KANGANA IN MANDI ; RUNOUT IN HIMACHAL ?

   Seismologists have been predicting an earthquake in the Hindukush Himalayas for quite some time now, and it happened earlier this week. Ms Kangana Ranaut, eminent historian and chronicler of India's independence, has been given the ticket by BJP to contest the Mandi Lok Sabha seat in Himachal. This will cause quite a few fault lines and post-quake tremblors in the coming days. The sitting MP from here is  another lady, Rani Pratibha Singh, widow of the late six- time Chief Minister, Virbhadra Singh. She, being better informed than the Chief Minister and his Intelligence sleuths, had read the writing on the wall and had announced last week that she would not be contesting. This election, therefore, promises to be a dame-changer.

  We in Himachal. who keep our ears close to the ground to detect tectonic shifts and tremors in the Himalayas, had been expecting this for some time. Ms Ranaut, of course, had in 2021 denied this eventuality, saying Himachal was not "complex" enough for her special talents and therefore lacked challenges: there was no poverty there, and no crime either- both essential prerequisites for winning elections in India. Presumably, the state is now complex, poor and crime ridden enough and its apples ripe for the plucking, what with electoral bonds having introduced it to defections, cross-voting, resort politics and retaliatory disqualifications, all sine- qua- nons of our own version of democracy. And so, in a departure from the Biblical fable, the apple has been offered to Eve, and boy! has she jumped at it!

  Make no mistake- Ms Ranaut would be a formidable candidate. She has proved time and again that she is the only man in Bollywood, she has strong opinions and expresses them in even stronger language, she does not let history, logic, common sense or the truth stand in her imperious way. This is one Ranaut who will be difficult to run out; it will take a hit-wicket to send her back to her Pali Hill house in Mumbai. She needs nothing more than her oomph to win, she is her own man-ifesto. She already has a head start in the race: 50% of Himachal's oxygen starved voters- the men- are already in her Gucci bag: any testosterone deprived male who has the temerity to vote against her will be strung up by the nearest lamp-post, or, since Mandi has no lamp-posts, the nearest deodar tree. As for the remaining 50% females and hussifs, opposing her will be a dicey proposition for them too- their husbands are not likely to be amused, and triple talaqs and quadruple dirty looks would be in order.

  The voter does not yet know what the Rani of Jhansa stands for, other than her theory that India owes its independence to Mr. Modi, not to Nehru, Patel, Mahatma Gandhi et al; never mind that Mr. Modi was not even born when that event happened. On the larger canvas of history, what are a couple of years here and there. after all? We shall, no doubt, learn more history during the course of her campaigning. Which is another cause of concern for me. You see, her constituency includes the high mountains of Mandi, Manali and Lahaul-Spiti, with their glaciers and snow-fields already subject to climate change and warming. My worry is that Ms Ranaut's oomph, in such close proximity to them, might hasten their melting. I am thinking of writing a letter to the Election Commission, asking that she be directed to stay at least 5 kms from any glacier or ice field, in the interest of preserving the ecology of the state. Especially as its rationality will go for a six the moment the lady files her nomination. 

  I whole-heartedly welcome the glamour and straight-talking her entry brings to politics in Himachal, which had become a staid, boring contestation between green caps and maroon ones; it will never be the same again, thank God! But I deplore and roundly condemn the trolling Ms Ranaut has been subjected to: why is it, I wonder, that attractive, outspoken, independent women bring out the worst in the Indian male? I suspect that, patriarchal ignoranuses that we are, we feel threatened by such ladies. The only cure for such troglodytes is to have more women in politics and public life. Not, mind you, that Ms Ranaut herself is blameless in such matters, or that she has not disrespected women publicly: we still recollect her describing Urmila Matondkar as a "soft porn star", and saying that the anti-CAA protesting women at Shahin Bagh had been purchased for Rs. 100 each. Her language can match that of any meat seller in the Murgi Mandi in East Delhi, she is no respecter of women (or anyone for that matter), and needs to do a Betadine gargle before she speaks. But none of that justifies social media abuse of a woman, period.

  That being said, this is also a moment of reckoning for me personally- how can I continue to rail against the BJP if the Manikarnika lady waltzes into my cottage and asks for my support with that Barbie-girl pahari accent, that wide-eyed, limpid look piercing one's heart like an AK47 bullet and lobotomising the frontal lobe of the brain instantaneously? A mouse fixed by the stare of a cobra would have more freedom of action than I would in such circumstances. A man, folks, has to be a man when the chips are down, even though he may be knocking on Mr. Parkinson's door or Mr. Alzheimer's study. Methinks I'll take myself off to Mr. J.P. Nadda's office for some badly needed advice- I'm told it's now pro-bono and does not need the prior purchase of any electoral bonds.

G.N.SAIBABA AND THE BIG HOLE IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM- THE NEED FOR REPARATIONS

 

         LAW NEEDED TO COMPENSATE VICTIMS OF WRONGFUL ARRESTS.

 

Earlier this month the Delhi University Professor, G.N Saibaba, who suffers from a 90% disability, was acquitted by the High Court of charges under the UAPA. He had been in detention for more than nine years, during which time his already fragile health has deteriorated and he has been terminated from his job. The Supreme Court has rightly refused to stay his exoneration and release. Some years ago Dr. Kafeel Khan, of the Gorakhpur hospital tragedy fame who tried to save infant lives by buying oxygen cylinders out of his own pocket and was jailed by the UP govt. for it, had been freed by the Allahabad High Court which found no evidence against him. He was kept in various prisons for eight months without legal justification. Dr. Khan, however, was one of the lucky ones.

This govt. has been in an overdrive these last ten years to lock up anyone who can think independently of its propaganda machinery, or express himself in opposition to its anchors and spokespersons- academists, activists, the rare journalist, students, NGOs. One of its main instruments in this pogrom is the deadly legacy bequeathed it by the Congress, the UAPA ( Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) now suitably amended by the BJP to fit its image. NCRB data shows that 5023 cases had been registered under UAPA between 2018 and 2022, and 701 under sedition sections. During the period 2014-2020, 10522 persons were arrested. Tellingly, however, according to information furnished by the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Rajya Sabha in 2021, the conviction rate of arrested persons under this Act is less than 3%! In other words, 97 out of 100 arrested persons are ultimately acquitted. And this is only at the trial court stage; after the appeals process the convicted figure would come down even further. And this exposes the government’s game: the idea is not to convict since the charges are usually trumped up and without any evidence, the intention is to harass, teach “them” a lesson, intimidate and take them out of circulation for as long as possible. The govt. has nothing to fear if its cases fail in court, for there is no accountability and no penalties.                                                                                                        But in the process tens of thousands of innocent persons have been locked up for months and years without reason. Anjum Zamarud Habib was in prison for 5 years,  Mohammad Amir Khan for 14 years, the Akshardham temple blast accused for much longer before being exonerated of terrorism charges. That is why Kafeel Khan was lucky, and why this is as good an inflection point as any to consider the endemic problem of malicious prosecution and wrongful arrests in this country, and whether or not the state should provide reparation to these victims of deliberate state excesses.                                                                                                                                  The guarantee that no citizen shall be deprived of his personal liberty without reasonable evidence against him is the bedrock of human rights, and the corner stone of an equitable system of justice.  As the criminal justice system heads towards total collapse and the govt. compensates by legislating more and more draconian laws stipulating arrests without any inquiry and/ or no provision of bail, such detentions shall surely increase. It is time to address the issue rationally.

     Citizens in India are being confined illegally on a colossal scale, either in police lock-ups or in judicial custody. Our prison population is in excess of five lakhs, of which 70% are undertrials who have not yet been convicted of any offence. The majority of them are not likely to be convicted either. According to NCRB data again the national conviction rate for IPC offences is just 45%; in other words, of the 3.50 lakh undertrials in jail 55% or 2..45 lakhs will be found innocent for want of evidence ! A further 25% of them will get off on appeal. But they would have spent years behind bars, deprived of their liberty and natural rights, their future blighted by the stigma of imprisonment, unemployment and broken families. Why were they arrested in the first place ? Why did the courts send them to judicial custody if there was no prima facie evidence against them ?

    The answer is nothing short of an indictment of our criminal justice system: callous apathy, venality and incompetence of the police, failure and lack of due diligence on the part of our lower courts , and complete indifference of the policy makers. To begin with, many of our laws themselves are defective to the point of being blood thirsty- laws relating to dowry deaths,  suicide, rape, domestic violence, atrocities on scheduled castes, sedition, terrorism are so crafted that the " accused" can be arrested straightaway without the need for any corroborating evidence. This is grist to the police mill which in any case is more interested in " closing" a case by arresting someone than in ensuring that actual justice is done by catching the real culprits . Quite often public/ political/ media pressure is so intense that an arrest-any arrest- is the only way to get them off their backs. Thereafter shoddy investigation, external influences, lengthy trial delays, witness intimidation, frequent transfers and lack of any accountability ensure that at least 55 of 100 cases will inevitably end in acquittal, either at the trial stage itself or in appeal(s). Meanwhile, of course, those arrested will languish in jail.

    The same bizarre process applies to convictions after trial. In the Akshardham Temple blast case of 2002, six accused were convicted by the trial court and High Court: three were sentenced to death and three others to imprisonment ranging from 10 years to life. All six were acquitted by the Supreme Court on 16th May 2014 . But by then their lives had been destroyed as they had spent the intervening ten years in jail. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases playing out every year. It boggles the mind how two judges, on the same set of facts and evidence, can come to such polar opposite decisions- life sentence by one, and acquittal by the other. The other question is: should the nation not compensate them for the miscarriage of justice, at least financially, even though no reparation could possibly bring back the years lost, the reputations tarnished, the families torn apart?

   There are many types of wrongful confinement: False Arrest (detaining a person without lawful authority), Wrongful Arrest (taking someone into custody without prima facie evidence), Wrongful Imprisonment (confining someone without just cause or without using legal channels), and Wrongful Conviction (imprisoning someone on grounds/ evidence subsequently found to be inadequate). The first three are blatant violations and transgressions of the law; only the last type is a consequence of a (defective) legal process, but it is nonetheless no solace to the victim. All four are rampant in India.

   The  really genuine and accountable democracies have accepted that victims of a necessarily imperfect criminal justice system are entitled to reparation from the state, and have devised mechanisms for it. In the USA 29 states have legislated Wrongful Conviction Compensation statutes which provide compensation ranging from US$ 50,000 to US$100,000 for every year of wrongful imprisonment. A typical case is that of one Marty Tankleff who was wrongly convicted for the murder of his parents and had to spend 17 years in incarceration before he was acquitted in 2007. He was awarded compensation of US$ 3.4 million dollars . In the UK , Canada, New Zealand, Germany too systems exist for the state to be sued in such cases. It is next to impossible to do so in India because both, specific legislation or a general law,  are missing. We have failed to enact a law on reparations even though India is a signatory to the International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights.

The framework for having such a law exists, however. Articles 32 and 26 of the Constitution allow the Supreme Court and the High Courts, respectively, to pass orders and provide relief in such matters, and it is the constitutional right of a citizen to approach the courts. There is also a wealth of jurisprudence and case law to mandate that the state pay compensation for wrongful confinement. The relevant landmark judgments by the Supreme Court are in Bhim Singh vs State of Jammu and Kashmir, and in Rudul Sah vs State of Bihar ( 1983); in the latter case the SC laid down the legal responsibility of the State in no uncertain terms:

“ The State must repair the damage done by its officers to the petitioner’s rights. It may have recourse against its officers.”

Over the years both the Supreme Court and various High Courts( MP, Jharkhand, Kerala, Bihar, Assam, Madras) have also awarded compensation to petitioners in their writ jurisdiction, the most notable and recent one being the Rs. 13 million reparation paid to the ISRO scientist Nambi Narayan by the Kerala govt. for arresting and hounding him for 26 years on false spying charges.

But this sporadic, discretionary, pick and choose approach is certainly not adequate. Let us not forget that most of the undertrials and victims of police high handedness and judicial apathy come from the weakest sections of society (economically and socially) and do not have the resources to file writ petitions and engage expensive lawyers. Nor do they have the social eminence of a Nambi Narayan to motivate the media to take up their case. There should be a simple, specific legislation that can be accessed at the level of a district court or even a statutory authority like the District Magistrate. The law should, among other aspects, lay down the compensation to be paid for both pecuniary and non pecuniary damage caused to the petitioner by his illegal confinement, and the scale of reparation should be based on that. There should also be a provision for recovery of the amount from the salaries of the officials involved. This is necessary to curb the growing enthusiasm of the police to carry out any illegal order of their political bosses, or even to indulge their own brutish instincts. 

  The standard argument of governments has been that the state cannot afford the financial burden. Yes, there would be a cost ; a back of the envelope calculation shows that if even 50% of undertrials are ultimately released and compensated by Rs. 50000 for every year of wrongful incarceration, and assuming that (a) each of them has to be given compensation for five years and (b) that one fifth of the undertrials would be released/need to be compensated each year, the annual payout would be Rs 1250 crores. To put that in perspective, that is just 15% of what the Prime Minister's special planes cost,  or 30% of what the Statue of Unity cost the exchequer, or less than 25% of what the PM spent on his publicity last year. Surely a vaunted five trillion dollar economy can bear this cost of destroying hundreds of lives? 

  And this figure shall come down drastically over time once the positive spin-offs of this reparatory policy kick in. These will include:

* Better investigation of cases and collection of evidence, leading to fewer unwarranted arrests and reduction in the number of undertrials over time. 

* Fewer adjournments in courts, with more accused being released on bail.

* With financial accountability now being fixed, the police shall be more circumspect in detaining people and in framing them to manufacture "results".

* The govts, both states and central, will be more careful and discerning in filing appeals against acquittals (an invariable practice currently) since now there may be a further cost attached if the appeals are not successful.

* The case load in the courts at all levels shall come down, making the whole justice system more efficient, even generating financial savings in the administration of justice ecology. 

   Wrongful confinement of any type by any agency of the state is a violation of human rights, and when it occurs on the scale that it does in our country it amounts to a negation of an equitable justice system. The prevailing concept of "arrest first, gather evidence later" is abhorrent to the spirit of jurisprudence. One can understand the indifference of the government and the parliamentarians, but what is inexplicable is the silence of the judiciary and the bar. Is it because the former is equally guilty through its casual approach, and the latter because this infringement of fundamental rights is good for business? Whatever the reason may be, it is high time laws are put in place to compensate the victims of wrongful arrests/ convictions and to punish the perpetrators. At the least, this would have a salutary effect on the way our police conduct investigations and the judges examine evidence. The people have voluntarily given the state enormous power over their lives in order to live in a just and lawful society; when the state errs in the exercise of this power it must offer reparation to its victims. Not doing so would be breaking a covenant that is the bedrock of a democracy.

 

 

 

DINOSAURS IN THE CORRIDORS OF POWER.

 

  Now that Woman's Day has been commemorated suitably - by Ms Ambani coiling the GDP of Pakistan around her shapely neck at Jamnagar, and the Didi from West Bengal staging another march to honour the rape victims of Sandeshkhali instead of promptly arresting the rapists, and our Prime Minister gifting housewives a one hundred rupee cut in LPG prices after raising them by five hundred rupees, and Ms Hema Malini being given another ticket for the Lok Sabha elections in recognition of her outstanding record in Parliament - perhaps we can now get back to the real business of showing women who's the boss in the land of the Manusmriti. Just in case they haven't got the message yet even after the thrashing of Olympic women champions near Parliament, or the chicanery of using the census to deny women reservations in Parliament, or persisting with legalised rape by refusing to recognise marital rape as a crime or removing the abhorrent provision of "restoration of conjugal rights". For, tokenism is what our governments and society are best at, and in the matter of treating women as equals in India, the more things change, the more they remain the same. 

  Madhu Bhaduri, retired diplomat and writer, in her book LIVED STORIES, makes a startling disclosure of a fact which perhaps most people are/ were not aware of (I certainly wasn't even after 35 years in government service and 13 more years in the pasture). It appears that till the late 1970s women officers in the IFS needed prior permission to marry, and that even then they risked losing their promotions and even their jobs as their "domestic commitments is likely to come in the way of the efficient discharge of duties." No such stigma was attached to their male colleagues. This was not just gender bias, this was outright gender contempt. The matter was fortunately laid to rest by Justice Krishna Iyer in the early 80s on a petition by the IFS's first lady officer. The judge struck down the offending Rule 8(2) of the IFS (Conduct and Discipline) Rules 1961 as being violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. 

  That was almost 50 years ago, and much water, muck and money has flowed down the Yamuna since then. Actually, the water and money has, but much of the muck is still stuck in New Delhi's testosterone-filled corridors of power, at least where gender discrimination is concerned. One such odorous piece surfaced just last month.

  NDTV/ Business Standard/ Hindu have reported on the mystifying issue of a notification by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to the effect that if a married woman wishes to revert to her maiden name she will have to either produce a decree of divorce or furnish an NOC from her husband! Apart from undoing decades of gender affirmative action by the courts, this order also establishes that dinosaurs are still alive and thriving, thank you, in South and North Block. For what it does is reinforce the hoary tradition of women being chattel, the property of the husband, without an independent identity or any freedom of action to make her own decisions.

  The order has been challenged, of course, in the Delhi High Court and will no doubt be quashed (with the concerned Secretary being sent for a mandatory course on gender equality, hopefully) but it does remind me of the occasion in 2007 when I applied for a second LPG connection for my newly constructed cottage in Mashobra. I was informed by the company that, since I already had a connection in my name in Shimla, I was not entitled for a second one. But since I was one of the four pillars of the government then (one Chief Secretary and three Addl. Chief Secretaries, of which I was one), an exception could be made in my case: a second connection could be issued in my wife's maiden (not married!) name, provided she submitted an affidavit stating that she was divorcing me! Neerja and I did a quick cost-benefit analysis and decided that, though the idea had occurred to her independent of the LPG connection, it was now too much of a hassle to revert to her maiden name and start looking for her ex-beaus. So we stayed married, but it was a close call, folks. (I did finally secure that second connection, but claim the Fifth Amendment to refuse to disclose how).

THE GANGS OF FATEHPUR

 

THE GANGS OF FATEHPUR.

   Ensconced in my tiny village near Mashobra in the Shimla hills in the summers, I feel like Raja Hari Singh Katoch of Kangra when he was besieged in the Kangra fort by Jahangir in 1620.  Worse, actually, because the stalwart Raja had to put up with the inconvenience for only fourteen months whereas I have had to endure it every year for the last 14 years. And it's not the Mughal army I have to contend with but the Khan Market and Lutyen's gangs of Delhi.

   Come April every year and members of these gangs, in their tens of thousands, clamber up the mountain landscape and take over our roads, markets, forests and every bed in every homestead. Like locusts they devour everything and leave behind in their wake tonnes of plastic, bottles, empty packets of chips, cigarettes and condoms. Like Jahangir, they lay claim to our lawns, apple trees and parking places; the women have been spared so far, but that's only because we hide them with the cattle. We huddle in our houses, waiting for the pestilence- called tourists in modern parlance- to pass.

   I have given the origins of this annual invasion a lot of thought, and have come to the conclusion that it occurs primarily because we no longer visit our grandparents, and instead prefer to go on vacation to the hills! Think about it. The internet, competitive consumerism and the breakdown of familial relationships drive us to constantly seek " new experiences" and new vistas. If the Junejas can do it, we reason, so can we. Even if it means being stuck for eight hours on the Rohtang pass, being ripped off by taxi drivers in Dharamshala or abused by the pony wallahs in Kufri. It was different when we were growing up in the fifties and sixties.

  My grandfather, a patriarch no one messed with, stayed in a village of Fatehpur district in UP called Husainganj (unless the good Yogi has now changed its name). He had built himself a huge haveli there from the proceeds of his book shops in Calcutta, and inscribed one golden rule in its stones: all his children and 17 grandkids had to visit him every summer: he even paid for the rail tickets. So I never even saw a mountain( or sea, or desert) till I was 25: the only mountain I had seen was the stupendous landfill in Ghazipur, which, like the Himalayas continues to grow each year. Every summer vacation my Dad would pack the family into a second class coach of the Kalka mail at Calcutta (or Hazaribagh or Asansol or wherever he happened to be posted at the time) for the 24 hour journey to Fatehpur- annual migrations one looks back on with fond nostalgia mixed with a regret that my own sons (part of the KM gang) have never seen this facet of the Old India. For today train travel is all about getting to the destination as quickly as possible, it's never about the pleasures of the journey itself. I recently travelled by Shatabdi to Kanpur and found that of the 62 passengers, 60 of them had buried their persona and noses into their smart phones. The 61st was a seven eight year old kid (who should have been smothered at birth) who was sliding the door open and shut, letting in the flies and letting out the cold air. I was the 62nd, observing it all and weeping like Alexander the Great for I had now seen it all.

   For us the journey was itself a delight. There were no AC coaches or electric traction back then. We would stick our heads out of the open windows, breathing in the soot and smoke from the massive Bullet engines, jump out at every station to buy comics from the AH Wheeler stalls (where have they all disappeared?), grab the local station food from the vendors- "jhalmoori" at Asansol, aloo tikkis at Dhanbad, samosas at Mughalsarai, puri-aloo at Benaras, the delicious pedas at Allahabad. All extremely unhygienic, swarming with e-colis no doubt, but Michelin star stuff which built up the immunity which in later years has enabled us to tackle the tasteless swill IRCTC serves on trains nowadays. But the "piece de resistance" for which we all used to wait, came at Fatehpur, which arrived at the opportune time for breakfast and where we deboarded with great excitement. Its generally deserted restaurant served the best buttered toast and omelette on the Grand Trunk line, on round tables covered with spotless linen and cutlery.  (The only railway restaurant that comes even close to its ambience and service is the Barog station on the Kalka- Shimla line). We left the restaurant only when they ran out of eggs, for the next two weeks in Husainganj were to be a vegetarian existence, without even onions and garlic.

   There was only a dirt track between Fatehpur and Husainganj, a distance of about ten kms; there were no buses, only the occasional horse carriage on a sharing basis. But my grandfather had the biggest haveli in the village and there was no way his grand brats would travel in a "tonga"; for us he sent his personal bullock cart, drawn by two of his finest oxen: a magnificent, snow white pair standing almost five feet high at the shoulders, bedecked with colourful ribbons and tinkling bells, their regal horns sheathed in copper. The bullock cart itself was a caparisoned wonder, with sun shades, carpeted with Mirzapuri rugs and stocked with sugarcane stalks, peanuts and nimboo-pani.  We flew down the dirt track like Ben-Hur in the last lap of his famous race , giving the term " cattle class" an entirely new meaning. It set the tone for the next month, a controlled chaos of joint family living, over which my grandfather proudly presided: a patriarch who held his large family together with stern dictats, superb logistic skills and well placed inducements.

   He is gone now, of course, and so is the world we grew up in: the haveli is in ruins, the bullock cart is now a symbol of penury, not of status, the omelette is now a leathery strip served with sarkari reluctance, the station food vendors replaced by catering franchisees hawking packaged rubbish, most trains do not even stop at Fatehpur. Why should they? Nobody goes there for everyone is now headed for the mountains, the seaside resorts or the casinos of Goa. In this world of OYO rooms, Make My Trip.com, Airbnb and cashbacks, visiting grandfathers is such a waste of time. But I do wish the millennial generation would start visiting the old critters again: it would make them happy, it would lift my siege and might even save the mountains from further depredation. I speak, of course, as a grandfather-in-waiting.

DISAPPEARING DEMOCRACY-- DISMANTLING OF A NATION

                                          

                            

This is my latest book, published by Author's Upfront/ Paranjoy on 24th Feb.2024. Available on AMAZON, in paperback and Kindle versions. An international edition is also available.

DISAPPEARING DEMOCRACY is, in a way, a continuation of my earlier book, THE WASTED YEARS (published in 2021), and takes off from where the latter had ended. It covers the period from June 2021 to November 2023, and is a collection of my articles, blogs and opinion pieces on various subjects of current interest.

The pieces in this book are my take on political, legal, economic and societal issues engaging the attention of the nation at the time. I write, not as a domain expert or as an investigative journalist, but as an averagely well informed (I hope!) citizen alarmed at the cataclysmic changes that have been taking place to the country's painstakingly carved structure, something we all had taken for granted but now find is all too fragile. To quote Lord Byron from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: 

"A thousand years scarce serve to form a state,                                                                                              An hour may lay it in the dust."

It is that hour I speak about.

Our nation state is being dismantled before our eyes, its nuts and bolts being taken apart-the judiciary, civil services, constitutional bodies, media, NGOs, armed forces, even our history and culture- to serve the interests of an exclusionary ideology. What is perhaps most disturbing, however, is the dismantling of our once tolerant, proudly diverse and joyously inclusive society. It has now become dangerously brutalised, indifferent to wrongs and excesses, it has lost its voice and conscience. All other components of a state can be repaired and fixed when an enlightened leadership replaces an old one, but there is no anti-venom for a poisoned society. It can only perish, taking with it thousands of years of civilisation. If there is one lesson that history teaches us, it is this.

This book is an attempt to record these developments, in real time and not in hindsight: the date of each of the 47 chapters in the book is indicated to provide it context for a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding it. But if there is one paramount message I wish to convey, it is that the future of a nation is too important to be left to politicians, bureaucrats, so-called experts, Big Capital and the media. The ordinary citizen- you and I- have to get involved and to take centre-stage and speak out. For when public conscience and opinion die, so does democracy.

  

THE NAME OF THE GAME

   Even as I write this piece, a lion-lioness pair in a national park in Tripura is going through a severe identity crisis: named Akbar and Sita respectively, they have now to be given new names as per an order of the state High Court. Apparently, a VHP outfit had objected to the names, though it is not clear whether their refined sensibilities had been offended by the naming of an animal after a goddess, or whether it was the pairing with a Mughal name which made them see red (or saffron, in this case). We also do not know whether they disapproved of the inter-faith relationship or the live-in arrangements. Taking no chances, however, the High Court has directed that they be renamed and that animals should not be named after prominent people or deities. The Chief Wildlife Warden of Tripura is now facing a crisis of his own-an existential one this time-for he has been suspended, presumably for setting too much store by Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name..."

  When I was growing up (in prehistoric times, I must admit, given my advancing years) naming a person or place was great fun, a family occasion, like an "antakshree" game, where the biological parents had little say. The final word was usually that of the family pundit or presiding matriarch- what they suggested was generally accepted by everyone, and all concerned thereafter repaired happily to the nearest "theka" to celebrate. Notwithstanding this casual-and usually politically incorrect by today's Woke standards-approach, however, the conferred name left nothing to the imagination and was a perfect description. In my ancestral village, if a guy had a limp he was named Langru, if he was one-eyed he was naturally called Kana, the younger brother was invariably Chotu, a sharp and intelligent child had to be Chakku, the youngest kid in the family could be no other than Nanhe, a cute little girl was always named Gudiya. See what I mean?-No probing questions were needed when you met the guy or gal for the first time, no Google search was necessary, the name was the bio-data. 

  It was the same with place names, which got their moniker from the person who founded it, or from the local deity or religious structure, or some natural feature, or a local tradition, or some historical titbit. For example, my present village in Himachal is called Purani Koti, which means Old Koti. It used to be, in pre-independence days, an unknown hamlet of a couple of houses and part of the Koti kingdom. That kingdom is long gone now, but there are plenty of other Kotis scattered all over the place, which have no connection with the erstwhile kingdom. So, in order to retain its historical roots and show the parvenus their place, the natives decided to name this hamlet as Purani Koti. No fuss, no controversy, history respected, and the world has moved on.

  No more, in Naya Bharat. The name has now been weaponised in support of a particular ideology: towns and cities are now being renamed faster than Mr. Modi changes his clothes. Of course, after Independence states, districts and towns have been frequently renamed- more than 100 cities have been renamed, 10 in the last five years alone. But whereas earlier the renaming was generally in the nature of phonetic transliteration (to align with local, indigenous pronunciation, i.e from Calcutta to Kolkatta, or from Simla to Shimla), or to replace the Romanized spelling with Indian English (eg. Jubblepore to Jabalpur, or Cawnpore to Kanpur), today this process has acquired a hyper nationalistic, Hindutva driven character. More often than not it is places with Muslim names which are being targeted, an exercise of revenge against past atrocities, real and imagined, the rewriting and redaction of history. The concerned governments are not bothered about the loss of cultural authenticity or the erasure of history this entails, for place names are one of the building blocks of history, and removing any of them leaves permanent holes in our past. But perhaps this is precisely what our present rulers want-simply delete those phases or events in our past which do not suit the current majoritarian narrative.

  This weaponisation of names has acquired an even more sinister character and purpose when it comes to names of individuals. Since names indicate religion and ethnicity they have increasingly become a tool for the targeting and persecution of minorities. RWAs will not admit residents with Muslim names and stout Hindus will not employ staff with Muslim names: in my Society every second maid or cook belongs to the minority community, but they all give Hindu names in order to secure a job. Orders are rejected if the delivery boy happens to have such a name, and in some reported instances the poor chaps have even been beaten up for this supposed crime. There are reports that in some states minority names are deleted from voters' lists on a large scale. There are occasional calls to boycott shops with Muslim names; in order to circumvent this, shops belonging to this community often adopt and display Hindu names, but this does not work: when payment is made through the QR code, the shopkeeper's name and identity gets revealed, leading to commotion, scuffles and subsequent boycotts.

  This last example shows how even something secular like a digital innovation can inadvertently result in making one's life difficult, even without the religious under-pinning. If there is a mis-match in your name in the Aadhaar card and your bank account, PAN card, ration card, EPIC (voter card)-even if it's just a spelling error- you can spend the rest of your life trying to get it fixed, and in the meantime you will get no rations, lose access to your bank account, be unable to file your ITRs and be fined as a consequence by the Income Tax department, will not be allowed to vote, cannot get a driving license. The error or mismatch in your name will mean that you will effectively cease to exist as a living entity, you will be part of the living dead. Your name may as well be Dracula.

  Never in the past have names been such a serious issue: they used to be simple markers of identity. Now they have become complex instruments of surveillance, persecution, harassment, digital black holes, stigmatas- in short, a bloody nuisance we can do without. We need to move to a less exploitable system of identification, like a PIN instead of a name. That would truly be secular paradise, what? No one will be able to, well, pin you down to a particular caste, religion or community, and peace and harmony shall prevail. And who wouldn't want to be known as 007 instead of Banchoddas Chanchad, Soumya Bum, Pornika Sircar or Valentine Mirchi ?