swarajya pre launch issue

8/10/2019 Swarajya Pre Launch Issue

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WALLPAPER DIVASWhy Hindi lm heroines are expectedonly to look pretty and not try acting

PERSPECTIVES

BIBEK DEBROY, JERRY RAO, SANJEEV SANYAL

THE 9 THINGS ARUN JAITLEYMUST DO TO GROW THE ECONOMY

INDIA’S BIGGEST FOREIGN POLICY

BLUNDER: AFGHANISTAN

A NewIdea of

IndiaTHE INDIAN RIGHT NEEDS A

DIFFERENT NARRATIVE—ONE WHICH

IS ROOTED IN OPENNESS, AND A

REFUSAL TO DISCRIMINATE BASED

ON IDENTITY.

CAN THIS MAN PROVIDE IT?

DECEMBER 2014

44 56

AMPLE ISSUE. NOT FOR SALE.



5DECEMBER 2014

FROM THE EDITOR

DEAR READER,

In 1956, journalist Khasa Subba Rau, with thepatronage of C. Rajagoplachari—Rajaji, India’s

last Governor-General, freedom fighter and a

statesman hailed by Mahatma Gandhi as his

“conscience keeper”, launched a weekly maga-

zine called Swarajya.

Swarajya was intended to convey the found-

ers’ quest to translate the joy of freedom not

only from foreign rule, but full freedom as

defined and promised by the preamble of our

Constitution. It represented the first coherent

and consistent intellectual response to Nehru-

vian socialism and the ever-expanding Big

State in newly independent India.

Long before it became fashionable, Swarajya

championed individ ual liberty, private enter-

prise, the minimal State and cultural rooted-

ness. Thiia whAt Rajaji wrote:

“There is before the country the great

problem of how to secure welfare without

surrendering the individual to be swal-

lowed up by the State, how to get the best

return for the taxes the people pay and how

to preserve spiritual values while working

for better material standards of life. This

journal will serve all these purposes.”So what is this Swarajya 2.0 —about?

Rajaji’s words remain as true as ever even,

and especially now, in 2014. The new Swarajya

wishes to be an authoritative voice of reason

representing the liberal centre-right point of

view. It remains committed to the ideals of in-

dividual liberty unmediated by the State or any

other institution, freedom of expression and

enterprise, national interest, and India’s vast

and ancient cultural heritage.

Swarajya has two avatars to begin with—a

digital daily (www.swarajyamag.com; you can

just scan the first QR code in the left column

on your smatphone and reach there—and this

monthly magazine.

(The next QR thing, I won’t tell you about. Let

that be a surprise.)

We aim to be a big tent for liberal right-of-

centre discourse that reaches out, engages with

and caters to the New India in a manner that’s

not arcane, abstruse, arrogant or self-referenc-

ing, through commentary, analysis, research,

satire and opinion. Our focus will be on what

we refer to as SPEC: the Social, Political, Eco-

nomic and Cultural life of India.

These are our articles of faith (in alphabetical

order):

• Dmora• Gndr qalit

• Fr markts

• Individal ntrpris

• Individal frdom

• Intgrit of or ontr

• Opportnit for vr Indian to ahiv his/

her potential

• Promoting or ltral hritag

• Rdd rol of th Stat t a mor ff-

tive one in its focus areas

• Slarism hih dos not pandr, and a

separation of religion from politics

• Th dangrs of dogma

We have an Editorial Board of Advisors com-

prising outstanding thought leaders (again, in

alphabetical order):

Bibek Debroy, bold economist and distin-

guished Indologist; Jaithirth Rao, right-of-

centre philosopher, former CEO of IT giant

MphasiS, and head of Citibank’s Global Tech-

nology Development Division; Manish Sab-

harwal, chairman of Teamlease Services,

India’s largest staffing and training firm, and

one of the country’s leading thinkers on em-

ployment and employability; fearless econo-mist and perhaps the world’s best cricket ana-

lyst Surjit S. Bhalla; and Swapan Dasgupta,

historian, veteran journalist and authoritative

voice of the Indian right.

OK, our ambitions are pretty high, and we are

promising you a lot. But with your help—and

the frank criticism essential to the principles

of free discourse and exchange of ideas that we

have carved in granite—maybe we can…maybe

we can grow to be resonant—deep, full, and re-

verberating.

Welcome, and do plan for a long stay.

— Sandipan Deb EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

[email protected]

A New MagazineThat’s 58 Years Old



7DECEMBER 2014SAMPLE ISSUEDECEMBER 2014

In this issueDECEMBER 2014

Cover IllustrationT F HADIMANI

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 3

CONTENTS 4

FIRSTLIGHT 6

WHAT IS RIGHT WING? 12

JERRY RAO 29

INTERPRETERS OF MALADIES 30

SANJEEV SANYAL 34

BENGAL MUSLIMS AND BJP 38

SEETHA 41

BIBEK DEBROY 42

9 STEPS JAITLEY SHOULD TAKE 44

GERMAN LEMON 48

DOES JAPAN THINK OF US? 52

PADDY PADMANABHAN 62

MALLIKA NAWAL 78

BOOKS 80

ARCHIVES 82

The Swatantra Years

Beauty of the Bouncer

We Lost AfghanistanThe son of Minoo Masani, co-founder of the Swatantra Party, committed to freemarkets and free enterprise, and the chief political opponent to the Nehruvianconsensus, recalls those heady days.

Phil Hughes’ death is a terrible tragedy, but banning the bouncer, as many aresuggesting, will be unjust and irrational, and can only diminish the beauty ofcricket. If you really love cricket, you’ll bat for the bouncer.

The Indian government squandered Afghanistan’s goodwill through years ofvacillating and incoherent policy towards the country. This failure wil haverepercussions in the retire egion.

M E M O R I E S

C R I C K E T A L S O

W O R L D 1856

66

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARDBibek Debroy

Jaithirth RaoManish SabharwalSurjit S BhallaSwapan Dasgupta

EDITORIAL DIRECTORSandipan Deb

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICERPrasanna Viswanathan

PUBLISHER AND CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICERAmarnath Govindarajan

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICERN. Muthuraman

FOREIGN AFFAIRS EDITORPadma Rao Sundarji

EDITOR-AT-LARGERupa Subramanya

NATIONAL AFFAIRS EDITORSurajit Dasgupta

BOOKS AND CULTURE EDITORAntara Das

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSAravindan NeelakandanBiswadeep Ghosh

Jaideep A PrabhuSeetha

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTSBERLIN: Hermanne DeneckeTOKYO: Hiroyasu Suda

DIGITAL NEWSROOM INTERNKruthika Rao

CREATIVE DIRECTORPranab Dutta

www.swarajyamag.com

/swarajyamag

@swarajyamag

/+Swarajyamag

/company/swarajya

For Editorial queries:[email protected]

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All rights reserved throughout the world.Reproduction in any manner is prohib-ited. Printed and published by AmarnathGovindarajan on behalf of KovaiMedia Pvt Ltd. Printed at Bhagya OsetPrinters, No 89/A1 [New no. 109],Chinnammal Street, Saibaba Colony,Coimbatore 641038. Published at 43Nehru Nagar, M.D Gardens, Civil AirportPost, Kalapatti Road, Coimbatore, TamilNadu, INDIA 641014.

This is a Sample Issue and is not forsale. For private circulation only.

A New Idea of IndiaThe Right needs to develop a dierent narrative—one that is rooted in the scepticism and opennessinnate to Indian tradition. Can Narendra Modi provide that?

Mainstream Hindi lms rarely delve beyond a woman’s physical beauty. Female actors bag roles on the basis of looks not acting skills, leading to the creation of more stereotypes than ever before.

C O V E R S T O R Y

E N T E R T A I N M E N T

Why Pretty Women Won’t Act

22

72




MOST OF uS have heard Arnab

Goswami thundering at 9 pm: “Please

answer the question! The Nation Wants

to Know!” But how big is this ‘nation’

Goswami claims to represent?

On any given night, less than 4 lakh

Indians watch this show! Yes, you read

it right. Less than 4 lakh! So to be tech-

nically correct, Arnab should be saying

“0.033 per cent of this nation wants to

know!” And of course, many among

even those watching may not really be

interested.

• TV pntration in India is still lo:aot 12 ror TV sts in a ontr of

120 crore

• Hindi ntrtainmnt, rgional han-

nls, Hindi movis and kids’ hannls

account for about 78 per cent of total

TV virship.

• Ns virship is lss than 4 pr

cent of total viewership, and English

news channels: less than 0.4 per cent.

• Ths, vn assming vr TV st

has two viewers (which is an overes-

timation in case of news), there are

about 10 lakh viewers per night for all

English news channels put together!

The reader can use market share data

advertised by these channels to assess

viewership of specific channels.

So, next time you watch Goswami (or

Barkha Dutt or Rajdeep Sardesai), bear

this simple fact in mind—that their

reach is 0.033 per cent of the population!

In fact, many popular Twitterati may

be influencing more minds than these

news anchors on any given day!

N. Muthuraman

PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi hasstarted renaming airports, streets, and

projects hitherto named after members

of the Nehru dynasty. It seems that

Modi might rename streets and projects

aftr Vivkananda, Aroindo, Naraa-

na Guru, etc.

Why though?

Yes, these luminaries contributed

immensely to Indian society. So, OK,

name some projects after them—one per

head. Wouldn’t it make better economic

sense to invite private parties to bid for

naming of projects after the highest

bidder? Who gains when the highway

connecting Chennai and Bengaluru is

namd NH4? Or vn hn it is namdafter a leader from a bygone era? But if

it r to namd Mirosoft Higha,

after the highest bidder, it would bring

huge revenue to the exchequer which

could be invested in development. This

idea could be extended to India’s ailing

public schools, transportation, and

hospitals.

Naming projects after great Indi-

ans shuts out an important source of

revenue. In that sense, figuratively

spaking, a Vivkananda or Naraana

Guru stands in the way of economic

development.

Kalavai Venkat

Only 0.033 Per Cent of theNation Wants to Know

IBM Highway Makes BetterSense than Vivekananda NH

ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN, Chief

Economic Advisor to the Gov-

ernment of India, graduatedfrom St Stephen’s College,

Delhi, in 1979. Reena Theophi-

lus Panikar, captain of the col-

lege’s ladies’ basketball team

at the time recalls that Subra-

manian was known as ‘Super’:

“And to his fellow basketball-

ers, as ‘Super Onion’.” Says

Sunil Mehta (who contributed

the group picture to Swarajya,

showing the victorious basket-

ball men’s and women’s teams

in 1976-1977, Arvind second

from left standing): “He used

to be thrilled each time we

beat the college ‘across the

road’ (Hindu College).”

Padma Rao Sundarji, Foreign

Aairs Editor, Swarajya, re-

members Super as the guard

in a Shakespeare Society play,

Antigone, dressed in a ‘skirt’.

“Super was also Assistant Edi-

tor of Kooler Talk (KT), our col-

lege rag that ripped everyoneo.” Historian Supriya Guha

reveals that it was on board

the 210 (a Delhi public bus

route) that classmates intro-

duced Subramanian to Parul

Tiwari, whom he married.

Says Shavak Srivastava:

“Arvind’s thoughts are way

ahead of his ability to speak

and then he gets so excited

and speaks so fast. I wonder

how Finance Minister Jaitley

and the government will deal

with that!”

The Boy TheyCalled ‘SuperOnion’

Death of Employment:Welcome to the Singular

uSeD TO be that you would join a company as a “permanent employee” at the bot-

tom rung of the ladder and work your way up, sometimes staying there your entire

career, and retiring one day with a pension plan, a gold-plated wristwatch, and a

plaque. Changing employers seldom happened.

Today, large corporations worldwide are embattled institutions struggling to

remain relevant to customers. They have become compl etely soulless environments

where the struggle for survival and job protection pits people against each other on

a daily basis. Compassion and empathy don’t exist in large corporations today.

In an age where the permanence of an employer is a big question mark, the notion

of “per manent” employment is quaint and laughable. The rupture of trust between

employers and employees is the only thing that is “permanent”. Disenchanted withlarge corporations, and lured by the opportunity to remain independent and do

meaningful work, young men and women are increasingly choosing self-directed oc-

cupations over employment. This often takes the form of entrepreneurship.

When every individual is expected to change a dozen jobs over the course of a

career, it is employment by name but free a gency for all intents and purposes. Every

stint with an “employer” is just another gig that adds value through cash compensa-

tion, learning opportunities, relationship networks, and eventually, some form of

success defined as money or expert knowledge.

Call this the Singular phenomenon. A single individual drives his or her own

destiny, with little or no guidance and support f rom an institutional employer, and

often does this with the help of advanced and readily available technology, and most

likely a very small group of fellow Singulars. In this world, every person operates as

a singl onomi nit. utopia? ma not. It’s a Singlar orld. And it’s ors.

Paddy Padmanabhan

(For the full version of this text, visit www.swarajyamag.com)

Anna to Goon HungerStrike Again?

firstlight

ON 22 NOVEMBER Anna Haz-

are met with Ram Jethmalaniand the Aam Aadmi Party’s for-

mer head of legal cell Ashwini

Upadhyay at his home in Rale-

gan Siddhi, Maharashtra, to

fnalize issues that the Adarsh

Bharat Abhiyan (ABHA—Ideal

India Campaign) would take

up with the government.

These include: expediting

the appointment of the Lok-

pal; asking the government

why six crucial Anti-Corruption

Bills are pending in the Lok

Sabha; pushing the 2006 Su-

preme Court order on police

reforms; implementation of

the Law Commission’s recom-

mendations of 2009 on judi-

cial reforms; and urging for an

ordinance to declare all illicit

money in India and stashed

abroad as national assets.

Hazare had written to Prime

Minister Modi, seeking his

response on these issues.The Prime Minister assured

Hazare that the government

is working on the necessary

legislations and administra-

tive reforms. However, ABHA,

formed on 9 August, is not

confdent the laws will come

through in the winter session

of Parliament.

If negotiations with the gov-

ernment fail, Anna will sit on

hunger strike at Jantar Mantar

on 21 March.

Surajit Dasgupta



SAMPLE ISSUEDECEMBER 2014

5 Facts Communists Haveto Hide about Karl Marx

GROucHO wAS certainly the more

entertaining Marx, and possibly made

much more sense.

Marx was a poet As a young man,

Marx wrote quite a bit of poetry. Many

of his poems are marked by violence, a

sense of doom, a cursed universe, and

pacts with the Devil. Sample this: “The

orlds, th s it and go rolling on/

And howl the burial song of their own

dath./ And , Aps of a old God,

still hrish/ with frnzid pain pon

or loving rast/ Th vipr so volpt -

osl arm,/ That it as univrsal Formrars p/ And from its pla on high

grins down on us!” Scary!

He played the stockmarkets On 25

June1864, he wrote his uncle, Lion

Philips, who later founded electronics

giant Philips: “I have…been speculat-

ing…in American funds, (and) English

stocks, which are springing up like

mushrooms…I have made over £400.”

Many of his most famous lines were

not his It was Jean-Paul Marat, a leader

of th F rnh Rvoltion, ho rot:

“The proletarians have nothing to lose

but their chains.” German labour leader

Karl Schapper said: “Workers of the

orld, nit!” And Frnh soialist

Louis Auguste Blanqui first called for “a

dictatorship of the proletariat”. Marx

borrowed these pithy lines.

He falsified data to prove his points

In 1885, Cambridge scholars Joseph

Tannr and F.S. car plishd a

monograph in which they exposed

how Marx had misquoted and falsified

data published in British government

reports (Blue Books) to make his points.

Th rot: “H ss th bl bookswith a recklessness which is appalling…

to prove just the contrary of what they

really establish.”

He was Britain’s greater exploiter of

a worker Marx admitted that he never

discovered a worker in Britain who was

paid litrall no ags at all. bt Hln

Demuth lived with the Marx family as

domestic help for 45 years. She got her

keep but was never paid anything. In

1851, Marx fathered a son through her,

but refused to accept responsibility.

Hnr Frdrik Dmth orkd as a

railway engineer and died in 1929.

01.12.1955:Rosa ParksWon’t Get UpIT WAS rush hour in Montgom-

ery, Alabama. A 42-year-old

African-American seamstress

took a seat on a bus on her

way home from work. And set

o a social revolution.

On Montgomery buses, the

front 10 seats were reserved

for white passengers. Rosa

Parks was in fact seated in

the frst row behind those 10

seats. When the bus became

crowded, the driver instructed

Parks to vacate her seat for

white passengers. Parks re-

fused, the driver called the po-

lice, and she was arrested.

Her arrest became a rallying

point. The African-American

community organized a bus

boycott. Martin Luther King Jr,

a 26-year-old pastor, emerged

as a leader during the peace-

ful boycott that captured the

world’s attention. The 381-dayboycott ended with a Decem-

ber 1956 US Supreme Court

decision banning segregation

on public transportation. But

Parks had triggered o the

Civil Rights movement, which

would fnally triumph with

the US banning discrimination

based on “race, colour, reli-

gion, or national origin”.

When Parks died in 2005,

she became the frst woman

to lie in honour in the US Capi-

tol Rotunda.

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firstlight




When Arjuna Drew HisSword to Kill Yudhishthira

IT WAS DAY 17 of the Kurukshetra war.

Though most ofn the maharathis of the

Kaurava army had fallen, Karna still

rmaind. H as no omandr of th

Kaurava army and had been unstop-

pable, scattering the “Pandu soldiers

like a mass aof cotton by the speed of a

mighty wind”.

A harried Yudhishthira, unable to

withstand the force of Karna’s assault,

retired to his camp, awaiting news

of Karna’s death. When Krishna and

Arjuna entered his tent, he was elated:

Karna must be dead! But Arjuna said

no, he would fight Karna the next day.

At this, Yudhishthira just lost it.

H raild against Arjna, alling him

worthless, and a coward, ending with

what today reads like a dialogue from a

Hindi movi: “It old hav n ttr

if you had not been born in Pritha’s

womb.” No true warrior would stand for

this barrage of insults. Arjuna grasped

his sword, ready to kill Yudhishthira.

But why would these two brothers,

the epitome of filial love, hurl abuses

at each other? And why would Ar juna,

who had two weeks ago received the

timeless wisdom of the Gita from

Krishna, lose control so much?

OK, ask this: Aren’t we more likely

to lose our temper when tired and ex-

hausted, say after a long day and week

at work, at the slightest of provocations?

Thik about it: You are more likely to

let out an obscenity at an errant driver

when you’ve been stuck in traffic for an

hor on Frida vning, than on a k -

end drive to a resort. Why is t hat?

The answer may lie in “ego deple-

tion”, a relatively new idea in social

psychology, which has been used to

explain various seemingly odd phenom-

ena—why we are more likely to gorge on

pizza and r on Frida night rathr

than on Sunday evening.

Self-control, or willpower, can be

compared with a muscle—every deci-

sion we take that requires us to make a

conscious choice, tires that muscle. But

unlike physical muscles, more use does

not seem to make the willpower muscle

stronger. The stress of 17 days of bat tle

had taken a toll on the warriors. The

anger and frustration would have been

under control on Day 1, but not Day 17.

Ego depletion had set in. Even though

Dharmaraj knew better than to snap

at his brother, and so virulently, the

psychological toll of war had withered

away self-control.

Of course, as you can guess that a

bemused Krishna, who had been a silent

observer till now, stepped in and broke

up the fight. But the point is, keep that

ego muscle well rested, lest it deplete.

Abhinav Agarwal

Reference: Dr Bibek Debroy’s Ma-

habharata (Penguin India, 2013), an

unabridged translation of the Critical

Edition of the Mahabharata.

3 Steps toCreate aCulture ofInnovation

TO CREATE A culture of inno-vation in companies or teams,

start by being innovative.

INSPIRE Set aside time to

talk about innovation. Bring in,

say, a mechanical water sprin-

kler and share with your team

why you think it is innovative;

better yet, ask them. This al-

lows you to develop a shared

sense of what is innovation—

that it’s not only a cure for

cancer. Over time, this can be

things that your own team has

innovated.

MEASURE Put in a process,

where the team can spend

time focusing on problems

which allow scope for innova-

tion. This could be in technol-

ogy, internal processes or any

function within your business.

And put in measures—only

that which gets measured will

get done. When you measure

it, everyone pays attention.REWARD & RECOGNIZE But

don’t celebrate success alone.

Recognize and reward risk tak-

ing. We need to create a cul-

ture of tolerating mistakes and

viewing them as a way to learn

and do better. As Gordon

Moore, co-founder of Intel, put

it, “I view this year’s failure as

next year’s opportunity to try

it again.”

K. Srikrishna

(For a full version of this text,

visit www.swarajyamag.com)

ON JuNe 7, 1893, at a little station

called Pietermaritzburg, Mohandas

Gandhi was thrown off the train. Big

mistak. For ovr 20 ars, h as a

thorough nuisance to the South African

rgim. H avoidd violn, talkd of

virtue, refused to play fair. They were

relieved when he left for India in 1915.

But what if this had never happened?

Supposing a fellow passenger had said,“Hllo, o look qit dnt for a

ron hap. Fan a spot of ta?”

Gandhi was not a born revolution-

ar. His famil had hopd that h old

earn some money and experience in

South Africa, and come back and take

over as Dewan of Porbander. Per-

haps that’s what he would have done,

remained a lifelong loyal servant of

the Empire, and built Porbander into a

model state, with good roads, clean toi-

lets, and many goats. Once India became

independent, it would have become an

example for the rest of us.

But without Gandhi, would we be

free? We probably would, because the

British were running out of things

to steal. They could have kept us as a

captive market for their products, but

unfortunately they had already taken all

our money, so we were not in a position to

buy anything.

So we would definitely have needed the

freedom struggle. Who could have led us

to freedom?

Nehru, son of Motilal Nehru, and an

excellent speaker, would certainly have

been a player through the 1920s and 30s,

and been pointed out as a leftie at tea par-

ties. Like Nehru, Subhash Bose turned

nationalist early, punching out British

professors in college. There might never

hav n a Sardar Patl, thogh. H as

inspired into action by Gandhi, suddenly,

in his middle age. If this hadn’t hap-

pened, maybe he would have remained

a respected member of the local com-

munity, known for his clear thinking, the

right man to go to with a problem, never

in his wildest dreams imagining that one

day he would become a big statue.

Which leaves a Congress with Nehru

and Bose as key leaders, along with

one Mr Jinnah. Certainly a fine mind,

but a cold fish. Nehru and Bose being

impatient men, the Congress pushes

for freedom sooner. They are militant.

Meanwhile, the Indian Army is getting

restless. The British raise salaries, which

they can ill afford to do.

In 1938 and 1939, Bose is Congress

President. People notice that some Con-

gress volunteers are wearing khaki, and

marching. Jinnah (no one ever mentions

the word ‘partition’) finds Bose’s cos-

tumes funny, but he can deal with him.

When World War II breaks out, B ose

ss Hitlr as opportnit. b 1942, th

Indian Army is disintegrating, fatally

weakening the British war effort. Some

have formed the Indian National Ar my.

The Japanese win the Battle of Kohima,

supported by the INA. They break

through to the plains of Bengal, where

the Japanese are thrilled to find so much

fish. Netaji gives the order to rise, and

New Delhi falls in a military coup. Garri-

sons across Western and Southern India

rally to his name. It’s worth remember-

ing that in the Congress elections of 1938,

every single Congress delegate from the

South voted for him.

Netaji is declared Supreme Leader,

ith Nhr as Forign Ministr. Th rst

thing Bose does is request Stalin f or sup-

port. Stalin is busy taking over Europe,

distracted but sympathetic. Nehru flies

don to Moso. H oors all th omn.

The Americans cannot allow this. They

make the British take back the Japa-

nese possessions in East India. A much

smaller British India is re-established,

right next to the freshly independent

Republic of India.

An Iron Curtain falls over the subcon-

tinent. Soon, a wall goes up, somewhere

near Patna.

Shovon Chowdhury

(For a full version of this text, visit

www.swarajyamag.com)

What If Gandhi Hadn’t BeenThrown Of The Train?

firstlight




A deep, incisive,

challenging

multidisciplinary

investigation into

the Big Question.

We try to make it

easy for the reader

with lithographs by

Honore Daumier

(1808-1879), the

‘Michelangelo of

caricature’.

APART FROM beING opposed

to left-wing people, who or what

is a right-wing person? In judg-

ing this, we usually go by in-

stint. Vr oftn th hav lots

of money. Sometimes they wear khaki shorts.

Like Paul McCartney, they long for yesterday.

All these are clues. But such a burning issue

can no longer be left to guesswork, not when

whole magazines are being put together on the

subject. In India, it could be anyone who hates

Sagarika Ghosh. While this can be deeply sat-

isfying, it seems rather fragile, ideologically

speaking. What happens if she actually does im-

migrat to Pakistan? Ho do ll th mpt

space in our lives? We could replace her with

Arundhati Roy, but the emotions she evokes

are so strong that sometimes people end up

frothing too much at the mouth to form coher-

ent sentences. This is not conducive to debate.

until th 18th ntr, thr r no ings,

only kings. The principles of governance were

simple. You obeyed the king, or he chopped off

your head. If he was a bad king, he chopped off

the heads of your family too, and in some cases,

the rest of your village. If he was a good king, he

settled for an arm or a leg. Even though kings

were divine, and much greater than the rest of

us, it was hard for them to do everything. So

they surrounded themselves with a small group

of well-armed well-funded people. This became

the aristocracy. They became rich and power-

ful because of their proximity to the ruler. As

a result, life was very good for the king and his

friends, but not so good for the rest of us.

Th Frnh ar ll knon trolmakrs.

They changed this. They had a novel thought.

“Why don’t we cut off the king’s head instead?”

they thought. “Maybe things will be better

thn.” This as alld th Frnh Rvoltion.

It was this Revolution that gave us the term

‘right ing’. Mmrs of th Frnh National

Assembly in 1789, who supported the king,

sat on the right. They supported the ancien re-

gime, hih is Frnh for “this is th hotl of

m fathr”. Otsid th Assml, th Frnh

people were busy killing clergymen and burn-

ing the homes of the rich. The right wing hur-

Excuse Me,

But What isRight Wing?

SHOVON CHOWDHURY

I D E A S




son, an angry man who massacred many Native

Americans, invented producerism. Producer-

ism rallied hard-working producers against

evil parasites. The middle class, the honest

farmer, and factory-owners were the produc-

ers. The poor, the bankers, and people who had

immigrated more recently than them were the

parasites. This is a rich and powerful tradition,

which lives on in America. Even today, ele-

ments of the Tea Party attack big business for

supporting immigration, which is an evil plot

to get themselves cheap labour.

In fact, America was where economics was

first introduced into the right wing thought pro-

cess. At the turn of the 20th century, economic

liberals and social conservatives joined hands,and the infernal brew that resulted was known

as modern conservatism. They formed a union

which has lasted for over a century, and has two

guiding principles, “Don’t touch my money!”

and “Why aren’t you reading the Bible?”

This thought process has been very influen-

tial, and today most countries have at least one

party which hates gay people and loves bank-

ers. But there are wide variations across soci-

tis and ltrs. For xampl, in Amria,

“liral” is a sar ord. In th uK, it’s a politi-

cal party. In India, it’s a girl of loose character,

as in “she is very liberal”. Most fundamentally,

what differentiates the right wing from the left

wing is their attitude towards c hange. The right

wing believes nothing should change. The left

wing believes everything should change until

they can take charge.

Ho has it orkd ot in India? w s v-rything through the lens of secularism. Broad-

ly, we have two types of people: people devoted

to cows, and anti-national pseudo-sickular

Porkistani sluts. I’m no expert, but it’s probably

not that simple. Why view everything through

the lens of religion? A toilet has no religion, and

neither does a roti. Many people in India need

both. This doesn’t mean that faith isn’t impor-

tant. Just that it’s not all-important.

In India, like everywhere else, the right wing

is a force of reaction. Reaction to one man, and

his theories, economic and social. I’m not nam-

ing him because I’m not sure that’s allowed

here. Let’s call him the Evil One. But ma ybe it’s

time to move on. Maybe we should just thank

In the US, Andrew Jackson inventedproducerism, which rallied hard-working producers against evil parasites:the poor, the bankers, people who hadimmigrated more recently than them

riedly gave away as many of their privileges as

they could. Soon after, the people burst in and

hauled most of them off to the guillotine.

From this, th right ing larnt, at th vr

moment of its birth, that giving things away is

never a solution.

The next 100 years were full of act ion, as peo-

ple in other countries thought, if it worked for

th Frnh, than h not s? Th Rssians ros

repeatedly. The British were far more gradual.

They did kill their king, but they brought back

his son, and they let most of the aristocracy live.

These aristocrats became the Tories, whose

philosophy was best summed up by the Duke of

Cambridge. “There is a time for everything,” he

said, “And the time for reform is when it can nolonger be resisted.”

Th Frnh right ing ontind to thriv,

inspired by Edmund Burke, and represented

by people like Joseph De Maistre, who thought

the most important employee of the State was

the executioner, the ultimate guarantor of or-

dr. Manhil, Frdinand of Napls, anothr

notable conservative, dressed up as a woman

and had himself sculpted as Minerva, Goddess

of Wisdom, by Canova. This shows that, even

at this early stage, right wing politicians were

willing to embrace diversity.

As usual, what used to be a simple matter

was unnecessarily complicated by the Ameri-

cans. In the early 19th century, Andrew Jack-

The French right wing consisted ofpeople like Joseph de Maistre, whothought the most important employeeof the State was the executioner, theultimate guarantor of order



19DECEMBER 2014

Shovon Chowdhury’s blog,India Update, has horriednearly 200,000 people. He

is also the entire editorialsta of The Investigator, published by HinduBusiness Line, which digs for the truth, so you don’thave to. He has recentlyedited the secret diaries ofManmohan Singh. He hascompleted one novel, TheCompetent Authority. Hisnext, Death of a SchoolMaster, comes out inDecember.

To know more about the life

and work of Honore Daumier

please visitwww.daumier.org

him that we’re not Pakistan, and get on with our

lives. Because there’s more to life than secular-

ism. It’s a good thing we’re remem bering Rajaji

again. His vis on ast ar a it orring, t

he was also the man who coined the phrase “Li-

cense Permit Raj”. Instead of spending all our

time cursing the Evil One and his socialism,

maybe we can think about this.

Who issues the licenses? Who produces the

prmits? undr hos Raj do liv? wh ar

they answerable to no one, and immune from

any form of prosecution, unless they give per-

mission, which they rarely ever do, even if we

ask nicely? Adam Smith talked about the Invis-

il Hand. whos hand is it that fl on or

necks, governing everything, from where we

can put our penises to what we can make mon-

ey from, and how much? Whose hand builds the

schools without toilets, and the hospitals with-

out doctors, and the irrigation systems for win-

eries, while farmers save up money for poison?

Whose hand takes away 85 paise out of every

rupee that’s supposed to reach the poor? Whose

hand arrests the victims, and pats defense law-

yers on the back, saying there, there, don’t wor-

ry, the file will be misplaced shortly?

Whose hand steals the homes of war widows,

and jeopardizes our international relations

because of a nanny, and keeps our brave sol-

diers on glaciers, with same-size-fits-all boots

and no oxygen, and the nearest medical facil-

ity hundreds of miles away? Whose hand signs

the vouchers for millions of phantom cleaners,

while the garbage piles up on our streets? Could

it conceivably be a hand nourished on salaries

that come out of our pockets? Are we actually

paying them to do this to us?

Papps ill om and Fks ill go. evn

AK49 will one day leave us wondering whether

he was a CIA agent or a Maoist, or just a man in

a muffler with delusions of grandeur. The Evil

One will become a distant memory. Maybe it’s

time we stopped fighting each other, and saw

who our real enemy is.

Maybe we should pause, just for a while,

in our battle on behalf of labour, or against it,

and stop arguing about what our fiscal policy

shold , and hat xatl a Hind Mslim

is, and whether bikinis are good or evil. Maybe

we should get together, as citizens, joined by

a common cause, and push through new laws

that will get that dead hand off our necks, once

and for all. If some of those hands break stones

in Tihar, so much the better.

That’s when we’ll really be free. That’s when

we’ll have genuine swarajya.

The hand that we feel on our necks, governingeverything, answerable to no one, is nourishedon salaries that come out of our pockets




THe SwATANTRA PARTy first

entered my life as a dimly under-

stood rival for my mother’s atten-

tion. I would have been around 11

at the time, and my father Minoo

had given up his comfortable job at the Tatas as

JRD’s Chief of Staff to launch independent In-

dia’s first serious parliamentary opposition to

Nehru’s one-party state. Though sympathetic

to Swatantra’s free market ideology, JRD had

n prsadd that Fathr’s ontinan at

the Tatas as an opposition leader would bring

down the ire of the Nehru government on the

whole business group.

So Fathr st p on his on as a manag -

ment consultant and hit the campaign trail as

General Secretary of the new party in the run

up to the 1962 general election. Mother increas-

ingly had to accompany him, playing the role of

loyal politician’s wife and adding her personal

glamor and impal Hind rdntials to

his agnostic Parsi origins. The Jan Sangh, pre-

cursor of today’s BJP, had been trying to dis-

credit father as “a beef-eating Parsi”.

For m, still ignorant of sh polit ial mah-

inations, the Swatantra Party meant long and

painful separations from an indulgent mother I

adored, living in her absence with my very dis-

ciplinarian Parsi grandparents. Why, I asked

Fathr, oldn’t h tak th far asir rot of

joining Nehru’s Cabinet instead? After all, they

had been good friends, working closely together

dring th nationalist movmnt. Fathr’s r-

ply was characteristically terse: “Because that

would stop me doing the things I believe in,

and th PM old fl mh th sam.” Fathr,

by then, had already been active along with

Jayaprakash Narayan and C. Rajagopalachari

(Rajaji) in championing lost causes such as Ti-

betan independence, so abjectly surrendered to

Red China by Nehru, and self-determination for

Kashmir.

Although Rajaji accepted no official position

in the Swatantra leadership, he was its presid-

ing deity, lending it the credibility of his august

past as a leading Congressman and independ-

ent India’s first Governor-General. “The old

fox”, my parents affectionately called him, part-

ly because of his inscrutable smile and dark

glasses, but also his reputation for Machiavel-

lian political strategies. Like Mahatma Gandhi

with the Congress in the past, Rajaji sanctified

Swatantra gatherings with his presence and

oftn had th last ord hind th sns. His

entourage included the great singer Subbalak-

shmi, dubbed “the nightingale of India”, whose

husband, Sadasivam, was Rajaji’s devoted

assistant and secretary. Despite her roots in

Masani’s wife Shakuntala(exreme right) duringa Swatantra Partycampaign. To her rightis one of the new party’sstars, Ayesha of Jaipur(Maharani Gayatri Devi)

TheSwatantra Years

DR ZAREER MASANI

M E M O R I E S

The son of Minoo Masani, co-founder of the

Swatantra Party, committed to free markets

and free enterprise, and the chief political

opponent to the Nehruvian consensus,

recalls those heady days.

Minoo Masai (left) atan election meetingwith C. Rajagopalachari(centre) and Acharya J.B.Kripalani (right)




Dr Zareer Masani is theauthor of Macaulay:Pioneer of India’sModernization; And All IsSaid: Memoir of a HomeDivided; Indira Gandhi:

A Biography; and FromRaj to Rajiv: Forty Yearsof Indian Independence(written with Mark Tully).He is an Oxford doctoratein Modern History, andlives in London.

Budget speech in Parliament, opening the de-

bate as Leader of the Opposition. It was a chal-

lenging performance, since the Budget details

r nvr knon in advan, t Fathr al -

ways rose to the occasion with his usual orato-

ry and a forensic skill in dissecting opaque of-

ial statistis. His sphs sall lld oth

the press and public galleries, were heard with

rapt attention and were widely reported in the

papers, though not on government-controlled

broadcast media.

Fathr as also th part’s main link ith

events and movements abroad during these

tense years of the Cold War. Like Nehru, he

was a firm internationalist, but the similarity

ndd thr. unlik Nhr, Fathr, thn still a

socialist, had been appalled by Stalin’s purges

of the 1930s, followed by the Iron Curtain im-

posed on Eastern Europe at the end of World

war II. H sa commnism as an xpansionistideology, which would attempt to sweep across

India as it had China. Global Communism was

for him the greatest threat to world peace, and

he strongly supported the military alliances

the West was sponsoring to halt the Commu-

nist advance. Not surprisingly, he saw Nehru’s

Non-Alignment developing, under the baleful

influence of the Communist “fellow-traveller”

Krishna Menon, into a thinly veiled apologia

for commnist trann. His arnings r

vindicated by the attempts of India’s suppos-

edly non-aligned government to condone Soviet

spprssion of oth th Hngarian prising of

1956 and the Prague Spring of 1967.

Ironically, it was my years as a student at

Oxford in the late 1960s, at the height of the anti-

Vitnam war protsts, that ndd m Satan-

tra honeymoon. After two years of staunchly

arguing the American case, I finally succumbed

to th anti-ar Zitgist. Fathr and I no had

frequent rows about what I saw as his toady-

ing to American imperialism, and I converted

Mother to my own subversive views.

Tensions at home escalated in 1969 when

Indira Gandhi split the Congress and launchedher bid for supreme power on a populist plat-

form of nationalising banks and abolishing

prinl privilgs. Fathr, no Prsidnt of

the Swatantra Party, resolutely opposed Indira

and expelled C.C. Desai, a colleague who had

been bought over by her to foment disaffection

in opposition ranks. It on Fathr th rp -

tation of being one of the last incorruptibles

among Indian politicians.

I remember a Times of India cartoon by the

grat R.K. Laxman, shoing Fathr tall and p -

right in a sombre black Nehru jacket showing

the door to a scruffy, little C.C. Desai, dressed in

a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and complaining:

“But nobody dresses like that anymore!”

Indira had already carried the battle into

our own home, where Mother and I split with

Fathr to ampaign for th lft-ing Indira

congrss in th 1971 gnral ltion. Fathr,

under pressure from Rajaji, had, by then, been

compelled to submerge the distinctive Swatan-

tra identity into a so-called “Grand Alliance”

with the discredited right wing of the Congress.

The result was a landslide for Indira, in which

Fathr, for th rst and last tim in his arr,

lost his on parliamntar sat. H insistd on

taking responsibility for his party’s defeat and

resigned as its president. A few years later, the

part as ond p. Fathr dvotd th rst of

his long life to civil society groups promoting

citizenship and free enterprise.

Fort ars on, th hl has trnd fll ir -

cle, with a government ostensibly committed toeconomic liberalisation. My own politics have

also returned to the pro-Western economic lib-

eralism of my early youth. But like other secu-

larist economic liberals, I now find myself po-

litically homeless, unwilling to choose between

a dynastic Congress rump and the saffron chau-

vinism of Narendra Modi’s RSS cadres. The

sad demise of the Swatantra alternative left a

political vacuum that has yet to be filled; this

is not just my own nostalgia but the lament of

left-wing Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In his

sph at this ar’s Jaipr Litrar Fstival,

he said he would not have voted Swatantra him-

self, but the country needed a secular, right-of-

centre alternative to the Congress.

1992: Masani withthen Finance MinisterManmohan Singh,who was credited forbringing in economicliberalization, somethingthe Swatantra Party had fought for 30 years ago

Carnatic music, Subbalakshmi excelled at the

Meera bhajans of northern India; her inspiring

performances of these frequently opened and

closed party conferences.

The third and least impressive member of

Swatantra’s leading triumvirate was Profes-

sor N.G. Ranga, a farmer leader from Andhra

Pradesh, whose professorial title belied his

bumbling presence and incoherent speeches. I

often asked how and why he had been elected

party president, to be told that his peasant cre-

dentials were necessary to balance the party’s

strongly urban image.

By the time I became a college student (atelphinston in boma), Fathr’s rmarkal

organising abilities and his oratory had made

Swatantra the main opposition in Parliament,

ith Fathr at its hlm hammring aa at a

Prime Minister whose failing health mirrored

his humiliation in the disastrous 1962 war with

China. In the 1967 general election, Swatantra

did even better, crossing the necessary thresh-

old to become India’s first official Opposition.

Fathr am Ladr of th Opposition, ith

Cabinet status and a Lutyens house to match in

New Delhi’s coveted Tughlaq Road.

My own politics through these exciting

times were steeped in Swatantra ideology. I was

dazzled by the glamour of the legendary beauty,

Maharani Ayesha of Jaipur, who led the cohort

of Indian royalty that gave Swatantra its rural

base, joining forces with the party’s urban busi-

nssmn and intlltals. I rmmr Fathr

grumbling about the Maharani’s penchant for

disappearing to Europe unexpectedly with her

polo-playing husband, just when she was most

needed in Rajasthan for local electioneering.

The Jaipurs, as close friends of the Queen and

Prince Philip, led a jet-set lifestyle which made

thm as targts for soialist jis. Fathr had

far more admiration for the grit and persever-

ance of the Gwalior Rajmata, although she

gravitated eventually to the Jan Sangh.Perhaps the most appealing characteristic of

the Swatantra Party was its uncompromising

secularism and championship of minorities.

Fathr, in partilar, mh admird Pakistan’s

President Ayub Khan, who had backed India

during the China war, and he blamed Indian

intransigence on Kashmir for the hostilities

which escalated into the second Indo-Pakistan

War of 1965. I remember being dubbed a traitor

by chauvinistic fellow students at Elphinstone

when I argued Pakistan’s case on Kashmir in

the prevailing climate of jingoism.

The Swatantra Party strongly challenged the

economic orthodoxies of Nehruvian socialism,

and Fathr ld th assalt vr ar ith his

Minoo Masanielectioneering in Rajkot,with a cow and calf.The Jan Sangh haddenounced him as abeef-eating Parsi.

To read Rajmhan Gandhion the Swatantra Party,use this QR code:



25NOVEMBER 2014ISSUE 001.01NOVEMBER 2014

C O V E R S T O R Y

A New

Idea ofIndia

RAJEEV MANTRI & HARSH GUPTA

“…Who knows, and who can say

Whence it all came, and how creation happened?

The gods themselves are later than creation,

So who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,

He, whether he fashioned it or whether he did

not,

He, who surveys it all from highest heaven,

He knows—or maybe even he does not know.”

— THE NASADIYA SUKTA (HYMN OF CREATION), RIG VEDA

THe FOuNDATIONAL texts

of Dharma, forged some

three and a half millennia

ago, are filled with such scep-

ticism that would gladden

the heart of philosophers

and physicists to this date.

Indeed, the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger,

riting in 1944, osrvd that th upanishadi

concept that atman equals brahman or that

“the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-

comprehending eternal self” was, in contrast

to Christian thought, “far from being blasphe-

mous”, and in fact represented “the quintes-

sence of deepest insight into the happenings of

the world”.

It is because of the sceptical tradition within

the metaphysical aspects of what is now called

Hindism that, sa, th N Athist movmnt

so prominent today mostly critiques Abraham-

ic or Western traditions when they critique

“rligion”. Hporisis and hirarhis xist

in Indic religions as well but are primarily so-

ciological—related to gender and caste—and

less theological. This is not because there are

no worrisome “holy texts” or doctrines, but

because those texts and doctrines can be selec-

tively followed.

The Right needs to develop a dierent narrative—one that is rootedin the scepticism and openness innate to Indian tradition




Nehru’s CertitudeIndia under Jawaharlal Nehru and his succes-

sors decided to pursue a development model in-

spired by Soviet Russia, with the State enjoying

a gargantan partiipation in th onom. un-

der his leadership, our democracy came to be

based upon the State brokering and negotiating

settlements between groups of religions, castes

and languages rather than guaranteeing equal

rights and freedoms to each citizen.Inevitably, the State favoured some groups

over others, needlessly anointing itself referee

and vainly believing that it was best placed to

decide what was right for whom. In both eco-

nomic and social spheres, the Indian State ex-

uded a certitude that chafed against the millen-

nia-old ethos of the society it sought to govern.

But the governance philosophy was not limited

only to certitude; it was selectively condescend-

ing as ll. whil Hind prsonal las r

modernised, Muslim laws were not. Perhaps

Nehru wanted to cultivate a committed voter

base as he pushed through his programme of

leftist economics, for, despite being lampooned

by the Right, Nehru always understood why In-

dia was united.

In 1961, addressing the All-India Congress

Committee session, Nehru had said: “India has

for ages past, been a country of pilgrimages.

All over the country, you find these ancient

places, from Badrinath, Kedarnath and Amar-

nath, high p in th sno Himalaas don to

Kanyakumari in the south. What has drawn

our people from the south to the north and from

north to the south in these great pilgrimages?

It is the feeling of one country and one culture

and this feeling has bound us t ogether. Our an-

cient books have said that the land of Bharat is

th land strthing from th Himalaas in th

north to the southern seas. This conception of

Bharat as one great land which the people con-

sidered a holy land has come down the ages and

has joined us together, even though we have had

different political kingdoms and even though

we may speak different languages. This silken

bond still keeps us together in many ways.”

The “Secular” ConfusionBut Nehru’s philosophy of centralisation and

certitude, carried forward with increasing

intensity by his successors, had disastrous

consequences for economic development and

ommnal harmon. Hovr, it did not fail

entirely—the carving out of linguistic states re-

mains its biggest success. Today, the fact that

Nehru’s successors are hard pressed to even ac-

knowledge the civilizational unity that seemed

obvious to India’s first Prime Minister shows

how far they have travelled from their roots.

In the quest to brand themselves “secular”, andguided by narrow electoral interests, they have

transformed into deniers of India’s civilization-

al heritage. The fundamental flaw of modern In-

dia’s “secularist” philosophy is that it embodies

what English-American political theorist and

philosopher Thomas Paine had identified as the

confusion between State and Society.

Nowhere is this confusion more evident than

in the way secularism and communalism are

routinely touted as antonyms. The opposite of

secularism is not communalism but theocracy,

for secularism is a feature of the State—nation-

stats an slar or thorati. Hovr,

communalism is a feature of Society. In a free,

democratic and liberal country, it is not only ac-

ceptable but sometimes even welcome for indi-

viduals to be “communal”. The more “commu-

nal” a society is, the more social capital it has.

The networks of trust and cooperation that

high social capital catalyzes bind together a so-

ciety in myriad ways and thus encourage inter-

course rather than creating distinctions, to use

Paine’s words. It is important to recognize that

the “type” of social capital is as important as

the “quantum”, but the former is more a prod-

uct of State policy than the latter. The degree of

economic freedom determines the type of social

capital, and the greater the economic freedom,

the more likely it is that communities not tied

exclusively to religious or ethnic identity will

emerge.

This same confusion between State and Soci-

ety rears its head when India is spoken of as a

“Hind nation”. whnvr an politiian, intl-

lectual or public figure says so, there is much

outrage and heartburn among a section of the

left-liberal intelligentsia, who wail that secular-

ism is in danger. But this intelligentsia fails to

distinguish between Nation and State. Because

of India’s civilizational ethos, demography and

Under Nehru, our democracy came to be basedupon the State brokering settlements betweengroups of religions, castes and languages ratherthan guaranteeing equal rights to each citizen

To see and hear Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Trystwith Destiny’ speech atthe moment of India’sIndependence, use thisQR code:

Why Scepticism is EssentialScepticism is an indispensable foundation for

what is today called “science”—the fundamen-

tal premise of scientific inquiry is that an un-

known truth can be learnt through iterative

experimentation and exploration. A dogmatic

school of thought cannot profess to be scientific.

As phsiist Rihard Fnman said, sin is

the belief in the ignorance of the experts. Ap-

plied to the spiritual sphere, a “scientific reli-

gion” would be one that can accept that its as-

sumptions are wrong. Indeed, philosopher of

science Karl Popper said much the same when

he posited that for a theory to be scientific, it

should be falsifiable. Popper also critiqued the

historicist and teleological underpinnings of

th Marxist and Hglian orldvi—that

there were inexorable laws of historical des-

tiny, all leading towards definite ends. In sim-

ple terms, the Indic worldview is more cyclical

than linear.

Similarly, an economic system that imbibes

such scepticism cannot, by definition, be cen-

trally planned, for that would require an omnis-

cient, omnipotent body to allocate resources. In

this sense, socialism is analogous with obscu-

rantist and fundamentalist faith, while com-

petitive capitalism is analogous to a “scientific

religion”.

Also, scepticism—and the intellectual hu-

mility that it engenders—is required to culti-

vate tolerance in a society, for it allows fellow

human beings to accept mutual differences.

This tolerance is also mediated through the

mechanism of the social contract in the mod-

ern era of democratic, liberal nation-states, so

that the views of one person or group cannot be

forced onto fellow individual citizens.

Social diversity too is the product of scepti-

cism. Only if individuals are allowed to syn-

cretically build upon, add and subtract from

tradition and practice, without being required

to dogmatically treat them as immutable rules,

can diversity within a group emerge. This di-

versity is apparent and much celebrated in the

land that is India, where the same festivals and

rituals are celebrated in different ways by dif-

frnt ommnitis and rgions. Had th Hin-

du tradition been a dogmatic one, there would

have been uniformity, not heterogeneity, in

socio-cultural life. That is why the opposition

from som fations of th Hind right to ml -

tiple interpretations of, say, the Ramayana, is

very unfortunate.




be celebrated by even cynics and opponents.

When it comes to the normative underpinnings

of our public discourse, the orthodox have been

defeated decisively but not completely. But this

is a defeat of orthodoxy and not tradition per

se, for it is the tradition of our civilization to

be flexible. Through the ages, Indian tradition

has been shaped by modernizing influences

of th tim. Hn, th adjtiv Sanatana or

“eternal” for India’s majority religion—and it

is important to recognize that this is not an atti-

tude limited to just one group. To take an advice

given by the great poet Ghalib to Syed Ahmed

Khan, we must focus on the present and the fu-

ture and not the past.

The Indian Renaissance will soon enter its

third century, initiated by its encounter with

British imperialism. While India was humili-

ated, looted and denuded like all colonies are, it

got back a window to its ancient past—a culture

that had influenced the Greeks with its scepti-

cism, to which the Europeans looked up to for

their own Enlightenment. The process of re-

form startd off in bngal, hr th Hind lit

finessed the acceptance of modernity and West-

ern education while rejecting the Christianity

of colonial missionaries. The deist, egalitarian

and relatively feminist views of Rammohan

Roy and fellow travelers in the Brahmo Samaj

were opposed by the orthodox Dharma Sabha.

Today, an increasing number of educated In-

dians are closer to Roy’s ideas on rationalism

and equality than that of the Dharma Sabha’s

even as they confidently continue to idol wor-

ship and believe in “polytheism” as symbols of

piety, diversity and tradition.

history, India is already largely a Dharmic na-

tion or soit. Hovr, it follos from th

scepticism innate to India’s philosophical tra-

dition that th onpt of a thorati “Hind

state” is illogical and absurd.

Contradictions of Indian RenaissanceBut the left-liberal intelligentsia’s fears are not

entirely unfounded. There is a section of the

Hind right that is rtainl straing from thtradition that espouses scepticism and open-

ness under the garb of protecting Nehru’s “land

of Bharat” from foreigners. In a delicious irony,

while purportedly protecting the land from “al-

ien faiths”, the self-anointed protectors have

come under the influence of foreigners in their

intrprtation and prati of th Hind tradi -

tion, aping the antediluvian diktats—which dis-

regard scepticism and deny openness—of the

same traditions from which they aim to defend

Hindism.

Ho ls dos on xplain a “Hind” fa-

tion that beats up defenseless young couples,

t ssris to th sam road Hind tradi -

tion that worships Krishna, famed for his rela-

tionship with Radha, with whom he was never

marrid? Ho dos on ronil a slf-stld

“Hind” fation that attaks omn for drink-

ing alohol, hn Hind fstivals ar lrat -

ed by men and women alike with the consump-

tion of a drink made from the cannabis plant,

and when the potent datura is offered in prayer

to Shiva? These factions seem to have internal-

ised the anti-blasphemy attitudes of medieval

Trks, and th prdr of Vitorian england.

The Indian State has not been in c onsonance

with Indian Society’s highest metaphysical im-

pulses. Given that the Nehruvian experiment

has largely failed, there is a slow but sure, if

as yet unexpressed, realization that our idea of

ourselves should evolve into seeing individual

citizens as the unit of State policy, to quote

Arun Shourie. It is this philosophy, the oppo-

site of Nehruvian thinking, that is congruent

with Indian Society’s heritage and best repre-

sents the possibility for India to emerge as a

progressive, prosperous and strong nation for

all her billion-plus citizens.

India’s political right, with the Bharatiya

Janata Party as its vehicle, has ensconced itself

on the national centrestage only over the last

to dads. undr Prim Ministr Atal bihari

Vajpa, th right mrad fr markt r -

forms despite a powerful faction committed to

anti-liberal economic policies, thanks largely to

the Prime Minister’s visionary leadership. This

push for market reforms created a new constit-

uency of right-liberals committed to economic

and personal freedom. Competitive capitalism,

as opposed to crony socialism, also helped dis-

solve the bonds of caste and community, as has

been extensively documented by intellectuals

like Chandra Bhan Prasad.

Cut to 2014—a “low caste” leader from a sup-

posedly “obscurantist” party winning a sim-

ple majority in the Lok Sabha, speaking about

women’s rights with peerless eloquence from

th Rd Fort, is srl a rst and somthing to

There is a slow but sure realizationthat our idea of ourselves should evolveinto seeing individual citizens asthe unit of State policy

To hear SardarVallabhbhai Patel’sspeech in Calcutta on January 3, 1948, on hisidea of the unity anddiversity of India, use thisQR code:




Ayn Rand’s popularity in India can be used as the Trojan horseto direct India’s young away from the sterile paths of socialism,collectivism, Statism and State paternalism.

AN INTERESTING news

snippet I ran across is that

India has one of largestgroups of young people

in the world interested in

Ayn Rand. This should constitute a great

source of hope and excitement for all of

us who are engaged in trying to spread

the message of the overarching impor-

tance of individual freedoms.

I have always felt that Rand was a

prtt mdior novlist. Hr haratrs

ar oodn and strotps. Hr sita -

tions tend to be simplistic binary ones.

But of course, it is not the quality of her

fiction that makes her such a compelling

read. It is the fact that her fiction is mere-

ly a medium for conveying with extraor-

dinary emphasis, her basic philosophy

that the only way to achieve progress for

humankind is by unleashing the energies

of the dedicated individual.

Collectivism will doom us to a world

of envy and mediocrity, where individu-

als will cease to be free sovereign human

beings and become servile cogs in a

gigantic Statist wheel.

Keeping Rand on Indian bestseller

lists, disseminating her ideas, hosting

seminars where Rand is the focal point

of discussions, encouraging study groups

to talk about Rand—these are ways we

should consider to expand the attrac-

tive beachhead we already seem to have

acquired among the young in India. Rand

can, in effect, become the Trojan horse

which we can leverage to direct India’s

young away from the sterile paths of

socialism, collectivism, Statism and State

paternalism, so prevalent in our academ-

ic, political and bureaucratic spheres.

Rand has an appeal to the hard-

headed as well as to those attracted to

starry-eyed aspirational ideals. It is this

combination of being grounded in conse-

quential empiricism while appealing to

the indomitable spirit within each of us

that we need to keep pushing.

The emergence of entrepreneurial en-

ergy in unlikely places, or places which

people considered unlikely, is one more

theme we can and should focus on. In this

context, a book I would recommend is De-

fying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepre-

neurs by Devesh Kapur, D. Shyam Babu

and Chandra Bhan Prasad.

This extraordinary book tells us how

Dalits, who have been for centuries sup-

pressed by a stultifying societal identity

can liberate themselves as individuals

and how so many of them have literally

and metaphorically defied the odds and

emerged as successful entrepreneurs.

It is not State hand-outs or govern-

ment doles that have been the key to the

lives of these remarkable people. It is the

call of the free market where the high

quality of your product and the attractive

price of your service determines whether

you succeed, not your surname or what

accent you speak with, which caste youbelong to or which college you attended.

It turns out that the best cure for

centuries of deprivation is simply having

the right of free and unfettered entry into

business—a right not granted based on

birth or connections, a right not granted

at all, a right that is grasped by sheer

ability, resilience, chutzpah, risk-taking

and hard work. No one turns down a

good job in a factory because the owner is

a Dalit; no one refuses a good bargain be-

cause the company providing the product

has been started by a Dalit.

The book is of course, inspirational—

just like the story of any Ayn Rand

protagonist. But it is also dedicated to

the simple proposition of empirically

verifiable consequentialism that a free

market is the best antidote to entrenched

casteism. Remember that in the license-

permit Raj, only the well-connected get

licenses. But when you no longer need

the State’s permission or license to start

and run a business, guess what, out of the

woodwork, dozens, hundreds, thousands

of Dalit entrepreneurs emerge.

Between Ayn Rand and the biogra-

phies of Dalit entrepreneurs, we have

powerful weapons to encourage our

young to turn their gazes and give their

support to robust individualism, free

markets and the enhancement of free-

doms for all humans.

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 aordable housing venture. Rao is a mem-

ber of the Editorial Advisory Board of Swarajya

A Tactical AllianceWith Ayn Rand

JAI THI RTH RAO

I D E A S

Rajeev Mantri and HarshGupta are co-foundersof the India EnterpriseCouncil.

A New Narrative for the RightThere are four levels of political consciousness,

in increasing order of depth: party politics;

public policy; philosophical; and psychological.

At the party-politics level, public intellectu-

als on the center-right, be they animated more

by liberal economic or civilizational concerns,

should rise above partisan bickering and apo-

logia, and focus more on pushing ideas rather

than individuals, policies and philosophy rath-er than personalities or parties. Electoral poli-

tics should be left to the cadre, on the ground

or increasingly online—and that too is a criti-

al rol in an dmora. Hovr, ida ntr-

preneurs may come across as more credible if

they keep reminding themselves that a political

party is just a vehicle, and not an end in itself.

At the policy level, there is room for sub-

stantial give and take. Both sides can agree to

concede a little and drive change on connected

isss sh as Artil 370 and th Armd Fors

Special Powers Act, the Special Marriage Act

and concessions for minority educational in-

stitutions, and many other combinations. We

have laws like the Right to Education, which

does not respect private property and distin-

guishes between citizens based on religion.

We have programmes like the National Rural

Employment Guarantee Scheme, which is fun-

damentally Luddite in nature. We have welfare

shms lik Right to Food, hih do not ndr-

stand choice and competition and instead force

distribution of food to the needy through a gov-

ernment-run body in a centralized, top-down

model rife with waste and corruption.

This is just on the welfare side; on the sup-

ply side, besides a Byzantine bureaucratic

structure, we also have the huge dearth of State

capacity, with an woefully inadequate number

of judges and police officers. This seriously un-

dermines rule of law and justice delivery. Con-

tracts are often not worth the paper they are

written on, which drives Indians to work only

with people they already know and trust, con-

centrating certain types of social capital within

specific communities.

At the philosophical level, the big question

is what is it that the Indian Right is aiming for?

Is thr a Hind vrsion of utopia or Ram Ra-

jya besides rhetorical abstractions? If not, what

is the point of communal cold wars in the face

of worsening demographics? The Right needs a

different narrative. That is, the State must not

discriminate based on identity, whereas indi-

viduals should be by and large allowed to do so,

even if we find that personally reprehensible in

some cases.

Similarly, the antonym of an open economy

is not a welfare state, but autarky—a protection-

ism-based, closed economic system that deludesitself into thinking it is perfectly self-sufficient.

Competition-enhancing, supply-side reform is

in no way inimical to the State taking care of

the most needy, and indeed some competition

should be introduced to make our welfare state

more efficient. Swaraj is different from Swa-

tantra. Individual freedom and local self-rule is

very different from national independence.

Finall, at th pshologial lvl, th ral

debate is between self-belief and a deep-seated

inferiority complex. After 67 years of Independ-

ence, why are we as a nation still seemingly

scarred? Is it just the “millennium of colonial-

ism”? Th Hind right shold pshing for

free speech and free conversions, but is instead

acting only defensively. Despite all the bluster,

do most rightists believe that India can take on

the world? We should not hide behind a victim-

hood complex, and then blame others of doing

the same. The Indian nation will soon be the

largest section of humanity but do we really be-

long at the high table, and what do we hope to

contribute?

These baubles that we have accumulated in

the last generation or two—do we really believe

that we deserve them? Do we say “Please” and

“Thank You” to fellow Indians in the same way

as we do to foreigners? Or is something other

than politeness involved? Is one Indian as im-

portant as one non-Indian? The answer is no.

Our economy will boom if we make prosper-

ity, and not merely the removal of poverty, our

aim. Our society will be free and open when we

make self-improvement, and not the transfer of

blames, our modus operandi. Instead of trying

to bring others down, there’s no reason why

Indians should not take responsibility for their

destiny, channelize energies towards preparing

to win, and as Krishna had advised Arjuna, do

so without worrying about the outcome.

Public intellectuals on the centre-right shouldrise above partisan bickering and apologia,and focus more on pushing ideas rather thanindividuals, and policies rather than parties




WHO INTeRPReTS INDIA for

the Western audience? This

is not merely an arcane aca-

demic question, but for me

has been brought sharply

into focus by the spate of largely negative com-

mentary pieces in the international media on

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the

unitd Stats.

As representative examples, consider the

blog post in The Economist Patrik Folis:

“And suddenly, just after mid-day, Mr Modi is

standing on the same floodlit spot (in Madison

Square Garden) where Mick Jagger probably

sang Sympathy for the Devil . Mr Modi ignores

th dignitaris ompltl: idiots. H looks

around the crowd smiling, savouring it all.”

In The New York Times, Manu Joseph wrote:

“(Th Hind diaspora aks th vals) that tri-

umphed with the ascent of Mr Modi, whom the

Indian stockmarket adores, who complained

in March that his political rivals were killing

rhinos to make room for Bangladeshi migrants,

who has shown disdain for government spend-

ing on the poor and whom human rights advo-

cates hold responsible for the slaughter of hun-

dreds of Muslims in 2002, as did the American

government, which barred him from entering

th unitd Stats ntil a f months ago, hn

he became prime minister.”

In his online column for Bloomberg, Pankaj

Mishra went much further: “(Narendra Modi)

may actually be the most dangerous of cliches,

since the force unleashed by him can swiftly

turn malevolent. India desperately needs a vi-

sion other than that of the vain small man try-

ing to impress the big men with his self-impro-

vised rules of the game.”

Commentators for India in the foreign press

tend to be Western “experts”, elite members of

the diaspora or, if based in India, members of

the Anglicised establishment elite. These three

representative examples I have quoted roughly

fit the paradigm.

What you won’t hear are voices drawn from

outside the establishment—such as members

Prime Minister NarendraModi responds to anenthusiastic crowd inNew York City

“ E X P E R T S ”

Commentators on India in the foreign press tend to be

Western “experts”, elite members of the diaspora or, if based

in India, members of the Anglicised establishment elite

TheInterpretersof Maladies

RUPA SUBRAMANYA




Rupa Subramanyais Editor-at-Large atSwarajya. She is a Mumbai-based economist, policyanalyst, commentator andco-author of Indianomix:Making Sense of ModernIndia (Random HouseIndia, 2012).

heart of the British establishment, married to

a cousin of the prime minister David Cameron.

But he seems oddly resentful of the idea of so-

cial mobility for other Indians.”

But the membership is honorary.

Mishra can’t quite muster the serious schol-

arship to be considered a “true intellectual” be-

yond reproach, nor, despite what we presume to

be a valiant effort, can he quite emulate the faux

Oxbridge accent that is so prized in the clubs of

Lutyens Delhi.

H mst thrfor, on prsms, s -

pecially riled that Modi and his many fans at

Madison Square Garden are a reminder of his

socio-economic origin in India, from which he’s

fled so nimbly.

As my friend, the writer and art historian

Deepika Ahlawat so aptly put it to me: “Note

Mishra’s fetishisation of formal education

throughout, his mockery of Modi’s bac kground,

his disdain of popular culture, and his Socratic

horror of democracy. This is a vicious and yet

tragic piece. Because Mishra stares at Modi and

sees only himself. Just less popular, less pow er-

ful and immensely less significant.”

One might also add the delicious irony that

Mishra’s disdain for the middle class NRI is

the flip side of what used to be the middle class

NRI’s disdain for everything Indian—two sides

of the same coin of self-loathing.

Yet, the truly abiding irony of this cri de

coeur is that when Mishra damns the middle

class NRI and their brethren back home, he is,

one can only conclude, staring into a cesspool of

disgust which reminds him of his own middle

class origin in small-town India.

But then this makes him just the pitch per-

fect native informant.

Pankaj Mishra must be especially riled that Modiand his many fans at Madison Square Gardenare a reminder of his own socio-economic originin India, from which he’s ed so nimbly

of the new middle class, largely self-made, or of

the non-elite diaspora.

In the language of post-colonial theory, these

are the real “subalterns”—those whose voices

are unheard, but instead are ventriloquised and

caricatured.

While the likes of The New York Times and

Bloomberg assiduously exclude such dissent-

ing voices from their pages, technology has giv-

en the dissenters an outlet in the social media,

blogosphere and so forth. But for the most part,

the mainstream narrative has remained firmly

in the grip of an entrenched elite.

This cosy state of affairs has been given a

huge jolt with the overwhelming election vic-

tor of Narndra Modi. For th rst tim, a slf-

proclaimed outsider and vociferous critic of

the establishment is in power, threatening the

dominance of the Nehruvian consensus of the

“idea of India”.Note the singular construction—implying

that there is a monolithic and agreed-upon

“idea” of what India is, rather than a plurality

of competing and overlapping “ideas” which

also give voice to the disenfranchised.

What’s relevant in this context is that Modi’s

support base is drawn largely from the very

middle class who’ve powered India’s transfor-

mation into a modern economy since 1991, but

have ironically been excluded from the telling

of the tale.

Equally, those middle class Indians forced to

leave and seek opportunities abroad—includ-

ing the many Indo-Americans and non-resident

Indians (NRIs) who thronged Madison Square

Garden—are scorned by the establishment elite

(who had the luxury of crony connections that

allowed them to prosper in India) and they too

are excluded from the mainstream narrative.

It’s telling that much of the criticism of

Modi’s uS visit ntrs not on an poli an-

nouncements he might have made or not made,

but rather on attacking the non-elite middle

class backgrounds and culture both of Modi

himself and of his supporters.

Contrary to what the orthodox Left would

have you believe, and despite the hype, the com-

munal violence in Gujarat in 2002 has little if

anything to do with the many critiques of Modi

being offered up.

If it were really about 2002, why do the critics

take such great pains to pour scorn and spew

bile on the risen bourgeois (both domestic and

in the diaspora)—the group, more than any oth-

er, which has come to represent Modi’s strong-

est support base?

At the root of it, I would argue, is a deep-seat-

ed class bias that, try though they might, the

critics find impossible to conceal.

Modi and his supporters are most certainly

not “people like us”.

The glaring irony is that many of these crit-

ics—who in India tend to come from the Left—

are familiar with, or at any rate, ought to be

sympathetic to, the ideas of post-colonial litera-

ture, the writings of Edward Said, Gayatri Spi-

vak and Homi bhaha among othrs.

Yet, they so often engage in the worst form

of stereotyping, essentializing, caricaturing

and more generally “Orientalising” their sub-

ject while at the same time ventriloquizing the

voiceless—all of which plays perfectly for the

intended audience in the West and Anglicised

Indian elites both in India and abroad.

As a prime example, those dissenting from

the consensus view are often painted as crazy,

irrational, religious fanatics, and so on. Estab-

lishment journalist Sagarika Ghose coined, to

mh alaim, th trm “Intrnt Hinds” to

tar all critics of the left-liberal consensus as be-ing radial Hindtva tps, hn ths ar at

best a small minority.

Sometimes this dislike is tinged with the

hysteria of self-loathing and the insecurity it

brings, as in the much publicised recent opinion

piece cited above by that native informant par

excellence, none other than Pankaj Mishra—a

piece widely shared and lavished with praise by

the establishment, but which would make any

sensitive reader cringe.

As Mishra writes, with barely suppressed

disdain: “Not for him the barely audible

speeches of his Oxford-educated predecessor;

he brought a Bollywood fantasy to Madison

Square Garden because that’s what his admir-

ers have voted for. It actually reminded me of

Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (Raju Becomes a

Gentleman), one of many Bollywood films to as-

sert that rising Indians can conquer the world

in their own style.”

Yet, Mr Pankaj Mishra lets the mask slip

ever so slightly.

There are many instances in world litera-

ture of the aspiring bourgeois who tries to re-

write the norms of society and ends up making

a fool of himself—such as, for instance, Moliere

and Lully’s classic Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,

with which, one assumes, someone of Mishra’s

presumed cultural sophistication is familiar.

Yet his natural cultural reference point, to

clinch (as he believes) his argument against

crass Bollywood culture, is a Bollywood film!

As it happens, Mishra was not born into the

Anglicised elite establishment, but has climbed

his way into an honorary membership in the

l. As th ritr Patrik Frnh itingl pts

it: “Pankaj has obviously been on a long jour-

ney from his self-described origins—in what he

calls a ‘new, very poor and relatively inchoate

Asian society’—to his present position at the

Experience NarendraModi’s speech at MadisonSquare Garden in NewYork City here:




An investigation into Hinduism as a complex adaptive system

S

ANATANA DHARMA or Hin-

duism has long suffered from

a very basic problem—the dif-

ficulty of defining it. One can

describe a particular sect orphilosophy, but it is not easy to explain

the whole. Thus, it is not uncommon for

people to ultimately fall back on saying

that it is a “a of lif”. unfortnatl,

such a definition is neither a meaning-

ful description nor of analytical value. If

anything, it causes a great deal of confu-

sion sggsting that Hind rligion

is identical to Indic culture—the two

are obviously linked but not exactly the

same. The purpose of this article is to in-

vestigate the systemic logic of Sanatana

Dharma as a whole and the processes

by which it evolves. It is not concerned

with the philosophical content or daily

practice of any of the constituent sects,

traditions and philosophies.

Most world religions, particularly

those of Abrahamic origin, are based on

a clearly defined set of beliefs —a single

god, a holy book, a prophet and so on.

These are articles of faith or axioms from

which each of these religions is derived.

This is why the terms religion, belief

and faith can be used interchangeably in

these cases. In contrast, it is perfectly ac-

ptal in Hindism to a polthist,

monotheist, monist, pantheist, agnostic,

atheist, animist or any combination

throf. Ths, Hindism is a rligion t

not a faith, although constituent sects

or philosophies can be termed faiths or

beliefs. Instead, it should be thought of

as an organic, evolving ecosystem of

interrelated and interdependent elements

that are constantly interacting with each

other (and with the outside world).

There are many systems that fit the

above description—financial markets,

economies, cities, the English language,

ecological systems and so on. These

are all examples of “complex adaptive

systems”. Note the contrast between the

organic and evolving dynamics of such

systems and the static laws of Newtonianmechanics. In turn, this has important

implications for how we understand

Hindism and manag it.

Not the Sum of Its Parts

One of the most obvious differences

between complex adaptive systems and

Newtonian mechanical systems is that

the former is not the sum of its parts. A

mechanical system like a car is the sum

total of all its parts as put together to an

“intelligent design”. In contrast, a city

is more than the sum of all the buildings

and a biological ecosystem is not just the

sum of all the plants and animals. This is

why complex adaptive systems cannot be

described neatly from any one perspec-

tive. The English language cannot be

defined through even the most detailed

description of its grammar. Similarly,

the most detailed description of the Taj

Mahal would not define Agra. Yet, speak-

ers of English—and the citizens of Agra—

have little difficulty identifying and

using the language and the city respec-

tivl. Th sam is tr of Hinds—thir

seeming difficulty in defining Sanatana

Dharma poses no problem in recognizing

and practicing their religion.

Moreover, the evolving and mutating

nature of complex adaptive systems im-

plies that even the most detailed descrip-

tion is not just insufficient but funda-

mntall rong ovr tim. For instan,

given the constant absorption of words

and usages into English, an exclusivereliance on Wren and Martin’s grammar

to understand the language would miss

th point. This is also tr of Hindism

where even the most detailed reading of

Dharma Shastras and Smritis would not

give you the correct picture of the lived

experience of the religion over time.

History-Dependent but Not Reversible

One of the common characteristics of

complex adaptive systems is that they

are path-dependent, that is, they carry

the imprint of their historical evolution.

Thus, most cities, biological ecosystems

and living languages will show the layer-

by-layer accumulation of their history.

Readers will no doubt recognize how this

applis to Hindism. Noti ho this is

distinct from Newtonian mechanics. Two

identical footballs, in identical condi-

tions, will behave in exactly the same

way if exactly the same force is applied to

them. There is no historical memory in

the system, and it does not matter what

was done with the two balls before we

subjected them to this experiment.

Complex adaptive systems, however,

have an additional property—irrevers-

ibility. This means that the system will

not reverse to its origin even if all histor-

ical events were reversed. Thus, revers-

The Architectureof Hinduism

SANJEEV SANYAL

It is perfectly acceptable in Hinduism to bea polytheist, monotheist, monist, pantheist,atheist, or any combination thereof. Thus,Hinduism is a religion, but not a faith

I D E A S




Adi Shankarahara or Vivkananda.

There were also many instances where

Sanatana Dharma absorbed a foreign

ida and mad it it s on—Hind tmpls

and idol worship is possibly inspired by

Grk inn (Vdi Hinds onl sd

fire altars).

Intrstingl, Hindism’s xil

adaptive architecture may not have ap-

peared entirely by chance but may have

been deliberately set up by the ancient

Rishis. Ths, Hind sriptrs ar di-

vided into Shruti and Smriti.

The former are said to have been

“heard” from the gods and consequently

are canonical. Strictly speaking, only the

first three Vedas—Rig, Sama, Yajur —

are considered Shruti (although many

would also include the Atharva Veda). All

other sacred texts, including the much

revered Bhagavad Gita, are considered

Smriti. The Smriti are “remembered’ and

therefore considered of human origin—

the works of great thinkers, compilations

of traditions, and so on. Some of them

may be highly regarded but they are not

canonical.

This architecture has had important

impliations for Hindism. Th Shruti

texts may be canonical and provide gen-

eral principles but they are wonderfully

open-ended (just consider the Nasadiya

Sukta or cration Hmn in th Rig Veda

to understand what I mean), w hereas

the Smriti texts are more specific but

not canonical. This means that one can

keep adding new texts and ideas forever,

including texts that contradict previous

Smriti texts. The much criticized Manu

Smriti, by definition, can simply be re-

plad or rvisd if Hinds so ish.

To onld, analzing Hindism as a

complex adaptive system provides many

important insights into the functional

architecture of Sanatana Dharma. It

shos that th k strngth of Hind-

ism has been its ability to evolve, adapt

and innovate. This ability needs to be

actively enhanced and strategically

dplod in ordr to kp Hindism

halth. For instan, it ma tim to

revive the tradition of writing new Smriti

texts, a practice that went into decline in

mdival tims. Som orthodox Hinds

may consider this presumptuous but, as

already discussed, it would be in keep-

ing with the inherent logic of Sanatana

Dharma.

This essay merely illustrates some

of the possibilities presented by the sys-

tmi approah to ndrstanding Hind-

ism. It is not meant as a comprehensive

treatise but an attempt to initiate a new

way of thinking about Sanatana Dharma.

The author hopes that others will build

on it.

Sanjeev Sanyal, currently global strategist with

one of the world’s largest banks. is a Rhodes

Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow. Ho was named

“Young Global Leader 2010” by the World

Economic Forum at Davos.

A version of this article will be published in Probodhani, a collection of essays on Hinduismedited by Saradindu Mukherji, published as

part of the World Hindu Congress, New Delhi, 21-23 November 2014

Analyzing Hinduism as a complex adaptivesystem shows us that its key strength hasbeen its ability to evolve, adapt, innovate

ing history will not take English back to

Old Saxon but to some other language.

Reversing the events of human evolution-

ary history will not take us back to our

ape-like ancestors but to a new species.

Similarly, reversing urban history will

not take a city back to the original village

settlement. More likely, one will get a

deserted city like Detroit or a museum

it lik Vni. Again, noti th diffr -

ence with Newtonian mechanics where

a perfect reversal of factors will take the

system back exactly to its origin.

An implication of these characteris-

tis is that Hindism arris its histor

within it but cannot return to a pure

origin or “Golden Age”. It is necessarily

about constantly evolving and moving

forward even as it draws inspiration

and ideas from its past. The holy books,traditions, stoms and tnts of Hind-

ism should not be seen as a path to an

ideal “Kingdom of God” or “Caliphate”

to which everyone must revert. Rather,

they are the accumulation of knowledge

and experience. Critics may argue that

idea of “Ram Rajya” contradicts this

point but this is a misunderstanding.

Hinds dra inspiration from th ida

of Ram Rajya as a time of prosperity and

rule of law, but it is not a vision for a

return to the Iron Age.

No Equilibrium State

Yet another characteristic of complex

adaptive systems is that they do not

have an equilibrium or steady state in

the long run. Again, note the contrast

with Newton’s laws. Thus, the English

language will keep adding words and us-

ages with no tendency to stop. Similarly,

sssfl itis ill kp hanging and/

or expanding.

Hovr, a orollar is that if th

system begins to contract, it can keep

contracting with no tendency to self-

equilibrate. Thus, a city like Detroit kept

declining even though theory would sug-

gest that falling real estate prices would

attrat popl ak. Finanial markts

too behave in this way—they will keep

rising past what people think is a “fair

value” and then fall back well below—

hardly spending any time at the so-called

equilibrium.

This behaviour has important im-

plications for how to manage complex

adaptiv sstms. First, it mans that

managers should not attempt to hold

the system at some preconceived steady

state. Rather, they need to accommodate

the fact that the system is characterized

by “increasing returns to scale” which

can push the system into spiraling expan-

sions or contractions. This does not mean

that one should not attempt to manage

sh osstms—far from it. Finan-

cial markets, cities and even ecological

systems can benefit from active manage-

mnt. Hovr, th managmnt shold

allow for constant movement. A city

mayor or a financial market regulator

who insists on holding the system to a

static equilibrium will either fail or ef-

fectively suffocate the system.

Althogh Hindism dos not hav a

centralized leadership, the above char-

acteristics have many implications for

ho Hinds think aot thir rligion

and manag its ftr. For instan, thsggst that Hind ladrs rfrain from

ing too prsriptiv of hr Hindism

should go in the long run. Much better

that they focus on continuously updating

and reforming the system on an ongoing

basis while taking care to maintain inter-

nal diversity. The lack of uniformity may

seem like a disadvantage in the short run

but is a big advantage when dealing with

an unpredictable long-term future. This

is analogous to a species maintaining

genetic diversity as a bulwark against

epidemics and other shocks.

Another possible implication of this

intellectual framework may be that

one needs to be less enthusiastic abo ut

“anti-conversion laws”. These have been

proposed by some activists as a way to

“prott” Hindism in som Indian stats

but these laws are based on an idea of

static equilibrium. Our analysis, how-

ever, suggests that such laws will have

littl nt if th Hind ommnit is

shrinking (for whatever reason). In other

words, a defensive tactic cannot work if

the community is in a downward spiral

in a particular area. It would be far better

to focus on expansionary strategies to

re-inflate the system. These could include

intellectual and cultural innovation,

social and missionary work, building al-

liances with other like-minded religious

traditions and so on. Some of these ef-

forts can be derived from the past, but it

is perfectly alright to use completely new

strategies.

The Importance of Flexibility

One of the learnings from the study

of complex adaptive systems is that

flexibility will always triumph over

brute strength in the long run. Indeed,

inflexible systems can sometime disin-

tegrate very suddenly even if they look

outwardly strong. Take, for instance, the

evolutionary history of life on earth. The

dinosaurs were big and strong, and domi-

nated the planet for millions of years.

Yet, they suddenly disappeared as they

could not adapt to changed circumstanc-

es—except for a few species who adapted

to become birds! Similarly, the Soviet

empire, for all its nuclear warheads,

collapsed overnight because it could

not adapt. China adapted and thrived. A

similar story can be told of cities. Once-

great cities like Birmingham, Detroit and

Kolkata were unable to adapt to deindus-

trialization. In contrast, by repeatedly

reinventing itself, London has not only

survived deindustrialization and the loss

of Empire, but has been able to retain its

place as the world’s financial capital.

This has very important lessons

for Hindism. Indd, th rligion has

survived for so long because it was able

to continuously evolve though internal

reform, innovation and absorption.

Sometimes it was the slow accumula-

tion of small changes, sometimes it

was a rapid shift led by a reformer like




point out political observers, is a breakaway

of the Congress with all the ills and warts that

pokmark th fa of th Grand Old Part. Fa-

tionalism, thus, is rife in Trinamool—a party

that lacks any ideological moorings and whose

‘leaders’ and office-bearers are there mainly for

power and pelf. The jostling for power and its

attendant benefits among various leaders of the

party has led to intense rivalries that often find

expression in violence. Leaders, and supporters

of the weaker and marginalized factions within

Trinamool have been facing the same plight

as that of Left supporters and, in order to save

their skin, have been joining the BJP. Many of

them are Muslims.

But then, say sociologists like Nikhil Chan-

dra Chatterjee who used to teach the subject at

caltta univrsit, to sa that Mslims ar

joining the BJP in Bengal for protection from

Trinamool would be too blithe an explanation.

The popular belief is that the BJP is, at best,

apathetic towards Muslims and, as such, anath-

ema to members of the community. Going by

this belief, Muslims wouldn’t have joined the

BJP even to save their skin. As many political

observers point out, had the BJP really been a

pariah party for Muslims, a far better option for

them (the Muslims) would have been to swal-

low whatever humiliation they suffered at the

hands of Trinamool goons and seek shelter un-

der Mamata Banerjee’s aanchal .

That they haven’t done so, preferring instead

to join a party that the self-proclaimed and self-

serving secular cabals in India love to taint as

communal and majoritarian, perhaps speaks

volumes about Muslims’ changing perceptions

about the BJP.

As state BJP chief Rahul Sinha contended

just the other day, had the BJP really been anti-

Muslim as the party has been portrayed, Mus-

lims ought to have shied away from it. There

is merit in his argument. More so because the

Muslims who have been joining the BJP did

have other options. They could have easily

opted for the Jamaat-i-Islami which has turned

away from its earlier bonhomie with Trinamool

and is now pitting itself against the ruling party

in Bengal.

Jamaat leader Siddiquallah Chowdhury has

been quite critical of Mamata Banerjee in recent

months and could have been a far better option

for Muslims to rally around, had they really

been seeking protection from Trinamool. Also,

the attar king Bajruddin Ajmal-led All India

unitd Dmorati Form (AIuDF) hih has

emerged as a powerful force in neighbouring

Assam and had set up base in Bengal a couple

of years ago could have been another option for

BJP President Amit Shahaddressing a rally inKolkata on November30. The Trinamool government tried to stopthe rally from taking place.

THAT THe bJP is on the ascendant

in West Bengal is well known. That

the ruling Trinamool Congress,

worried over this development,

has been letting its goons loose

on BJP supporters and activists, especially in

rural areas, has also been widely reported. But

a significant detail lies buried under the blood

and gore of these continuing clashes that erupt-

ed immediately after the Lok Sabha polls: the

BJP lost five of its supporters in these clashes

and all five were Muslims!

Muslims, as BJP state president Rahul Sinha

attests, form a considerable chunk (about 15 per

cent) of the new entrants in the saffron party.

What makes this very noteworthy is that this

is happening in a state whose chief minister

has gone to great lengths to fashion herself as a

hampion of th minoritis. Hr ontrovrsial

overtures to Muslims include sops like monthly

stipends to muezzins (those who give the call

for prayers at mosques) and imams (priests),

which have not gone down well with members

of other communities.

While many of the Muslims who have joined

the BJP in recent months had been Left sup-

porters, there has been quite an exodus of Mus-

lims from the Trinamool as well. The reasons

are manifold. In keeping with the culture of

retribution and violence that has character-

ized politics in West Bengal ever since the

Communists came to power in the state in 1977,

Trinamool Congress supporters and activists

attacked, killed and maimed Left activists af-

ter Mamata Banerjee won the elections on the

crest of a promised ‘ paribartan’ (change) wave

in 2011. They were merely avenging what they

were subjected to by Left cadres when the Left

was in charge in Bengal.

Since Muslims formed a large chunk of Left

supporters, they were at the receiving end of

the Trinamool cadres’ retribution. But the Left

parties, which had collapsed quite like the Ber-

lin Wall after their decimation in the state as-

sembly polls, were in no position to offer any

protection to their supporters. Thus, for three

long years till the summer of 2014, Left support-

ers, left in the lurch by the party apparatchik,

bore the reign of terror that the Trinamool

thugs meted out to them.

And then things took a sudden dramatic

turn with the BJP, with Narendra Modi at the

helm, sweeping to power at the Centre earlier

this year.

Suddenly, the BJP emerged as the only

party that could pose a challenge to and check

the marauding Trinamool goons in Bengal. No

wonder, then, that Left supporters, including

Muslims, changed colours from red to saffron.

The story of the other lot of Muslims who

have been flocking to the BJP since the Lok

Sabha polls is equally interesting. Trinamool,

P O L I T I C S

“We joined the BJP out of our own free will. The colour of Islam is green and the BJP’s colour

is saron. Together, we make for India whose ag has both these colours.”

Are Muslimsin West Bengal

Flocking to BJP?

JAY ANT CHO WDHU RY




India is a better place than it was during the heydays of socialismbecause there is more transparency today. Crony capitalism has been

put on watch; crony socialism never was.

E

VeR SINce the Supreme

Court order on the coal

block allocations came, the

Socialist Syndicate has beenon a roll. Smug smirks on

their faces, they point out that the entire

mess has proved every warning of theirs

right—the private sector is unscrupu-

lous, market forces have no morality and

opening up the economy in 1991 has only

encouraged crony capitalism.

Fortnatl, th dfndrs of fr

markets have been the first to welcome

the order, seeing in it an opportunity to

clean up a mess that is the result of what

Firstpost ’s R. Jagannathan calls crony

socialism. The order has paved the way

for putting in place a more transparent

system where the scope for hijacking by

a crooked politician-businessman nexus

is minimised.

Yes, certainly, the camaraderie

between business people, politicians and

bureaucrats is more open and unapolo-

getic than in the pre-1991 days, when it

was covert and sly. Yes, corruption seems

to have increased. In their book, Cor-

ruption in India: The DNA and the RNA ,

Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari

have noted that reforms seem to have

thrown up opportunities for big-ticket

corruption and that the frequency and

monetary value of scams have grown.

But the corporate sector also has

never been under as much scrutiny.

Indian jails had never played host to as

many top business leaders—B. Ramal-

inga Raju, Jignesh Shah, Shahid Balwa,

Sanjay Chandra, Neeraj Singhal, Subrato

Roy. And notice that no one is crying

about witch hunts. There is recognition

and acceptance now that if businessmen

try to game the system, they will have to

pay for it.

In pre-1991 India, managing the

environment was more important than

managing the market. In post-1991 India

too, businessmen do manage the environ-

ment with the help of obliging politicians

and bureaucrats and by silencing the

media with threats of pulling out ads and

filing defamation cases. But they succeed

only up to a point. Beyond that, they are

brought up short against market agen-

cies (rating agencies, market analysts)

and independent regulators and the odd

crusading NGO.

Ho did th ooking of th ooks of

Satyam Computers get outed? Stockmar-

ket analysts and institutional sharehold-

ers raised the red flag, when Satyam

approved the acquisition of Maytas Infra

and Maytas Properties in what Raju later

admitted was a bid to replace fictitious

assets with real ones. Raju had enor-

mous clout with both the Congress and

the Telugu Desam in erstwhile Andhra

Pradesh. What led to the comeuppance ofJignesh Shah? It was a payment crisis at

the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL),

promotd his ompan, Finanial

Technologies, that saw an empire col-

lapse like a house of cards. No govern-

ment patronage could save it.

Ho did th amoant Srato Ro

Sahara, who flaunted his proximity to

politicians cutting across party lines, go

behind bars? Roy had defied SEBI, w hich

had restrained two of his companies from

taking dposits from th pli. H trid

every legal measure to get his way, but

ultimately nothing worked.

Political clout did not save any of

these businessmen.

The limit to managing the environ-

ment is the result also of an increase in

competition, again a post-1991 phenome-

non. Earlier, there was a limited number

of players in any sector, making manipu-

lation and suppression of dissent easier.

That is no longer the case. There are also

tougher corporate governance and disclo-

sure norms in place, far more stringent

than when the state was micro-managing

businesses.

Yes, frauds still take place. Market

plars ar not alas srplos. For

every case that independent regulators

crack down on, there are allegations of

them turning a blind eye to two more.

There are still regulatory grey areas. The

rule of law is not as robust as it needs

to be. And yet, India is a far better place

than it was during the heydays of social-

ism. Crony capitalism has been put on

watch; crony socialism never was.

Seetha is Contributing Editor of Swarajya

The CronyCapitalism Scare

SEETHA

I D E A S

bngal’s Mslims. Th AIuDF has annond

it will contest the next assembly polls in the

state in 2016. That Bengal’s Muslims did not opt

for these two parties and chose, instead, to join

the BJP is significant in itself.

What is clear is that for the Muslims who

were facing attacks from Trinamool, the BJP

was definitely not the only option before them

and they had the Jamaat, a political outfit, and

th AIuDF that is privd as a Mslim politi -

al part lik th Hdrraad-hadqartrd

All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen, to join

if they wanted to. If anything, for these Mus-

lims, joining th Jamaat or th AIuDF old

have guaranteed them complete protection

since Trinamool would not have dared attack

members or supporters of these two outfits.

Mamata Banerjee, hyper-conscious of her so-

called ‘secular’ image, would never have al-

lowed that.

But the BJP, to her and her goons, is fair

game and the Muslims who joined the BJP

knew that. And despite this knowledge, they

joined the BJP. This proves that the theory that

Muslims are joining the BJP in Bengal to save

themselves from the marauding Trinamool is

not the whole truth.

The reality is that a growing number of

Muslims in Bengal do not buy the propaganda

that the BJP is a communal party. In urban and

semi-urban areas, many literate and even semi-

literate Muslims perceive Narendra Modi’s

development plank very favourably. Most Mus-

lims, as expelled CPM leader Abdur Rezzak

Mollah, who was a senior cabinet minister in

both the Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacha-

rjee governments, says, have started seeing

through the hollowness of Mamata’s touted pro-

Muslim gestures.

Mollah, who retains considerable clout in

south Bengal, warned Muslims at a convention

in Kolkata a couple of days ago against Mama-

ta’s “minorit ommnalism”. H livs

Mamata’s gestures and sops to Muslims are hol-

low and insincere, aimed at only securing the

ommnit’s vots. His harg nds rsonan

among many Muslims. So does the BJP’s ‘sabka

saath, sabka vikaas’ promise.

Add to that Narendra Modi’s image as a no-

nonsense incorruptible leader whose stated

objective is fast-paced inclusive development

that is in sharp contrast to the Saradha scam-

tainted, corrupt Trinamool Congress govern-

ment that lacks any vision and objective and is

characterized by misgovernance. Is it any won-

der, then, that Muslims in growing numbers

are joining the BJP?

Khalil Sheikh, the bereaved father of 17-year-

old Sheikh Jasim who was shot dead and then

hacked by Trinamool goons at Chowmandalpur

village in Bengal’s Birbhum district on Novem-

ber 16 for having joined the BJP, told visiting

mediapersons: “We joined the BJP out of our

own free will. The colour of Islam is green and

the BJP’s colour is saffron. Together, we make

for India whose flag has both these colours.”

Khalil could well have been speaking for all

his brethren who have joined the BJP, much to

the anguish of Mamata Banerjee and other so-

called secularists.

Joining the Jamaat orthe AIDUF would have guaranteed Muslimsin Bengal complete protection, since MamataBanerjee, hyper-conscious of her ‘secular’image, would neverhave allowed attacks onmembers or supportersof these outts

Jayant Chowdhury isan avid observer of andcommentator on politicsand society in Bengal andeastern, including north-eastern, India.




fices, having offspring), towards gods

(offering oblations into the fire), towards

guests (feeding them) and towards non-

human species (feeding them). These are

respectively known as Brahma-yajna,

pitri-yajna, deva-yajna, manushya-yajna

and bhuta-yajna .

Note that manushya-yajna isn’t quite

charity, though it is often understood

that way. There are strong injunctions

against giving to the wrong person at the

same time.

Note also another point. If the king is

equated with the State, there were lim-

ited expectations from the State, beyond

security, law and order and jurispru-

dn. For instan, pli orks r

driven by individuals, not necessarily by

the king. Who imparted skills t raining?

Not the State, but the counterpart of what

may be called guilds.

On jurisprudence, it is interesting

that the Mahabharata gives a listing of

17 types of civil suits, in order of priority,

which the king should pay attention to.

Right at the top was breach of contract.

On the criminal side, there is an argu-

ment that rich people should not be

imprisoned. That’s a drain on the public

exchequer. Instead, monetary penalties

should be imposed on them. It is the poor,

who are unable to pay fines, who should

be imprisoned. This is a rather modern

line of argument.

Who created the wealth? Within that

varna framework, given the occupations

Brahmanas engaged in normally (excep-

tions were permitted for exigencies),

wealth must have been created primarily

Vaishas, ith som Kshatrias and

perhaps even the odd Shudras thrown in.

Whenever there was greater urbaniza-

tion and trade, this wealth creation must

have increased.

In reacting to the texts and quoting

from them, it is important to remember

this, in addition to the chronological

timeline. Why quote from the Dharma

shastras, if we know those were primar-

ily meant for Brahmanas?

Remember that most of the support

(including financial) for the Buddha

am from Vaishas. Hn, if thr is

an imprssion that Hindism is against

wealth creation, that’s because of selec-

tive and biased reading from the texts.

There is a healthy emphasis on creating

wealth, with limited expectations from

the State. Indeed, there are arguments

about a balance between the three objec-

tives of dharma, artha and kama. But

that’s not an argument against artha.

Bibek Debroy is a noted economist. His ongoing

10-volume translation of The Mahabharata is

one of the most seminal works in contempo-

rary Indology. He is a member of the Swarajya

Editorial Advisory Board

Selective and biased reading from texts gives the false impressionthat Hinduism is against wealth creation. In fact there is a healthyemphasis on creating wealth, with limited expectations from the State.

AcROSS SeVeRAL texts of

Hindism, dharma, artha

and kama are describedas the three objectives of

human existence. Dharma

is difficult to translate in English. In

different contexts, it can stand for duty,

ethics, rule of law, code of conduct and

the spiritual or metaphysical. Artha is

wealth or prosperity, and kama is desire,

but not necessarily interpreted in the

narrow sense of sexual desire. Tran-

scending dharma, artha and kama is

moksha —the ultimate goal of emancipa-

tion or liberation.

At a superficial level, there is an

impression that moksha is superior to

dharma, dharma is superior to artha and

artha is superior to kama. Also at that

superficial level, there is an impression

that the template of good behaviour is

based on varnashrama dharma, the four

varnas and the four ashramas.

To state the obvious and without

defending its subsequent hereditary

aspects, the four varnas represented

nothing but economic specialization.

If one leaves aside sacrifices, Brahma-

nas engaged in studying and teaching.

Kshatriyas ensured security, rule of law

and jurisprudence, imposing and collect-

ing taxs. Vaishas ngagd in agril-

ture, animal husbandry and trade, while

servitude was the lot of Shudras. As for

the four ashramas , brahmacharya was

the first, followed by garhasthya, leading

to vanaprastha and finally to sannyasa.

Since this is known, why waste

words on something that is obvious? The

problem lies with quoting from a text,

ignoring the context. Take the Dharma

shastras . Who were they primarily writ-

ten for? They were primarily written

for Brahmanas and Kshatriyas, espe-

cially Kshatriyas who were kings. Words

like brahmacharya and sannyasa aresymptomatic. Brahmacharya is usually

understood as a period when one studies,

which is fine. But it is also understood as

celibacy, which is not necessarily true.

I can cite chapter and verse to il-

lustrate that brahmacharya was also

interpreted, not as celibacy, but as in-

dulging in sexual intercourse within the

permitted norms of behaviour, such as

with one’s own wife. Similarly, sannyasa

did not mean renouncing everything and

resorting to a life of mendicancy and be-

coming a hermit. Within the garhasthya

(householder) stage, one can also practice

sannyasa, as long as one sticks to some

norms. The contested proposition is t hus

the following one.

That, with its emphasis on the next

world and dharma and moksha, Hind-

ism wasn’t concerned about creating

wealth. It was instead about pursuing

objects that weren’t material.

As a counterpoint, you may think of

Kautilya’s Arthashastra. But I didn’t re-

ally have this text in mind. Arthashastra

is about rajadharma , the duties of a king.

Arthashastra is about what we would to-

day call government and governance, the

enabling framework for wealth creation.

I have in mind the Mahabharata instead,

especially, but not only, the sections that

have to do with Bhishma’s teachings to

Yudhishthira when he is lying on the bed

of arrows—in the Shanti Parva and Anu-

shasana Parva. You will also find similar

statements in Vana (or Aranyaka Parva)

and to a lesser extent in Udyoga Parva.

Incidentally, the Mahabharata also

has a substantial section on rajadharma.

In terms of describing the economy and

society, these are much richer than

Arthashastra. The Mahabharata isn’t

only about the core Kurukshetra Warbetween the Kauravas and the Pandavas

and it is unfortunate that these sections

aren’t usually read. I am deliberately not

going to cite chapter and verse. But three

messages come out very strongly.

First, rating artha is desirable,

as long as that wealth creation is done

through legitimate means and wealth

created is used for desirable purposes.

Without artha, dharma and kama can’t

be pursued. Artha is the base.

Second, brahmacharya (understood as

the period of being a student) is a stage

that everyone goes through. But after

that, garhasthya is superior to resorting

to vanaprastha or sannyasa . Had thr

not been householders, who would have

sustained those who resorted to vanap-

rastha or sannyasa?

Third, as one progressively goes down

the cycle of yugas, Satya (Krita) yuga,

Treta, Dvapara and Kali, tendencies to-

wards dharma go into a decline. In Satya

yuga, people were naturally inclined

towards dharma. No longr. Hn, th

role of the king and the carrot and the

stick in ensuring rule of law.

This proposition, about the impor-

tance of artha and garhasthya, isn’t new.

For instan, it as also statd, ithot

dtaild proing, Sami Vivkananda

in several of his lectures, including the

one named Karma Yoga.

Hovr, vn hn it is rognizd,

little is written about a householder’s

rol in rating alth. For xampl, a

lot of the discussion gets bogged down

in the five daily sacrifices a householder

must perform—towards Brahma (study-

ing), towards ancestors (funeral sacri-

The Desirabilityof Artha

BIBEK DEBROY

I D E A S

Creating artha isdesirable, as long asit is done throughlegitimate meansand the wealthcreated is used fordesirable purposes.Without artha ,dharma and kama

can’t be pursued




Will the NDA government change the sce-

nario? On 12 November, The Indian Express

reported: “Worried about the adverse political

fallout of watering down provisions of the Right

to Fair compnsation and Transparn in th

Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettle-

ment Act, 2013, the NDA government is unable

to decide whether to go ahead with its plan to

amend the Act in the forthcoming winter ses-

sion of Parliament or try and build a larger

consensus on the issue. Sources said the gov-

ernment is even toying with the idea of taking

the ordinance route after the winter session of

Parliament to effect key but politically sensi-

tive changes to the Act. In fact, the government

had earlier also mulled issuing an ordinance to

give effect to the changes but the move did not

fructify.”

True, this columnist had explained to

Swarajya’s readers in his 23 October article on

swarajyamag.com that the new government

was committed to reforms, but it would usher

in changes keeping their political implications

in mind. Hovr, that annot prptall sta

as the government’s excuse, especially after the

BJP’s remarkable victories in Maharashtra and

Harana assml ltions. If 288 sats in Par-

liament were not enough to instil confidence in

Team Modi, the BJP will be in a better position

to send its representatives to the Rajya Sabha

ith mor stats in its kitt, hih its uppr

Hos MPs an rprsnt th tim Frar

2015 arrives. Still, will “procedural changes” be

all that the people will get from Jaitley’s next

Budget?

3. HOW ABOUT DISINVESTMENT?

The government is indeed moving in the right

direction, but rather slowly. The disinvestment

programme for 2014-15 seems to have kicked

off in right earnest with the Cabinet clearing

the sale of government stake in four major

public sector companies—Steel Authority of

India (SAIL), Oil and Natural Gas Corporation

(ONGc), coal India (cIL) and National Hdro -

ltri Por corporation (NHPc). bt hat

about several other businesses that, according

to Modi’s pre- as well as post-election speeches,

government had no business to be i n?

The Indian State is a strange authority that

once nationalised domains where competition

was possible and privatised those where it

wasn’t. Tata Airlines, Oriental Life Insurance

Company and other insurance companies, 20

privately owned banks etc were once forced to

sell their stakes to Indira Gandhi’s government.

Air India, Life Insurance Corporation, etc

sprung up in their place and banks were now

State-owned while retaining their old names in

most cases.

On the other hand, State electric and water

supply contracts are being gifted on a platter to

private industries, even though if the customer

is not satisfied with the services, he can in no

Jaitley’s rst Budgetdid not satisfy theliberal intellectualswho campaigned for aBJP government, or the people who shunnedold favourites to vote for an employment- generating paralysis-free policy regime

FINANCE MINISTER Arun Jaitley

has promised “a whole set of second

generation reforms” in the Budget

proposals that he is going to present

for Parliamnt in Frar 2015.

H said th rforms alld for som “ndoing”:

allocation of resources without the executive

exercising discretion, a rational and reason-

able tax regime and some procedural changes

in, among other things, land laws.

1. BEYOND INCREMENTALISM

It is in the language of the third that the status

quoism that the minister has been accused of,

manifests. Procedural changes as well as free-

ing business from legal hassles had marked the

announcements in his first Budget, but that

clearly did not satisfy the liberal intellectuals

who campaigned for a BJP government or the

people who shunned their old favourites to vot e

for a Narendra Modi-led dispensation during

the Lok Sabha elections to see an employment-

generating, paralysis-free policy in place.

2. LAND ACQUISITIONS

It is wrong premises—more than lengthy pro-

cedures—that stunt India’s growth. In the case

of land, for example, government must cease to

be a broker. A hands-off regime will not only set

the ruling party free from the accusation of be-

ing guided by cronies, but will also send person-

al property prices hurtling down while helping

stop generation of black money needed to book

a piece of earth in this country.

In case of acquisition, let it be a direct deal

between the industry and the land owner; in

case of housing, let there be no registration has-

sles. Government’s job should be restricted to

oversight of compliance with regulations. Once

land is acquired, an increase in its value will

not lead to agitation by farmers who would re-

gret having charged less for the land that is no

longr thirs. For, onl th Stat an sjt -

ed to activism; private parties can’t.

As the Lok Satta Party had put it last year in

ration to th uPA govrnmnt-mad la, “in

the guise of helping the farmer, the Bill creates

all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles in the shape of

committees at the district, state and central lev-

els for clearing land acquisition”.

The party’s then president Dr Jayaprakash

Narayan had said that the children of farmers

who parted with land should be equipped with

skills and provided jobs in activities that follow

land aqisition. H ralld that h had th

privilege of training 8,000 children of farmers

ho partd ith thir land for th Visakhapa -

tnam Steel Plant and providing permanent jobs

to all of them. The Land Acquisition, Rehabili-

tation and Resettlement Act is completely silent

on this aspect.

The people get a raw deal, too. More than

50 per cent of land allotted to special economic

zones (SEZs) across the country remains idle.

The SEZs’ very purpose was defeated with no

significant increase in employment even as

the government’s revenue foregone was to the

tune of Rs 83,000 crore between 2007 and 2013,

according to the Comptroller and Auditor Gen-

eral (CAG).

E C O N O M Y

9 Things ArunJaitley Can Do

SURAJIT DASGUPTA

The government is moving in the right direction, but rather slowly. It needs to go beyond

procedural changes and strike at some very basic wrong premises that hold back India’sgrowth. Here are 9 major reform areas that come to our mind.




from 75 hours to 125 hours in others involving

work of public interest is on the cards. Compa-

nies with 10-40 employees will be exempt from

having to furnish and file returns on various

aspects, helping avoid procedural delays. But

there is no proposal to increase low worker pro-

ductivity in the country.

8. INSURANCE NEEDS REFORMS TOO

In the insurance sector, thankfully, the BJP, as

the then main Opposition party, had not made

as much of a noise of protest as it had made

against FDI in rtail.

It’s not jst aot inrasing FDI in th s-

tor from 26 per cent to 49 per cent. The proposed

law gives more power to the Insurance Regula-

tory and Development Authority (IRDA) to de-

cide on expenses of the insurers. This, among

other things, allows the regulator to stitch a

new commission structure for distributors.

The Bill also puts the onus on the insurer to

tighten its underwriting norms. Currently, an

insurer has a window of two years after a policy

is bought to reject a claim on grounds of any

mis-statement or fraud. After two years, the in-

surer can still reject a claim on grounds of fraud

such as intentional suppression of material in-

formation.

The Bill, however, gives insurers three years

to establish this, after which the insurer will not

be able to reject a claim on any grounds. This

will curb the practice of underwriting a cus-

tomer at the time of claim instead of at the time

of buying the policy. The Bill and the proposed

amendments gives more power to the regula-

tor and brings in several customer-friendly re-

forms. It defines quantum of penalty on specific

violations such as insurance sale through unli-

censed entities and clearly prohibits damaging

sales practices such as multi-level marketing.

9. LET’S GO EASY ON TAXES

whil th Finan Ministr said for his last

Budget—and has maintained so thereafter—

that he is personally for a wider tax net but

lower tax rates, the exemption was upped in his

Budget by a measly Rs 50,000 per annum.

Elsewhere, how much RBI Governor

Raghuram Rajan’s reluctance to reduce lending

rates has curbed inflation is unknown, but the

middle class, whose lives run on how efficiently

they manage the monthly liability of instal-

ments, has certainly got no relief. Goods and

Services Tax is now the buzzword; hopefully,

the states, which have been offered a good share

from the consolidated tax, will not object. But

what happens to competitiveness of indigenous

products with imported ones in the scenario to

follow is not clear.

Frthr, ith a togh sal dit targt of

4.1 per cent of GDP, slack tax revenues and the

challenge of raising a record $9.5 billion from

asset sales could force Jaitley to cut spending,

risking a fragile economic recovery.

The new committee onrailways restructuringwill submit its rstinterim report before thenext Railway Budget. Ifthe government desires,these recommendationscan be implemented in a phased manner

way switch from one supplier to another.

Shouldn’t Government stop running hotels

and airlines and being the country’s chief mon-

eylender forthwith?

4. SMART WELFARE

When it comes to replacing subsidies by direct

benefits transfer (DBT) via Aadhaar, bank ac-

counts, Su-Pay, debit cards, and mobile pay-

ments, for instance, the subsidies on cooking

gas and kerosene will soon be transferred to

ank aonts of niaris. Th uPA gov-

ernment was handicapped by the SupremeCourt judgement that said Aadhaar could not

be forced down people’s throats for DBT. But

Jan Dhan Yojana coupled with Aadhaar reach-

ing uttar Pradsh, bihar, chhattisgarh and ut -

tarakhand means an increase in the number of

people with unique identification numbers to 1

billion by the end of 2015.

Government must now rely on an anticipat-

ed human reaction; when some people get the

benefits and others don’t, there will be a rush

among those left out to secure their Aadhaar

cards. DBT, therefore, must not be delayed any

further.

5. COAL MINING

The NDA government moved on 20 October to

open up the coal industry to commercial min-

ing, signalling the most serious shift in 42 years

toward allowing private players full participa-

tion in the sector. But procrastination is writ

large on its announcements. While the industry

will be opened as and when required, no time-

lin has n st. Frthr, no forign ompan

will be allowed to do commercial mining.

This isn’t totally liberal, but acceptable na-

tionalism. Once coal-bearing land is taken back

from private companies whose mining licences

were cancelled by the apex c ourt in September,

the government will hold an electronic auction

of the mines for steel, power and other compa-

nies for their own consumption in three to four

months; this transparency is welcome. Now the

status quo: No changes are being made to the

structure of Coal India.

6. FIXING THE RAILWAYS

Liberals were quite happy with the first Rail-

way Budget of this government, but then came

th rd shok of th rmoval of D.V. Sadan-

anda Gowda from the ministry. News of the

Cabinet reshuffle was immediately followed by

a report that the former Railway Minister was

not able to get his job done. Why was he then

put in the Law Ministry that is crying for judi-

cial reforms?

But this article is about economic reforms.

Mercifully, a go-getter Suresh Prabhu has been

put at the helm. The new committee on rail re-

structuring will come out with multiple reports

on different themes. Before the next Railway

Budget, the committee’s first interim report

should be submitted. If the government desires,

these recommendations can be implemented ina phased manner.

7. LABOUR LAW REFORMS

India’s labour laws are archaic, suffering from

a 19th century impression about capitalists,

thereby making capital investments virtually

impossible. Rigid laws discourage firms to in-

troduce new technology, as that sometimes en-

tails rtrnhmnt. This dtrs FDI as of

the fear that it would not be possible to dismiss

unproductive workers or to downsize during a

slodon. Hn, gtting FDI into xport-ori-

ented, labour-intensive sectors in India has not

been fully achieved.

The Industrial Disputes Act (1947) has rig-

id provisions such as compulsory and prior

government approval in the case of layoffs,

retrenchment and closure of industrial estab-

lishments employing more than 100 workers.

A 21 days’ notice and employees’ consent are

required if the job content or nature of work of

employees needs to be changed, as per the Con-

tract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act

(1970). Th Trad union At (1926) provids for

the creation of trade unions where even outsid-

ers can be office-bearers. This hurts investor

faith and restricts economic growth.

Amendments to some restrictive provisions

of th Fatoris At (1948), th Laor Las At

(1988) and the Apprenticeship Act (1961) have

been cleared by the Cabinet and are set to be

tabled in Parliament. The punitive clause that

calls for the imprisonment of company direc-

tors who fail to implement the Apprenticeship

Act of 1961 is sought to be dropped. Employers

will no longer be required to absorb at least half

of the apprentices in regular jobs if the amend-

ments pass parliamentary muster.

Doubling the provision of overtime from 50

hours a quarter to 100 hours in some cases and

A 4.1 per cent scal decit target, slack taxrevenues and the challenge of raising $9.5 billionfrom asset sales could force spending cuts

Scan this to go to Arun Jaitley’s ocalsite. Unfortunately, hedoes not seem to have provided a link wherevisitors can comment:




In October, the German army discovered ’aconsiderable number’ of defects in the tail of theEuroghter Typhoon jets. Other countries, likeAustria, too have been complaining

IT IS THe largest defence deal in the

world and India is the buyer. India will

spend $28-30 billion (Rs 173,600-186,000

crore) on 126 Medium Multi-Role Com-

bat Aircraft (MMRCA) to meet the ur-

gnt rqirmnts of th Indian Air For (IAF)

and replace its ageing Soviet-era aircraft.

It is a dal that, for th IAF, is imprativ

and long overdue: there has been a dramatic

rise in both fatal accidents involving its old

planes but also in security threats in the vola-

tile South Asia region.

It is a deal that, since the first tender in 2007,

tstd and liminatd th uS’ F-18 e and F16-e,

Russia’s MiG-35 and Sweden’s Saab 39 Gripen,

narrowing down the choice to two aircraft—

both made in Europe.

Finall, in 2012, India rjtd th eroght -

er Typhoon built by the European Air Defence

Sstms (eADS) onsortim (Grman, uK,

Spain and Fran) and sttld on Fran’s Das-

sault Rafale. Negotiations are in their last and

final stage, over pricing. Dassault is confident

of a wrap-up in 2015.

But Indian media reports suggesting that

price negotiations with Dassault are stuck over

some issues seemingly provided a ray of hope

for th Grmans. For, to ars aftr India st-

tled for Dassault, German representatives and

those of EADS have renewed and intensified

their lobbying for the Eurofighter in New Delhi.

In September, both German ambassador in

India Michael Steiner and his boss, German

Forign Ministr Frank-waltr Stinmir on-

fidently told members of the German media that

“negotiations with India are still on”. “To our

knowledge, India is still considering two offers

(Dassault and Eurofighter),” Steinmeier told

ARD TV. “Th Indians ill did on th on or

the other.” All German media unquestioningly

and without exception reported the same.

But defence experts are perplexed at the

Germans’ renewed bid to gain a ‘sideway entry’

into a deal which is just short of being finalized.

“The possibility of the purchase of the Das-

sault Rafale being cancelled at this advanced

stage is extremely remote,” said Rahul Bedi,

defence analyst for Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“There is a never-exercised-before procedure

under which India can, under very extreme and

desperate circumstances, cancel the import of

strategic equipment, but it is not likely to be in-

voked. Backtracking on such a huge deal is also

a question of India’s credibility and reliability.”

Bedi cites other, even more important reasons:

One, India would have to give adequate and

acceptable reasons for cancellation. It would

require tremendous political courage because

a government that does so, would immediately

come under attack from the Opposition for pos-

sible corruption.

Two, cancelling the deal now would mean re-

tendering. In the most optimistic of scenarios,

a repeat of the entire procedure up to delivery

of the aircraft could take up a further 20 years.

Three, given its urgent requirement and

groing rgional srit onrns, th IAF,

which is satisfied with Dassault, is pressuring

the government to sign the deal so it can start

flying the new MMRCAs as soon as possible.

For, if th Dassalt dal is ompltd

2015, the first aircraft will be delivered only in

2018 and the last in 2025. To tide over the wait

till 2018, Fran has rportdl offrd to of

D E F E N C E

Did theGermans Try to

Sell Us a Lemon?

PADMA RAO SUNDERJI

Fighter jet maker Euroghter’s plans to sneak

in through the backdoor looks set to backre




the daily that all sophisticated aircraft—like

th eroghtr or vn th uS F22—do fr-

quently have glitches. But though some coun-

tries which needed fighter jets on a must-have

basis like Saudi Arabia had purchased the Eu-

rofighter, it was not as though dozens of others

were queuing up to buy the jet either, he said.

Indeed, manufacturing flaws in the Eu-

rofighter have been reported frequently since

way back in 2004.

So could another reason for EADS’ enthu-

siastic offer to Modi to set up a manufacturing

hub in India and thus offer what seems like a

win-win for both sides, be the phenomenal rise

in manufacturing costs of the Eurofighter in

Germany itself? According to a 2013 report in

Germany’s Spiegel-Online, the Eurofighter took

25 years to be developed. Till date, the German

air force itself is yet to receive all 180 jets it had

originally planned to order. Meanwhile, Ber-

lin’s entire budget of $18.6 billion wi ll have been

used up on merely 108 jets.

The Spiegel report also pointed out that the

last batch of Eurofighters ordered by Germa-

ny—the Tranche 3B—which boasts the most

sophisticated technology to date—will cost the

government billions more than envisaged. Ger-

many’s defence ministry reportedly said that a

decision had not yet been taken.

Importantly for India, the site reported that

there were plans to raise money for Tranche 3B

by selling the older, first-generation aircraft de-

livered to the German air force to generate sev-

eral hundred million Euros. But those jets are

outdated by European standards, and NATO

partners are only marginally interested.

Given all these angles, Germany’s renewed

—if futile—attempt to reverse the Indian D e-

fence Ministry’s decision may well be aimed at

tackling some of the myriad problems that have

beset the Eurofighter in Europe itself.

Defence expert Bedi says that Germany is

not alone. Ever since the media reports suggest-

ing roadloks in ngotiations ith Fran’s

Dassault, there has been a renewed attempt

by all stakeholders including the Russians to

launch fierce campaigns against one another.

But even if the Germans were to undercut

th Frnh offr mltifold, a rvrsal of th dal

ith th Frnh manfatrr, at this advand

stage, still remains virtually impossible. “The

natr of Indo-Frnh rlations is vr diffr-

ent to that with Germany,” Bedi says. “We have

nlar oopration ith Fran, a lot

of other defence equipment from them. No gov-

ernment would want to jeopardize all that.”

The Indian Air Force,which is satised withthe Dassault Rafale,is pressuring the government to sign thedeal so it can start yingthe new planes as soonas possible

its own operational Dassault squadrons with

immediate effect. This is a standard procedure

which is good for pilots to train and get used to

the new aircraft.

What is also likely to take the wind out of the

sails of the German and EADS lobbyists wooing

India’s Defence Ministry all over again, are de-

velopments in Europe a couple of months ago.

Just weeks after Steinmeier made a renewed

pitch to sell the Eurofighter to India and not

for the first time, the German army in October

discovered ‘a considerable number’ of manu-

facturing defects in the tails of some of its Eu-

rofighter Typhoon jets. Defects in the aircraft

have also been reported in other European

countries like Austria, whose bankrupt defence

ministry has additionally been struggling with

the astronomical prices of spare parts for the

sophisticated Eurofighter.

Despite these problems with the aircraft inEurope and even after India had settled on the

Dassault, the Eurofighter manufacturers had

made a presentation to then Chief Minister of

Gujarat Narendra Modi, when it became clear

that he would win the national elections. Aware

that ‘going indigenous’ is high on Modi’s list of

priorities, EADS is reported to have given him

a detailed presentation of a plant they would

set up in India, and even dangled the prospect

of using the plant as a manufacturing hub for

further exports.

Could this newfound German confidence be

based upon that meeting with Modi? Is there a

likelihood of India purchasing the Eurofighter

in addition to the Dassault?

“Absolutely not,” says Bedi. “India already

operates about 26 platforms needing 26 lines of

repairs, servicing etc. to keep the equipment op-

rational. Frthr, and sin th rqirmnt

is for three generations of fighter aircraft (Das-

sault being the medium range) and we are also

buying heavy and light fighters from the Rus-

sians, there is no money either.”

Bedi agrees that indigenous manufacture is

something which is bound to be attractive to

the Indian government. Even the initial restric-

tion to loal manfatring to Hindstan Aro-

natis Ltd (ndr uPA II) has, in th intrim,

been further expanded—to the greater comfort

of Dassault—to include some private domestic

industries. And yet, he firmly rules out a can-

cellation of the Dassault deal.

But the German media reports of the Eu-

rofighters’ manufacturing defects—which, per-

haps due to language issues, have hardly been

picked up in the Indian media—raise the dis-

onrting qstion: Hav eADS and th Gr -

mans been trying to sell India a lemon?

Quoting the German army’s own website, a

report in German magazine Focus in October

stated that a “large number of manufacturing

flaws” were discovered in the tail of the Euro-

fighter during a routine inspection. Though

EADS assured the armed forces that the flaws

in the tail did not compromise flight safety, the

latter immediately reduced the ‘down-time’

(that is, the permissible flying hours till the

next inspection), from 3,000 to 1,500, citing they

were doing so as an ‘additional safety precau-

tion’. To “avoid disadvantages and in the pro-

tection of its own interests”, the German army

also “decided not to accept delivery of any more

Eurofighters for the time being.”

Worryingly, Focus also reported that of

the German army’s total inventory of 108 Eu-

rofighters, only 74 are theoretically accessible,

of which only 42 are combat-ready.

The discovery by the German army in Oc-

tober unleashed concerns in neighbouring

European countries. Austria’s Wiener Zeitung

reported that the country’s defence minister—

already struggling with cuts in the defence

budget—is considering legal action against

EADS. Between 2007 and 2009, Austria had tak-

en delivery of 15 first-generation Eurofighters.

By May 2011, 68 defects that had led to emergen-

cies had already been chronicled.

Austrian defence expert Gerald Karner told

If the Dassault

deal is done by2015, the rstaircraft will bedelivered in2018. To tideover the wait,France hasoered twoof its Dassaultsquadronsimmediately




global partnerships and identify the ‘good’ ones

that will be of reciprocal benefit.

Ever since his Liberal Democratic Party

came to power in a landslide election victory in

December 2012, and much like Indian PM Modi,

Abe has travelled more extensively than any

of his recent predecessors, visiting almost 50

countries in barely two years. In Abe’s vision

of who or what constitutes a ‘good’ partner,

he had taken note of the potential India holds

for Japan. But to improve relations with New

Delhi, there were several hurdles to be crossed.

The first was the nuclear disarmament issue.

India has not signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Treaty (NPT) for the discriminatory nature of

th trat tn th ‘Havs’ and th ‘Hav-

Nots’. But in Japan, the world’s only victim of

nuclear weapons, strong anti-nuclear senti-

ment persists in some sections of public opin-

ion: all governments have to factor this in to

all policies, at least to an extent. Consequently,

every initiative to improve relations with India

must bear this section of opinion in mind.

Since Abe’s first government (2006-07) faced

declining popularity at home, his idea of forg-

ing ties with India did not make substantial

progress.

This was followed by the global financial cri-

sis of 2008, which crippled subsequent Japanese

governments, already struggling with conflicts

within both the Liberal Democratic Party as

well as the socialist-inclined Democratic Party.

Japan’s global strategy lay neglected.

By the time the general elections of Decem-

ber 2012 came round, a deep distrust of all po-

litical parties prevailed among Japanese vot-

ers. All of them expected any new government

to revive the stagnant economy. Much like the

public mood ahead of the elections in India ear-

lier this year, it is these voter expectations in

Japan that lent a big momentum to Abe’s return

to political centrestage.

Given the significantly greater public sup-

port, Abe’s second coming has proved far

strongr than his arlir tnr. H has gn

to tackle the most crucial issues head-on: reviv-

ing Japan’s economy and lending consistency

and pragmatism to domestic policies.

In Abe’s vision, India would always be a ‘goodpartner’. But to improve relations with NewDelhi, there were several hurdles to be crossed

To see the absolutely

unique beauty of Japan:

WHeN INDIAN Prime Min-

ister Narendra Modi chose

Japan for his first official

overseas trip, diplomatic

and business circles in both

countries sat up and took note. “There are no

two other countries in the region that can pro-

vide as steadfast and solid a base for economic

development without much risk,” wrote Aki-

hiko Tanaka, head of the Japan International

Cooperation Agency (JICA), in the daily Yo-

miuri Shinbun. Importantly, Tanaka argued

that Japan’s forging good relations with South

Asian countries, notably India, is not merely a

reactionary trend to China’s expansionism. In-

stead, the JICA chief sees it as an effort to lay

a firm and long-lasting foundation for develop-

ment in South Asia: one in which Japan can

play a much more effective and dynamic role.

Any India-watcher in Japan will tell you that

it has been obvious for long that India holds

enormous potential for Japan. And yet, a look

at the past 23 years since India began opening

up its markets to foreign investors reveals that

Japan’s pace of investment in India, compared

not only to western countries, but even other

Asian economies like Singapore and South Ko-

rea—has been rather slow.

The reasons for Japan’s reticence were not

very different from those of many foreign in-

vestors. The Japanese too were overwhelmed

by the chronic ‘India problem’: a combination

of politics, bureaucracy and corruption.

Consequently, for many Japanese compa-

nies, China and South East Asia remained the

main playing fields. Even though they were

evaluating India’s unique potential as a ‘sleep-

ing elephant’, Japanese investors prioritized

expanding their businesses in geographically

closer Asian markets first.

But despite the sluggishness, Japan’s pres-

ence in India maintained a steady upward

curve. Take New Delhi alone. In the 1990s, the

number of Japanese residents in the Indian cap-

ital was around 1,000. In 2014, there are about

5,000 Japanese residents in the National Capital

Region, most of them in the suburban business

areas of Gurgaon.

Since 2000, Tokyo’s polity has witnessed

chronic stalemate. Several prime ministers

have been toppled after the briefest terms in of-

fice. This unsteady scenario posed serious chal-

lenges to Japan’s overall business competitive-

ness. Asia’s most industrialized nation began

to lose out to China and South Korea. As we

struggled with domestic political turbulence,

these two countries consolidated their presence

across Southeast Asia, especially in the auto-

mobile and home electronics sectors.

Of course, many Japanese remain confident

of their prowess in sophisticated technology,

which remains at the global forefront and still

sells successfully in many countries. Indeed,

current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe mirrors

this faith. Abe and his team have made it clear

that they are determined to rescue Japan’s

economy from the doldrums, plagued as it has

been by deflation over the past two decades.

It is therefore entirely in keeping with that

goal that Abe has set out to reassess Japan’s

A S I A

Much has appeared in the Indian media about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Japan in September. But what do the Japanese think of Modi?

New Dynamics,New Chapter

HIROYASU SUDA

When Satyajit Ray met

Akira Kurosawa:




Over the past 15 years, China’s expansionist

policy became apparent and Tokyo’s relation-

ship with two neighbours, China and South

Korea, turned sour over territory and differing

views on mutual history. Increasingly, Abe

and Japanese business leaders began to share

the view that Japan needs partner countries in

areas beyond East and South East Asia.

Abe was thus able to close the circle and re-

turn to his old idea of improving ties with India.

The opportunity to employ Japanese technology

to develop India and other countries connected

with India, the Middle East and Indian Ocean-

rim African countries, is a stepping stone to

that new dimension of Japan’s foreign policy.

The bilateral relationship with India has

already seen a significant development: Tokyo

has made it clear that it will cooperate in the

transfer of nuclear technology for peaceful use

in spite of the domestically prevailing anti-nu-clear sentiment. This clearly indicates a more

pragmatic stance towards business.

Another area of interest for Japan is the in-

troduction of its rapid railway system in India.

Of course there are other competitors—Ger-

man, Fran and china—ho ar as knl

interested.

Frthr, Japans sinsss ar also on-

sidering some parts of India as hubs in the

supply chain of Japanese goods to the world

market. Such industrial estates already exist

around Bangkok. These bases produce car parts

and audio electronic goods for companies like

Nissan, Panasonic and Canon to export to the

world. But when Thailand was hit by severe

floods in late 2011, some of these factories were

forced to suspend operations, leading to a sharp

drop in thir prodtion of goods. Having an -

other hub in India would certainly minimize

this kind of risk.

The landslide victory of the BJP in the May

elections made news in Japan. But even Modi’s

earlier reforms during his 12 years as Gujarat

chief minister, such as streamlining the state

bureaucracy and revitalizing the style of do-

ing business were already viewed here as big

successes. So it is no coincidence that Abe’s

long-held interest in India has been energized

through the emergence of the Modi govern-

ment, one that is more ambitious to push for

reforms than its predecessor was. Modi, on his

part, set the ball rolling. By choosing Japan for

his first official visit as Prime Minister, he sent

a clear signal to Abe that he, too, views Japan as

one of the most important partners for India’sdevelopment and economic reforms.

Of course, sceptics abound in both countries:

they want to wait for ‘substantial results’ before

commenting on Narendra Modi’s promises to

‘rebuild’ India.

Given India’s complexity of religions and

castes, bureaucratic red tape and ironically

because of its strong democracy, many Japa-

nese know that India is a notoriously difficult

country to govern. Yet, positivity has the upper

hand. “The current scenario in India is vastly

different from the past,” said a Japanese busi-

ness leader. “This is a time of rare optimism, it

has come after a decade. We must not lose the

momentum.”

Modi wih Japanese PrimeMinister Abe at the Tojitemple in Kyoto, a worldheritage site that housesancient Buddha statues

Hiroyasu Suda is a veteran Japanese journalistwho has been Bangkokcorrespondent, New Delhibureau chief, Hanoi bureauchief and senior editor inOsaka and Nagasaki, forKyodo News. The ‘old Indiahand’ currently alternatesbetween Bangkok andTokyo and is a muchsought-after senior analystof South and South East Asian aairs




N E I G H B O U R S

The Indian

government

squandered

Afghanistan’s

goodwill through

years of vacillating

and incoherent

policy towardsthe country. This

failure will have

repercussions in the

entire region.

How IndiaLost Out InAfghanistan

JAI DEEP PRA BHU

THeRe uSeD TO be a time, not long

ago, when Afghanistan could not

get enough of India. Just in 2013, in

addition to the usual delegations

on business, health, security, and

othr stors, thn Afghan prsidnt Hamid

Karzai paid three visits to India. Then sudden-

ly, a coolness developed in India-Afghanistan

relations when Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai took

over as President after the Afghan elections

of April 2014. Just like that, the hot romance

cooled down to casual acquaintance.

Hovr, things r hardl that sddn.

In fact, the Indian government squandered Af-

ghanistan’s goodwill through years of vacillat-

ing and incoherent policy towards the country.

Where decisions were taken, they went unhon-

oured as many times as not, and Delhi almost

appeared disinterested in the future of the cen-

tral Asian state. Most critically, India repeat-

edly deflected requests to play a greater role in

the security of the nascent Afghan democracy.

India’s historical ties to Afghanistan are well

known; every Indian and Afghan leader likes to

reflect upon them in front of the camera and an-

alysts usually make at least a cursory reference

to them. Yet India’s crisis in the mountainous

country has little to do with either Mauryan

conquests or Mughal control of the country.

More importantly, the policy paralysis India

has exhibited in Afghanistan is symptomatic

of deeper flaws in the Indian foreign policy ap-

paratus that will have repercussions not just in

the country but in the entire region.

In October 2001, less than a month after the

Sptmr 11 attaks, th unitd Stats and its

allies launched the invasion of Afghanistan un-

dr Opration endring Frdom. Th unitd

States was quick to ask India to contribute to-

wards its Global War on Terror. India showed a

willingness to cooperate in terms of intelligence

and logistics but firmly refused to play a mili-

tary role in Afghanistan. Washington appealed

to Delhi several times during the tenure of In-

dia-friendly president George W. Bush—even

for Indian boots on the ground since 2006, but

Raisina Hill did not dg. Prhaps som flt

that th unitd Stats od India for rating

a grand mess in the region in the 1980s in the

first place.

Riding on th oattails of uS militar por

comes easy to the world, especially when things

ar going ll. Hovr, 2009, Amrians

were growing tired of a war on the other side

of the planet that supposedly degraded ter-

rorist networks but did not yield any visible

prize. In May 2011, Osama bin Laden was found

and killed in Pakistan, barely a stone’s throw

away from a military facility of an American

ally. Domestic public pressure to leave became




New Afhan President Ashraf Ghani is anacademic and technocratwho comes to the tablewith a blank slate andis willing to work withIslamabad to reduceterrorism in his country

by Washington to distinguish between a “good

Taliban” and a “bad Taliban” was also ignored.

Despite vociferously denouncing the withdraw-

al of uS troops, Dlhi rmaind prdital t

frustratingly quiet during the negotiations be-

tn Afghanistan and th unitd Stats ovr

the Bilateral Security Agreement in 2013 and

early 2014. If anything, India’s policy towards

Afghanistan sin th uS invasion an st

described as masterly inactivity.

To fair, Raisina Hill has not n ntirl

inert: India has extended over $2 billion in aid

to Afghanistan, the most it has ever extended to

any country. India is the fifth largest bilateral

donor to Afghanistan, aftr th unitd Stats,

th unitd Kingdom, Japan, and Grman,

though Islamabad remains Kabul’s largest trad-

ing partner. Besides the much-publicised Delar-

am-Zaranj highway, India has also built power

lins from uzkistan to Kal, onstrtd th

Salma Dam for hdropor in th Hrat prov -

in, invstd in th mining stor at Hajigak

(although work has progressed so slowly that

Kabul has threatened to take the contract away

from the Steel Authority of India), and provided

support in education, health, and telecommuni-

ations. India opnd p for onslats in Hr -

at, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Mazar-e-Sharif,

and in 2007, also pushed for Afghanistan’s entry

into the South Asian Association for Regional

Cooperation (SAARC) to better integrate it into

the region’s economic networks.

Hoit, India old do ll to look to its

own history—if it ever opened its archives—

to understand that developmental aid would

never mean the same as military assistance.

Th unitd Stats and Japan r th largst

sources of developmental aid to India since in-

dpndn and t it as th Sovit union that

won the affection of the Indians with their MiG

ghtr jts and uralvagonzavod tanks.

India’s military aid to Afghanistan is not

quite nil: Delhi trained 576 Afghan troops in

2012 and that number increased to 1,000 in 2013;

over 650 officers and special forces commandos

have also received training in India. According

to Indian officials, there are also some 500 In-

dian paramilitary forces deployed in Afghani-

stan to guard Indian assets as they develop Af-

ghan infrastrtr. Finall, in Ma 2014, India

worked out a deal with Russia whereby Delhi

would pay Moscow to manufacture and deliver

weapons to Kabul. Though the specifics of this

deal are unknown, brand new weapons would

cost more and cut into the volume of arma-

ments Afghanistan is looking for. India would

also pay to repair old equipment the Soviets had

left behind in 1989.

This is not enough for Kabul, which has been

blunt about what they expect from India: sec-

ond-hand weapons such as MiG-21 fighter jets,

T-72 tanks, Bofors howitzers, AN-32 transport

aircraft, MI-17 helicopters, trucks, bridge-lay-

ing equipment, radios, radars, other equipment

critical to command and control, and signifi-

cantly more military trainers. India’s excuses

so far have been baffling, from claiming that

India does not have surplus weapons and Paki-

stani refusal to grant overflight permission, to

requiring Russian permission to manufacture

weapons for export under license. Admittedly

with the benefit of hindsight, it is nonetheless

unclear why Delhi could not anticipat e Kabul’s

requests and work towards resolving these log-

The US Navy Seal whokilled Osama bin Laden:“I shot him twice inthe forehead...It wasclosure.”

stronger, now that the mission seemed truly a c-

complished—the Afghan government had been

established in 2004 and it was their responsibil-

ity to safeguard their own wellbeing.

Strategists warned, however, that the Tali-

ban was not yet dead and would come back the

moment NATO left Afghanistan; the Afghan

National Srit For as as t too ak to

rsist th Talian on its on. Th unitd Stats

was desperate for allies in the region to hold on

to the gains it had made. Already, as American

plans to retreat became more pronounced, the

Taliban began a small surge against local and

foreign forces.

India’s reticence to become involved in Af-

ghanistan’s security has come at a high price.

Even as talk of downsizing the American com-

mitmnt to Afghanistan appard in th uS

presidential election campaign in May 2008,

the Indian embassy in Kabul was the target of a

terrorist attack that left 58 people dead and 141

wounded. It was targeted again in October 2009,

killing at last 17 mor. In Frar 2010, tr-

rorists lvlld th Ara Gst Hos, killing

nine Indian doctors. In August 2013, the Indian

consulate in Jalalabad suffered a suicide bomb

attack with 10 casualties, and the Indian consu-

lat in Hrat as attakd in Ma 2014, thank-

fully with no injuries. Indians have also been

victims of kidnappings and executions in the

central Asian version of the Wild, Wild West.

Many of these attacks have been traced

back to Pakistan and its notorious intelligence

srvi, th ISI. Th uS rtrat had not onl

encouraged the Taliban to launch their own

Spring Offensive but also emboldened their pa-

trons in Islamabad to try and dislodge Delhi’s

foothold in their backyard. In fact, Ashfaq Kay-

ani, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff from 2007 to

2013, had publicly called for minimizing India’s

role in Afghanistan in exchange for stability in

Afghanistan.

India’s inaction in the face of these provoca-

tions is curious. On the diplomatic front too,

Delhi’s actions can at best be described as tepid

except when it has come time to criticize the

unitd Stats. Hovr, India has hlpd ni -

ther itself nor the region with any proposal of

its own.

For xampl, from Dlhi’s prsptiv, Iran

holds the key to Afghanistan’s reintegration

into South Asia. Yet India has done little to

prsad th unitd Stats to mak an xp -

tion to its sanctions on Iran so that India could

continue the highway from Delaram to Zaranj

through Milak to Chabahar. This route would

not only open Afghanistan up to trade but also

the rest of Central Asia.

At the same time, Chinese companies trade

routinely with Iran in arms, auto parts, elec-

tronics, mining, oil, power generation, textiles,

toys, transportation, and more. China’s trade

with Iran has increased dramatically since 2007

hn it rplad th eropan union as Iran’s

largest trading partner, and is set to hit $44 bil-

lion this year. India has largely complied with

th spirit of th uS santions rding its

oil dependency on Iran and disconnecting its

financial links with the country.

So timid has Indian diplomacy been that Del-

hi was excluded from the International Confer-

ence on Afghanistan, held in Istanbul in Janu-

ary 2010, largely due to Pakistani pressure. Last

year, Delhi’s outcry at the preposterous attempt

Former President HamidKarzai’s relations withPakistan were as toxicas they were good withIndia. Just in 2013, hehad visited India thrice




was no lessening of support for terrorist activ-

ity against India from Islamabad, Delhi genu-

flected to the half-baked logic of brotherhood

and Pakistan as a co-victim of terror. As one

analyst argued, India already deploys almost

10,000 troops aroad ndr th uN ag; it rall

would not have been that difficult or alien an

experience for India to put boots on the ground

in Afghanistan if it so decided.

The second reason for India’s inertia is that

its ruling political party was too inward-look-

ing and occupied with domestic rivalries to

formlat an fftiv national poli. Forign

policy was federalized, with Sri Lanka being

the purview of Tamil Nadu, Bangladesh fall-

ing to West Bengal, and Pakistan coming under

the jurisdiction of Kashmir and its chapter in

Delhi. There was no foreign policy community

in the country that could grill the government

as citizens became withdrawn from governance

with scam after scam rocking the country and

institutions crumbling one after the other.

In April and May 2014, both India and Af-

ghanistan went to the polls. In India, the BJP

won in a landslide, the first time any party cap-

tured more than 50 per cent of the seats in the

Lok Sabha in 30 years. Even before Narendra

Modi took his oath of office, he received two

calls from Karzai. The appointment of Ajit Dov-

al as National Security Advisor gave hope to

the outgoing Afghan president that India may

at last step up to its regional responsibilities.

In Kabul, Ghani took office; unlike his chal-

lenger in the polls, Abdullah Abdullah, Ghanihad no tis to India. H had not foght alongsid

Ahmad Shah Masood against the Taliban. Gha-

ni is an academic and a technocrat, educated at

th Amrian univrsit of birt and colm -

ia univrsit for tahing at brkl and

Johns Hopkins and joining th world bank.

While Karzai’s relations with Pakistan were

as toxic as his relations with India were good,

Ghani comes to the table with a blank slate and

is willing to work with Islamabad to reduce ter-

rorism in his country. Now, India fears that t his

may increase Pakistan’s influence in Kabul yet

again.

Ghani is no mans anti-India. Hovr,

having watched the South Asian giant vacillate

for years, he is following the prudent path by

dealing with those ready to do so. Delhi fears

that Ghani might overcompensate for his pre-

decessor’s brusqueness with Pakistan and co-

operate with them to reduce India’s footprint in

Afghanistan in exchange for reducing support

to the Taliban.

The pity of it all is that Delhi remained aloof

while it had Afghanistan trying to woo it and is

now realising its folly, albeit under a different

government, when Kabul has turned away to

other partners.

In many ways, Afghanistan is a litmus test

for Delhi’s ascendance as a regional power.

One of the many lessons a regional power must

understand is that soft power, while useful, is

meaningless without hard power.

For a dad, Dlhi prodl ralld that

th most poplar TV srial in Afghanistan as

an Indian soap opera, Kyun Ki Saas Bhi Kabhi

Bahu Thi, as proof of the superiority of its soft

por ovr uS militar for. yt Kal rnd,

and as they used to say back home, dum Romae

consulitur, Saguntum expugnatur —while Rome

deliberated, Saguntum was captured.

Jaideep A. Prabhu is aspecialist in foreign andnuclear policy; he also

pokes his nose in energyand defence-relatedmatters

jams once it received the first requests from

Washington and Kabul in 2006.

Seeing India’s hesitation, Afghanistan has

reached out to other regional powers such as

China and Russia and has been less prickly to-

wards Pakistan, from whom it had once reject-

d an militar aid, vn training. For Kal,

Delhi was the ideal partner as it provided aid

with no strings attached, given the considerable

overlap of interests between the two countries.

India itself invited China, Iran and Japan to

find ways of providing for Afghanistan’s securi-

ty. As most realists would point out, this was a

grave mistake by the Indian government—one

never offers other governments an opportunity

to enter one’s own backyard, especially when

one of them harbours hostile intentions and has

been known to support a rival neighbour.

The real reasons for India’s vacillating Af-

ghanistan policy are twofold. The first is that

Delhi continued to subscribe to the foolish

policy of placating Islamabad at all costs lest

the latter escalate the situation in Kashmir and

elsewhere. Over the last decade, India has ap-

proached Pakistan with a soft touch because

of domsti vot ank politis and/or a mntal

paralysis that prioritizes looking noble and

restrained over achieving results. While there

Afghan troops ghtingthe terrorist attack onthe Indian embassy inHerat in May 2014




and the book itself has nothing to do

with anything here I’m talking about.

I just want to impress the reader with

the rigour of my research).

2. I talked to my wife and kids. My kids

ignored my question and went on

with their work. My wife shook her

head and gently suggested I look at the

grocery list to run some errands.

3. I talkd to m Amrian thrapist. H

said it was quite simple. You Indians

Are Like That Only. I got upset with

him because a) I was paying him for

therapy, not to insult my culture, and

b) he was probably right.

Being of a scientific temperament, I

decided then to start at the beginning of

time. Or, more precisely, the beginning of

Indian Standard Time. Turns out there’s

qit a stor thr. Hr’s hat wikip-

dia (the source of universal truth) had to

say:

After independence in 1947, the Indian

government established IST as the of-

cial time for the whole country, although

Kolkata and Mumbai retained their own

local time (known as Calcutta time and

Bombay Time) until 1948 and 1955,

respectively.[3] The Central observatory

was moved from Chennai to a location at

Shankar Garh Fort Allahabad District, so

that it would be as close to UTC +5:30 as

possible.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) was used

briey during the Sino–Indian War of 1962

and the Indo–Pakistani Wars of 1965 and

1971.[4]

It also turns out there were attempts to

introduce three different time zones in

the 80s, and a proposal to revert to some

colonial era time zones (such as tea-time,

not to be confused with the time for

drinking tea—it was time observed in the

tea gardens, the bagans of the North East

where the sun rises and sets much earlier

than in Aamchi Mumbai). As recently

as 2001, there was even a government

committee set up to assess the merits of

multiple time zones for India, but their

recommendations were shot down by the

irrepressible Kapil Sibal who declared

that “the prime meridian was chosen

with reference to a central station, and

the expanse of the Indian State was not

My American therapist said it was quitesimple: You Indians are like that only. I gotupset with him because a) I was payinghim for therapy, not to insult my culture,and b) he was probably right

Why Indian guests linger at the door, and other timeless habits.

S

OME YEARS ago, I happened

to be in India for Diwali. Per-

haps the first time in 10 years

that I was in my hometown

of Chennai for this most im-portant festival in my culture. My good

friend Shiv had invited me to his house

for a Diwali party, which I was delighted

to accept. What time should I be there, I

asked. Oh, 7 pm should be fine, he said. I

planned carefully, adjusted for traffic de-

lays driving across town, and showed up

exactly at 7 pm. Shiv wasn’t home, and

his wife was getting the house ready for

th gsts. From th look of things, th

guests weren’t expected anytime soon,

and the hosts weren’t quite ready either.

Hovr, sh graiosl invitd m

into the house since I was already there—

a bona fide guest who had showed up on

time. I walked in, and I saw one other

guest, sitting a little uncomfortably and

examining the interior décor with great

interest (it’s amazing how one can fixate

on the most mundane of things when

you have nothing to do, nowhere to go,

and no on to talk to). H lookd p at m

with great relief, like he just set eyes on

a fellow traveler in the Sahara who just

might have some drinking water.

Turned out he was from Minneapolis.

It’s close enough to Chicago that we’re

practically neighbours (relative to the

distance we had both traveled to be in

Chennai that evening). Our host, the

aforementioned Shiv, a charming man

with a mischievous grin, walked in and

announced– oh, so the Americans are

hr! Jst as xptd. H and his

wife went on to explain that we “Ameri-

cans” are always on time and hosts have

a dilemma on their hands every time

they invite Indian Indians and Western

Indians home. The westerners will al-

ways show up on time, the Indians never

will. As it turned out, the Indian guests

arrived between 60 and 120 minutes later

that evening. A random walk by any

definition.

I routinely suffered this embarrass-mnt in th uS, hr I liv. w hav

many Indian friends who are gregarious,

party-throwing types for whom the con-

cept of time is somewhat loose. We used

to be always among the first guests to

show at any party. One time, we showed

up at the appointed hour and learned the

hostess was upstairs taking a “nap”—at 8

pm. There was no food or drink any-

where to be seen, no other guests. The

hapless husband poured wine in paper

cups for us while we waited for her to

wake up.

That was the day I swore never to

show up on time ever again for an Indian

party. But then, it got me thinking about

this strange cultural issue. Why are

Indians never on time for parties? More

specifically, for Indian parties, and even

more specifically, when the party is host-

ed by close friends. And all this is just

about getting to the party. It’s a whole

another matter when it’s time to leave.

There are broadly three types of

departures—early departures, mass de-

partures, and the stragglers—distributed

nicely along a bell curve.

Early departures: Guests have another

party or two to hit up before the end of

the evening, so they need to go.

Mass departures: Group behaviour

brought on by the sight of other guests

beginning to gather up their belongings

to leave.

Stragglers: Ones who won’t leave till

every last drop in the whisky bottle has

been consumed.

They all have one thing in common.

The Long Goodbye.

Indian guests who have spent the last

three hours catching up with every other

guest, will suddenly remember many

things they need to talk about just as they

are about to leave. So between goodbye

hugs all around, the conversation dragsas they announce they are about to leave

(the hosts will always protest—do you

need to leave so early? Never mind it’s

1 am.). As the guests reach the door and

put on their footwear ( Indians are very

conscientious about leaving footwear at

the door—it’s ingrained in our c ulture,

just like never picking up food with

your left hand), there are more hugs and

goodbyes. Wait, it’s not over yet. The host

will follow you to your car, or at least

to the end of the driveway, while you’re

getting ready to leave. By now, the kids

in the back seat are ready to blow their

brains out with boredom and frustration

(after all, its 2 am now). And so finally,

we depart.

Our scriptures exhort us to hon-

our the principle of Atithi devo bhava

(loosely, the guest is to be treated and

welcomed like God) but neither guest

nor host seems to think that necessarily

means being punctual.

So, I decided to conduct some deep

psychological and sociological research

into the Long Goodbye. I wanted to leave

no stone unturned in my quest for the

truth. I started with three things:

1. I asked my close friends if they had

read Raymond Chandler’s 1953 book

The Long Goodbye in their teens. My

hypothesis was that some kind of

groupthink had developed in the 60s

and 70s based on some influential

ook (no intrnt or TV ak thn).

I quickly eliminated that theory be-

cause no one I talked to had read that

book or seen Robert Altman’s 1973 film

of the book (Never mind that the film

changed the storyline dramatically,

The LongGoodbye

PADDY PADMANABHAN

I D E A S




large.” Wow. So we’re not a big country.

Take that, you rabid nationalists.

Anyway, the point is that we are a

confused polity when it comes to decid-

ing what time it is, or what time it should

be, for anything. (Never mind what place

it should be. Every town and street worth

naming in India has changed names in

the last 20 years. This has only caused

more confusion and second-guessing

among intelligent Indians.)

Note though, that we are incred-

ibly punctual and punctilious when it

comes to our religious ceremonies. Ask

a self-respecting Indian what he would

think of being, say 30 minutes late, to tie

the knot at his wedding with his bride,

and potentially missing the auspicious

moment. Not a chance. Or the glamorous

Bollywood producer who has to break

the nariyal for his film’s muhurat at an

appointed time when the constellations

line up in a certain way that makes a

ka-hing sond at th ox of. NFw.

(Editor’s Note: If you don’t know what

NFw mans, hk it p on th nt, t

only when your children aren’t looking

over your shoulder)

Note also, that in the horribly com-

pliatd uS, hih osrvs nin ofial

time zones (yes—NINE. If you don’t

believe me, look up Wikipedia), as well as

daylight saving time—with some degree

of confusion about Arizona, Indiana, the

Navajo Nation and the like—Americans

still get to work on time, show up for and

leave parties on time, and are generally

good about managing their time. I must

clarify that the very same Indian Ameri-

cans I refer to are rarely, if ever, late for

work-related appointments or official

events, or parties hosted by Americans

(which may or may not include other

Indians).

I grew up in an India where people

would routinely ask other people for

the time of day. Not many people had

watches; they were a luxury. Many fami-

lies listened to the radio to get a sense of

time (If it was Binaca Geetmala on the

radio, it was 7 pm). My father was the

only one who had a watch in our home.

It was gifted to him by my grandfather

when he married my mother. It was a

Favr-La, ith hand-inding mahin-

ery. One day, when I was in high school,

he was mugged when walking along the

road at Ekdalia Park in South Calcutta

(oops, Kolkata, how things change with

time!), and they took his watch. I know

for a fact that we lost all sense of time (we

were timeless, in some ways) for a long

time. Many years later, after I moved to

th uS, I oght him a ni ath hih

he wore till the day he died.

So here is my conclusive theory

on this. Growing up with a degree of

timelessness at a time when no one

knew precisely what time it was gave

an entire generation a warped sense of

time. In later years, external factors like

unpredictable flight delays, horrible city

traffic, complicated game theories about

how late the other person was likely to

be for the meeting, linear programming

models that simulated a time-series flow

of guests at an Indian party—all of these

made the simple act of showing up on

time an extremely complex thing to ac-

complish.

But why do Indians linger at the door

every time it’s time to say goodbye? I am

currently studying the latest behavioural

theories for clues to explain this phenom-

non. For no, I am hind shdl in

turning in this piece to my publisher.

Paddy is a Chicago-based low-brow thinker,

pop culture observer, and a repository of

thoughts and ideas that serve no purpose in

advancing humankind . During the week, he

runs a healthcare analytics business. During

the weekends, he sings and plays guitar in a

classic rock and blues band. He hopes to own a

1959 Les Paul Sunburst some day.

Growing up with a degree of timelessnessat a time when no one knew exactlywhat time it was gave an entire Indiangeneration a warped sense of time




been changed to aid batting sides, especially in

the limited-overs formats; we can’t but admit

that the bowler—especially the fast bowler—is

already working as a second-class citizen. Phil

Hghs’ dath is a frak aidnt, and nd

to recognize it as that, and not respond irration-

ally, and on the basis of immediate emotions.

The unfortunate young man whose bouncer

hit Hghs is thniall not vn a fast olr.

H is a mdim par.

Everyone who goes out to play cricket at a

certain level knows very well that a leather ball

coming at him at high speed is a potentially

lethal projectile. That’s an integral part of the

game, same as brutal shoulder charges are in

rugby. Or keeping control of the vehicle while

negotiating a curve at nearly one-third the

spd of sond in Formla 1 raing.

The bouncer is a completely legitimate

weapon that a fast bowler has in his armoury,

just like the yorker, which, when delivered per-

fectly by someone like Waqar Yunis, is referred

to as the “toe-crusher”. Yes, the bouncer is

most often used to intimidate rather than take

a wicket, to try to jolt the batsman’s confidence

a bit, but what is wrong with that? Every good

batsman trains hard to tackle the bouncer and

if he is scared of being hit, he should not be out

there on the pitch. What use is a striker in soc-

cer if he is terrified of the rough tackle?

There is even some outrage that bowling a

bouncer is not right in the “gentlemen’s game”.

Cricket is a competitive sport, and as far as gen-

teel behaviour goes, I find the reverse sweep

far more uncouth than the bouncer, which is a

delivery that, in cricket history, only the most

talented bowlers have been able to bowl con-

sistently well. And sledging of batsmen using

the foulest language is a much bigger insult

to the spirit of the game. The spirit lives on in

other ways; for example, though there is no law

against it, bowling short stuff to a tail-ender has

always been—and is still is—considered un-

sportsmanly.

If you are in the team as a batsman, you are

supposed to give as good as you get, and the

bowler is honour-bound to give you the best

that he has.

And the fussy “gentlemen” can always go

play croquet if they want.

Batsmen today are as comprehensively ar-

moured as they can be without the weight of the

protective gear slowing them down. The helmet

surfaced in Test cricket only in 1979, 102 years

after the first Test match was played, when Gra-

ham Yallop of Australia came out t o bat wearing

one (It should come as no surprise that the rival

team was the West Indies). Till then, batsmen

were bareheaded or had a cap on, fully aware of

and accepting the physical risk involved.

The best ways to tackle a bouncer developed

naturally—hook it, or duck without keeping

your bat up like a flagpole, or just move out of

the way. This is a skill that batsmen learn as a

necessary component of their repertoire.

Has thr vr n a mor atifl sight in

cricket than Sunil Gavaskar swaying his head

and shoulders away just the required bit from

a viciously rising delivery, while keeping his

eyes on the ball all the time?

The truth is that no fast bowler—not Lar-

wood, not Malcolm Marshall, not Allan Donald,

From left to right: HaroldLarwood of England was perhaps the fastest anddeadliest bowler of alltime. Pakistan’s WaqarYounis was renownedand feared for his ‘toe-crusher’ yorkers, as nastya delivery as a bouncer.West Indian Joel Garnerwas nearly 7 feet tall,so his normal deliverieswould bounce o thetrack and come to thebatsman at rib height

Raman Lamba died after he took a pull shot on

his head at close quarters, fielding at short leg

without a helmet.

So, out of the five relevant deaths, only three

had anything to do with fast bowling.

The number of officially recognized interna-

tional Test matches and one-dayers played till

today is 5,703. Lesser matches—whether inter-

national and domestic—played are obviously

innumerable.

Of course, there have been near-death situ-

ations related to fast bowling, the two best-

known involving New Zealander Ewan Chat-

field and Indian captain and opening batsman

Nari Contractor.

In a 1975 Test match, Chatfield was clinically

dead for a few seconds after being hit by a de-

livery from England fast bowler Peter Lever.

And Contractor was almost killed in 1962 when

he was struck on the head by the West Indies’

Charlie Griffith.

Now the facts. Peter Lever did not bowl a

bouncer to Chatfield. The ball hit his gloves at

waist level and then slammed into his temple,

felling him.

And Contractor has said in many inter-

views that as Griffith came in to bowl, someone

opened a window in the pavilion right behind

Griffith’s bowling arm, and Contractor couldn’t

sight the ball (there was no system of having

sight screens at that time). This was hardly

Griffith’s fault.

It is also a fact that many arms and legs and

jaws have been broken and noses smashed, on

rikt lds fast olrs, from Harold Lar-

wood in the 1932-33 ‘Bodyline’ series, to Den-

nis Lillee and Jeff Thomson of Australia in the

1970s, and the fearsome West Indian pacers of

the 1970s and 1980s. But it’s hardly true that it’s

only while batting that cricketers have been

grievously injured. Players get far more regu-

larly hurt while fielding, and sometimes with

serious consequences.

Raman Lamba of course is the most tragic

example. But think of Saba Karim, a fine Indian

cricketer whose career ended suddenly at its

prime, when he was hit by a ball under his eye

while keeping wickets.

What no one denies—or can dare to, without

risking being branded a moron—is that cricket

is a batsman’s game. In case of a close call, the

decision has to always go in the batsman’s fa-

vour. I think I don’t need to go into the details

of how over the last decade or so, rules have

Everyone who goes out to play cricket at a certainlevel knows very well that a leather ball comingat him at high speed is a potentially lethalweapon. This is an integral part of the game

Watch this! Curtly

Ambrose vs SteveWaugh, 1995, the bestbattling the best, andcommentary by the besttoo, Michael Holding:




not Shoaib Akhtar—has ever wanted to kill

anyone.

Truly fast bowlers, by the very nature of

their calling, have to instill some fear in bats-

men, and the bouncer is the best way to do that.

When a batsman is hurt, it is usually the bowler

who reaches him first and is the most concerned

(as also happnd in th as of Hghs).

Larwood went into depression after he had

hit Australia’s Bertie Oldfield on the head.

Marshall vomited right there on the field after

he had smashed Mike Gatting’s nose in a 1986

math (Gatting as a togh man. H had to sit

out a few games, then returned with his nose

plastrd. unfortnatl, h had to fa Mar-

shall again when he came in to bat, and the first

delivery broke a bone in his arm). Peter Lever,

after hitting Chatfield, was inconsolable, and

was never the same bowler again (and he hadn’t

even bowled a bouncer, since Chatfield was a

tail-ender, the No 11 batsman).

The truth also is that most good fast bowlers

use the bouncer sparingly, because it is a noto-

riously difficult delivery to get just right (the

same is true for yorkers). In fact, 80 per cent of

the time, bouncers are wasted deliveries—they

are either too high or pitch too short (and goes

for a boundary or a six) or too wide for the bats-

man to even bother.

Phil Hghs’ dath is a trril and shok-

ing tragedy, but it is also an event that has an

extremely low probability, perhaps one in 20

million. The bowler is definitely not to blame at

all, and every genuine cricket lover will surely

hope that this 22-year-old cricketer can cope

with what happened, be psychologically fit,

and live a life without being pointed out on the

strts as th man ho killd Hghs.

Because he did not.

H is as mh a vitim of fat as Hghs as.

Cricket is possibly the friendliest and most

inclusive team sport on earth. This is a common

sight in a Test match: a batsman makes a mess

of handling a bouncer and turns and grins ap-

preciatively at the bowler who also laughs and

winks.

Don’t tamper with a fast bowler’s right to

bowl a bouncer. Don’t shackle him further.

And listen to Nari Contractor, who would

have thought about bouncers and the danger

they pose more than almost any other human

being alive (After his injury, though Contractor

returned to first class cricket, he never made it

to th India tam again). Rating to Hghs’

death, he said: “But then, this is part and par-

cel of the sport. I am hearing that some people

are calling for change in rules and do away with

bouncers. If that is done, it will take away the

beauty of Test cricket.”

This is a true cricketer. Respect.

As Nari Contractor facedup to Charlie Grith,someone opened awindow in the pavilion,right behind the bowler’sarm. Contractor wasunsighted and was hit onthe head. He almost died,but never blamed Grith




M

eHbOOb KHAN ReMADe

his own 1940 film Aurat as

Mother India in 1957. Almost

60 years later, this Nargis

Dutt starrer is regarded as

th most signiant among poplar Hindi om-

an-centric films ever. The reckless usage of te

term ‘woman-centric’ implies that the man-cen-

tric film is normal and the former is not, which

is deplorable.

Films ith omn plaing ntral hara-

ters are viewed as aberrations, which explains

why they need to be categorised and manipu-

lated to defend the patently indefensible: which

is that the portrayal of the woman in films in

cinema is regressive and stereotypical. That’s

why whenever the subject of women in popular

Hindi inma oms p dring a disssion,

Mother India is usually the first title to pop up

in our minds.

Not that gndr inqalit is niq to Hin -

di cinema. It is a global problem, although In-

dia’s performance on every count is seriously

embarrassing. A first-of-its-kind study was

conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gen-

dr in Mdia, uN womn and Th Rokfllr

Fondation, hih analsd th ontnt of gn-

der roles in 10 most profitable film-producing

territories. The case studies were ‘theatrically

released between January 1st 2010 and May 1st

2013 and roughly equivalent to a MPAA rating

of G, PG, or PG-13,’ two conditions which led to

deductions which dedicated viewers of contem-

porary Indian cinema across all genres and lan-

guages may not like to hear.

To start with, Indian films are among the

worst in their emphasis on ‘sexy’ attire and

‘some’ nudity. Even more pathetic is the focus

on attractiveness, an area in which India has

emerged as the global leader. While no sample

E N T E R T A I N M E N T

Mainstream

Hindi lms rarely

attempt to delve

beyond a woman’sphysical beauty.

Female actors bag

assignments on the

basis of looks not

acting skills, leading

to the creation of

more stereotypes

than ever before.

Why PrettyWomenDon’t ActAnymore

BISWADEEP GHOSH




While Bhandarkar deserves a special mention

since his choice of subjects has attracted top

stars like Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Ka-

poor in spite of the low budget of the films, he

appears to have delivered his best with Chan-

dni Bar , his second film after the disastrous

Trishakti. Besides, none of these films really

qualify as mainstream cinema.

Vishal bhardaj ho is mh mor talntd

than Bhandarkar has directed some films with

strong female characters such as 7 Khoon Maaf

and the controversial Haider in which Tabu’s is

the key role around which the story revolves.

Tabu is an accomplished actor who has played

powerful characters in Astitva, Chandni Bar ,

Maqbool and even in the breezy and unambi-

tious Cheeni Kum in which her character falls

in love with a man w ho is older than her father.

bt sin sh is 42, mainstram Hindi inma

will judge her as an actor who is past her ‘ex-

piry date.’ This eliminates the possibility of

casting her as the central female lead—or the

main supporting actor—in big budget films. Is

this power?

Vida balan is ing sn as an ator ho

can steer solo starrers after her fine show in

Ishqiya and the success of Kahaani and The

Dirty Picture. True, The Dirty Picture brought

The argument that a big lm with a Katrina Kaif(Dhoom:3 , facing page) or a Deepika Padukone(Happy New Year , above) as the main star can’t be

made since no one has a story to sell is rubbish

study can be perfectly accurate, the nation’s

inma in gnral and Hindi inma in parti-

lar doesn’t attempt to look beyond the woman’s

phsial at in mainstram lms. Fmal

actors bag lucrative assignments on the basis of

looks as opposed to acting skills, leading to the

creation of more stereotypes than ever before.

A typical example is Katrina Kaif, who has

been trying to evolve into a decent actor for

quite some time. If beauty has to be admired,

she will possibly score a 9 on a scale of 10. As

an actor, how good is she? Think Waheeda Re-

hman, Nutan, Meena Kumari, or Sridevi, Mad-

huri Dixit and Kajol, in spite of the many medio-

cre films they starred in. Katrina’s best moment

as an actor may be as bad—or worse—than the

worst of a Madhuri or a Waheeda Rehman. But

she is one of the leading female actors at pre-

sent. Enough said.

That the past has to be evoked during assess-

ments of quality is a reflection of the flawed pre-

sent in which objectification at the expense of

content has reached new levels. No film in the

modern-day counterpart of parallel cinema has

been able to make the sort of impact that those

with female central characters like Bhoomika,

Mirch Masala and Arth did. Each of them had

fine actors—Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi—

and they delivered a significant sub-plot in the

post-70s cinematic narrative.

An irony of modern times is that obsession

with attractiveness is getting stronger. Amidst

such a decline, many in the media have been

struggling to establish how more and more

omn ar nding ttr rols in th Hindi lm

industry. Those supporting this argument must

state that each year sees a rise in the number

of releases from Mumbai’s film-producing fac-

tory. They ought to admit that the industry had

never branded a film as a horex—a film blend-

ing horror and sex—before Ragini MMS:2 came

along. This, they naturally don’t.

Since 2000, Madhur Bhandarkar has directed

several women-centric films such as Chandni

Bar (very good), Page 3 and Fashion (good) and

the not-very-convincing Corporate and Heroine.

Kamli, Dhoom 3, KatrinaKaif):




Having started out as a journalist at 18, Biswadeep

Ghosh let go of a promising future as a singer not muchlater. He hardly steps out ofhis rented Pune at wherehe alternates betweenwriting and looking afterhis pet sons Burp and Jack. We decided to makehim a Contruting Editor toSwarajya

sales in India alone? None.

Did the producers shell out Rs 60 crore or

mor for an of ths prodtions? Forgt

spending that much, a film which stars a wom-

an rarely manages to earn that much.

Earnings explain a film’s reach or the rela-

tive lack of it. This reach, in turn, is the only

way real power can be understood. Major male

stars have that in abundance, but those with

comparable stature among women don’t have a

fraction of what the men do.

Try as we might, this fact cannot be over-

looked or disguised.

Within the film industry, a vicious cycle

is at ork. From da on, a ig dgt lm is

marketed as one with a big male star in the

lead. Any insistence that a similar film with a

Priyanka Chopra or a Deepika Padukone as the

main star cannot be made because nobody has

a story to sell is utter rubbish. The real problem

is that directors are dependent on the money

that producers invest.

Producers evaluate the risk factor and

choose not to gamble because he won’t be able

to find distributors who will shell out a much

higher price. The final outcome is the small-

budget film which suffers because of ordinary

marketing and is eventually released on a much

smaller scale compared to the big-budget enter-

tainer. Seekers of simplistic classifications call

it an ‘art’ film.

Nobody asks a key question since it is seen

as irrelevant. If a commercial entertainer with

a woman in the central role costs Rs 100 crore,

will it manage to bring Rs 150 crore home, the

way even a migraine-inducing movie like Bang

Bang! can?

Logically speaking, that’s possible, although

producers need to believe in the idea and invest

first. Distributors must respond by buying the

rights thereafter. Since that won’t happen any-

time soon, a huge film in the traditional sense

will lead us to one more Dhoom:3 . A big film

with a female star will be another The Dirty Pic-

ture. Fiv tims lss rah as a sign of shifting

balance of power? That’s a bad joke.

in more revenue than the producers might have

imagined, but an honest analysis would suggest

that a fair share of the revenue must have come

from those who went to see a ‘dirty’ picture.

This argument can be substantiated by the

fact that this film became the highest gross-

ing Hindi lm ith an ‘A’ rtiat, a rord

eclipsed by the sexist filth fest Grand Masti not

much later.

Kahaani was admittedly a success, in fact, a

huge one for a film with an estimated budget of

Rs 8 crore. That kind of money is equal to, or

less than, the fee of a top male star or what he

eventually earns because of his share in distri-

bution rights.

Mary Kom, Queen, No One Killed Jessica,

Mardaani and Gulaab Gang are among films

with powerful women characters that we get to

read about every day. Gulaab Gang , being a bad

film, bombed, which is fine. Dedh Ishqiya didn’t

live up to its hype, which is not new either.

But did any of the ‘hits’ come remotely close

to earning Rs 100 crore in the Indian market—

the new benchmark—at a time when the typical

high-dgt Hindi lm ith a Khan or Hrithik

Roshan is targeting Rs 150 crore from ticket

The suicide of Silk, playedby Vidya Balan, in TheDirty Picture:

Vidya Balan is seen as an actor who can steersolo starrers: Kahaani (above) and Dirty Picture (facing page). But much of Dirty Picture’s revenue

came from those who went to see a ‘dirty’ picture




cumbed to its battle wounds.

Thankfully though, I was born in a

family that had a reverence for the rheto-

ric. And in the limited time I have spent

on planet Earth (of course, that’s my way

of reminding you that I’m pretty young),

I have lived and loved it all!

I have experienced the covetous pleas-

ure of English, the bewildering intimida-

tion of Hindi, th st arss of bngali,

the rough embrace of Bhojpuri, the musi-

cal notes of Maithili, the flamboyant style

of Punjabi, the diabolical similarity of

Marwari and Gujarati, the longing desire

of urd, th r-simpliit of Oria, th

swift breath of Tamil, and the tantalizing

intriais of Frnh.

unfortnatl, in a orld hr

shortcuts and ‘ jugaads’ abound, cor-

ruption has permeated language as well

—hthr it’s th advnt of Hinglish; or

the use of ‘kinda’, ‘wanna’, ‘gonna’; or the

mindless boycott of vowels. But before

you condemn this corruption, remember

—evolution will weed out the weakling.

But the corruption itself does not

enrage me, it’s the label. If speaking good

Hindi maks m ‘SIcK’; good english

makes me a ‘SNOB’! Either way, it

seems, I’m going to be stuck with some

label. Of course, I don’t care what label

I have to live with, I will not give up on

my romance with language, and neither

should you!

But was it always like this?

The answer is: No. Rousseau, in a

posthumously published essay, contend-

ed that language developed in south-

ern warm climates and then migrated

northwards to colder temperatures. (And

as the temperatures dropped, language

too took quite a fall}. So, while at its

inception, it was musical and had raw

emotional power, the colder climates of

the north stripped language bare, distort-

ing it to the present rational form.

The comparison of language to music

is a befitting one. Can you honestly single

out a single note in music and claim it’s

more important than the rest? Can you

choose a single colour and remove the

palette? (Don’t bother answering—it’s

just a rhetorical question!)

To quote Otto Jespersen (1922), the

Danish linguist: “The genesis of language

is not to be sought in the prosaic, but in

the poetic side of life; the source of speech

is not gloomy seriousness, but merry

play and youthful hilarity...In primitive

speech, I hear the laughing cries of ex-

ultation when lads and lassies vied with

one another to attract the attention of

the other sex, when everybody sang his

merriest and danced his bravest to lure a

pair of eyes to throw admiring glances in

his direction. Language was born in t he

courting days of mankind.”

After all, who amongst us has not felt

both its warming glow and its cold icy

sting…its companionship and its aban-

donment…

Ho it maks s soar to th gratst

heights of paradise or how it flings us

into the deepest darkest recesses of hell.

Truth is, language has infinite power

and as long as there’s Adam and Eve (or

Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu

or Martian and Vnsian or yo and

Me), as long as there’s love in the world,

language will find a way to cast its spell…

just as it did, a long time ago, on a little

girl who lived in Bihar.

Chetan Bhagat notwithstanding.

Curse you, CB!

Mallika is a professor-cum-author, about to

complete her doctorate in marketing from IIT

Kharagpur. She is the author of three manage-

ment books which are prescribed textbooks in

universities across India. She has taught at in-

stitutes like IIT Kharagpur, and S. P. Jain Centre

of Management, Dubai. She is the author of the

crime novel I’m a Woman & I’m on SALE.

Every day I getcryptic messageswithout vowels. Myhead reels at thisbizarre boycott

Language has innite power and as long as there’s Romeo and Julietor Laila and Majnu or You and Me, as long as there’s love in the world,language will nd a way to cast its spell.

BOw-wOw…POOH-POOH…

DING-DONG…yO-He-HO…

LA-LA…Before you ask, letme set the record straight:

No, I have NOT lost my

mind (at least, not enough to land in an

asylum—not yet). Nor am I imitating

the two-year-old toddler that lives in my

neighborhood (although sometimes, I do

scream like him).

So, what’s this gibberish?

There is always a method to my

madness, which usually happens when

someone makes me really mad. And this

time, the man who managed to press

my buttons (and not in a ‘good’ way)

was none other than the beloved “mass”

author, Chetan Bhagat with his Half

Girlfriend , in which a girl who speaks im-

peccable English agrees to be only “half

girlfriend” to a boy from rural India who

struggles with the language.

I truly don’t know who’s more offend-

ed—the girl in me, the feminist in me, the

linguist in me or the Bihari in me!

Of course, this is not another review

of the book, which, to be completely hon-

est, I haven’t read—for the concept itself

managed to put off my multiple person-

alities—all at the same time.

Hovr, for I dlv into m

twisted reasons for writing this article

(and I solemnly swear to explain the bal-

derdash at the beginning of this article),

let me quote another IITian—this time

an eminent IIT professor (and a close

personal friend). During a session, he

categorically informed his students, “You

can never speak proper English. It’s not

your mother tongue.” And I simply sat

there, staring at him.

I promise to get to those funny-sound-

ing words in a moment—but for now,

bear with me—just a little longer, at least

for one last anecdote.

I once dialed the number of thisincredible hunk of a CEO and managed

to ask “for” him, in alss Hindi (in m

defence, I had not expected him to pick

p th phon). H as horrid: “Mal -

lika, what the hell is wrong with you?

Are you alright?” (The horror overpow-

ered the happiness that I should have

otherwise felt, realizing that he knew my

voice). Since then, whenever I want to

to ith him, I jst had into th Hindi

arsenal and bring out the big guns. And

although, he has managed to dial down

his horror, he’s yet to pack some heat…

which finally brings me to my reason for

writing this article and I can explain the

mumbo-jumbo.

Well, here goes nothing…

Bow-wow, pooh-pooh, ding-dong, yo-

he-ho, la-la are simply derision-dripping

‘cute’ names that the great Oxford

linguist Max Mueller used to denote t he

theories of the origin of language. That’s

right: language, like humans, have their

own evolution. They too follow the prin-

ciples of natural selection and they too

have seen the practice of artificial selec-

tion (aka selective breeding—please note,

the proper term for such hybrid languag-

es is ‘macaronic language’; for example,

Hinglish, britalian, chinglish, t).

And language, like us mere mortals,

has also known life and death.

Speaking of death, let’s head back to

th horrndos ot of Hindi horror. To

be completely honest, this Greek-God-

prsonid ceO’s onstrnation at Hindi

knocked the wind out of me (and stirred

up the hornet’s nest inside my head).

Since then, we’ve both been at it—

guns drawn, words loaded!

Although, I haven’t stopped pondering

the implication of his questions: Is there

something wrong with me if I choose tospak impal Hindi? If spaking good

English was a hallmark of good breeding,

hn did spaking good Hindi dgnr -

ate into a debilitating sickness?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in

the wind.

It would be wrong to say I didn’t see it

coming. I knew this war was imminent—

signs of it were strewn about the World

Wide Web and the telecom networks.

Every day I receive intelligence from my

assets who send me cryptic messages—

messages without vowels. Even now my

head reels at this bizarre boycott. And

while I call them Slow Sluggish Sloths,

th all m th Vstal Virgin for Vols.

(Alliterations are so much better than

altercations, are they not?)

The world that we live in is truly

strange. There were three children, who

lived in perfect harmony. But now, Eng-

lish is th onl lgitimat hild. Hindi

was abandoned in the dumpster long ago

and Hinglish no ars th rs of il -

legitimacy. The war bugle has sounded!

I know what you’re thinking—Chetan

Bhagat and countless others have been

cursing the English purebreds. It’s an

exclusive club, after all, with special

membership privileges.

Are they wrong?

Alas, no! English does open doors for

you that would otherwise have remained

closed. And the truth is that even those

who openly condemn it; secretly covet it.

But in the arena of impression

management, through the battle-cries of

image consultants, language has lost its

lustre. Image is everything and the joy

of simply learning a language has suc-

The Image Rises,The Word Falls

MALLIKA NAWAL

I D E A S




HIS RATIONALe is sound. And he has a way

ith ords — h orros from th poplar uS

TV srial th trm “californiation” to smma -

rise Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze’s description

of a liberalising India as “islands of California

in a sa of s-Saharan Afria”. Hindol Sn-

gupta’s Recasting Indiadepicts a country whosecitizens have perhaps made more sense of free-

dom in the last two decades than what its politi-

cians could muster. A member of the upwardly

mobile middle class would be tempted to own it

as his or her published title.

Beginning with Dwarakanath Tagore, Gu-

rudev Rabindranath’s grandfather who had in-

terests in coal, tea, jute, sugar refining, newspa-

pers and shipping, the author speaks of the rut

that Bengal politics, and hence economy, even-

tually fell into while not forgetting to mention

that this linguistic community was not found

effete when the situation demanded, first mod-

ernising a regressive society and then bomb-

ing its way into the history of India’s freedom

struggle.

But before the reader can accuse him of pa-

rochialism, Sengupta flashbacks to Bhimji

Parekh of 17th century Surat. Parekh’s parleys

with British trade representative Gerald Aungi-

r, hih srd a pla for Hind Gjarati

businessmen in Bombay makes the point that

entrepreneurship is not always merely about

managing to make profits but often about ex-

tracting assurances from the ruling class.

As the book hovers over Mukesh Ambani’s

Antilia, defiance of reasonable budgeting by

Suresh Kalmadi’s Commonwealth Games, and

A. Raja’s 2G spectrum bidders jumping the

queue, it turns into a compelling argument

explaining why the disparity between the rich

and the poor is not spinning into a civil war, all

anti-corruption movements of the recent past

notwithstanding. The poor of t he unorganised

sector, Sengupta argues with reason, are trying

with their limited capacities to climb the ladder

by making and selling whatever they can. This

“per capita hope”—which his father dismissed

as “per capita joke”—is keeping them from tak-

ing to th gn. For, an atmosphr of sinss

does not support violence. The author sees even

Maoist militancy in and around places buzzing

with economic activity as a fight for Anitilia

and not one against it; “We want to be up there,”

the faceless protagonists of the story seem to be

demanding.

In this roughhouse of course, scams likeSaradha happen, where old investors are paid

high interest from the money of the new until

th hain dris p. Hovr, thr is also th ilk

of Shriram Chits that does not promise strato-

spheric returns but does something useful for

trade: provide loans to truckers who would oth-

erwise have to endure months of processing

time if t hey were to apply to banks for the sum,

a delay the business can ill afford.

But Recasting India is no starry-eyed account

based on anecdotes from the country’s metros.

Hiar bazar, six hors’ driv from Mmai,

for example, has its own nonfiction to narrate.

Juxtaposed with the Shiv Sena and Maharash-

tra Navnirman Sena’s protests against the toll

one has to pay while driving on the expressway

between the state’s capital city and Pune is the

calm intelligence of doing business in the back-

waters.

The environs described in this chapter re-

frshd m mmor of Himmatnagar in G-

jarat which I visited just about a year ago:

Pothole-free roads, clean water, round-the-clock

electric supply, well-built and maintained hous-

es and, most importantly, people making money

and the poor turning middle class. And this

capitalism comes with a good measure of social

tolerance; there is just one Muslim family in the

villag, t Hinds hav ilt a mosq to fa -

cilitate that family’s prayers.

Sengupta’s challenge to the inertia-ridden so-

cialist political heads and dyed-in-the-wool dem-

agogs is formidal. His ook is no armhair

commentary. Born in 1979, the author himself

exemplifies a change a relatively liberal India

has brought forth that the book does not delve

into: the emergence of a breed of right-of-centre

ideologues equipped as impressively as commu-

nist activists in universities with statistics hard

to den y.

Why Bharat won’trevolt against IndiaSengupta’s challenge to the inertia-ridden socialist political heads and dyed-in-the-wool

demagogues is formidable. And his book is no armchair commentary.

RECASTING INDIA: HOW

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

IS REVOLUTIONIZING

THE WORLD’S LARGEST

DEMOCRACY

Hindol Sengupta

Pan Macmillan India

239 pages

Rs 499

SURAJIT DASGUPTA

THeRe wAS A time, around a few thousand

years ago, that God would talk to us.

A lot. Somtims H old sa somthing

from hind a rning sh. Somtims H

old appar in a dram. Somtims H old

give us his words in the field of battle and some-

tims H old jst snd his son don to earth.Then, for some reason, God became silent,

round about the time Man started this whole

“science” thing.

Now once again, after Many Years, he has

spoken, this time through a new prophet.

Not surprisingly, the chosen one happens to

be a Bengali by the name of Boria Majumdar.

I apologize for the blasphemy I am going to

commit right now. But I have to say it. Prophet

Boria’s prose is, for the want of a less obvious

ord, oring. Not to sll th prit of His

ords, t on ishs that H had hosn a

more accomplished spinner of sentences, some-

one like Rahul Bhattacharya for instance, who

would have been less liberal with passages that

sound like paraphrasing of scorecards.

But perhaps I am wrong. God knows best.

Perhaps only Mr Boria would have been able

to capture the voice of God without superim-

posing his own. Perhaps each exclamation point

was an “Ailaaa”, and God does indeed remem-

ber how many balls he faced and how many

runs he scored of matches played decades ago.

Perhaps.

Because, truth be told, Playing It My Way is

authentically Sachin. (Note: I shall from now

use the word “Sachin” interchangeably with

God).

There is deference to higher authority, name-

l th bccI, for vn Sahin has His Gods.

There is predictable silence on the conten-

tios stff. Th Frrari. Vinod Kamli’s ot-

burst. The match-fixing that was taking place

all around him.

Needless to say, there is much carping on

the interwebs for his silence on the latter. The

problem in being God is that the infidels always

carp. If he had said something about fixing,

then the retort would have been: “Why did he

ait till his atoiog raph to sa this? H is jst

creating controversy to sell his book.” Now that

he has not, they are still pitchforking him.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

S, that’s th Prolm. whatvr H dos,

God can’t win.

And that’s often been the greatest criticism

of Sahin, that H dos not mak India in,somthing H lts go otsid th off-stmp.

There is some controversy of course, but

vn hr, Sahin has gon for Hnr Olonga-

like easy targets. Greg Chappell is the big bad

wolf, as are Adam Gilchrist, Ian Chappell, as-

sorted Australians and that English match-ref-

eree who denied God.

Well, I take that back. There is one rather dra-

matic beef wi th another God, a kind of Zeus vs

Hads, that is nvr qit as front-and-ntr

as the lightning strikes on Greg Chappell, but

simmers and smokes throughout. I shall not

“declare” the details here, because that would

be a genuine spoiler, but suffice to say there is

material for massive crusades on Twitter, some

of which I see has already begun.

bt thn hn has a Hol book not n on-

tentious?

Playing It My Way works (mostly) because

it is this voice of Sachin that comes out strong

and clear, despite the exclamation marks, the

stilted prose and the unimaginative retelling of

that-which-everyone-knows. There are remark-

able insights into batting techniques. Though

absolutely non-controversial, unlike a certain

Sunil Gavaskar revelation in One Day Wonders,

there are many personal anecdotes—of how

he wooed Anjali, of his son resenting his pro-

longed absences, of self-doubt, anxiety, loss and

fear. Even his broadsides against those who he

feels have hurt him just goes to show that even

God, with all the adulation and worship, can

never forget a slight. And then finally there is

my favourite, where he impulsively lets himself

gets stumped after being beaten by a bowler

who is hearing-impaired, even though the keep-

er flubs the chance the first time.

It’s these that make Playing It My Way worth

a read. You know, the places where God appears

a bit...human.

The Voice of God—And His Silences

B O O K S

SRT’s autobiography works (mostly) because Sachin’s voice comes out strong and clear,

despite stilted prose and an unimaginative retelling of that-which-everyone-knows.

PLAYING IT MY WAY

Sachin Tendulkar

with Boria Majumdar

Hachette India

497 pages

Rs 800

ARNAB RAY




This piece was written by Atulananda Chakravarti for the 2nd April 1960 issue of Swarajya.

W

Hy DO PeOPLe follow

me?” asked Prime

Minister Nehru of

the press sometime

ago. H ansrd his

own question. “It is,” he said, “becauseof my dedication to them, because of my

patriotism”. The world came to read all

this next morning with amusement and a

shot of pain at the same time. They were

amused by the stagey, theatrical tone of

it; and the pain they felt was due to the

Prime Minister trying to come out of a

muddled self-appraisal.

H is not alon in ddiation and

patriotism. There were and probably are

thousands who can boast of the same.

Where are they? Some have probably suf-

fered and sacrificed much more, vastly

more than he has. Do the people know

them even? The answer he gave was not

the right answer. The right answer is

that people are still searching for the

fierce idealist, the uncompromising

leader, in the faded shadow that is Prime

Minister Nehru.

At home he wanted to unify India, but

the agents he employed have substituted

ntralization instad. H initiatd th

Plans to make the people prosperous,

economically and socially. The Plans

have only let loose rackets of all kinds

and degrees. While his apparently loyal

followers are seeking to industrialize

India, they batten on the economy and

impoverish it, letting the essentials go

neglected.

The trouble began as Nehru took

to a new role not his own. Gandhi had

appointed him as his heir. A person be-

queaths to another only what belongs to

him. In the same way, an heir can be said

to have inherited just that office which

his predecessor used to hold.

What was the office that Gandhi held?

His as onl th nofial of of t h

leader of the Congress, of the Opposition;

institutionally it was Congress, spiritu-

ally, it was Opposition. And remember,

Gandhi’s announcement of successor-

ship was made at a time when Prime

Minister-ship was not envisaged at all.

H old not hav possil hosn

Nehru as Prime Minister. And it would

be a queer piece of logic to say that

Nehru is Prime Minister by right of suc-

ssion to Gandhi’s Of. H am

Prime Minister by virtue of being the

leader of the Congress Party—but then it

was a Congress from which Gandhi had

just gone out and which he was thinking

of remaking after his own ideal in the

light of the new necessities created by

the Independence in which he could not

participate.

And since Nehru went over to the gov-

ernment it was left to the old man—the

Master as he was called—to work as the

symbol of popular opposition to the gov-

ernment run by Nehru, and added that if

the king would do a wrong he would say

so and stand up against it.

Since then, Nehru had been giving

his best to the country as the spokesmanof the left wing of the Congress. Great,

though unperceived, tragedy followed

the sudden change of Nehru’s habitual

faculty, his radical amendment of his

own mental constitution. It is seen only

today in its naked horror when the only

effective voice of opposition—Gandhi’s

voice—has been silenced by destiny.

The result has been pathetic. No omis-

sion, no commission, no corruption of

the government can now be corrected by

the force of fearless opposition; for that

force, furthered by Gandhi, was Nehru’s;

but he is the government, and as Prime

Minister, its invariable defender. The

self-contradictions of a great man whom

Nature made an opposition leader and

history turned into a Prime Minister are

bound to have fatal consequences.

These are reflected in the chronic con-

flicts within his party as well as within

his government. Nehru goes much faster

than it is possible for his men to catch up.

His idas rsh pon him mor impt -

ously than he can himself handle them.

Before one innovation is absorbed in the

system he embarks on another. All this is

a fitful attempt to fit oneself into a situa-

tion for which one is an intrinsic misfit.

A professional politician may easily

adapt himself from opposition to the rul-

ing position, but one who derives energy

from inspiration cannot so easily change

his place, for inspiration is not an outer

garment that can be cast off at will. It

is the tragedy of a political philosopher

playing the role of a political technician.

(For the full version of this text, visit

www.swarajyamag.com)

Nehru: PhilosopherTurned Technician

A R C H I V E S

FROM SWARAJYA’S 40,000 PAGESOF ARCHIVES SINCE 1956.

swarajya pre launch issue

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