UPA II- Stop anti-poor acts!!

The UPA Government is making the common man’s life more miserable by hiking the petrol prices. The petrol price hike will hit the common man and the poorer sections hard as it will have a cascading effect on the economy. The rise in petroleum products is outrageous and atrocious. It is more due to the government’s inefficiency and incompetence than necessity. Since prices are increased at any time of the fiscal year, the annual budget has lost its importance. The people are forced to pay hefty prices for the government’s mismanagement and failures. Raising the price of petrol is the government’s easiest method to cover up the losses or deficit due to faulty planning and mismanagement. Notwithstanding the Centre’s justification that the petrol price hike will help the oil PSUs cut their losses and avert an impending financial crisis they face, the ripple effects of price hike will badly hit the poor who are already hit by galloping inflation of food items.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and the oil companies are in a dangerous nexus and the government’s stand on fuel price hike due to inflation is untenable. The facts and figures of losses of oil companies are unacceptable because petrol is an essential commodity that cannot be sold for profit. With inflation reaching newer heights, commuters especially those who commute daily by their private vehicles are a harried lot. People no longer will be able to bear the brunt of this hike as a majority of them belong to middle working class group. The government, therefore, should rollback the petrol price hike and the proposed price hike of  diesel, LPG and kerosene as it will result in increase in the prices of all essential commodities and public transport.

To hell with your poverty line

The fact that a rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh (“The austerity of the affluent”- P. Sainath The Hindu dated 21^st May 2012) exposes the hypocrisy of the Indian state glorifying its economic growth rate even as India has about 26 million people living below poverty line and 35 per cent out of this group, classified as the poorest of the poor, have income level of less than Rs.22/- per day out of the total population. The politicians, government, bureaucrats, media, NGOs, civil society — collectively as a nation, under the hypnotising influence of global market forces and obsession with the projected economic growth rate have turned their faces away from the millions of poor people who famish with a meagre Rs.20/- per day income. As per 2001 Census, about 78 million people in the country were living without a home and more than that number were holed up in urban slums. The number of the poor living in the country is more than the poor living in any other country of the world.

Despite the socio-economic problems plaguing the Indian society, post-reforms period has been marked by high growth rate, placing the country among the fastest growing economies in the world. Unfortunately, the spurt in economic activity in the country and increase in the growth rate over the past few lustrums has not been able to make a discernible impact on the problem of poverty, deprivation and exploitation of the poor. The divide between the rich and the poor has become a tangible reality. Though there are more Indian billionaires in the Forbes list than ever before, the number of the poor and hungry is ever increasing. During this era of rapid growth, the problems of unequal and skewed distribution of economic resources and the fruits of growth have surfaced. The income gap between rich and poor has increased steadily in line with economic progress, but only recently, with unemployment and austerity measures hitting the poor has public resentment against inequality. One is left speechless and shocked when one finds a Montek Singh Ahluwalia or an FM or a PM waxing eloquent over GDP growth, liberalised economy, globalization and fixing Rs. 28/- as poverty line. The planning commission has not only fudged the poverty data to exaggerate the fall in poverty but also supplied misleading statistics.

The ever-widening rich-poor divide and income inequality tends to threaten the stability of India. In the present scenario, the role of the media, NGOs and civil society is important to expose and highlight the moral, social and administrative deficiencies in the political system. As Indian Constitution, through the Directive Principles of State Policy entrusts the responsibility of equitable distribution of economic resources to the government policies,  the government must strive hard to achieve the ultimate goal of equitable growth of the economy. Liberal economy cannot snatch away the basic right of decent living from the poor and the downtrodden. It is the responsibility of the government to take measures for bridging the widening gap, which requires pragmatic policies aimed at redistributive justice on a sustainable basis.

My Letter on ‘gagging the voice of Rationalists’ to The Hindu dated 08-05-2012  

Our secular credentials were questioned yet again when police filed FIRs and started investigations against Sanal Edamaraku, a rationalist who has been exposing miracles and pseudoscience beliefs for over three decades (“India's god laws fail the test of reason,” May 7). In exposing the ‘miracle' in a Mumbai church, he performed his fundamental duty as a citizen under Article 51-A of the Constitution. Lack of scientific temper is the biggest impediment to the progress of our nation. Exposing the truth about a said miracle does not amount to inciting hatred against Christians. Only exposure can lead to a debate and defence of ideas.

In response to the opinion page article “India's god laws fail the test of reason” in The Hindu dated 07-05-2012

Early in March, little drops of water began to drip from the feet of the statue of Jesus nailed to the cross on the church of Our Lady of Velankanni, down on to Mumbai's unlovely Irla Road. Hundreds began to flock to the church to collect the holy water in little plastic bottles, hoping the tears of the son of god would sanctify their homes and heal their beloved.

Sanal Edamaruku, the eminent rationalist thinker, arrived at the church a fortnight after the miracle began drawing crowds. It took him less than half an hour to discover the source of the divine tears: a filthy puddle formed by a blocked drain, from where water was being pushed up through a phenomenon all high-school physics students are familiar with, called capillary action.

For his discovery, Mr. Edamaruku now faces the prospect of three years in prison — and the absolute certainty that he will spend several more years hopping between lawyers' offices and courtrooms. In the wake of Mr. Edamaruku's miracle-busting Mumbai visit, three police stations in the capital received complaints against him for inciting religious hatred. First information reports were filed, and investigations initiated with exemplary — if unusual — alacrity.

Real courage

Mr. Edamaruku isn't the kind to be frightened. It takes real courage, in a piety-obsessed society, to expose the chicanery of Satya Sai Baba and packs of lesser miracle-peddlers who prey on the insecurities of the desperate and gullible. These actions have brought threats in their wake — but never from the state.

India's Constitution obliges all citizens to develop “scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”. India's laws, though, are being used to persecute a man who has devoted his life to doing precisely that.

Like dozens of other intellectuals and artists, Mr. Edamaraku is a victim of India's god laws — colonial-era legislation obliging the state to punish those who offend the faith of others. Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code criminalises the actions of “whoever destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship, or any object held sacred by any class of persons”. Its sibling, Section 295A, outlaws “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class”. Section 153B goes further, proscribing “any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities”. Alarmingly, given the sweeping generalities in which these laws are written, truth is not an admissible defence.

In the decades since independence, these laws have been regularly used to hound intellectuals and artists who questioned religious beliefs. In 1993, the New Delhi-based progressive cultural organisation, Sahmat, organised an exhibition demonstrating that there were multiple versions of the Ramayana in Indian culture. Panels in the exhibition recorded that in one Buddhist tradition, Sita was Ram's sister; in a Jain version, she was the daughter of Ravan. Even though the exhibits drew on historian Romila Thapar's authoritative work, criminal cases were filed against Sahmat for offending the sentiments of traditionalist Hindus.

Punjab has seen a rash of god-related cases, mainly involving Dalit-led heterodoxies challenging the high traditions of the Akal Takht. In 2007, police filed cases against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the head of the syncretic Saccha Sauda sect, for his purportedly blasphemous use of Sikh iconography. Earlier, in 2001, similar charges were brought against Piara Singh Bhaniarawala, after he released the Bhavsagar Granth , a religious text suffused with miracle stories.

Islamic chauvinists have shown the same enthusiasm for the secular state's god laws as their Sikh and Hindu counterparts. Earlier this year, FIRs were filed against four writers who read out passages from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses — a book that is wholly legal in India. Fear of Islamic neo-fundamentalists is pervasive, shaping cultural discourse even when its outcomes are not as dramatic as Mr. Rushdie's case. In 1995, writer Khalid Alvi reissued Angaarey — a path-breaking collection of Urdu short works banned in 1933 for its attacks on god. The collection's most-incendiary passages were censored out. India's feisty media didn't even murmur in protest after the magazine India Today was proscribed by Jammu and Kashmir in 2006 for carrying a cartoon with an image of the Kaaba as one among a metaphorical pack of political cards.

Even religious belief, ironically enough, can invite prosecution by the pious. Last year, the Kannada movie actress, Jayamala, was summoned before a Kerala court, along with astrologer P. Unnikrishna and his assistant Reghupathy, to face police charges that she had violated a taboo against women in the menstruating age from entering the Sabrimala temple.

For the most part, judges have shied away from condoning criticism of the pious, perhaps fearful of being held responsible for public disorder. In 1958, the Supreme Court heard litigation that grew out of the radical politician, E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker's decision to break a clay idol of Ganesha. Lower courts had held, in essence, that the idol was not a sanctified object. The Supreme Court differed, urging the lower judiciary “to pay due regard to the feelings and religious emotions of different classes of persons with different beliefs, irrespective … of whether they are rational or otherwise”.

‘Insult to religion'

Earlier, in 1957, the Supreme Court placed some limits on 295A saying it “does not penalise any and every act of insult to or attempt to insult the religion”. Instead, it “only punishes the aggravated form of insult to religion perpetrated with deliberate and malicious intention ” (emphasis added). The court shied away, though, from the key question, of what an insult to religion actually was.

Hearing an appeal against the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to confiscate Naicker's contentious Ramayana , the Supreme Court again ducked this issue. In 1976, it simply said “the law fixes the mind of the Administration to the obligation to reflect on the need to restrict and to state the grounds which ignite its action”. “That is about all”, the judges concluded.

That hasn't, however, been all. In 1998, the Supreme Court upheld Karnataka's decision to ban P.V. Narayanna's Dharmakaarana , an award-winning re-reading of the Hindu saint, Basaveshwara. In 2007, the Bombay High Court similarly allowed Maharashtra to ban R.L. Bhasin's Islam , an aggressive attack on the faith. There have been several other similar cases. In some, the works involved were scurrilous, even inflammatory — but the principles established by courts have allowed State governments to stamp out critical works of scholarship and art.

Dangers ahead

Indians have grappled with these issues since at least 1924, when Arya Samaj activist Mahashe Rajpal published the pamphlet that led the state to enact several of the god laws. Rangila Rasul — in Urdu, ‘the colourful prophet' —was a frank, anti-Islam polemic. Lower courts condemned Rajpal to prison. In the Lahore High Court, though, Justice Dalip Singh argued that public outrage could not be the basis for legal proscription: “if the fact that Musalmans resent attacks on the Prophet was to be the measure [of legal sanction]”, he reasoned, “then an historical work in which the life of the prophet was considered and judgment passed on his character by a serious historian might [also] come within the definition”.

In 1927, when pre-independence India's central legislative assembly debated the Rangila Rasul affair, some endorsed Justice Singh's message. M.R. Jayakar likened religious fanaticism to a form of mental illness, and suggested that those who suffer from it be segregated “from the rest of the community”. This eminently sane suggestion wasn't, however, the consensus: the god laws were expanded to expressly punish works like Rangila Rasul .

Perhaps Indians can congratulate themselves that the god laws have not been used to persecute and kill religious dissenters, as the ever-expanding blasphemy laws which sprang up in Pakistan. Mr. Edamaruku's case ought to make clear, though, just where things are inexorably headed. If Indians wish to avoid the fate of the dystopia to the country's west, its citizens desperately need to accept the right of critics to attack, even insult, what they hold dear.

In 864 CE, the great physician, Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakaria al-Razi, wrote: “The miracles of the prophets are imposters or belong to the domain of pious legend. The teachings of religions are contrary to the one truth: the proof of this is that they contradict one another. It is tradition and lazy custom that have led men to trust their religious leaders. Religions are the sole cause of the wars which ravage humanity; they are hostile to philosophical speculation and to scientific research. The alleged holy scriptures are books without values”.

Following a rich scholarly life, and a tenure as director of the hospital in Baghdad patronised by the caliph Abu al-Qasim Abd 'Allah, al-Razi died quietly at his home in Rey, surrounded by his students. In modern India, his thoughts would have led him to a somewhat less pleasant end.

Police investigation of Sanal Edamaraku for debunking a “miracle” at a church is a crime against the Constitution.

Bathoni Tola massacre- Miscarriage of Justice

There is an urgent need to sensitize the public on issues relating to underprivileged sections of society, and to insist that the media need to accord more priority to coverage of the grave violations of the basic rights of Dalits. The continued prevalence of atrocities against Dalits and the ways in which the Protection of Civil Rights Act (1955) and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (1989) are routinely subverted deserve attention of the media. The response of the governments and the media has remained the same in all these atrocities; of outrage, and then forgetting the issue until the next atrocity occurs. Precisely for this reason, this verdict should wake up the national media, make them reflect, and act, to put an immediate end to caste based atrocities. The Judiciary entrusted with the dispensation of Justice has acted as the stooge of the dominant caste groups and failed to the hopes of the common man, as a custodian of human rights. The denial of victim’s Right to Justice, by the approach adopted by the government and prosecuting agencies facilitating the culprit to kill innocent Dalits get away with impunity and sadly the judicial decision in question is nothing but a betrayal of Dalits.

The verdict aquitting 23 persons in the gruesome Bathani Tola massacre left everyone with a sensitive mind shocked and dismayed. Needless to say, this judgement is a blatant miscarriage of justice as mass murderers are acquitted to escape punishment for their inhuman crimes. Moreover, the failure to punish the murderers, would not only subject to ridicule the judiciary but would render it far more difficult to deter similar mass killings in the future. This criminal trial failed to provide justice because it tended to focus on individuals and single acts instead of the broader role of institutional casteist forces. In treating the massacre as a purely criminal act, it actually masks caste realities. Justice and fairness of treatment for the victims belonging to the socially disadvantaged is practically non-existent in India. In denying justice, very sound and cogent reasons and arguments couched in ceremonial legalese are advanced on behalf of the aggressors. The verdict raises serious questions as to which need to be enquired with urgency, as the same can have far reaching consequences on the credibility of the entire justice delivery system, which prides itself of maintaining high standards of independence and utmost fairness. In a case which so speaks for itself, the stupor with which the entire system has worked is unpardonable, and the way accused have been allowed to go away scot free with impunity, has added insult to injury to the Dalits, already suffering social discrimination.  Indeed much has been said already about the delays associated with our criminal justice system, but sixteen years is too long a time, especially when all that is secured to the people is a grossly miscarriage of justice. The lack of potency, the successive governments and investigating agencies have projected in the prosecution of the accused and in failure to secure extradition of the accused, raises serious queries as to the how miniscule and insignificant the cost of Dalit lives becomes, when pitted against feudalism.

If the Government of Bihar expects Dalits to repose faith in Judiciary, it must do some soul searching on the mass acquittal of the Bathani Tola massacre case.  The massacre was a stigma on civil society and rarest of rare cases of brutality. The massacres at Khairlanji, Keelvenmani, and Bathani Tola stand out prominently in the minds of Dalits all over the nation as the sanguinary examples of Casteism. Blaming the lack of evidence – which is primarily the failure of the prosecution -is unlikely to assuage the sentiments of the victims. A fair verdict in this case alone will help wipe away the stigma of upper-caste bias which shadows India’s judiciary.