Politics
Questions of identity…
The elections have just concluded. Much discussion has transpired on the various things politicians said to get votes and seats, from free laptops, to Activas at half price. But, for some reason, one election promise hasn’t been discussed in the mainstream as much as I would like: that of giving primacy to Tamilians in Tamil Nadu. This election slogan of “Tamil Nadu is for Tamilians” is neither new, nor entirely unexpected. What is, however, disheartening is the number of educated and seemingly sensible people who seem to think this attitude is acceptable.
I do not quite understand how someone can be so determinedly nationalist in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. I do not understand how nationalism and exclusionism is not a negative quantity in a world where most products we routinely consume are produced outside of the geography that we occupy. How can someone who boasts an Apple iPhone, a Fossil watch and a Ford car think that only people who “originally” belong to a state/region have the right to live there? How can anyone, in the same breath speak with great pride of Satya Nadella and Indra Nooyi, while simultaneously wishing to deport all non-Tamils from Tamil Nadu? What does nationalism or regional pride even mean in today’s world?
Questions of identity are extremely complex and difficult to resolve. This questions is one of special personal importance to me, as I have spent the better part of my life trying to give myself a single identity. And failed. Am I Kannadiga, when my knowledge of the language is limited to the dialect I speak at home, and that of the state limited to my few visits to Bangalore? Or am I a Tamilian, when my mother tongue is a language other than Tamil? Who exactly am I and what is my relationship with this place I call home?
When someone asks me where I am from, the first answer I give is, “Chennai”. Because, it is true. I am from Chennai and this is home. I certainly do not speak Tamil as a first language or mother tongue. I belong to a tiny community of Kannada-speaking people who migrated into this state several centuries ago. I am married to a member of an even tinier community of Marathi-speaking people who also migrated several centuries ago. If someone asked us to go back where we belong, where do we go? To Karnataka, whose language and people are so alien to me that I return from each short trip to Bangalore with the joy of pup returning home? Or to Maharashtra, which I have barely visited except for a few times for official reasons? For me, home is Chennai. Even if I were to go a few generations back to trace my origins, they would go no further than Coimbatore and Theni. Then, who am I?
If mastery of a language is the criteria for qualifying as a “Tamilian”, then would millions of my co-inhabitants of Tamil Nadu qualify? How many native speakers of Tamil actually know the language they call their mother tongue? How about this generation of urban youth, which is more comfortable in English than in their mother tongue?
These are questions that are extremely hard to resolve, or even attempt a resolution at. Yet, we do not hesitate to call someone an “outsider” just because we feel entitled. Can we try, at least, to build a more equitable world? A world that, in Tagore’s immortal words, has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls? Try?
Being a woman…
…is not easy at times. This is not the first time I’ve spoken up against online abuse and it will not be the last. Yet, it never seems to end. As a woman, the minute you say something the majority doesn’t agree with, you’re targeted. Sometimes it’s people making you see sense, sometimes it is those who malign you and question your integrity and at other times it is those who threaten you into silence. But, almost always, the fact that you’re a woman is held against you.
If you follow me on twitter, you’ll know that I have refrained from commenting on politics and especially on the political right wing in India. This is mainly because I find objectivity sorely lacking in Indian political discourse. The attitude usually is, “if you’re not with me, you’re against me”. To elaborate, you either believe that the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate is the best thing to have happened to India or you’re a dynasty apologist. People like me who harbour a certain ambivalence to both mainstream parties and almost every other party in-between are considered outcasts. Indeed, there can be no middle path in Indian politics today. This basically forced me, and I believe many others like me, into preferring to watch from the sidelines.
In this situation, the news that Muthalik had joined the BJP shocked me into speaking out. So outraged was I with the idea that a hooligan could actually be admitted into a mainstream political party that could well be tomorrow’s ruling elite that I finally sent one one tweet on rethinking my ambivalence to the party.
Less than three hours after that tweet went out, I found myself inundated by @ mentions and retweets suggesting that I should go lick the feet of the Congress. The reactions did not stop there. As is usually the case, they extended to my character and my beliefs, even my family and my person. One well-meaning critic asked me what I know of Muthalik apart from what’s published by the mainstream “paid” media. Some critics helpfully pointed out that being a woman, I should watch out.
To all these people I have just question. Can’t you think of any better way to disagree with a person other than to malign her character and threaten her into silence? I find misogyny so rampant in the online world that nobody even stops to think about it any more. The last time I spoke out against the hooliganism of the Ram Sene in Mangalore, I was threatened and intimidated. There is no guarantee that this won’t happen again. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if I we’re to speak out against any political party at all, I’d be targeted in much the same way.
I find that otherwise rational and normal human beings become strangely intolerant when they start supporting one or the other political party. This is true about people across the political spectrum. What explains this? The need to belong? The need to identify with a group, however big or small? Or is it simply that ambiguity and ambivalence are too difficult for them to take? I don’t have answers. And perhaps never will.Perpetuating myths…
There has been considerable outrage on the expose by NDTV and Tehelka on the attitude of policemen in and around the National Capital Region towards rape victims. While it is shocking that such comments come from those who are supposed to be protectors of the innocent, none of this is really surprising. The attitude is simply representative of the attitude of a large majority of Indian men who seem to think that a woman who is in a relationship with one person automatically grants privileges to 10 others because she is of “loose” character.
Nor is it surprising that the very act of forcing a woman is considered “normal” because she was drinking, or exchanged phone numbers, or dressed in “skimpy and provocative” clothing. I do not remember how many times women’s rights activists, women in general and several others have reiterated that provocation or “losing control” does not exonerate the rapist. Along with rapists, the police and other law-enforcement authorities, sometimes including our law courts are just perpetuating several myths regarding rape:
Myth: If a woman dresses provocatively, drinks or is in a relationship with someone, she “tempts” a man into raping her.
Fact: Rape is NOT a sex crime. Rapists rarely do so because they are unable to “resist temptation” or because they lose control. They do it because they are trying to establish their power over a woman by doing so. Rape is about power, not attraction. It happens because the perpetrator of the crime does not even consider what he is doing as a crime. It also happens because the rapist believes (and with good reason) that he will get away with it. As with most cases, shoddy investigation, unsympathetic police personnel and lack of DNA evidence results in an acquittal.
Myth: A woman who dresses modestly will not be raped.
Fact: Rape is the result of the twisted logic of a sick mind. What else could explain rape of 2-year old children and 85-year old grandmothers? A woman is at risk of being raped even if she were dressed in a burqa. Asking women to dress modestly and not “provoke” only puts the onus of security on the victim. It practically exonerates the actual criminal and victimizes the victim.
Myth: She is doing it for money. When someone uses force, she cries rape!
Fact: Even if a woman were a prostitute, she does not deserve to be raped. Her character has nothing to do with the whole affair. And in case our cops don’t realize, forcing a woman is indeed called rape.
Apart from all this, it is quite distressing that the Delhi government seems more inclined to impose restrictions on women rather than address the core issue of rape as a law and order problem. To top it all, the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has expressed concern at the state of women in NCR. We do not want to know if she is “worried”. In fact, she should be angry, not worried. She should be angry enough to do something about the current state of affairs in order to make a difference. She should, as the Chief Minister of a state, take action to ensure that Delhi’s streets are safe for women, and not pay lip service to the plight of women in the country’s capital!
Indian media and the credibility crisis
For the first time in weeks, I was offline for something like 4 hrs. And, what do I see when I come back? My Twitter timeline explode with comments on the The Hindu and one blogpost repeatedly retweeted on the Indian Express and its pro-establishment leanings. It felt like one fine day, the skies had opened up to rain fire on our mainstream media. Not that our newspapers haven’t already experienced this credibility crisis but these two happenings make us question the whole journalism business. Now…where do I start?
Earlier in the day, I was pointed to a letter by N. Ravi, Editor, The Hindu to all employees of the organization. In this hard-hitting letter, Ravi accuses N. Ram, Editor-in-chief of not keeping up his word to retire in May 2010, and conspiring with some members of the Governing Board to remove him from his position of Editor. All this office politics notwithstanding, some accusations levelled by Ravi against Ram are distressing! In a damning indictment of something we always suspected, Ravi accuses Ram of forcing him to publish a defensive interview of A. Raja in 2010 against the promise of a full-page colour advertisement by the Telecom Ministry. Even more distressing is the Editor himself accusing the Editor-in-chief of being overtly pro-Chinese Communist Establishment.
In the light of these accusations by Ravi, The Hindu’s publishing of “Living our Values: Code of Editorial Values” doesn’t really make a mark. Indeed, taking a moral high ground and taking of editorial values and journalistic ethics in the backdrop of a general decline of editorial standards seems incongruous. Now, whether the Editor-in-Chief actually published pro-Raja articles and news for a direct quid pro quo is another matter. Irrespective of whether every word in Ravi’s letter is true or not, and irrespective of whether Ravi himself benefited from an actively pro-establishment stand, these revelations make one doubt the credibility of the Hindu as a newspaper. Personally, I stopped reading The Hindu because of it’s increasingly pro-left leanings and in the light of these allegations, I really wonder how much credibility this newspaper, once the gold standard in Indian journalism, really has left.
On that note, I also came across this brilliant blogpost at Churumuri, on whether “anti-establishment” which was originally IE’s calling card has now changed beyond recognition. The analysis of whether the newspaper that chose to fight the establishment through Emergency and later, has actually changed its stripes to become pro-establishment. Do read it.
The timing is so perfect that it triggers off a range of thought about what credibility is really left for the Indian media. As I tweeted earlier in the day, The Hindu has just outed itself thanks to infighting. The Indian Express seems to be inexorably moving from being an objective and fearless newspaper to being an apologist of the powers that be. The Times of India lost its credibility the day it started degenerating from a mainline newspaper to a tabloid in broadsheet format. Hindustan Times, as I pointed out a few years back, is more interested in telling us that Michael Douglas uses Viagra than to give us any real news. What does that, as readers, leave us with? Small wonder then that we “pseudonymous bloggers” sitting in darkened rooms in our ivory towers actually prefer Twitter to newspapers as our primary source for news.
What now, of the mainstream media? Who is going to step in to fill the void that our mainstream media has created in being the watchdogs of our polity? Can we really expect these newspapers, who seem more interested in currying favour and making money, to perform the duty that is expected of them as Fourth Estate? Or will social media eventually take over that role? I have no answers at the moment. Only questions.
Living our Values: Code of Editorial Values
Of democracy and democratic traditions…
There has been a raging debate on the origins of Indian democracy on Twitter ever since I tweeted about Christophe Jaffrelot’s latest Foreign Policy Review Essay, comparing democracy in India and in Pakistan. I strongly recommend that you read Jaffrelot’s article and Nitin Pai’s superb fisking of the essay at The Acorn, before moving on with this blogpost.
The one problem I see with Jaffrelot’s approach to India and its democracy is that he tends to view everything Indian democracy stands for from a western perspective. I am saying this after studying not just his articles and essays, but after having studied under him during my two-year masters at Sciences Po, of which CERI, his parent organization, is a part. First, he believes that all democratic tradition in India is a legacy of the British Raj, without which India would still have been a nation of barbarians who do not know how to rule themselves. He completely discounts the influence of native cultures and traditions, which may be called democratic in the vaguest possible sense. Second, he attributes the success of democracy in India, during his lectures as well as through his writing, to the en masse politicization of the Indian population by the Indian National Congress and the independence movement. The role of other political movements however marginal, tend to be completely ignored, not just by Jaffrelot himself but by most western indologists, including Philip Oldenburg whose book he reviews in Foreign Policy. To them, democracy in India is a western legacy that its people have unquestioningly accepted to the extent that we are today, the world’s largest democracy.
This standpoint is often accepted by many Indians themselves and this acceptance triggered a raging debate about whether democracy was actually Indian in nature. This is where I feel compelled to clarify certain popular misconceptions, prevalent even among the well-read, intellectual elite. My claim is not that democracy as it is practiced today is entirely Indian in nature and we had it all before the British came along and conquered us. My contention is merely that democracy survived and prospered in post-independence India the way it never could in Pakistan because the Indian traditions of pluralism, tolerance and multi-culturalism are derived mainly from certain traditions that may be considered democratic in nature. At this point, it is impossible to ignore the obvious differences between the Indian and the Pakistani State: pluralism vs. monism, federalist union vs. unitary state, non-interference in religion vs. Islamist governance. Viewing the two countries through the politically-correct prism of secularism is neither sensible, nor desirable.
It becomes important, at this juncture to clearly define those democratic traditions, so as to dispel the perception that I claim democracy to be purely Indian in origin. The example of democracy in India that I am personally most familiar with is the “kuda-olai” system of electing village administrative officers. K.A. Nilakanta Shastri explores this system in detail in his two volumes on the Cholas. The books are now out of print and can only be found in colleges and public libraries. This information, unearthed from stone inscriptions in Uttiramerur near Chennai, date back to the 12th Century A.D, especially during Rajaraja’s reign between 985 and 1014 A.D. To put things in perspective, the Chola administrative system pre-dated the famed Magna Carta signed in 1215 A.D. With the signing of the Magna Carta, the western world finally accepted the limitations on the right of the king, whereas in southern India, the system of electing representatives who were governed by rules already existed two hundred years previously.
If we go further back in history, we have archaeological and documentary evidence of tiny clans and even some bigger ones like the Lichchavis of modern-day Nepal, who practised a primitive form of democracy in choosing the leader of their tribe. They are often called “republics” by scholars like Steve Muhlberger to whose work I have linked earlier.
That said, these primitive systems can, by no means, considered a precursor to modern-day democracy because voting was largely restricted to men aged between 18 and 60 years, who in addition, must be land-owners. This constituted approximately 20 percent of the total population, excluding large groups like artisans, laborers, and most importantly, women. However, by that definition, no system predating the universal suffrage movement of the 20th century can be called democratic. Looking for a replica of democracy as we know it today in the Arthashastra or the Manu-Smriti is an entirely pointless exercise because much of what we hold dear today, including human rights, civil liberties, individual freedom and universal suffrage have evolved over the last two hundred years. Not even the famed democratic nation-state of Athens would qualify for that title. The Magna Carta, often considered the precursor to the British writ of haebeas corpus, and to modern democracy was actually devolution of power from the monarch to the feudal lords and not to the “people” as we qualify them today.
Finally, no country can adapt a completely foreign system if it goes against its political ethos, unless founded on complete destruction of earlier cultures and imposition of a new religious, social and political order as in the case of some South American countries. If democracy has succeeded in India, it is because our basic political ethos is not fundamentally different from the one imposed by western-style democracy. While British rule accelerated India’s acceptance of multi-party democracy as the only possible system of governance, it would not have survived the various threats posed, first by the bloody massacres of partition and subsequently by the state of Emergency imposed by Mrs. Gandhi, had that democratic tradition not existed in the first place. It is only intellectually honest to accept that a native discourse in democracy-studies is not an entirely-flawed approach, unlike indologists like Jaffrelot and Oldenburg who seemed determined to negate that influence.
Of democracy and democratic traditions…