
lak’s Gaikwad Wada home for a music recital.
In fact, Dr Ambedkar’s biographer Dhananjay
Kheer also notes in Dr Ambedkar: Life and Mis-
sion that the former had attended a tea party at
Tilak’s Gaikwad Wada home at the invitation
of Shridhar Pant Tilak, who passed away under
tragic circumstances.
In spite of Ambedkar’s opposition to Tilak’s
conservatism, Tilak Junior’s social awareness
should have assured Ambedkar that not all
was lost within Hindu society. However, he
saw, with increasing bitterness, an emerging
Congress leadership, which, he felt, was appro-
priating the cause of members of the scheduled
classes without providing any radical reforms.
Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar perceived this as inhib-
iting an urgent need in Hindu society.
A most probable unstated and even uncon-
scious influence on Dr Ambedkar could have
been Sri Aurobindo. As seen earlier in this se-
ries, Sri Aurobindo was brought by Sayajirao
Gaikwad to Baroda, and he influenced the
thinking of the reformist king. Sri Aurobindo
contributed to the development of Baroda and
was also instrumental in writing a lot of the late
Sayajirao’s important speeches.
Sri Aurobindo, who had condemned the un-
democratic elements of the caste system in no
uncertain terms, had written way back in 1907:
“The Nationalist does not quarrel with the past,
but he insists on its transformation, the trans-
formation of individual or class autocracy into
the autocracy, self-rule or Swaraj, of the nation,
and the fixed, hereditary, anti-democratic caste-
organisation into the pliable self-adapting, dem-
ocratic distribution of function at which social-
ism aims. In the present absolutism in politics
and the present narrow caste-organisation in
society, he finds a negation of that equality that
his religion enjoins. Both must be transformed.
The historic problem that the present attitude of
Indian Nationalism at once brings to the mind,

42 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 43

Sayajirao Gaikwad
rejected the caste
system. According to
him, Shri Krishna,
had he lived in the
modern era, would
not have tolerated
“the rigidity of the
caste system that
sentences millions
of our fellow men
to life of misery,
subjugation and
degradation.”
as to how a caste-governed society could coexist
with a democratic religion and philosophy, we
do not propose to consider here today. We only
point out that Indian Nationalism must by its
inherent tendencies move towards the removal
of unreasoning and arbitrary distinctions and
inequalities.” (The Unhindu Spirit of Caste Ri-
gidity, Bande Mataram, 20 September 1907)
Sayajirao also spoke about the “rigidity” of
the caste system that led to “ignorance and su-
perstition”. He considered caste as an obstacle
in the context of the emerging “national con-
sciousness”. His critique of caste thus foresees
many of the thoughts developed by Dr Ambed-
10 things most people possibly kar. Sayajirao rejected the essentialist argu-
do not know about Dr Bhimrao ment that caste is the core or that it is unique
Ramji Ambedkar to Hinduism. According to him, Shri Krishna,
had he lived in the modern era, would not have
tolerated “the rigidity of the caste system that
sentences millions of our fellow men to life of
misery, subjugation and degradation.”
Historian Dr Ruma Bhattacharya explains
(Maharaja Sayajirao-III’s Ideas and works on
Caste System and Untouchability, 28 October
2008, Humanities and Social Sciences Online):
“(Sayajirao) disagreed with the view that the
rigid caste system with its concomitant out-
44 D e ce m b er 2015
castes was a part of the Hinduism in the old
Vedic times. In fact, society was then divided
into four classes on the basis of division of la-
bour and these four classes were not castes.
One could improve his quality and ability and
get into the next higher class. He expressed
his views that the ideas of untouchability are
only a later refinement born of ignorance and
conceit and nurtured by self-complacency. He
pointed out the fact that untouchables were not
feeble in spirit or mentality. As an example, he
mentioned the names of some famous saints of
India, who were respected even by the Brah-
mins. Such as Nanad in South India, Ravidas
in Oudh, Chokamela in Maharashtra, Haridas
Thakur in Bengal.)
Parallel to these developments on the nation-
al scene was the emergence of Mahatma Gan-
dhi. He was trying to take reformist ideas for-
ward and transform them into actions with the
help of moderates in Congress circles. But he
was repeatedly defeated by the orthodoxy that
was dominating the Congress at every level.
Meanwhile, the Khilafat movement led to the
consolidation of Muslims into a strong political
force and inadvertently awakened in them the
idea of reviving an Islamic empire. That result-
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
ed in a series of riots with Hindus mostly at the
receiving end. Even under such circumstances,
the orthodoxy was not ready to integrate the so-
called untouchables with the rest of the Hindu
society by recognizing their denied share in the
power structure of Hindu society.
In 1924, Hindu Mahasabha leader and Con-
gress stalwart Lala Lajpat Rai had observed:
“It is inconceivable to think of a democracy
that recognizes ‘untouchability’ as part of indi-
vidual ‘Dharma’ and as a permissible form of
religious and social prejudice. It is useless to
talk of a democratic State as long as this kind
of prejudice sways our mind and influences our
conduct…The process of building a nation is a
moral process. You cannot engage in a work of
this kind with success by practicing duplicity…
It is sufficiently humiliating that we should
have to mention untouchability at all in our
programme; but to have avoided it for fear of of-
fending the sensibilities of some classes of our
countrymen could have been worse. It would
have been immoral. The democratic mind
should clear itself of all such prejudices.” (Ide-
als of Non-Cooperation and Other Essays, 1924)
In the anti-caste discourse of the 1920s, Hin-
du leaders, whether it was Sri Aurobindo or
Sayajirao or Lajpat Rai, had looked down upon
caste as “undemocratic”, “rigid” and the cor-
ruption of a system that was free from discrimi-
nation originally. Dr Ambedkar’s criticism of
caste at a later stage would lead to the evolution
of the same line of argument.
“scheduled castes” as “protestant hindus”
The 1917 Calcutta Congress session had passed a
resolution “respectfully asking religious heads
to help the growing desire to reform Hinduism
in the matter of its treatment of the suppressed
classes”. (Lajpat Rai, Ideals of Non-Cooperation
and Other Essays). But even years after this, the
situation wasn’t showing any sign of changing
for the better.
At Mahad, Dr Ambedkar and his follow-
ers had to confront violence in their fight for
the rights to enter the temple tank and temple
premises. On 4th January 1931, Dr Ambedkar
submitted to the Round Table Conference a
“Supplementary Memorandum” in which he
stated that the term “Depressed Classes” was
considered by the so-called untouchable com-
munities as “degrading and contemptuous”.
Instead, he suggested three official names:
“Non-caste Hindus”, “Protestant Hindus” or
“Non-conformist Hindus”.
That was two years after Dr Ambedkar had
announced in Jalgaon at a conference of Dal-
its that their disabilities could not be recti-
fied within the Hindu fold. The nomenclature
gives credence to the charge that Dr Ambedkar
wanted to restructure Hinduism in a Protestant
mould. At the same time, his vision of annihi-
lation of caste was a continuation of the vision
of Indic reformers as opposed to restructuring
Hinduism into an Abrahamic religion.
Dr Ambedkar envisioned a casteless Hindu
society where his people would be accepted
without disabilities and discrimination, and
the Hindu orthodoxy had failed to meet his ex-
pectations at every level.
After he felt that all the doors had been
closed, in 1934, Dr Ambedkar wrote to Bhaurau
Gaikwad: “I would advise the Depressed Classes
to insist upon a complete overhauling of Hindu
society and Hindu theology before they consent
to become an integral part of Hindu society. I
started temple entry satyagraha only because I
felt that that was the best way of energizing the
Depressed Classes and making them conscious
of their position.”
In 1935, the visionary made his final declara-
tion of conversion. Though he had resolved to
leave Hinduism, which he perceived as “a veri-
table house of horrors” for the Dalits, his love
for Indic Dharma never left him. It is from this
unfinished manuscript titled Riddles in Hindu-
ism, in which he had made the most unjustifi-
able and uncharitable attack on Hinduism, that
we can see just how deeply rooted his thinking
was in the Hindu philosophical system and
his expectation for its application in the social
context. The passages need a detailed revisit as
they are often avoided carefully in discussions
of Dr Ambedkar.
Let us start with the acidic way in which
he describes Hindu society: “The Hindu social
system is undemocratic not by accident. It is
designed to be undemocratic. Its division of so-
ciety into varnas and castes, and of castes and
outcastes are not theories but are decrees. They
are all barricades raised against democracy.”
So, did Dr Ambedkar find the entire Hindu
dharma worthless? That seems to be the case,
until he springs a surprise: “From this, it would
appear that the doctrine of the fraternity was
unknown to the Hindu Religious and Philo-
sophic thought. But such a conclusion would
not be warranted by the facts of history. The
Hindu Religious and Philosophic thought gave
rise to an idea that had greater potentialities
for producing social democracy than the idea
of fraternity. It is the doctrine of Brahmaism.”
Making the Upanishads the spiritual basis
of a new casteless Hindu society was an idea
very close to Dr Ambedkar’s heart. He advised
those Hindus who wanted to remove casteism
that they need not search for a spiritual basis
of casteless Hinduism outside Hinduism. In
his Annihilation of Caste (1936), he wrote: “…
for such religious principles as will be in con-
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 45
 sonance with Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,
it may not be necessary for you to borrow from
“If all persons are foreign sources and that you could draw for
parts of Brahma,
such principles on the Upanishads.”
If Dr Ambedkar aspired to remould Hindu-
then all are ism into an Abrahamic—simply a Protestant-
like—religion, influenced by colonialism, he
equal, which is would have repeated the Western rhetorical
what Democracy
criticism of Vedic Advaita. (He calls Advaita
“Brahmaism”, a term he borrowed from The
means...There Great Epic of India: Character and Origin of the
Mahabharata by Edward Washburn Hopkins).
cannot be any But in Annihilation of Caste, he proceeded to
doubt that no
give a brilliant defence of Vedic Advaita against
the usual Christian theological criticisms:
doctrine could “There are two criticisms which have been
leveled against Brahmaism. It is said that Brah-
furnish a stronger maism is piece of impudence. For a man to
foundation for
say ‘I am Brahma’ is a kind of arrogance. The
other criticism leveled against Brahmaism is
Democracy than the inability of man to know Brahma. (But) ‘I
am Brahma’...can also be an assertion of one’s
that of Brahma.” own worth. In a world where humanity suffers
so much from an inferiority complex, such an
assertion on the part of man is to be welcomed.
Democracy demands that each individual shall
have every opportunity for realizing its worth.
It also requires that each individual shall know
that he is as good as everybody else. Those who
sneer at Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahma) as an
impudent utterance forget the other part of the
MahaVakya, namely Tatvam Asi (Thou art also
Brahma). If Aham Brahmasmi has stood alone
without the conjunct of Tatvam Asi, it may
have been possible to sneer at it. But with the
conjunct of Tatvam Asi, the charge of selfish ar-
rogance cannot stand against Brahmaism.”
He explained the social relevance of the
MahaVakyas after that: “It may well be that
Brahma is unknowable. But all the same, this
theory of Brahma has certain social implica-
tions which have a tremendous value as a foun-
dation for Democracy. If all persons are parts
of Brahma then all are equal and all must en-
joy the same liberty, which is what Democracy
means...Brahma may be unknowable. But there
cannot be slightest doubt that no doctrine could
furnish a stronger foundation for Democracy
than the doctrine of Brahma.”
Taking a significant step forward, he criti-
cized the Western and Christian scholars who
attribute Christianity and Greek thoughts as
the seeds of democracy: “To support Democ-
racy because we are all children of God is a
very weak foundation for Democracy to rest on.
That is why Democracy is so shaky wherever
it is made to rest on such a foundation. But to
recognize and realize that you and I are parts
of the same cosmic principle leaves room for
no other theory of associated life except democ-
46 D e ce m b er 2015
racy. It does not merely preach Democracy. It
makes democracy an obligation of one and all.
Western students of Democracy have spread
the belief that Democracy has stemmed either
from Christianity or from Plato and that there
is no other source of inspiration for democracy.
If they had known that India too had developed
the doctrine of Brahmaism which furnishes a
better foundation for Democracy, they would
not have been so dogmatic. India too must be
admitted to have a contribution towards a theo-
retical foundation for Democracy.”
Till now, a traditional Hindu would enjoy
what Ambedkar had to say. But, what follows is
the riddle. It is an uncomfortable question that
can be answered only through honest introspec-
tion by Hindus who care about the survival of
the entire Hindu society:
“Why then Brahmaism failed to produce a
new society? This is a great riddle. It is not that
the Brahmins did not recognize the doctrine
of Brahmaism. They did. But they did not ask
how they could support inequality between the
Brahmin and the Shudra, between man and
woman, between casteman and outcaste...The
result is that we have on the one hand the most
democratic principle of Brahmaism and on the
other hand a society infested with castes, sub-
castes, outcastes, primitive tribes and criminal
tribes...What is more ridiculous is the teaching
of the Great Shankaracharya. For it was this
Shankaracharya who taught that there is Brah-
ma and this Brahma is real and that it pervades
all and at the same time upheld all the inequi-
ties of the Brahmanic society.”
Here one can say that Dr Ambedkar was un-
charitable to Adi Shankara, the latter’s Mani-
sha Panchakam being a spiritual statement
that contains space for social emancipation.
But the relevant point here is the good doctor’s
notion of social democracy—that it ought to
have a spiritual basis and that it is Advaita that
provides that spiritual basis rather than the
Abrahamic “fatherhood” of God. One can also
see how he takes forward the idea of Sri Aurob-
indo, Sayajirao and Lajpat Rai that democracy
is part of the spiritual conception of Brahman.
His anger comes from the non-implementation
of the social implication of Advaita. In fact,
Swami Vivekananda’s similar observations
about Hinduism merit recollection here.
In a criticism as harsh as that of Dr Ambed-
kar, Vivekananda wrote to his friend Alasinga
in 1893: “The poor, the low, the sinner in India
have no friends, no help—they cannot rise,
try however they may. They sink lower and
lower every day, they feel the blows showered
upon them by a cruel society, and they do not
know whence the blow comes. They have for-
gotten that they too are men. And the result is
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
slavery. Thoughtful people within the last few
years have seen it, but unfortunately laid it at
the door of the Hindu religion, and to them, the
only way of bettering is by crushing this grand-
est religion of the world….Religion is not in
fault. On the other hand, your religion teaches
you that every being is only your own self, mul-
tiplied. But it was the want of practical applica-
tion, the want of sympathy—the want of heart.
The Lord once more came to you as Buddha and
taught you how to feel, how to sympathize with
the poor, the miserable, the sinner, but you
heard Him not. Your priests invented the hor-
rible story that the Lord was here for deluding
demons with false doctrines!
“True indeed, but we are the demons, not
those that believed…A hundred thousand men
and women, fired with the zeal of holiness,
fortified with eternal faith in the Lord, and
nerved to lion’s courage by their sympathy for
the poor and the fallen and the downtrodden,
will go over the length and breadth of the land,
preaching the gospel of salvation, the gospel of
help, the gospel of social raising-up—the gos-
pel of equality. No religion on earth preaches
the dignity of humanity in such a lofty strain
as Hinduism, and no religion on earth treads
upon the necks of the poor and the low in such
a fashion as Hinduism…religion is not in fault,
but it is the…hypocrites, who invent all sorts of
engines of tyranny in the shape of doctrines of
Pâramârthika and Vyâvahârika.”
If interchanged, what Dr Ambedkar says
Ambedkar could have been influenced by
about Vedic Advaita can well fit in as a passage Sri Aurobindo, who, in 1907, was writing
about “the unHindu spirit of caste rigidity”
from the writings of Vivekananda and what
Vivekananda had written to Alasinga may well
be part of a passage in Dr Ambedkar’s Riddles.
In fact, this is the real riddle that Dr Ambedkar
attacked mercilessly. His vehement criticisms tion, connecting it with hero worship which, in
of mythologies and epics in the unfinished man- turn, he cited as the reason for the downfall of
uscript reflect the pain of a passionate patriotic Hindu society. Brought up in a religious sect
leader who loved the essence of Hindu spiritual- rooted strongly in the Bhakti tradition, howev-
ity and society but was literally thrown out by er, he never failed to acknowledge his indebted-
the arrogance of Hindu orthodoxy. ness to his religious upbringing.
There is hardly any doubt that a Hindu will Speaking at a conference of SC Railway
find most of the “riddles” stated by Dr Ambed- workers, he said: “Character is more impor-
kar nothing less than abusive. But these harsh tant than education. It pains me to see youths
words are mere whispers compared to the ca- growing indifferent to religion. Religion is not
cophonic abuses hurled upon the depressed opium as is held by some. What good things I
classes by orthodoxy and non-Dalit castes. That have in me or whatever benefits of my educa-
is why Ambedkar believed that by denying tion to the society, I owe them to the religious
Dalits their share in the spiritual and cultural feelings in me.”
structures of Hindutva, of which Vedic Hindu- Apart from the calculated rejection of the
ism is a subset though a dominant one, we are Marxist view of religion while particularly talk-
diminishing Hindus as a nation. If and only if ing to the workers, the words of Ambedkar also
this fundamental flaw is rectified in Hinduism reveal another important aspect of his life. The
will all other “riddles” become irrelevant. religious environment of his early life provided
him with an ever-abiding moral-spiritual com-
beyond marx and max weber pass. Even after he had embraced Buddhism, it
Dr Ambedkar always rejected the Bhakti tradi- continued to be with him till the end of his life.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 47

In fact, Kheer notes that his faithful assistant
What Dr Rattu had recorded that the last time he saw his
Ambedkar
master, which was on the night of December 4,
1956, he heard him singing a song of Kabir.
says about Dr Ambedkar’s family belonged to the Ka-
bir Panth. Kabir was the radical proponent of
Vedic Advaita Vaishnava Bhakti through the guru lineage
can well fit in
of Ramananda of the Sri Ramanuja tradition.
Writing in this context, Prof Edmund Weber
as a passage explains in the Journal of Religious Culture
(No 18b, 1999): “Concerning the religious back-
from the ground of Ambedkar, we have to take notice
writings of
that his family belonged to the Kabir Panth.
This Bhakti religion did not acknowledge any
Swami jati and varna boundaries in religious, not yet
in practical respect, and worshipped the Nirgu-
Vivekananda na Rama. The origin from a Ram Bhakti Hindu-
ism strongly denying the ruling varna system
by religion and interpreting the Holy in the Nir-
guna way determined his further religious and
political development.”
Given such historical spiritual roots of his
family, his statement that he owed all that was
The author is a Contributing good in him to the religious feelings in him,
Editor of Swarajya makes him the epitome of a larger Indic guru
48 D e ce m b er 2015
tradition that has been constantly rebelling
against social stagnation. He can be seen as
an evolute, even if far removed, from the Sree
Vaishnav Sampradaya of Sri Ramanuja.
Despite the harsh criticism of Hindu mythol-
ogy and beliefs that Dr Ambedkar exhibited in
his writings, his attitude towards the beliefs of
Hindu Dalits was again one of compassion. In
his biography of Ambedkar, Kheer narrates an
incident: “An old devout man went to his ‘Baba
Saheb’ and entreated him to allow him to bring
the image of Ganapati the Hindu God. Ambed-
kar smiled at the guileless old man and said to
him in a loud voice: ‘Who told you I do not be-
lieve in God? Go! Do as you like!’ And then the
old man fulfilled his vow.”
As a matter of fact, he was careful that the
Dalits should not fall into the traps of non-
Indic religious and political ideologies. Prof
B.G. Gokhale explains in Dr Bhimrao Ramji
Ambedkar: Rebel against Hindu Tradition: “It
would have been quite in character with his
movement if it had finally resulted in a certain
loss of ‘religiosity’ among his followers. That
Ambedkar was aware of this possibility is evi-
dent from his speeches and writings. For a ra-
tionalist, such a loss could not be alarming and
far from a fatal circumstance. But Ambedkar
had within him a deep sense of the spiritual and
his vision of future of his people was not just
regarding economic advance, social equality or
political bargains…He was aware that by their
conversion to other faiths or their espousal of
Marxism they would create more and serious
problems for themselves either as new minori-
ties or turn themselves to a new tyranny under
a ‘Dictatorship’ that would use them and exploit
them ruthlessly, if not worse than Hinduism
had done. Secondly he knew that the untoucha-
bles were a deeply religious people whose spir-
itual hunger had to be satisfied only by offering
them an alternate religious system if they were
not to be transformed into a rootless mass…The
rebel within marched out of the fold but assured
the Hindus that he was close enough to them as
their equal in the contributions of their new
faith to the making of Indian culture.”
For a proponent of modernity in the colonial
environment, Christianity could have been a
natural choice. It was the time when the “Prot-
estant ethics” of Max Weber and Marxist ideas
of the Soviet Union were dominating the intel-
lectual realm. It is to the eternal credit of Dr
Ambedkar that he rejected both these dominant
players and zeroed in on Buddhism. Again, his
Buddhism was different from all other types of
traditional Buddhisms found around the world.
His was a Buddhism that he saw as a socio-po-
litical implementing of the spiritual thesis of
Vedic “Brahmaism”.
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
 m i d d l e e a s t
The Road To
Damascus
Jaideep A. Prabhu The Western pursuit of “democracy” in Syria has been the usual
disastrous blend of naivete and realpolitik. The result: displacement
and death of nearly eight million people, with no end in sight.
I
n the March of 2011, the turbulence of
the Arab Spring reached Syria. What be-
gan as agitated demonstrations quickly
escalated into a civil war that has now
claimed some 340,000 lives, displaced over
seven and a half million people, and involves
nearly a dozen countries. After almost five
years of fighting, the situation still appears
bleak and has become even more complex. Yet,
could this conflict have been resolved earlier,
before the various factions had become set in
their demands? This is a dangerous yet tantalis-
ing counterfactual: if the Western powers had
not been so insistent upon using the revolution
to remove Bashar al-Assad from power, would
Syria have turned into such a quagmire?
When the Arab Spring hit Syria, many won-
dered what would replace the Ba’athist tyranny.
Quick on the revolutionary bandwagon, West-
ern leaders salivated at the chance of finally re-
moving a pro-Russian government from power.
The fall of Saddam Hussein had inadvertently
promoted Iran up the ranks of regional power-
dom and with Iraq still tottering on the brink
of viability, the opportunity for a friendly if not
necessarily pro-Western government in Syria
was welcome. It is in the pursuit of this goal
that the United States and its European allies
constructed a narrative of bringing democracy
to Syria. Assad must go for any peace to come
to Syria, they argued, because it was the demo-
cratic will of the people. Years of bitter fighting
have now changed this rosy view.
Had it merely been press statements and pa-
tronizing editorials, Western policy could have
been dismissed as the usual blend of naïveté
and realpolitik. Unfortunately for the Syrian
people, it has come at a far greater cost. What
has been almost forgotten in recent commentar-
50 D e ce m b er 2015
ies on Syria is that Russia had approached the
West with a peace deal in February 2012, when
casualties stood at around 7,500. According
to Former Finnish president and Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari, the Russian
ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Chur-
kin, had approached him with a three-point
plan. The Russian plan was simple and what the
United States and Europe have come around to
accepting only a couple of months ago as the
best alternative. As Ahtisaari recalls, Churkin
said, “Martti, sit down and I’ll tell you what we
should do. One, we should not give arms to the
opposition. Two, we should get a dialogue go-
ing between the opposition and Assad straight
away. Three, we should find an elegant way for
Assad to step aside.” Ahtisaari took this mes-
sage to the American, British, and French dele-
gations at the UN but they ignored the proposal,
convinced that Assad was going to be booted
out in a matter of weeks.
To be clear, Assad is no boy scout. He is a
typical Arab authoritarian leader like Saddam
Hussein was and the House of Saud is. Despite
the trouble brewing in his neighbourhood all
through 2010, he refused, just weeks before the
unrest started, to relax his hold on the govern-
ment. There would be no political pluralism,
diversity of ideas, or greater tolerance of ex-
pression. During the civil war, Assad has been
indiscriminate in his use of force in population
centres, used heavy weapons such as cluster
bombs, barrel bombs, thermobaric weapons,
chemical weapons, and even Scud missiles
against the rebels. Such behaviour has encour-
aged recruits into the ranks of ISIS, analysts
point out. On a purely humanitarian basis, it is
not difficult to see why anyone would wish As-
sad away.
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
However, it remains unclear as to what
other options exist that are in any way better
than Assad. Defeating ISIS, it is said in West-
ern capitals, can only happen in conjunction
with the removal of Assad from power. Yet the
Syrian opposition gives little reason for confi-
dence. Most of them are almost as conservative
as Da’esh, albeit more restrained in their imple-
mentation of Islamic law. The West has always
harped on moderate elements among the Syrian
opposition but what that means in the Syrian
context may not be entirely savoury. There is
also this to be considered: can the moderate fac-
tions bring stability to Syria after Assad is gone
and ISIS has been eliminated? Or will we see a
bloodier version of Iraq after the fall of Saddam,
with sectarian strife ripping the country apart?
Other than Assad’s forces and ISIS, one
of the strongest organizations in Syria is the
Jabhat al-Nusra. The group is essentially the
al-Qa’ida front in Syria with the explicit near-
term aim of overthrowing the Assad govern-
ment and bringing Syria under Islamic law.
However, the Nusra Front has pursued a smart
long-term strategy focused on embedding itself
in Syrian society. They have shown restraint
in their application of the harsher tenets of Defeating ISIS,
sharia and have portrayed themselves more
as nationalists than as Islamists to garner sup-
the West feels,
port from the Syrian people. For example, the can only happen
Nusra Front is immediately more concerned
with the ouster of Assad than global jihad. As in conjunction
a result, the group has become popular despite
having an ideology almost as vicious as that of
with the removal
ISIS. The Nusra Front is also loyal to its parent of Assad from
organization; over the years, Turkey and Qatar
have repeatedly tried to bring the group out of power. Yet the
the al-Qa’ida fold to make them more acceptable
to the West as potential successors to the Assad
Syrian opposition
regime but to no avail. gives little reason
Another powerful group in the anti-Assad
coalition is the Ahrar al-Sham, arguably the for confidence
strongest faction in Syria both politically and
militarily. The secret of its success lies in sus-
tained backing from Turkey and Qatar, with
even Saudi Arabia showing some interest of
late. Again, the group is avowedly Islamist with
loose ties to al-Qa’ida in the past but it is, like
the Nusra Front, committed to ejecting Assad
from power. Ahrar al-Sham also benefits from
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 51
 Assad has been
indiscriminate in
his use of force in
population centres,
and used heavy
weapons such as
cluster bombs, and
even Scud missiles
against the rebels
excellent organization, which, according to
Charles Lister, a senior consultant to the Shai-
kh Group and involved in Syria Track II dia-
logues, has allowed it to survive major losses
such as the gutting of its leadership in Septem-
ber 2014. This administrative acumen indicates
an able pool of people to run a post-Assad Syria
but their ideology is just as unpalatable as the
Nusra Front and the US Central Intelligence
Agency has declined providing the Ahra al-Sh-
am with training and weapons.
A third group worth mentioning as contend-
ing for a role in a new Syria is the Jaish al-Is-
lam. The result of a merger of 50 or so smaller
Damascene groups in September 2013, the Jaish
al-Islam is a powerful militia in the conserva-
tive Islamist fold that is backed by Saudi Ara-
bia. There have been consistent rumours that
Riyadh has not only extended financial assis-
tance to the group but also recruited instruc-
tors from Pakistan to provide them training,
primarily because the Saudis were afraid that
the Nusra Front had become too dominant a
force in Syrian politics. Curiously, however,
the ideology of the Jaish al-Islam is also Islamist
in the al-Qa’ida mould, with the group’s leader,
Zahran Alloush, calling Nusra Front fighters as
his brothers and addressing Osama bin Laden
with honorifics such as rahimahu Allah. How-
ever, the Jaish al-Islam is as devotedly anti-ISIS
as it is anti-Assad and has released several vid-
eos that show the mass execution of captured
ISIS fighters. Its battle strategy is as gruesome
as that of ISIS, oftentimes using civilians as hu-
man shields to evade Allied air strikes. While
their ideologies do not align perfectly, Jaish
52 D e ce m b er 2015
al-Islam has in fact cooperated with the Nusra
Front and Ahrar al-Sham on the battlefield.
Groups like the Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar
al-Sham hold a reluctant interest for the West
because they have been extremely effective
against ISIS, more so than the more publicised
Kurdish peshmerga. Furthermore, despite
their unequivocally anti-ISIS and anti-Islamist
stance, the Kurdish factions pose a problem in
the long run because their Arab neighbours
are wary that the price of Kurdish assistance
against ISIS would be independence or at least
autonomy. Interestingly, the one thing that
unites everyone in Syria, from Assad to the Syr-
ia-focused Islamists, is the unity of the country.
At a recent seminar in London organized by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies,
Lister stated that in his two and half years of
close talks with the Syrian opposition, the over-
whelming consensus—90 to 95 per cent—was
that Syria must stay a single and unified state.
Unfortunately for the West, the only groups
who seem to be capable of holding a post-Assad
Syria together are staunchly Islamist.
These prominent Islamist factions pose a
more immediate problem too: they are Sunni
extremists and as such, virulently against Syr-
ia’s several minority groups such as the Shia,
Alawi, Druze, and Christians. Any anti-Assad
coalition that includes groups like the Nusra
Front, Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, will
never gain the acceptance of minorities that
have steadfastly remained loyal to Assad. In
their opinion, a secular dictator is supremely
preferable to a religious tyrant; they see lit-
tle difference between the massacre of Yazidis
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
around Sinjar by ISIS in August 2014 and the
massacre of minorities in Adra by the Nusra
Front and the Islamic Front, in December
2013. Any suggestion of incorporating Islam-
ist groups into a Syrian political settlement is
a non-starter while keeping the Islamists out
would mean a bloody and protracted civil war.
There are, to be sure, scores of moderate,
nationalist factions in the Syrian civil war too.
Judging from the assessment made by the Brit-
ish Joint Intelligence Committee, this segment
numbers about 75,000 fighters divided between
105 to 100 groups. The largest two, the Southern
Front of the Free Syrian Army and the Northern
Free Syrian Army, comprise 58 factions field-
ing 25,000 fighters and 14 factions fielding 20,000
fighters respectively. Both these groups have
been amenable to a political settlement to the
civil war but again, to the West’s misfortune,
these groups have proven ineffective against
Assad’s forces. In September 2015, the secretive
US Military Operations Command in Amman
withdrew support to the Southern Front after a
string of battlefield failures against the Syrian
Army. This has led to signs of splintering in the
group, with some elements allegedly reaching
out to more successful yet Islamist groups such
as the Ahrar al-Sham.
With a lack of feasible anti-Assad options on
the field of battle, there is also this to be consid-
ered: are Syrians capable of democracy, that too
one with multicultural hues? Such questions
are usually summarily dismissed as racist but
it is worth bearing in mind that a democratic
system is the embodiment of values already
present in the people. Thus can be explained,
for example, the institutional failure and weak
democracy of India. The successful implanta-
The Jabhat
tion of a democratic framework in West Ger- al-Nusra is
essentially the
many and Japan after World War II can easily
be countered by the failed democracies of over
a dozen postcolonial African states, Pakistan,
and Iraq. Hussein and Assad, little Stalins that
al-Qa’ida front
they have been, may not nourish the lofty ideals in Syria with the
explicit near-term
of free expression and political freedom but at
least they saved their countries from descend-
ing into sectarian bloodbaths. The hypocrisy of
the West in demanding a perfect solution to the
aim of bringing
Syrian question can be seen among its regional the country under
Islamic law.
allies in Saudi Arabia, a state that many have
compared to ISIS unfavourably. The Western
pursuit of democracy, or realpolitik, in the Mid-
dle East has unlocked an enormous wave of hu-
man tragedy.
Had the proposal that came to Ahtisaari in
February 2012 been pursued, the Syrian trag-
edy might have been averted. Assad’s own in-
fractions may have been responded to, at least
partially, via sanctions and diplomatic pres-
sure. Given that the country is surrounded
by US allies, this would not have been too dif-
ficult. However, some diplomats from the P3
(Britain, France, United States) have alleged
that no such proposal existed, or if it did, it was
not serious. If this is true, it would still have
been worthwhile to consider a future of Syria
in which Assad had a role, at least temporarily.
After all, a nationalist dictator might make for
an uneasy region but a global jihadist ideology Jaideep A. Prabhu is a specialist
is inherently expansionist and an international in foreign and nuclear policy; he
ulcer. This latter event has been the cost of the also pokes his nose in energy and
Western pursuit of “democracy” in Syria. defence-related matters.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 53
 G e n d e r

A Queen
A legendary
queen of the
Kakatiya dynasty,

With A
Rudrama Devi
epitomized
the essence of
indomitable

Mission
courage after
taking charge of
Warangal in the
13th century. She
suppressed many
military threats,
commanded the
“This (Kingdom) was formerly under the rule
respect of her
Archana Garodia Gupta of a King, and since his death, some forty years
past, it has been under his Queen, a lady of much
subjects, lived for
discretion, who for the great love she bore him the people whom
she led – and died
never would marry another husband (sic). And I
can assure you that during all that space of forty

for them.
years she had administered her realm as well as
ever her husband did, or better; and as she was
a lover of justice, of equity, and of peace, she was
more beloved by those of her kingdom than ever
was Lady or Lord of theirs before. The people are
Idolaters, and are tributary to nobody. They live
on flesh, and rice, and milk…
No other country but this kingdom of Mutfili
produces them (diamonds), but there they are
found both abundantly and of large size. Those
that are brought to our part of the world are
only the refuse, as it were, of the finer and larger
stones. For the flower of the diamonds and other
large gems, as well as the largest pearls, are all
carried to the Great Khan and other Kings and
Princes of those regions; in truth they possess all
the great treasures of the world.
In this kingdom also are made the best and most
delicate buckrams, and those of highest price; in
sooth they look like tissue of spider’s web! There
is no King nor Queen in the world but might be
glad to wear them. The people have also the larg- Anushka Shetty as the
est sheep in the world, and great abundance of legendary warrior queen
all the necessaries of life.” of the Kakatiya dynasty in
the new multi-lingual film
—Marco Polo, Venetian traveler, describing Rudhramadevi
the Kakatiya kingdom (13th century CE)

54 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 55
 V
ery few of us are aware of
With no
Queen Rudrama Devi, who ruled
Warangal in the 13th century. She
precedent is currently going through a reviv-
al of sorts with a 3D Telugu film on
for a woman her released this year. She is projected as a su-
ruler, Ganapati
perhero in the film, with the obligatory leaping
on elephants to tame them, and singlehandedly
officially declared defeating dozens of men in sword fights.
Distant from the moments of cinematic ex-
Rudrama a son travagance is the real Rudrama Devi as found
via a putrika
in the pages of history. The only independent
female ruler mentioned by Marco Polo, who
yajna. She was journeyed through many kingdoms across the
world, she ruled for 40 years and presided over
referred to in the golden age of the Kakatiyas. Polo erred by
the masculine as
assuming that she was the widow of the previ-
ous king, Devi having inherited the kingdom
Rudradeva. from her father Ganapati Deva, who chose her
as his heir over other male members of his ex-
tended family.
The Deccan had seen the great empires of the
Cholas and the Chalukyas battle each other to
exhaustion. By the beginning of the 13th cen-
tury, four major kingdoms ruled by former feu-
datories, almost coterminous with modern lin-
guistic states, had come up. The Seuna Yadavas
ruled over the Marathi-speaking regions, which
form modern-day Maharashtra with their capi-
tal at Devgiri (Daulatabad); the Hoysalas over
Karnataka with their capital at Dwarasamudra
(Halebid); the Pandyas over Tamil Nadu and
some of Kerala with their capital at Madurai,
and the Kakatiyas over Andhra, with their capi-
tal at Orugallu (Warangal).
Feudatories of the Eastern Chalukyas, the
Kakatiyas established the first kingdom encom-
passing all the Telugu-speaking lands. Rudrade-
va I declared independence from the Chalukyas
in 1163 and switched to Telugu from Kannada
as the official language. Ganapati Deva (1199-
1262), and is considered the greatest Kakatiya
king, made Warangal the capital.
Ganapati Deva had no sons, and he brought
up his daughter Devi to be a ruler, training her
in all the requisite skills. With no precedent
for a woman ruler, Ganapati officially declared
her a son via a putrika yajna to enhance the
chances of her acceptance. Her official depic-
tions always showed her in male dress, and she
was referred to in the masculine as Rudradeva.
In fact, she even attended all public meetings
dressed as a man.
She was made co-ruler with her father under
the male name Rudradeva Maharaja in 1259,
and Ganapati Deva later resigned and let her
become the sole ruler in 1262. She was, howev-
er, only crowned to the Chalukya “Lion throne”
in 1269 after the death of her father.
Devi got married to the Chalukya prince
56 D e ce m b er 2015
Virabhadra, a member of a minor Chalukya
branch. The marriage took place shortly after
Ganapati’s conquest of Vengi in 1240. Surpris-
ingly, we do not hear of Virabhadra in any
administrative position or playing any public
role. They had three daughters—Mummadam-
ma, Ruyamma, and Rudrama, who were mar-
ried to local noblemen. Rudrama designated
Mummadamma’s son, Prataprudra as her heir,
not any of her daughters.
After taking over from her father in troubled
times, Devi’s problems intensified because all
her neighbours saw her accession as a good op-
portunity to annex her kingdom. She also faced
opposition from the feudatory noblemen horri-
fied at the thought of being ruled by a woman.
She was, however, luckier than another woman
ruler, who was 25 years her senior.
Designated the ruler of the Delhi Sultanate
by her father Iltutmish, Razia Sultan had found
herself in a similar situation. She had adopted
the name Jalal-at-din-Sultan, and “abandoned
the veil and adopted masculine attire.” A con-
temporary historian said that she was “saga-
cious, just, beneficient, patron of the learned,
a dispenser of justice, the cherisher of her sub-
jects, and of warlike talent, and endowed with
all the admirable attributes and qualifications
necessary for a king.” Yet, noblemen revolted
as they refused to have a woman’s rule, and she
finally died battling them after a beleaguered
reign of four years, at the young age of 35.
At Rudrama’s accession, the Yadavas at-
tacked from Devgiri, the Gangas from Orissa,
and the Pandyas from the South. Many nobles
revolted. Although she survived the onslaughts,
she spent much of her reign pushing back these
kings to their original boundaries.
At the outset of her reign, the Seuna Ya-
All her neighbours
dava king Mahadeva invaded Telangana and saw Rudrama’s
ascension as
reached Warangal. As per the 18th-century his-
tory Pratapachantra by Ekamranatha, after
15 days of fighting, she chased the army back to
Devgiri and forced them to pay a large indem- her victory over the Seunas, in which she is the first two or three years of their joint rule,
an opportunity
nity in money and horses. Though both sides shown as a warrior mounted on a lion with a the kingdom was thrown into confusion and to annex her
kingdom. Her
typically exaggerate, Seuna records showing a sword and shield in her hands. An elephant disorder due to Jatavarma Sundara Pandya I’s
Yadava victory in which Devi is spared by Ma- trunk holds up a lotus to her in submission. invasion in the South in which the Kakatiyas
hadeva because she was a woman, and Pratap-
chantra mentioning an indemnity of one Crore,
In 1262 itself, the Kalinga Gajapati King Nar-
asimha I marched into the Godavari Delta and
experienced a disastrous defeat in the Battle of
Muttukur, near Nellore. Her loyal feudatories,
own noblemen
Rudrama’s victory is borne out by inscriptions Vengi region and occupied it. She recovered it the Kayastha chief Jannigadeva and his broth- too were horrified
at the thought of
that have been found in Bidar, deep in Yadava after 15 years. In 1278, her commanders Poti er Tripurarideva, later reoccupied some of this
territory, with local rulers pledging allegiance Nayaka and Proli Nayaka fought against Kalin- territory from the Pandyas.
to her. The coins were apparently distributed
by her amongst her officers, and a horde of Se-
ga Vira Bhanudeva I, son and successor of Nar-
asimha I, and inflicted a crushing defeat on him.
However, when their younger brother Am-
badeva took over in 1273, this area was lost as
being ruled by a
una coins found deep in Andhra territory was
probably part of it.
The commanders then assumed the title “Tan-
gasimha” (lion to the rutting elephant, viz. the
he rebelled against her. She also had to face re-
bellion from many of her nobles, including fam-
woman.
A title she adopted after the victory was Gajapati), and “Oddiyarayamanamardana”(the ily members Hariharadeva and Murarideva, as
“Rayagajakesari”—“The lion over the elephant destroyer of the pride of Oddiyaraya). mentioned in Pratapachantra. Clearly, nobody
kings.” She built a rangamandapa in the Sway- Forever confronted by adversaries, Devi met wanted to be accountable to a woman.
ambhu temple in Warangal to commemorate with her toughest challenge in the South. In In spite of inhabiting an atmosphere in
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 57

Rudrama which incessant warfare became a part of her
completed the
life, Devi summoned time and energy to work
on key projects. She completed the construction
construction of the nearly impregnable Warangal fort begun
by her father, whose still-preserved fortifica-
of the nearly tions consist of concentric circular walls.
impregnable
There is a citadel protected by an inner wall
one km in diameter and made of huge blocks
Warangal fort of granite, irregular in size but perfectly fitted
without the use of mortar. She enhanced the
begun by her height of this wall to over 20 feet. Forty-five
father.
massive bastions, from 40 to 60 feet on a side,
project outward from the wall and into the wa-
ters of the moat. As Amir Khusrau put it, “its
turrets rose up in the air and soared up to the
moon while its bottom passing below water
reached the fish”. An earthen wall 1.5 miles in
diameter and surrounded by a moat some 150
feet wide was built by her. In the 16th century,
a third wall, an earthen rampart nearly eight
miles in diameter was added.
Non-military constructions of her period
also manifest the dynamism with which she
looked after her subjects. There are beautiful
temples and buildings, much damaged by in-
58 D e ce m b er 2015
vaders, made of intricately carved hard granite.
Most of the pillars, toranas, etc are carved out of
single pieces of stone.
The Kakatiyas also brought large tracts
under cultivation that greatly increased their
revenue. Before the 11th century, much of the
dry Deccan interior was inhabited by herders.
The Kakatiyas and their feudatories built more
than 5,000 reservoirs or tanks by damming
small streams. These tanks were often managed
by small temples, which were built by the no-
bles, resulting in the expansion of agriculture.
Most of these tanks are still in use today.
Another change introduced by Devi was the
recruitment of non-aristocratic warriors from
diverse castes as officers and landowners. The
older feudal families were gradually supplant-
ed, and land grants given to new meritocratic
officers. A study shows that only 17 per cent of
her subordinates were of noble background,
which might have had a connect with the non-
acceptance of a woman ruler by the nobility.
She also created a class known as Angaraksha-
kas, warriors who were part of the queen’s reti-
nue, who became a new class of warrior lords.
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
Though Devi was not inclined towards the
arts, she encouraged the practice of Perini Shi-
va Thandavam by the soldiers. An extremely
vigorous and powerful dance done to the beat
of drums as a prelude to war, it was part of the
training of the royal forces. T
his dance form nearly died out after the end
of the Kakatiya dynasty and has recently been
revived by Padmasri Dr Nataraja Ramakrishna
by studying the poses depicted in the Ramappa
Temple at Warangal and other sources. The
Maoris in New Zealand did the Haka before a
war, which has been adopted by their sports
teams before matches. It’s a thought for our In-
dian teams.
In spite of the continuous warfare, her king-
dom was tremendously rich, not least because it
was the only known source of diamond produc-
tion in the world. (The first diamonds outside
India were only discovered in the 18th century.)
Anecdotally, while invading Telangana, Malik
Kafur did not bother to dig for diamonds as they
passed the famed mines—he said that strong
warriors dig out diamonds with their swords
and not pickaxes!
The Kohinoor incidentally was from the Kol-
lur mines and is rumoured to have been the eye
of an idol in Warangal during Kakatiya times.
It is supposed to have been carried to Delhi by
Malik Kafur and later passed on to the Mughals
as part of the Delhi treasury.
The famed fabrics of the Deccan, an impor-
tant export, were exquisitely described by Amir
Khusrau: “The fineness of its cloths is difficult
to describe: the skin of the moon removed by
the ‘executioner star’ (Mars—Akhtari Jallad)
would not be so fine. One could compare it to
a drop of water if that drop fell, against nature,
from the front of the sun. A hundred yards of it
can pass through the eye of a needle, so fine is
its texture, and yet the point of a steel needle
can pierce through it only with difficulty. It is
so transparent and light that it looks as if one is
wearing no dress at all but has only smeared the
body with pure water.”
Throughout her rule, the thorn in her side
was the rebellion of the Kayastha chieftain Am-
badeva in the southern part of her kingdom.
Motivated by his ambition to become an inde-
pendent king, Ambadeva allied with Kakatiya
enemies like Yadavas and Pandyas and started
conquering the territories of his neighbouring
Kakatiya feudatories. He is said to have fought
with 75 kings and built a substantial kingdom.
An inscription dated 27th November 1289
was found in 1994 in Chandupatla. The inscrip-
tion was laid down by an army man of Devi
named Puvvula Mamidi, who also donated a
piece of land to the Somnath Temple, commem-
orating the recent death of the queen and her
army chief Mallikarjuna Nayakudu. Though
there is no mention of the cause or location of
her death, it is deduced that she probably died
facing the armies of Ambadeva. The queen was
Though there is
about 80 years old then, but still in the saddle. no real historical
evidence, it is
Born in the lap of royalty, she had lost her life
in a war.
Devi was succeeded by her grandson Prata-
parudra in 1289, who later defeated Ambadeva.
deduced that
He was a great king who reconquered lost terri- Rudrama died
facing the armies
tories and was at the zenith of his glory 20 years
into his reign in 1309 when he came across a
threat unlike any other that the Kakatiyas had
confronted.
of Ambadeva. She
Allauddin Khilji, who fancied himself a was then 80 years
old, but still in the
great conqueror—an epithet he adopted was
Sikandar Sani (the second Alexander)—turned
his eyes South. In 1309, in the first of the many
Delhi Sultanate campaigns against Warangal,
saddle.
he sent an army under his favourite slave Ma-
lik Kafur (formerly known as Kafur Hazar Di-
nari). Kafur besieged the strong fortress with
his vastly superior siege machinery and broke
through the outer mud wall. Prataprudra bar-
gained for peace and parted with countless ex-
pensive gifts. Malik, once satisfied that the ra-
jah could pay no more, accepted the presents,
and returned to Delhi.
Prataprudra also agreed to an annual trib-
ute and confirmed himself as a Khilji tributary.
Malik Kafur returned to Delhi along with 20,000
horses and 100 elephants. One description says
that there were five hundred maunds of gems
and gold. Never before had such treasure been
brought to Delhi.
Prataprudra, however, stopped paying the
tribute in 1318, and a force was immediately
sent by Allauddin. He lost again, and the an-
nual tribute now became a substantial amount
of gold and gems, a 100 elephants “as large as
demons” and 12,000 horses.
When the Khiljis were displaced by the Tu-
ghlaqs, Prataprudra made history repeat itself
by stopping the payment of tribute again. An
army despatched under the future Muhammad
Bin Tughlaq in 1320 returned without success.
However, the Tughlaqs were back in 1323.
After many months of siege, the fortress was
finally conquered. The city was destroyed, and
much loot taken back to Delhi. As an aside, the
pavilion, whose collapse caused the death of The writer is the President of
Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq (supposedly engineered FLO, the women’s wing of FICCI.
by his son Muhammad bin Tughlaq), was set up One of India’s leading quizzers,
to view the elephants captured from Warangal. she was declared Champion of
Prataparudra was captured and sent in a Champions by BBC Mastermind
cage to Delhi. He is said to have committed sui- in 2001. Archana owns and runs
cide en route by drowning himself in the Nar- a successful gems and jewellery
mada. Sic gloria transit mundi... business, Touchstone, which
is a pioneer in Indian costume
jewellery.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 59
 d o u b l e x
Let’s Orange
The World
Mallika Nawal
To end gender-based violence, we have to take action at three distinct
levels: individual, familial, and State.
W
ell, first things
first…”Let’s Orange
the World” is not a
covert attempt at
saffronisation of the
world by the “Hindu Taliban”. I am sure
Mr Anish Kapoor can now relax in his
plush sculpting studio before he puts pen
to paper and writes another provocative
piece for The Guardian, this time accus-
ing the United Nations of getting in bed
with the Indian Prime Minister. (Sorry
Mr Kapoor, I wasn’t planning on making
it personal but when you unfairly dub all
my fellow countrymen “fascist”…well,
you’re kinda making it personal.)
Anyway, moving on…Let’s “Orange
the World in 16 Days” is actually a United
Nations initiative for the Elimination
of Violence against Women. Every year,
beginning November 25th (International
Day for the Elimination of Violence
against Women) through the run-up to
Human Rights Day on 10th December,
the world celebrates 16 days of activism
against gender-based violence. And no,
you do not have to be either a female or
a feminist to be a part of this movement.
(Being human, but, is a prerequisite.)
While it has been argued by many that
violence in general and violence against
women in particular cannot be prevented
let alone be eliminated, it simply does not
give us the license to play ostrich with
our heads perpetually stuck in the sand.
The truth is, affirmative action can go a
long way in preventing and eliminating
systemic violence against women. It has
worked in the past and I am pretty sure
it can work in the present. All we really
need is collective intent.
However, before we move forward, let
us first understand the term “Violence
Against Women” (VAW). According to
the United Nations, it encompasses “any
act of gender-based violence that results
60 D e ce m b er 2015
in, or is likely to result in, physical,
sexual or mental harm or suffering to
women, including threats of such acts,
coercion or arbitrary deprivation of
liberty, whether occurring in public or
in private life”. In other words, gender-
based violence includes all forms of
violence that are perpetrated by (a)
either a man or a woman and/ or (b) an
individual or a State—directed towards
another woman simply because she is a
woman. (Yes, women too are capable of
participating in gender-based violence—a
strange and curious phenomenon, which
we will probably discuss another time, in
another article.)
Hence, violence against women is
an umbrella term for all crimes against
women/ girls that are a resultant by-
product of a patriarchal, patrilineal,
patrimonial, and patrilocal society like
India. Hence, they are not just per-
petrated by individuals alone, but by
States too. When it comes to individuals,
violence against women gets manifested
in the form of eve-teasing, stalking, rape,
domestic violence, sexual harassment,
sexual abuse, acid attacks, coercive use
of contraceptives, female foeticide or
prenatal sex selection, female infanticide,
obstetric violence, mob violence, witch
lynching, honour killings, dowry deaths,
female genital mutilation, marriage by
abduction, and forced marriage. Other
forms of violence that are often perpetrat-
ed by the State (and often with impunity)
include: war rape, forced sterilisation,
forced abortion, stoning, and flogging.
While organized crime syndicates
perpetrate violence on women through
human trafficking rings and prostitution
networks. Phew!
As you can guess from the violence
bucket list as enumerated above, if you
are a woman, you have much to be wor-
ried about. In fact, according to Major-
General Patrick Cammaert, former com-
mander of the UN Peacekeeping Forces
in the eastern Congo, “it has probably
become more dangerous to be a woman
than a soldier in armed conflict.” Now
that is saying something.
This is also why the Indian govern-
ment has been shying away from allow-
ing women officers to serve in active
combat duty during times of war. And
while the government has finally given
its nod for female officers to fly fighter
jets (“partially” paving the way for
women to assume combat roles), it will
be a long time before they are allowed to
march on foot into enemy territory.
If you think the government is wrong,
here’s a sobering statistic. In 2012, a
study conducted by the United Nations in
Delhi found that 92 per cent of the women
surveyed reported having experienced
some form of sexual violence in public
spaces in their lifetime. Similarly, ac-
cording to Amnesty International figures,
around the world, at least one woman in
every three has been beaten, coerced into
sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
Truth is, with gender-based violence at
an all-time high, affirmative action is the
only answer moving forward.
When it comes to combating gender-
based violence, there are two basic facets
that need our attention. The first is
identifying and accepting that violence
against women is simply a symptom of
a much larger problem of patriarchy,
which manifests itself through a dysfunc-
tional discrimination against daughters.
From the moment a woman is born to the
moment she dies, she is forever treated
differently from her male counterparts.
The second aspect entails the action that
needs to be taken in order to deal with
this violence, which basically needs to
work at three distinct levels: individual,
familial, and State.
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
individual
When it comes to tackling gender-based
violence, the first change needs to hap-
pen at an individual level. Each one of
us needs to stand up and speak against
gender-based violence. And truth is, it
does not even require a big gesture.
For a woman, it simply means a vow.
A vow to not tolerate abusive relation-
ships, to not tolerate discrimination
at work, to not tolerate harassment at
home, a vow to not suffer in silence.
As for a man, it simply means mak-
ing a single promise. A promise that he
would never abuse the women in his life,
nor let anyone else do so. When men stop
being a part of the problem and start
becoming a part of the solution, change
is imminent. We already see this change
at large as more men are stepping up to
become equal partners at home.
FAMILIAL
Let’s be honest—gender socialization
happens at home. From the moment a
child is born, socialization lessons com-
mence with a society-approved gender
curriculum taught by zealous parents
who indoctrinate their children on how
to think and act based on their respec-
tive genders. Boys are actively discour-
aged from playing with dolls and openly
encouraged to play with toys that mimic It’s simple, really. The day you talk to your daughters
aggression and violence; while girls are
provided with tea sets and dolls, so they about safety, talk to your sons also about consent
can play “house”.
Hence, in order to prevent gender- the Elimination of Violence against he himself would be guilty of multiplied
based violence from becoming a problem Women instructs the State to “exercise murder. After all, to quote Nicholas Cage,
of pandemic proportions, families must due diligence to prevent, investigate and, “If there’s something wrong, those who
step up to stop gender socialization. As in accordance with national legislation, have the ability to take action have the
the most influential agents of gender punish acts of violence against women, responsibility to take action.” And so
socialization, it is the parent’s respon- whether those acts are perpetrated by the believed Lord Bentinck. Despite the ban
sibility to stop differentiating between State or by private persons”. being challenged by Hindu orthodoxy,
children based on their biology. One such example of a successful the Privy Council upheld the ban in 1832
But most importantly, remember to State intervention was Lord William and the blot on our civilisation called sati
undertake this simple job: “The day you Bentinck’s Anti Sati legislation of 1829, became a thing of the past.
talk to your daughters about safety, talk which declared abetment to sati as “cul- As the world embraces the colour
to your sons about consent.” pable homicide”; even though there were “orange” and stands in solidarity against
many voices of dissent and cynicism gender-based violence, let us be thankful
the State back then that advised Bentinck against that for every Wilson Horace of the world
There is no denying that when it comes such legislation. One such cynical voice who thinks it cannot be done, there can
to our society, there is an overarching was that of Wilson Horace, a British be a William Bentinck who gets it done.
ideology that emphasizes male superi- Orientalist and secretary of the Asiatic
ority vis-a-vis female dispensability. Society of Bengal, who believed that any Mallika is a professor-cum-author, doing her
Society, through its strict adherence to success of such legislation could at most PhD in marketing from IIT Kharagpur, and
gender stereotypes, provides its tacit be partial. But Bentinck had already author of three management books which
approval to gender-based violence. The made up his mind. A cursory perusal are prescribed textbooks in universities across
State therefore often has to step up and of his letter dated 8th November, 1829, India. She has taught in India and abroad.
step in, in order to correct this anomaly. reveals that Bentinck believed that if She is also the author of the crime novel I’m a
Even Article 4-c of the Declaration on he remained silent on the issue of sati, Woman & I’m on SALE.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 61
 B o o k s E x t r a c t
Mars: A New Home
For Humans?
Stephen L Petranek
N
How We’ll Live on Mars
Stephen L Petranek
Simon & Schuster
120 pages
Rs 350
62 D e ce m b er 2015
In his TED2015 lecture, journalist and technology writer Stephen
Petranek had argued that human settlement on Mars is not just
possible, but inevitable. In How We’ll Live On Mars (Simon & Schuster/
TED), Petranek builds on that argument and how we might be on
our way to becoming a two-planet species. Edited excerpts:
early a decade of anticipa-
tion has come down to this mo-
ment: the spacecraft inches to
the surface as the blast effect
of braking rockets kicks up red
dust. An Earth-bound audience waits eagerly as
an announcer reminds them of a press confer-
ence that took place years earlier—a meeting
that shocked the world and embarrassed NASA,
which was still at least two years from testing
its Mars spacecraft with humans aboard. On
that day, the company behind this private effort
to reach Mars revealed that it was about to build
a series of huge rockets to transport people to
Mars, and that within a decade it would launch
one or two of them to effect the first manned
landing on the Red Planet.
As Raptor 1 settles into a massive crater near
the Martian equator, the astronauts aboard are
already thinking ahead. Time is precious. If all
has gone well with the first landing, Raptor 2
will follow within hours, carrying more explor-
ers on board. First on the astronauts’ punch list
is the deployment of a base camp habitat, part
of the enormous cargo the ships have carried.
They must also inflate “buildings”—domed,
pressurized tents made of exotic materials that
will increase their living area and act as green-
houses in which to grow food.
Some environmental similarities exist be-
tween Earth and Mars. The Martian terrain
looks a lot like certain parts of Earth—the dry
valleys in Antarctica or the high deserts on Ha-
waiian volcanoes. Many other factors will prove
to be extremely challenging. A day on Mars is
only 39 minutes and 25 seconds longer than a
day on Earth, but a Martian year is far longer
than one on Earth—687 days — making seasons
twice as long.
Mars’s orbit is oval, meaning seasonal varia-
tions between winter and summer are more se-
vere than those on Earth; in the southern hemi-
sphere, summers are warmer and winters are
colder. Ultimately these Martian settlers intend
to establish two bases, one below the equator in
the southern hemisphere for summers and one
north of the equator for winters.
But now, within 24 hours, the first humans to
walk on Mars must begin their most important
task: finding water. They must determine if
there is, as NASA landers and orbiters have pre-
dicted, enough water in the surface soil, called
regolith, to support both their hydration needs
as well as serve as a stock for making more of
the oxygen they will consume. The astronauts
purposely landed in a crater that a NASA or-
biter spotted as having a smooth sheet of pure
water ice. If that sheen isn’t ice, they will need
to find a second site nearby with a high percent-
age of ice in the regolith. If that sort of ice can-
not be found nearby, the astronauts will deploy
ground-penetrating radar to find underground
water, and then drill.
Long before the next ships arrive (two years
from this moment), these astronauts must build
more permanent structures, possibly out of
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
bricks they make from the regolith. Although
today is sunny and relatively warm—about 50
degrees Fahrenheit—temperatures will plunge
as darkness approaches, turning the environ-
ment into something akin to a bad night at the
South Pole. Landing near the equator allows
the astronauts to take advantage of milder tem-
peratures that can reach 70 degrees Fahrenheit
on a summer day. But at night, the temperature
easily reaches minus 100 degrees, and struc-
tures will be needed to insulate the astronauts
from the cold as well as to protect them from so-
lar rays that are almost unrestricted by the thin
atmosphere.
In the event that everything goes wrong—
they cannot find a good water supply, the ra-
diation effects are more severe than predicted,
or one of the ships is badly damaged on land-
ing, they will hunker down and await a decent
launch window for the long trip back to Earth.
Otherwise, they are here to stay.
These first explorers, alone on a seemingly
lifeless planet as much as 250 million miles away
from home, have everything in common with
the trailblazers who preceded them—the great
explorers throughout history who scaled moun-
tains and sailed oceans to create new lives. And
yet, despite their commonality with explorers
of years past, these spacefaring pioneers are in
every way more important than any explorers
who have ever preceded them. Their presence
on Mars represents the greatest achievement of
human intelligence.
Anyone who watched Neil Armstrong set These spacefaring
pioneers are
foot on the moon in 1969 can tell you that, for a
moment, the Earth stood still. The wonder and
awe of that achievement was so incomprehen-
sible that some people still believe it was staged
more important
on a Hollywood set. When astronauts stepped than any
explorers who
onto the moon, people started saying, “If we
can get to the moon, we can do anything.” They
meant that we could do anything on or near
Earth. Getting to Mars will have an entirely dif-
have preceded
ferent meaning: If we can get to Mars, we can them. Their
presence on
go anywhere.
The achievement will make dreamy science
fiction like Star Wars and Star Trek begin to
look real. It will make the moons of Saturn and
Mars represents
Jupiter seem like reasonable places to explore. the greatest
achievement
It will, for better or worse, create a wave of for-
tune seekers to rival those of the California
gold rush. Most important, it will expand our
vision as far from the bounds of Earth’s gravity
of human
as we can imagine. When the first humans set intelligence.
foot on Mars, the moment will be more signifi-
cant in terms of technology, philosophy, history,
and exploration than any that have come before
it, all because we will no longer be a one-planet
species.
These explorers are the beginning of an am-
bitious plan, not just to visit Mars and establish
a settlement but to reengineer, or terraform, the
entire planet—to make its thin atmosphere of
carbon dioxide rich enough in oxygen for hu-
mans to breathe, to raise its temperature from
an average of minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit to a
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 63

These more tolerable 20 degrees, to fill its dry stream
astronauts beds and empty lakes with water again, and to
will set in
plant foliage that can flourish in its temperate
zone on a diet rich in CO2. These astronauts
motion a will set in motion a process that might not be
complete for a thousand years but will result in
process that a second home for humans, an outpost on the
will result
farthest frontier.
Like many frontier outposts before it, this
in a second one will eventually rival the home planet in re-
sources, standard of living, and desirability.
home for These pathfinders have embarked on a jour-
humans, an
ney that has implications far into the future.
Their greater mission is to establish a spacefar-
outpost on
ing society that maintains a system of space-
ports for rockets, allowing easy liftoff from a
the farthest planet with low gravity.
frontier.
From there, humans can travel to the outer
reaches of the solar system.
When these rockets land on Mars in the near
future, it will be far more than a great moment
for exploration. It will be nothing less than an
insurance policy for humanity. There are real
threats to the continuation of the human race
on Earth, including our failure to save the home
planet from ecological destruction and the pos-
sibility of nuclear war. Collision with a single
asteroid could eliminate most life, and eventual-
64 D e ce m b er 2015
ly our own sun will enlarge and destroy Earth.
Long before that happens, we must become a
spacefaring species, capable of living not only
on another planet but ultimately in other so-
lar systems. The first humans who emigrate to
Mars are our best hope for the survival of our
species. Their tiny base will grow into a settle-
ment, and perhaps even a new species that will
expand rapidly. The company which built the
rocket that brought them there is building hun-
dreds more rockets. The intention is to create
a viable population of 50,000 within a few dec-
ades. They can preserve the collective wisdom
and achievement of humanity even if those of
us back on Earth are annihilated.
The truth is that it has been possible to reach
Mars for at least 30 years. Within a decade or
so of the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first
humans on Earth’s moon, we could have landed
humans on the Red Planet. Almost every tech-
nology required has long been available.We
have not chosen to pursue the opportunity.
The backstory of that mistake is worth un-
derstanding—how a single decision by one US
President stunted space travel for decades, how
we might have inspired two generations of
earthlings to deliver on almost anything our
brains can imagine. Nearly five decades ago we
had the ability to extend ourselves into the so-
lar system and beyond.
Now private rocketry has opened a new win-
dow to the stars. Perhaps the need to explore is
built into our DNA; homo sapiens began ventur-
ing out of Africa about 60,000 years ago, push-
ing the horizon until they populated the globe.
Exploration may be connected to human sur-
vival. But it has also led to colonization of lands
already occupied, the devastation of cultures,
and the plundering of resources.
The settlement of Mars will happen far soon-
er than most people realize, and in a nonregu-
lated way. Most of this book is an examination
of the astonishing fact that we have the capa-
bilities to build on Mars. But this book is also a
wakeup call. The potential is enormous, but the
pitfalls are numerous. The time to think is now.
A
t this point in time—less than two
decades away from landing on Mars—
there are still many sceptics. People in
the space business tend to say that we should
go to the moon first to set up a practice base
there. Or they say the difficulties of making
Mars a liveable place for humans are too much
to grasp. The fact is, the prospect of landing on
Mars comes with a lot of challenges.
So let’s pause briefly to review a few of the
most common questions that arise.
Can a small group of people travel together
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
in extremely confined spaces under signifi-
cant stress for nine months without killing
one another?
Let’s answer this with another question: Didn’t
life in diesel/ electric submarines in World War
II answer this question? Besides, knowledge of
human psychology has advanced to the point
that picking the right people for a Mars mission
is no longer a challenge. We are very good at
identifying the right people to become commer-
cial pilots, Navy SEALs, and others who occupy
critical positions where stress, judgment, and
intelligence meet.
Angelo Vermeulen, a space systems re-
searcher who led a team of Earth-bound as-
tronauts through a four-month simulation of
living on Mars on the island of Hawaii, says:
“It all boils down to crew selection. You need
to match skills as well as psychological com-
patibility. You can quickly see if problems will
develop by simply putting people together for a
week and giving them something challenging to
do. If there are going to be problems, you’ll usu-
ally see them. There’s never a guarantee issues
won’t arise over a long period of time. But you
should start with a crew that explicitly likes to
work together and is resilient.”
Will anyone be willing to pay the cost—es-
timated to be $5 billion to get there and $30
billion to establish a small base?
Musk has answered the question by putting his
money where his mouth is. He has declared that
SpaceX will not go public until its Mars rocket
is flying. That rocket will be far larger than
even SpaceX’s next generation rocket, the Fal-
con Heavy, scheduled to fly in late 2015 or early
2016 with 27 engines and a first-stage thrust
three times greater than SpaceX’s current
rocket, the Falcon 9. In other words, he will not
subject his company to influence from stock-
holders who desire profits until he’s certain he
can get to Mars. “The first mission will be very
expensive,” Musk admits, but he expects future
missions will be financed primarily by the peo-
ple who are going. As (former SS officer turned
NASA scientist Wernher) von Braun said, a trip
to Mars costs no more than “a minute fraction
of our yearly national defence budget”.
Can enough safety factors be built in to the
mission to make success 95 percent prob-
able?
Ask film director and explorer James Cameron,
who recently set the world manned-submarine
diving record in the Mariana Trench. He points
out that if designers of risky machinery care-
fully tackle all the known and obvious prob-
lems, the inevitable unexpected problems will
likely also be surmountable.
Will astronauts’ bodies fall apart in a pro-
longed zero-gravity environment?
This is still a significant challenge, but von
Braun’s suggestion of tethering multiple space-
craft together and spinning them to create arti-
ficial gravity could be viable on a Mars journey.
A spacecraft could be designed in the shape of a
wheel to spin and create gravity. But it’s worth
remembering that the trip to Mars is only about
two months longer than the typical amount of
time an astronaut spends on the International
Space Station. During 2015 and 2016, Captain
Scott Kelly from the United States and Russian
cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will spend an
entire year aboard the ISS, and we’ll learn more
about long-term effects on the human body
from their mission. Overall, gravity on Mars is
slightly more than a third of what it is on Earth,
but scientists speculate that may be just enough
for humans to survive. Furthermore, recent re-
search indicates that many species could evolve
to new environment far more quickly than once
thought. A Martian community might adapt to
low gravity within a few dozen generations.
What if astronauts get ill?
Explorers who climb mountains and sail
around the world learned long ago that it’s a
good idea to bring along someone trained in
emergency medicine. But solo long-distance Here, Stephen Petranek shares
sailors who circumnavigate the Earth have just some of the factors those who
shown that the vast majority of problems can
easily be addressed by the supplies in a well-
make the first trip will have to
manage.
stocked medical kit and proper training. Space
travel, however, is not ocean sailing, and some
explorers may very well fall ill and die.
What about radiation?
This is still a big bugaboo. The worst solar ra-
diation comes from solar flares and the related
coronal mass ejections of radiation from our
sun. We have no technologies that can eliminate
solar and cosmic radiation, but we can design
emergency spaces in interplanetary vehicles
that are shielded for events like solar flares.
And there will be adequate warning to seek a
protective habitat until the burst has passed.
Musk has proposed a spacecraft insulated by
water. There are other strategies to deflect or
absorb radiation, but inevitably, astronauts go-
ing to Mars will experience far higher doses of
radiation than would ever be allowed on Earth.
NASA officials are evaluating an increase in the
limits of radiation astronauts are allowed to
experience as a way to get them to Mars under
operating guidelines. On Mars, where the at-
mosphere is of limited help and there is no mag-
netosphere or Van Allen belt to block radiation,
people will have to spend most of their time in
shielded environments or underground.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 65
 C e l e b r a t i o n
The
Awards 2015
The acceptance speech of Dr
Arvind Panagariya who could
not be present at the Awards
ceremony.
66 D e ce m b er 2015
The Swarajya Awards for 2015 were announced at the second India
Ideas Conclave, Goa, on 15 November, for achievements in four
categories: Economic, Political, Cultural and Social. The awards were
handed over to the winners by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.
The Dr B.R Shenoy Award for Economics
2015
winner— Dr Arvind Panagariya, for
his immeasurable contribution to liberal
economics.
The B.R Shenoy Award, named in honour of
India’s great free market economist who chal-
lenged the Nehruvian dirigisme, will be pre-
sented every year to an individual who has con-
sistently advocated the value of open markets,
stood for a reduced role for government in en-
terprise, and thereby made a significant contri-
bution to advance human freedom.
Dr Arvind Panagariya, vice-chairman of
NITI Aayog, is the most appropriate choice for
the very first B.R. Shenoy Award. Dr Panagari-
ya, like Shenoy, has consistently championed
free markets and minimal role of government
in the economy.
Dr Panagariya was born in September 1952
as the youngest of three sons of a government
official. His Jaipur-based family was not very
well-off but set great store by education. Dr Pa-
nagariya received his bachelor’s degree from
Rajasthan University and alongside a half-
hearted attempt at the civil services examina-
tion to humour his father, applied to universi- The packed Awards
ties in the United States for further studies. He ceremony hall (above);
earned a PhD degree from Princeton. The civil Sajjad Lone receiving his
services’ loss turned out to be economics’ gain Award from Sadhguru Jaggi
and Dr Panagariya emerged as a firm believer, Vasudev (left); and Dr
and strong advocate of liberal economics. Arvind Panagariya (facing
Specialising in international trade, Dr. Pa- page). Click on the QR code
nagariya has, in his 10 books and countless to read his acceptance
articles, always made a compelling case for the speech.
dismantling of protectionist barriers by both
developed and developing countries.
Dr Panagariya, who was awarded the Padma
Bhushan in 2012, has worked in the University
of Maryland, College Park; the Asian Develop-
ment Bank; the World Bank; the International
Monetary Fund and UNCTAD. Prior to taking
up the NITI Aayog post, he was teaching at Co-
lumbia University where he was the Jagdish
Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Econo-
my. His 2008 book, India: The Emerging Giant,
has been praised by critics and economists as,
among other things, “the definitive book on the
Indian economy”.
The Dr S.P Mukherjee Award for Politics
2015 Prasad Mukherjee epitomised—commitment to also shown that democracy, peace and develop-
winner— Sajjad Lone, for his commitment to Constitutional values, and thoughtful interven- ment are mutually complementary.
democracy, peace and development. tions to enrich the quality of public life. As the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir
It is now evident that peace in Jammu and People’s Conference, Lone has an inspirational
The Dr S.P. Mukherjee Award, named in hon- Kashmir is possible only through democracy record of public service. His entry into the dem-
our one of India’s greatest statesmen, politician and development. Sajjad Lone, by participating ocratic arena of India in 2008 came amidst dire
and an intellectual progenitor of a uniquely In- in the democratic process, and as a Minister in threats from those who would have suffered
dian political philosophy, will be presented eve- the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, has from such a move. Yet, Lone kept the interest of
ry year to an active politician who has consist- set an example for those concerned with the the people above all else, and has since contrib-
ently striven to uphold values that Dr Shyama well-being and prosperity of the state, and has uted immeasurably to ensuring lasting peace in
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 67
 THE JURY
Ram Madhav is Director,
India Foundation and
General Secretary, BJP. He
also has been an active
journalist and writer for
over 20 years.
Sanjeev Sanyal is an Indian
economist, bestselling
writer, environmentalist,
and urban theorist. He is
currently Deutsche Bank’s
Global Strategist and is
widely regarded as one of
Asia’s leading economists.
Swapan Dasgupta is a
senior Indian journalist. He
has held senior editorial
positions at The Statesman,
The Telegraph and India
Today where he was
Managing Editor till 2003.
Hari Kiran Vadlamani
is a serial and social
entrepreneur. He is
Director, Swarajya. He is the
founder of Indic Academy,
Advaita Academy and
Creative India. He identifies
himself as a Dharmic
Liberal.
M J Akbar is a leading
Indian journalist and Rajya
Sabha MP from Jharkhand.
He is also Director, India
Foundation.
68 D e ce m b er 2015
Jammu and Kashmir.
With his spirit of service and his commit-
ment to Indian democracy, Lone embodies the
values espoused by the late Dr Mukherjee. Dr
Mukherjee dedicated his life for the preserva-
tion of the integrity of India. Lone, in his capac-
ity as a senior leader of Jammu and Kashmir,
has furthered that noble cause.
With his participation in the electoral pro-
cess, Lone has demonstrated his enduring com-
mitment to peace and belief in the opportuni-
ties which democracy offers. As a Minister in
the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, Lone
has assumed the noble yet arduous responsibil-
ity of furthering the development of his state.
As both a political leader and an administrator,
Sajjad Lone’s contributions to peace and devel-
opment are far-reaching.
It is thus befitting that the Dr Shyama Pras-
ad Mukherjee ward for 2015 be given to Lone.
The Ustad Bismillah Khan Award for
Culture 2015
winner — Joe D’Cruz, who, through his
writing, manifests the soul of India, like the
late Bismillah Khan did through his music.
The Ustad Bismillah Khan Award, named in
honour of one of India’s great musicians who
embodied India’s cultural syncretism and our
shared civilizational heritage, will be presented
every year to an individual who has achieved
the highest level of excellence in the fields of
arts/ literature/ philosophy/folk tradition.
R.N. Joe D’Cruz was born into a traditional
Tamil fisherman family, and has years of hands-
on experience in traditional fishing systems as
well as in corporate fishing. He has also been
a community activist, raising his voice for the
coastal communities of not only Tamil Nadu
but entire India. He has been actively working
and writing for the ecological preservation, na-
tional integration and inclusive social develop-
ment of India’s coastal regions and communi-
ties. He is the founder and managing trustee of
Bharatha Culture and Heritage Trust. He is a
visiting faculty for shipping institutions includ-
ing Indian Maritime University, Chennai.
He is an eminent Tamil writer who estab-
lished his place in Tamil literary field for ever
with his first work: World Surrounded by Ocean
(Aazhi Choozh Ulaku). Published in 2004, the
novel deals with the lives and fortunes of sev-
eral interlinked Catholic fishermen families.
His second work Korkai is set in the port
town Tuticorin. This 1,174-page novel, pub-
lished in 2009, spoke about a traditional com-
munity in southern Tamil Nadu who were
pioneers of maritime business and were also
pearl divers off the Coromandal coast. The epic
narrative of Korkai traces, through multiple
layers, an inner chord of spiritual struggle be-
tween an earth-bound goddess tradition and an
imposed system alien to that tradition.
A born fighter, D’Cruz regularly faces
threats of violence and excommunication from
fundamentalist elements and vested interests.
But nothing deters him from his mission of em-
powering the coastal communities by integrat-
ing mainland India with them and them with
V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
mainland India.
The division that exists between the coastal
communities and mainland, he believes, is ar-
tificial and has no basis in tradition. He perse-
veres for the original organic ties that united
the coastal communities with Indian mainland
communities.
He has received several national and inter-
national awards for his literary output.
Through his literature and his mission for
socio-cultural empowerment, Joe D’Cruz mani-
fests bravely and holistically the soul of India.
He is a natural choice for the Ustad Bismillah
Khan Award.
The Sree Narayana Guru Award for
Social Work 2015
winner — The Robin Hood Army, for its
singular efforts towards fighting hunger.
The Sree Narayana Guru Award, named in hon-
our of a great social reformer from Kerala who
worked for social equality, spiritual freedom
and economic empowerment of the underprivi-
leged, will be presented every year to individu-
als/ institutions engaged in transformational
social work projects/ inspiring grassroots ac-
tivism in rural education healthcare/tribal wel-
fare/ empowerment of the marginalised/ rural
entrepreneurship.
It all started in August last year when a
group of youngsters decided to address two im-
portant issues, hunger and food wastage. They
drove to restaurants, collected unsold food, re-
packaged it and gave it to around 100 people in
The founders of Robin Hood
Army with Sadhguru Jaggi
Vasudev (left); Joe D’Cruz
with the Sadhguru and M.J.
Akbar (facing page)
need of it around Delhi.
Within a few months, the movement gained
nationwide support and appreciation, and
spread across 13 cities, including Hyderabad,
Mumbai and Kolkata. In April this year, the
movement crossed national borders, with cities
like Karachi and Lahore organising such volun-
teering campaigns.
Neel Ghose and Anand Sinha, the two
27-year-old founders, were inspired by Refood
International, an organisation based in Portu-
gal. Using a hyperlocal model, they collect ex-
cess food and give it to those who need it.
The two then roped in colleagues and friends
for the campaign. Volunteers kept pouring in,
and now they work across India and Pakistan,
owing to the tremendous efforts by their social
media team on Facebook.
Robin Hood Army’s young professionals
work in small teams and are assigned specific
areas. They visit local restaurants, convince
them to donate surplus food, identify clusters of
people in need—such as the homeless and chil-
dren in orphanages—and carry out the distri-
bution. Now around 30 restaurants across Delhi
and NCR have also started to provide freshly
cooked meals for the initiative.
In a nation which has one-fourth of the
world’s undernourished population, efforts by
organisations like Robin Hood Army are a bea-
con of hope and deserve full support.
Poverty, hunger and malnutrition are major
national issues, but organisations like Robin
Hood Army definitely prove that the simplest of
solutions can do wonders.
De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 69
 mind
game Puzzles Quiz
Please mail your answers to the Quiz to mindgame@swarajyamag.com by December 24. From
the all-correct or most-correct answers, three lucky winners will be chosen through a random
draw. The winners will receive books worth Rs 1,000 chosen by the editors of Swarajya.

1. Om Prakash Mehra, who 5. This post was established Nigeria recently won the the Ecuadorian embassy
1 The recent events of the shooting at the Bataclan concert hall and other loca- passed away in Novem- in 2008 when this South World Championship in in London, is the character
tions in Paris highlight the threat terrorism poses. Here’s a crossword on vari- ber this year, had served Asian country became this ‘sport’, becoming the named Confoundtheir-
ous militant groups around the world. as the Governor of the a Republic. Recently, a first African winner. He has politix based on in the
Across states of Maharashtra and woman took charge for been described as ‘a com- latest Asterix comic?
2 For nearly 25 years, this group has terrorized large parts of the Philippines Rajasthan in the 1980s. the first time in its history. puter’ and the Tiger Woods
4 Aum Shinrikyo released this gas into the Tokyo subway in 1995, harming hundreds However, the high point What post is this? of his sport. What is this 13. Even by colonial standards,
5 An Egyptian goddess whose name means ‘Throne’, her name is notorious in our of his career was a role he ‘sport’ that most of us are the establishment apathy
context performed with distinction 6. The great England bats- used to playing in a relaxed to this tragedy was shock-
8 The group ‘Black September’ targeted and killed athletes of this nation during the from 1973 to 1976. What man Tom Graveney, who environment at home? ing. When the government
1972 Olympics role? passed away recently, was was asked to redirect more
9 We are familiar with this organisation as the acronym of the Arabic for ‘Islamic a member of an elite list 10. The Raja of Chandragiri food and supplies to India,
Resistance Movement’ of 25 cricketers to achieve gave permission for the Churchill had this infamous
a certain feat in first-class British East India Company reply: “If food is so scarce,
Down cricket. The first to get to to move to this place in why hasn’t Gandhi died
1 Probably the most infamous of this group, its name means ‘The Base’ this feat was W.G. Grace, 1639, mainly because it yet?” Name this tragedy.
3 This Nigerian group shot to the headlines after kidnapping over 200 school girls while Don Bradman was was nearer the weaving
last year the first non-Englishman. centres from which the
4 This group, once led by Abimael Guzman, terrorised Peru in the 1980s What feat is this? company obtained goods
6 Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is a group working to separate this region from Spain for export to Persia and the
7 Notorious for its kidnap-and-ransom technique, the FARC has been terrorizing 7. Princess Elizabeth was East Indies. Which present-
this South American country staying at the Tree Tops day city?
Hotel in Kenya when she
Down: 1. Al Qaeda; 3. Boko Haram; 4. Shining Path; 6. Basque; 7. Colombia received news of the death 11. When a well-known actress
Across: 2. Abu Sayaff; 4. Sarin; 5. ISIS; 8. Israel; 9. Hamas of her father, King George interviewed a Nobel Prize
VI. One of the persons who winner recently, the latter
was with her at the time complimented her by say-
was a legend of sorts in ing: “I hesitated in saying
2 A metallic connect unites these people. We are looking for one specific word. We could have added an Indian – but that would have India. Who was this? [whether I am] a feminist
made this too easy! or not, [but] after hearing
8. Exactly one hundred years your [UN] speech, when
ago, in November 2015, a you said, ‘If not now, when?
seminal theory was pre- If not me, who?’ I decided
2. Sam Smith is in the news sented by a scientist to the there’s no way, and there’s
for a song titled ‘Writing’s Prussian Academy of Sci- nothing wrong with calling
on the Wall’. Which movie ences. This was built upon yourself a feminist.” Name
is this a tie-in for? his earlier work. Name this either person involved.
theory. 14. An extract from Prime
3. This one-time Ambassa- 12. On which real life personal- Minister Modi’s speech
dor to the USA was more 9. Wellington Jighere from ity, currently residing at at the British Parliament:
2. Iron – Lou Gehrig was the ‘Iron Horse’; ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson; Otto von Bismarck – the ‘Iron Man’ and Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’ famous for his career as a “And, tomorrow, Prime
jurist, and wrote the very Minister [David Cameron]
appropriately titled work and I will be at Wembley.
3 We earn them. We love them. We spend them. What connects the following? We, the People. Who? Even in India, every young
1. Sagar Samrat Oil Rig 3. Rhino, Elephant and Tiger 5. Parliament of India 7. Dandi March footballer wants to ___ _
2. Tractor 4. Mount Harriet, Port Blair 6. Himalaya Mountains 8. Indian Economy 4. This group has been ___ _____.” Fill in the blanks
3. Pictures on Indian Rupee notes consistently harassed in with a movie name with an
its homeland, with a 1980s Indian connection.
4 At first sight, the name of this disputed territory may seem just like the name of a geographical region. It is bordered by Morocco to law stripping them even of
the north, Algeria to the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Which territory, which had it citizenship. Their migration 15. Super Victor is the mascot
been a country would be the only one with a name that starts with “W”? to India and Bangladesh of what 2016 occasion that
has been controversial. has been threatened by
Anagram: AWASH EARN REST Who? recent tragic events?
4. Western Sahara
Winners of the
November 2015 Quiz:
Puzzles and quiz created by Nexus Consulting www.consultnexus.in s. srinivasan, jyoti malhotra, sarmishtha shah

70 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5 De c e m b e r 2 0 1 5 71
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72 D e ce m b er 2015 V o l u me 5 9 . I s s ue 3 5
Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India. Registered No. 1201/57 Date of publication: 05-12-2015

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