BOOK REVIEW-- INDIA'S LONG WALK HOME

 

INDIA'S LONG WALK HOME

Edited by Ishan Chauhan & Zenaida Cubbinz

Published by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta. 2021.

Rs. 595.00

  About once in every generation an event occurs which is so tectonic in its scope and intensity that it cries out to be chronicled for posterity. Not merely recorded or reported by news media and television channels, for that is merely transient journalism conveying statistics, allegations and denials. It does not convey the pathos and sufferings of millions, the shattering of dreams and lives; it concerns itself with the body and not the soul. Journalism is an inadequate testament for such events. These tragedies have to be narrated from the heart, not the brain; with feeling, not just analysis; with a sense of regret, not just urgency; with outrage, not just objective acceptance.

  INDIA'S LONG WALK BACK HOME is a much needed, valiant attempt to do just that. The book is a sensitively curated anthology of poems, essays and articles about the largest and most draconian lockdown in the world enforced by the government in India in March 2020, following the outbreak of Covid 19. Its focus is the biggest migration of peoples since the partition of 1947. Divided into three sections- Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry- it has contributions by Ruskin Bond, Arundhati Roy, Mridula Garg, George K Verghese, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta,, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, Suprabha Seshan, Ashok Vajpeyi, among others.

  The book addresses two broad issues- the degradation of the environment and the impact of Covid on the people of the country, in particular the vulnerable sections. It does so with scholarship, personal experience, feeling and satire.

  Zenaida Cubbinz's End of the Road mirrors a typical, heart-rending migrant experience: the story of a young couple, with two children, walking back to their village hundreds of miles away. They leave their dignity along with their employment back in the metropolis which does not want them any more. On their long walk back home they are stripped of whatever little remains- food, water, money, shelter, and finally, even the will to continue. They hang themselves on a tree, mere desiderata from the modern, muscular India our rulers aspire to, pictured ( in her patented style) by Arundhati Roy in And The President Took The Salute.

Kasturi Mazumder's Butterfly is the story of another migrant family, through the eyes of a young boy, a luckier one because two of them live to tell the tale. But it asks the question which no economist or Prime Minister wants to answer: " Does money really decide who gets to have  shades over their heads in such heat ? Does it decide how much water one gets to drink or the amount of food they have in their share ?" It does, but luckily the boy doesn't know it yet.

  Alok Rai's How India Is Outsourcing The Pandemic To Its Poor is a scathing denunciation of the rampant inequalities- social, economic, health, demographics- in India, and how the govt's Covid policies only reflect this. The poor and marginalised have had to bear the brunt of not only the virus but also of these incoherent policies which are " a virus-inflicted replication of our socio-economic apartheid." Covid has provided a brutal govt. and an unjust society the ultimate outsourcing opportunity: " farm out the dying as well" to the poor.

  Ritu Dewan offers a new perspective in Gender Blind Pandemic Response where she rues the fact that the pandemic and the govt's response have only reinforced patriarchal structures at several levels. The status of the migrant- a much used but little understood term- is examined in depth in Nandita Haksar's The Migrant As A Citizen from all angles- demographic, legal, social, human rights. The essay reinforces Alok Rai's point about inequality in that whereas the govt. has some policies in place for our 30 million " international" migrants, there is no such policy for the 120 million internal migrants.

In Parallels From The Past: Why We Should Hang Our Heads In Shame, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, in his usual, unsparing style, compares aspects of this pandemic with the great Bengal famine of 1943, and the similar duplicitous responses of the two govts.- concealing the number of actual deaths, refusal to provide genuine relief to the affected, skewing assistance in favour of the better-off sections of society, ruthlessly suppressing journalists who tried to reveal the truth. He does not hesitate to castigate the judiciary for failing to provide any protection to newspersons and migrant poor.

  The reader's growing despair and anger are somewhat relieved by the refreshing Experiences From Metropolitan India And The Himalayas by MVD Reddy and Asheem Shrivastava. This piece explores the lockdown ecology- the positive impact of the lockdown on the natural environment, something all of us have experienced for ourselves: the diminishing of garbage on mountain slopes, the increased availability of water, the reconnecting with nature, the return to the traditional and sustainable ways of living, the sudden appearance of a dancing peacock on a Gurgaon balcony, not seen in the last 30 years! We have, of course, more or less reverted to our wasteful ways of living now, but the pandemic did show us that " the way backward may be the way forward."

  The small posy of eight poems in the book provide an elegiac touch to the many lives snuffed out or broken by a raging virus and a clueless govt. Sometimes it takes poetry, with its imagery and cadence, to express the eternal sufferings of the children of a lesser God. It is poignantly conveyed in Barry O'Brein's The Virus- Yours, Mine and Ours, which distinguishes between the rich man's virus ( Covid) and the poor man's virus, Poverty. The latter unfortunate ( he can be an Untouchable, a Dalit, a Migrant- Barry doesn't tell us which, nor is there any need to do so ) laments:

" Truth be told, my virus is very different from yours,

   You weren't born with yours.

   It's not in your DNA and doesn't get passed down

   generation to generation.......

   But I was born with mine,

   It's genetic. "     and

   " Yours is the New Normal,

   Mine the old one- nothing new, everything Normal."

  A book review can never do full justice to all contributors, and that is my prime regret in this case. For this compendium also contains essays on how existing economic crises were exacerbated by the pandemic, the ten questions raised by the pandemic on the prevailing organising principles of humankind, the effect on our education system, and others. This is an ideal read for a quick 360* view of what the pandemic has done to this nation, and what corrections have to be made for the future. Most of all it is a reminder, as Suprabha Seshan tells us in her ruminations Locking Down Leviathan, of Arnold Toynbee's words: Civilisations are never murdered, they instead take their own lives.   

HAS RAHUL GANDHI CROSSED THE RUBICON ?

   At a public rally in Jaipur last week Rahul Gandhi made a distinction between HINDU and HINDUTVAVADI. The former, he explained, was the real believer in the values of Hinduism- tolerant, inclusive, peaceful and the pursuer of satya [ truth ] The latter were those who weaponised the faith to instill hatred, intolerance and violence in the pursuit of satta [ power]: the reference to the BJP/ RSS was unmistakeable. It was as if he had pulled the pin on a grenade- TV channels and social media exploded into paroxysms of outrage and/ or support, depending on where one stood on this new Radcliffe line in our sorry history. Political pundits, from the neighbourhood chai-wallah to the lofty editor, all opined that this was a suicidal mistake on Gandhi's part as it would consolidate Hindu votes behind the BJP: Uttar Pradesh, it was predicted, was now all but lost for the Congress. Even his own party, barring Salman Khurshid, maintained a discreet silence.

  Most people are perhaps not aware that Rahul Gandhi is not the first to differentiate between the two ideas. Savarkar had articulated it first in 1923 in his book HINUTVA- WHO IS A HINDU ? He had stated that Hinduism is but a fraction and small part of the larger Hindutva ideology which goes beyond religion. Hindutva, according to him, comprised of rashtra (nation ), jati ( common race ), and sanskriti  (common culture). It was a nationalistic, rather than a religious, concept, one that excluded rather than included. In other words, precisely what the BJP is attempting to ram through. This little slice of history validates what Rahul Gandhi has claimed.

  It took courage to make such a statement in the current, religiously surcharged atmosphere. By making it publicly, Rahul Gandhi has finally crossed the Rubicon in our troubled political waters. From a purely philosophical and cultural perspective, it was time someone of note belled this cat, or, to mix metaphors, called out this elephant in the room. For the fact is, the Hinduism now preached by the BJP is unrecognizable from the religion of Kabir, Prem Chand and Vivekanand; it has become a political doctrine rather than an easy-going way of life; its places of worship being converted into frontiers of war even when there is no visible enemy to defend them against. Faux enemies are being created and history is being exhumed and rewritten to provide legitimacy to a monstrous lie. The refusal to confront it was only making this stronger by the day. Even without the politics, purely on cultural grounds, someone had to make this point. For the biggest threat to Hinduism today is Hindutva, the militarised vision of Savarkar.

  Rahul Gandhi has also shown an acute sense of electoral strategy by carving out this distinction. Hindutva is the nucleus of the BJP/ RSS ideology, its core strength and battering ram in all elections. The Opposition can never defeat the BJP unless it is prepared to take it on face to face, eye ball to eye ball. One may win battles on one's own ground, but if you want to win the war you will have to take on the enemy in his own territory. Politics is not just about governance and delivery, it is also about the clash of competing ideas and ideology. The BJP's resurrected doctrine of Hindutva is a powerful driving force. The Opposition has to challenge it with a counter ideology, and Rahul Gandhi may just have found one.

  Even at the best of times the BJP has never got more than 40 % of the Hindu votes. By not taking the war into the Hindutva minefield the Opposition risks losing the remaining 60% over time, as the BJP increases its stranglehold and people resign themselves to a TINA (There Is No Alternative) logic. Rahul Gandhi appears to have realised this, and that it is time to reach out to that other 60% in the name of the very idea that Modi has invoked- religion- specifically the Hindu way of life and culture. For not only is this greatest of all religions being distorted and brutalised, it is being used to subvert and destroy the very basis of our nation, its Constitution. There have been examples aplenty of this in the last seven years, but let us take just the latest one.

  The Kashi- Vishwanath inauguration extravaganza last week has crossed the Laxman rekha of any secular country and Constitution. Not only was a govt. function converted into a political, Hindutva rally, but the Prime Minister himself assumed the role of a head priest. He had done this earlier also- at Ayodhya, Kedarnath, Badrinath, all paid for by the exchequer of a secular state. Mr. Modi, confident that he will not be challenged and is invincible in the " kavaz " ( carapace or armour ) of Hindutva is gradually metastasising into some kind of Inca or Maya emperor, the fount of all temporal and spiritual power. At great cost to the nation and its well being.

  The bills have started coming in: the pathetic human development indices, the highest inflation in the last 30 years, unemployment and LPR (Labour Participation Rates ) at record negative levels, social disharmony. one of the worst countries in the world in the inequality index, selling off of public assets built painstakingly over decades, the closure of more than 400,000 SMEs, another 120 million pushed below the poverty line, 12000 farmers committing suicide every year. The bills will continue mounting, for the BJP's toxic obsession with the politics of Hindutva is pushing the country to the brink of destruction in every sense of the term. For the BJP's model of governance cannot be separated from its idea of Hindutva. You cannot challenge one and not the other.

  It is no longer enough for the Opposition to fight Messers Modi, Shah or Yogi Adityanath; it has to fight the very idea of Hindutva, the fearful creature that has been hibernating for the last 70 years and has now found an environment conducive enough for it to emerge into the open. It can no longer be ignored, avoided or wished away- it has to be engaged. That is what Rahul Gandhi has done. It is a risk, but then one is reminded of the wise words of the philosopher, Kierkegaard:

  " To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily, but not to dare is to lose oneself. "

( And, may I add, one's country )

   

   

THE GENTLEMAN DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH

   Mr. Ranjan Gogoi, who earlier graced the Supreme Court and now adds gravitas to the Rajya Sabha ( when it functions, that is, or when he attends it- both of which are seldom) has come out with his statement for the defence in a book titled JUSTICE FOR THE JUDGE. For the last few days he has also been promoting it aggressively, leveraging his past status to stare down anchors who get under his thick skin. Arguably the most controversial Chief Justice this country has had to endure in 70 years, he has mastered the art of forcing the toothpaste into the tube, the toothpaste being the facts and the tube being his preconceived conclusion. The whole process creates a mess, of course, but nothing that can't be washed away with a little ganga jal and a post retirement sinecure. The book and the subsequent TV promos only confirm this assessment.

  The title of the book exposes his game, which is to play the victim card: that he has been treated unfairly in the court of public opinion for his various acts of commission and omission. Forget the brazen manner in which he has been  injected  into the Rajya Sabha, a surgical strike on democracy without the benefit of any anesthesia. But the more he protests, both in the book and in the interviews, the more untenable his position becomes.

  He is more adept at passing the buck than a croupier at a Vegas casino. That famous press conference of four judges is laid at the door of Justice Chelameswar: Gogoi claims that the former never told him that it was going to be a press conference- merely a cup of tea with a few journalists! The distinction escapes me. The clean chit to him in the sexual harassment case, we are told, was the doing of the Committee headed by Justice Bobde, the author had nothing to do with it, never mind that all members of the Committee were junior to him, never mind that he had already termed the accusations as " wild and scandalous" in open court and described them as a conspiracy against him. It is again Mr. Bobde, not he, who is responsible for the strange reinstatement of the complainant in the sexual harassment case. On being asked by Srinivasan Jain of NDTV to explain the contradiction in reinstating an employee whose complaint was found to be false, wild and scandalous, Gogoi ascribes it to Bobde's deep sense of compassion! Does he really expect the reader to swallow this bilge ?                                                                                                                                        Mr. Gogoi's absence from the Rajya Sabha sittings too is the doing of Covid, the failure to observe protocols in Parliament, never mind that hundreds of other members were faithfully discharging their duty by attending the sessions.                                                                                                                            The Supreme Court's abject failure to take up the Kashmir habeas corpus petitions and the challenge to the abrogation of Article 370 is also blamed on others. Gogoi says he had passed them on to other benches since he was busy with- what else?- the Ram Mandir case, and it was their responsibility. Never mind that all this was happening under his charge, that he is the Master of the Roster, that he is the administrative head of the Court.                                                                                                                                                                 He will not accept responsibility for that piece of " righteous miscarriage of justice ", the Ram Mandir judgment, insisting that it was a unanimous pronouncement by a bench of judges. He shirks questions on the Rafale " clean chit" to the government by saying that ex judges should not comment about their judgments. A disingenuous piece of dissembling, if ever there was one, considering that the sole intention of his book is to defend his various judgments and give himself a clean chit too.! He offers no explanation for almost single handedly driving the disastrous Assam NRC (National Register of Citizens) exercise, without first deciding on the constitutionality of Section 6 of the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act). If anything, he should have recused himself from the case; being an Assamese himself, his hearing this case was a clear instance of conflict of interest.

  Mr Gogoi blusters and blunders his way through awkward questions for which he has no answers, digging his hole a bit deeper every time with his frequent displays of righteous indignation. About surrendering to the government on the issue of appointment of Justice Kureshi to the MP High Court, he says he did so to avoid a confrontation between two constitutional authorities. He forgets that it is the fundamental duty of the Apex Court to confront the executive when it over-reaches; there is no other rationale for its existence.

 Gogoi claims, with a straight face, that it was the opportunity to render " public service" which made him accept the government's nomination to the Rajya Sabha. Forget for a moment the dubious quality of public service rendered by him as Chief Justice- we will leave that for posterity to judge. But here is the important part: since his nomination he has attended only 6 of 66 sessions- a mind blowing 10% participation rate. This places him level with other " public service" votaries such as Sachin Tendulkar and Rekha- not the appropriate role models as MPs, you will agree. To make matters worse, Gogoi then goes on to say (with another twist of the shovel) that he attends Parliament " when he feels like it." But we'll leave that little joke for the Privileges Committee of Parliament to chuckle over.

 For me the defining image of his tenure is the photograph in the book of Mr Gogoi and his brother judges " celebrating the landmark verdict " ( the Ram mandir judgment ) at a five star hotel, wine and all. One cannot grudge them a fine dinner after their hard work. But " celebrating "? Along with , perhaps the Sangh parivar, the BJP and assorted bhakts ? This scene reminds me of nothing more than a cut from THE GODFATHER, down to the fine detail of Don Corleone eschewing a glass of wine, much like Mr Gogoi himself.

  The former Chief Justice has much to answer for, in relation to both his judgments and his conduct. But he has only made things worse for himself with this book and the subsequent interviews. There is no introspection, soul searching, humility or regret in the book, and only aggression, hostility and rodomontade in the interviews. If the objective of this book was to redeem his tattered reputation, it has not succeeded by a long shot. Just as a good wine needs no brush, similarly a conscientious judge needs no book to defend himself. His judgments speak louder than any autobiography or press interviews. And Mr. Gogoi's judgments tell a different story. It would perhaps have been better if he had put this book in a sealed cover, one of his own juridical concoctions. For, as Christopher Hitchins famously said: " Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay." 

  

THE OMICRON VARIANT AND THE OMIGOD ! RESPONSE

   Life quite often plays out, first as a farce, and then as a tragedy. In India we are quite accustomed to these cycles, but the latest one is playing out even as I write this.

   Take the brouhaha about the latest Covid mutant, Omicron, which all governments have interpreted as Omigod. It's been around for a month now, has spread to two dozen or so countries, and has been making television anchors so breathless that we may soon see them hooked on to ventilators in the studios. All reports so far (including by the South African doctor who identified it first) indicate that it is much milder than the Delta variant, it has caused no deaths and hardly any hospitalisation. Yes, it spreads rapidly (so does the common flu) but its severity is far less.

  Surprisingly, however, all governments have gone into panic mode, have started imposing lockdowns again, ordered international travel restrictions (the Maharashtra govt. had even imposed curbs on internal travel till the Centre ordered it to roll them back). Many are in favour of introducing booster vaccine doses. Mr. Kejriwal, always first off the block with inane ideas, has been demanding a ban on ALL international flights. An environment of panic is being built up again.

  To me, all this appears like a cosy arrangement between governments and Big Pharma (especially the vaccine manufacturers), something which was widely suspected even earlier. The pandemic is a milch cow for both and cannot be put to pasture so soon.

  Governments, which are becoming increasingly autocratic the world over, find Covid a handy excuse for curbing people's rights and extending their own powers. Our own country is a stellar example. The pandemic has been used to defenestrate Parliament, deny access to information for journalists, prohibit public gatherings and protests, ram through unpopular laws, even jail those who disagree with the powers that be. Covid appears to have reduced the govt's accountability even as it has allowed it to assume more executive powers, to the detriment of the idea of a free nation and society. Remember how more than 4000 obtuse and confused orders were issued in just the first year of the pandemic ?                                                            Big Pharma has also benefitted tremendously in financial terms. It has been reported that vaccine manufacturers are making bumper profits: according to a report in Business Insider (Nov 2, 2021) Pfizer, whose total revenues in 2020 were US$ 42 billion, expects to make almost the same- US$36 billion- in 2021 from just its Covid vaccine ! And these are pre- Omicron estimates. Mr. Poonawalla  (who surely deserved a Padma Shri ahead of Kangana Ranaut, don't you think, even though she has more spikes than the virus ?) has even moved to London where perhaps his profits can be better spent without having to "contribute" to the Electoral Bonds and various senas. Hospitals, testing centres and even airports are making big bucks on the side too: Mr. Adani's Mumbai airport is charging Rs. 3900 for every RT-PCR test from hapless arriving international passengers, even though it costs about Rs. 300-500 at private health centres outside.

  The fact is that vaccine manufacturers have hundreds of millions of doses in stock (Mr. Poonawalla said so much in an interview on TV the other day), have added capacity to produce hundreds of millions more, and see huge profits for eternity as long as the Covid scare can be maintained. They have therefore joined hands with governments to perpetuate the fear. No wonder rioting has broken out in the more open societies of Europe and the anti- vaccine sentiment seems to be growing in places like the USA. People smell a rat, and not without reason. 

  What is the point in banning international travel ? Notwithstanding the stringent bans of last year, Covid has spread to every country in the world, and is probably even hibernating in the Arctic ice to strike us again when the permafrost melts in another decade or so. Such restrictions only cause untold misery to families, students and wreck global business. Please note that Omicron has reached dozens of countries, presumably through flyers, even though each one of them was vaccinated, tested repeatedly and quarantined ! Govts impose social distancing at airports and then seat the passengers shoulder to shoulder in an airtight cylinder for hours. And after all these "precautions" you can walk out of the airport and go straight to a big, fat Indian wedding and do the "bhangra" with 200 other dancing dervishes.

   Herding hundreds of passengers in holding areas in terminals just does not make sense. These are people who could board only after being vaccinated and after testing negative in the last 48 hours. If they have been infected in that period it is not likely to show up at the arrival airport as the virus takes three to four days for a positive reading. So why the tests on arrival, the unhealthy over crowding and consequent risk of spreading the infection ? It would make more sense to put them in home quarantine and ask for a mandatory test four to five days after arrival. Is anybody thinking this through in a rational manner ?

  Why is this vaccine-induced tumult and clamour  being made only for this ailment ? Covid has claimed 5.5 million lives in the last 18 months. The Spanish Flu of 1918 caused more deaths than that in India alone. According to WHO figures for 2019, heart disease caused 8.9 million deaths, 6 million died of strokes, air pollution led to the deaths of 7 million, respiratory diseases 6.4 million. I don't see any govt. or media going ballistic over these numbers, or mandating regulations and restrictions that are generally elitist in nature.

   And NO ONE is addressing the root cause of the origin of this virus (and many similar ones to follow)- the wholesale depredation of natural landscapes and eco-systems that allow such organisms to enter the human chain. Because corporates and governments stand to lose a lot of money if they did that. It's so much easier to drum up fear and panic on a global scale, push the vaccines and expand the frontiers of authoritarianism and power.

  We need to be sensible about this whole thing, listen to the saner, moderate voices, observe precautions and hygiene, and not mortgage our future existence to the Doctors Faucis or Faustuses of the world. In the ultimate analysis we have to live with this virus, just as we have learnt to live with other diseases and infections, or with other viruses like politicians, TV anchors, bhakts and Sambit Patra. Covid is just a gentle reminder that we should stop playing God with this planet. As the poet said:

" Kudrat ka kahar bhi zaroori tha, sahib,

   Warna har koi khud ko Khuda samajhne laga tha."

[This backlash by Nature was required, my lord,

   For everyone had started thinking that he was God.]

  

" TAPASYA " AS GOVERNANCE

    As one keeps piling on the years (I am now at three score and eleven ) one also imbibes some wisdom along with the evening pegs. And these days there is no better fount of wisdom than our seraphic Prime Minister who persists with casting his pearls before the swine even as they have their snouts buried deep in the muck of a crumbling civilisation. Let me explain.

  For close on seventy years now I have carried the burden of many failures on my V- shaped (like the economic recovery ) shoulders. I failed to pass the Mathematics paper in my Senior Cambridge exams. I failed to secure admission to St. Stephens College, and in later years to the Gymkhana Club (maybe there's a connection between the two ?). I failed to convince two Chief Ministers that I was not as stupid as I looked and would make a passable Chief Secretary. I have failed to convince my mother-in-law that she did not make a mistake in plighting her daughter's troth to me in a moment of weakness. I have failed in persuading some of my publishers to release my royalty payments to me. I have even failed to convince my dog that I am the man in the house- being gender neutral, he has conferred that title on my wife. The express-way of my life, in short, is dotted with more failures than there are dhabas on the Delhi- Chandigarh highway. A feeling of guilt has cast even more shadows in the evening of my life, as it were.

  And then, suddenly, the shadows were dispersed last week, in the manner of another portion of the Yamuna disappearing everytime Mr Kejriwal pledges to revive it. That feeling of guilt vanished, just like Anna Hazare vanishing after the 2014 elections. Then wisdom dawned on me, as it must surely on Kangana Runout someday in the distant future, that the failures were not my fault at all ! It was not I which had been found wanting, but my "tapasya ." The whole nation has this epiphany on the authority of no less a person than our celestial Prime Minister himself- the fault is not in our stars, dear reader, but in our tapasya. For if the failure of the epochal farm laws can be ascribed to a computer error in his tapasya, surely my minor failures cannot be laid on my character or competence ? Mr. Modi must surely know what he is talking about, having spent his formative years in the Himalayan forests and his abortive years in a Kedarnath cave.

   Now, "tapasya" or meditation is intended to uplift the individual soul, but Mr. Modi appears to have elevated it to an instrument of governance- with disastrous results. Now we know why demonetization , GST and the second Covid wave have played out the way they have: instead of sitting down with a few economists and virologists our Prime Minister was conversing with his soul. He forgot the caution underlined by the Buddha: "There is no meditation without wisdom." Incidentally, there is also no tapasya without sacrifice, but Mr. Modi believes that the sacrifice has to come from the people, while he himself basks in the glow of Arnab Goswami's rhapsodies.

   There is now a real danger that  tapasya may soon be made an essential part of the govt's curriculum, like Yoga. Why, we may soon have an International Tapasya Day decreed by the UN. It may soon become our second most important export, after fugitive billionaires. This is not good news for the poor public. As it is , it's impossible to find a sarkari babu at his table because he has either gone to do Yoga, or watch Man Ki Baat, or organise the Yogi's next rally, or get one of his many cards (Aadhar, PAN, CGHS, Metrocard, SIM) updated or recharged. Now tapasya will be added to this onerous list of official engagements. The long suffering citizens, naturally, will have no other option but to perform tapasya themselves, as they did at Shaheen Bagh, the borders of Delhi, Jantar Mantar and outside just about every second police station in Uttar Pradesh. Tapasya will shortly become a national movement, what Mr. Doval would probably term the fourth pillar of democracy, the other three being Man Ki Baat, Ram rajya and the Electoral Bonds.

   Digital India is, of course, welcome but digital tapasya ? Meditation is by definition a lonely activity, not one which is preceded by walks on red carpets, a well lighted background, sartorial affectation, all accompanied by television crews filming every quivering spark of enlightenment descending from the heavens, and dervish anchors singing hosannas to the new deity on the block, or cave, as the case may be. Perhaps someone in Niti Ayog should have reminded our Supreme Leader of what Confucius did NOT say: "You've mastered the selfie, now master thyself."

   The problem, it appears, is the intention behind our Prime Minister's tapasyas. The Buddha said that tapasya is done FROM love, not FOR love. Certainly not for votes. Which is why he should eschew this new management tool and get back to the conventional and time-tested forms of governance- consultation, the interests of the country and not one's party, carrying the Opposition along, being honest with the people, listening to those who disagree. For in the ultimate analysis you are what you do, not what you say you'll do. Something the country is now belatedly finding out, at great cost. 

LESSONS FOR THE JUDICIARY FROM THE FARM LAWS REPEAL FIASCO

    Prime Minister Modi once again demonstrated his shock and awe style of leadership by announcing the repeal of the three Farm Laws on the 19th of this month. Ever since then, many articles have been published about the lessons to be drawn from this year-long tug of war and its predictable denouement. Lessons to be learnt by the government, the media, the Opposition parties, the trolls, the farmers, perhaps even by Greta Thunberg and Rihanna and most certainly by Kangana Runout. But I notice that one important participant in this tourney has been left out of the pedagogy- the higher judiciary. That is a grave omission, for it too has a lot to learn from this misadventure.

   It appears to me that in this entire episode the judiciary has been following Mr. Narsimha Rao's famous doctrine of  "No decision is also a decision."  At least four petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court both against, and in favour of, the farm laws; their constitutional validity has been challenged. Even after one year the Court has not taken them up for substantive hearing and has simply stayed them: it has kept the Damocles sword hanging over the farmers, in the hands of an executive which cannot be trusted even to abide by a judicial order and has in the past overturned some by ordinances. The farm laws have joined a long list of important legislations which have been challenged but are kept in some form of judicial mortuary for years, on ice and developing rigor mortis- CAA (Citizen Amendment Act), Electoral Bonds, Article 370, Kashmir Reorganisation Act, Sedition laws. And with every day of delay in taking a decision on them, the democratic structure of this country becomes even weaker.

  One of the reasons for the SKM's (Samyukta Kisan Morcha)'s obduracy was precisely for this reason:  they did not expect an early decision by the court, and therefore felt that continued protests/ agitations/ blockades was the only option for them. I know there will be legal luminaries who will tell me that the Court has to follow a roster, a first-come-first served protocol for cases, and that there are 65000 other cases pending. My reply to them is that the apex court is not a McDonald franchise, in its care lies the very existence of the nation, and it needs to distinguish between cases of constitutional importance and of individual import. The former have to be given priority over the latter: the concerns of 400 million farming families surely must rank above Arnab Goswami's bail in the roster.

  Day-to-day hearings in the farm laws case ( as in the Ram Mandir case, the reader will recollect) would have saved this nation a lot of grief, bad blood, economic loss, social ruptures and maybe even the lives of a few hundred farmers. A decision- either way- would have probably brought an early end to the protests one way or the other. Both the govt. and the SKM would have had to follow the decision, the govt. because it is constitutionally bound to so, and the farmers because they would have lost public support and legitimacy if they did not. The Supreme Court still commands respect and is seen as the final arbiter of all disputes. Narsimha Rao's doctrine might make sense for the executive but not for the judiciary. 

  The only part of the farmer's movement which received the SC's attention were the petitions seeking to declare the blockades around Delhi as illegal- the symptoms, not the causes! And even here there was much confusion: one bench called the protests a fundamental right, another one described them as akin to strangling the city. Notices were issued to all and sundry, hearings held, the Court's displeasure for the farmers' action made clear. Herein lies the second lesson for our higher judiciary: distinguish between the socio-political dimension and the purely legal one, and engage yourself with the latter and not the former. 

  It is no part of the judiciary's mandate to pull the executive's chestnuts out of a fire of its own making. The agitation was the result of the govt's authoritarian and unilateral style of functioning, it's egoistic belief that only it knows best, and that its brute majority in Parliament entitles it to give a go-by to all democratic practices of consultation, debate and Parliamentary practices. It made the witches' soup, it should have been allowed to stew in it. But the Modi govt. has made it a practice to create an untenable situation on the ground, and then to try and extricate itself by using the judiciary through proxy petitions to stifle any opposition or protest. The courts should see through this pernicious stratagem of trying to find a judicial solution to what is essentially a socio-political issue, and give it a wide berth.

   The third lesson to be drawn from all this is the eternal truth: the difference between what is legal and what is legitimate: the two are not always synonymous. Hard as it may be for members of the judiciary to acknowledge this, the fact is that in a democracy the sovereign power vests, not in a Parliament, not in a powerful Prime Minister, not even in a Supreme Court, but in the people. A law may be legal but it will lack legitimacy if it is not acceptable to the people. We will perhaps never know if the three farm laws were legal or not because the challenges to them shall abate now with their repeal, but their utter lack of legitimacy has now been confirmed with Mr. Modi's admission that his " tapasya" has failed. The courts can only determine legality, not legitimacy. Which is why they should not get involved in determining the legitimacy of protests, or whether a hundred protesters or two hundred should be allowed at Jantar Mantar, or whether blocking a road amounts to holding a city hostage. Those are not legal issues; even if they are they may raise a question of conflicting rights. These are matters for the executive to address and resolve, and if it cannot do so then it has no right to govern. If the judiciary too gets enmeshed in them it faces the risk of getting dragged down with the executive when the people have spoken.

   No truer word was spoken than when the Chief Justice of India recently observed that the government should not have an adversarial attitude to human rights.. Equally, however, the judiciary should not have an adversarial relationship with the citizens. Just as it itself judges the legality of a law, it should allow the people to determine its legitimacy. And in a country where the Parliament and all other checks on the govt. have collapsed, protests are the only avenue for the citizens to rule on that. This should be recognized and respected.

FOOT IN MOUTH OR STRAWS IN THE WIND ?

   Over these last seven years we have become used to our saffron eminences and their intellectually challenged acolytes spouting all kinds of asinine nonsense: Einstein discovered gravity, Darwin was wrong because no one witnessed an ape turning into homo sapiens, Chandragupta defeated Alexander, India invented plastic surgery and in-vitro fertilisation procedures, Haldighati was a victory for Maharana Pratap, cow urine cures Covid, India achieved independence in 2014 and not in 1947. If these statements did not educate us they at least added a little levity to our despondent existence. But two recent statements, equally bizarre, may give us cause for concern. They come close on the heels of Justice (R) Arun Mishra, Chairman of the NHRC ( National Human Rights Commission) who is unable to control his admiration for the Prime Minister even at international fora,  organising a debate on the subject " Are human rights a stumbling block in fighting evils like terrorism and naxalism ?" In legal parlance this was the ultimate " leading question". We thought that things couldn't possibly get worse, but we were quickly proved wrong.

  Mr. Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor and India's third most powerful person, told IPS probationers at a passing out function that the new frontier of war was civil society, it was the " fourth generation" of warfare, that it can be suborned, manipulated, subverted and divided to " hurt the interests of a nation", and that the police are " there to see that the land is fully protected." He went on to further expound on his doctrine of democracy ( I am paraphrasing here): that the electoral process is not paramount, what is important are the laws made by lawmakers and the police must enforce them ruthlessly.

  The other declaration, even more alarming, was by the Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat who opined that it was a " good thing " that the public of Jammu and Kashmir was now ready to lynch terrorists. He did not see the necessity of making a distinction between suspected, hybrid and genuine terrorists. Presumably, the good citizens of J+K would make this judgment themselves just before they strung up these individuals on the nearest lamp-post. He also seemed to forget that there are laws in place to deal with terrorists, and that lynching is not yet an approved form of justice.

  These statements fall into a different category from the Kangana Ranaut and Satyendra Singh ones, and have to be taken more seriously, because they have been made by the two senior most officers of our most important uniformed forces- the police and the army. These two gentlemen are  acknowledged to be very close to the ruling dispensation and never speak out of turn. They are also good weather vanes. That is why the two statements need to be taken seriously and condemned unequivocally.

  The import of Mr. Doval's exhortation goes far beyond a few dozen IPS probationers: it is an attack on civil society, a warning to the govt's critics and an incitement to the police to target dissidents and liberals. I do not know whether his choice of words was deliberate or just unfortunately random, but to term civil society as a frontier of war is shocking, it equates citizens with an "enemy". And to elevate any peaceful confrontation between a government and its citizens to a " fourth generation warfare" is an astounding militarisation of dissidence. It is also a very innovative doctrine: most military strategists will tell you that the new generation of warfare consists of cyber, asymmetrical or algorithmic war. For Mr. Doval to add " civil society" to this list would be inviting ridicule. But somehow I don't think he was being facetious or stupid; he appears to have chosen his words carefully, and his messaging is deliberate.

  For me, this is confirmed by Gen Rawat's statement, which, shorn of its uniformed origin, is nothing but an incitement to vigilantism and mob violence. That the senior most defence officer in the country can say this publicly is condemnable but no longer surprising, for new furrows of illegality are being carved out everyday in this country these days.

  Both prescriptions are in direct contradiction with , and a violation of,  our Constitution and the law of the land. They criminalise freedom of speech, the right to disagree with the govt., the right to protest peacefully. As Aruna Roy points out in a recent article, Mr. Doval is short circuiting the democratic, social and developmental safeguards assured us by the Constitution, and is maliciously painting civil society as a force which is undermining development and nationalism. Moreover, it is clear that he is referring to the " other " civil society which protests the govt's excesses, and not the one represented by the Kapil Mishras, Kangana Ranauts and Swami Narsinghanands, all supporters and purveyors of hate and intolerance.

  In fact, one would have expected these two senior functionaries of the govt. to have done just the opposite of what they did. Given the manner in which most police forces in the states- not excluding opposition ruled states- have run amock of late, using UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) and sedition laws with gay abandon, arresting anyone who writes against the govt. on trumped up charges, defying court orders, being selective in their policing, the correct counsel to the IPS probationers should have been one which enjoined on them to work within the limits of the Constitution, abide by the judgments of the courts, respect the rights of citizens and the values of our democratic traditions and history, treat everyone equitably. General Rawat could have redeemed his rapidly shrinking reputation by denouncing vigilantism, reminding his audience that the sovereign right to violence belongs only to the state, and that too only after a due process of law is followed.

  By branding civil society as internal enemies of the state, however, the two have now given a license to the police and other coercive agencies to be even more ruthless and brutal in their treatment of those members of society who incur the govt's wrath and displeasure, including journalists, human rights activists, students, writers, liberal intellectuals, workers, farmers, artists. This is no longer just a dog whistle, it is sounding the bugles for a new war on the most fundamental of  democratic values- the right to disagree. Disagreement is the bulwark of democracy- to crush it is to crush democracy itself. 

  It is difficult to explain why Messers Doval and Rawat have decided to open another front at this time, considering their dismal performance on all other fronts- Kashmir, the Naga Peace Accord, Afghanistan, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Nepal, CAA, Pegasus, to name just a few. Moreover, the BJP ruled undisputed over social media till just about a couple of years ago, successfully drowning out the voice of civil society. So why now ? My guess is that, as repeated failures of the government in all areas of governance pile up, a significant back lash is building up among the public. The hold and influence of the sold out mainstream media is also diminishing, with independant portals and Youtube channels garnering huge viewership running into millions. The results of the recent by-elections seem to bear this out. Crucial elections in five states are due in just a few months. It is therefore time for desperate measures to instil more fear among members of the civil society, to fire up the vigilantes, and to convey the desired signals to the police. This will be the new template in the coming days. The barometer is falling and the wind is picking up.

  It's an ill wind that blows no good.