अमेरिका राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रंप ने शनिवार को एक ऐसे शासकीय आदेश पर हस्ताक्षर किए हैं। जो शरणार्थियों के प्रवाह को सीमित करने के लिए और चरमपंथी आतंकियों को अमेरिका से बाहर रखने के लिए सघन जांच के नए नियम तय करता है।
डोनाल्ड ट्रंप ने सात मुस्लिम देशों से आने वाले मुसलमान शरणार्थियों को बैन कर दिया है। राष्ट्रपति ट्रंप ने यह कदम अमेरिकी शरणार्थी पुर्नवास कार्यक्रम को स्थगित करके उठाया है। इस ऑर्डर के तहत अमेरिका में सात मुसलमान देशों सीरिया, इरान, इराक, लीबिया, सूडान, यमन और सोमालिया से आने वाले शरणार्थियों पर नए प्रतिबंध लगा दिए गए हैं।
मीडिया रिपोर्ट्स के मुताबिक, ट्रंप ने पेंटागन में ऑर्डर को साइन किया और कहा कि हम सिर्फ उन्हीं लोगों को देश में एंट्री देंगे जो अमेरिका को सपोर्ट करेंगे और यहां के लोगों से प्यार करेंगे।
ट्रंप ने अमेरिका के शरणार्थी कार्यक्रम को 20 दिनों के लिए स्थगित कर दिया है। वहीं जांच के लिए नए नियम लागू कर दिए हैं।
बता दें कि ट्रंप ने अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति चुनाव के दौरान और राष्ट्रपति पद की शपथ लेने के बाद कट्टरपंथी आतंकवादियों के खात्मे का संकल्प लिया था। उन्होंने कहा था कि CIA ऐसा करने के लिए योजना बनाएगी।
मोदी सरकार के 2.5 साल के कार्यकाल में पहली बार ऐसा होने जा रहा है कि कंपनियों का अपनी तरफ से इन्वेस्टमेंट घट गया है और क्रेडिट रेटिंग एजेंसियों ने भी भारत की रेटिंग को पहले के स्तर से नीचे कर दिया है। इससे आगामी बजट इस सरकार का सबसे मुश्किलों से भरा रहेगा।
नोटबंदी से पड़ा है कंपनियों पर काफी असर
समाचार एजेंसी ब्लूमबर्ग की रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, नोटबंदी को 3 महीने से ऊपर का समय गुजर गया है, लेकिन इससे सरकार की चुनौतियां काफी बढ़ गई हैं। इससे आम लोग तो प्रभावित हुए, साथ ही उद्योगों पर भी काफी नकारात्मक असर पड़ा है।
इस बार के बजट में उद्योगों को रफ्तार देने के लिए कदम उठाने पड़ेंगे। अगर मोदी और वित्त मंत्री अरुण जेटली ने इसके लिए कोई घोषणा नहीं की तो देश की इकनॉमी पर इसका काफी असर पड़ने की संभावना है।
क्रेडिट रेटिंग एजेंसियों ने भी घटा दी है रेटिंग
विश्व की प्रमुख क्रेडिट रेटिंग एजेंसियां जैसे की फिच, एसएंडपी ग्लोबल, मूडी ने भारत की साख को काफी नीचे कर दिया है। इसके साथ ही रिजर्व बैंक ने भी जीडीपी के अनुमान को 7.6 फीसदी से घटाकर के 6.8 फीसदी कर दिया है। केवल नोमुरा ने कहा है कि नोटबंदी से इकनॉमी पर इतना असर नहीं पड़ा है।
Six days after taking office, President Donald Trump is facing the first international crisis of his administration. And it’s unfolding on Twitter.
Following through on campaign promises to crack down on immigration, Trump signed executive orders to both kick-start the construction of a border wall with Mexico and block federal grants for “sanctuary cities” – jurisdictions that offer safe harbour for undocumented immigrants. Trump justified these measures as necessary for improving domestic security. “A nation without borders is not a nation,” he said. “Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders.”
After signing the orders, Trump insisted in an interview with ABC news network that Mexico would reimburse construction expenses “at a later date”.
Mexico has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough. Massive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border must change, NOW!
Trump’s push to force Mexico to pay for the wall has plunged the two neighbours into a tense and unusual diplomatic standoff. Mexico has long been a key partner and ally of the US and Enrique Peña Nieto’s government has keenly tried to avoid a standoff. Trump, on the other hand, has fuelled one with his frantic social media activity.
Welcome to the era of Twitter diplomacy.
American non-diplomacy
Historically, diplomacy is not one of America’s strong suits. Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once noted that he was surprised to learn that US international officials usually see “little need for diplomacy”. For Americans, Boutros-Ghali claimed, it’s perceived as “a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.”
But with Mexico President Trump has taken this tradition of American non-diplomacy to uncharted territories.
Mexicans, divided on their own president, are united behind a dislike of Donald Trump. Edgard Garrido/Reuters
Peña Nieto chose moderation and diplomatic subtlety to address Trump’s belligerence. This conciliatory strategy has, indeed, been perceived as a sign of weakness on both sides of the border.
Yet the Mexican government’s situation is delicate. Either Peña Nieto endures Trump’s relentless humiliation, or he jeopardises the nation’s commercial partnership with the US, which buys 80% of Mexican exports.
So Peña Nieto did everything possible to appease Trump, probably hoping that he would eventually moderate his positions. He even appointed Luis Videgaray – the unpopular politician who organised then-candidate Trump’s ill-received August 2016 visit to Mexico – as Minister of Foreign Relations.
Trump answered the conciliatory gesture, which was deeply controversial in Mexico, by tweeting that his southern neighbours would pay for the wall in the border “a little later” in order to build it “more quickly”.
Peña Nieto then tried to warn Trump about the consequences that a conflict with Mexico could have upon the US agenda. Using the infamous druglord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo, as a subtle rebuke to Trump’s stance on Mexico, the president extradited him to the US on January 19, just a few hours before Barack Obama’s term expired.
US officials and the Mexican public interpreted the timing of the extradition, which had been green-lighted for months, as a Mexican housewarming gift to the Trump White House.
But a different hypothesis seems more plausible. Mexico rushed to hand over El Chapo to Obama to prevent Trump from taking credit for the extradition. As Mexican journalist Esteban Illades argued, if Mexico had delayed the extradition by one more day, Trump would have boasted about his role in organising it for months on Twitter.
But Trump didn’t pay attention to Peña Nieto’s warning: two days after taking office, he announced that he would begin renegotiating NAFTA with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, and set a meeting with Peña Nieto on January 31.
Peña Nieto sent Videgaray and Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico’s Minister of Economy, to Washington for preparing his meeting with Trump. He instructed them to avoid both submission and confrontation in negotiations with the American administration.
But that plan faltered when, on the night before the emissaries were to arrive to Washington, Trump tweeted that Wednesday would be a “big day” for “national security” because he was looking forward to “building the wall”. Videgaray and Guajardo were actually in the White House when Trump left the building to sign his executive order.
This insult raised outrage in Mexico. Intellectuals, politicians and citizens, both left and right, demanded that Peña Nieto cancel his visit to Washington.
Mexico’s president answered this new provocation with a short video statement, in which he said that Mexican consulates would now serve as legal aid offices for undocumented Mexican migrants in the US. He resisted though cancelling the meeting with Trump, saying that he would make a decision based on Videgaray’s and Guajardo’s report out.
But another social media blast from Trump derailed that wait-and-see strategy, too:
of jobs and companies lost. If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.
Even for mild Peña Nieto this was too much. He cancelled the meeting with Trump without even a press conference. Instead he tweeted: “This morning we have informed the White House that I will not attend the working meeting with @POTUS scheduled next Tuesday.”
As Foreign Minister Videgaray acknowledged, “You don’t ask your neighbour to pay for your home’s wall.”
Esta mañana hemos informado a la Casa Blanca que no asistiré a la reunión de trabajo programada para el próximo martes con el @POTUS.
A phone call between Trump and Peña Nieto on Friday morning may allow for a brief cooling-off period, but without a doubt Mexico and the US have entered into an age of conflict. The consequences, in North America and beyond, are still uncertain.
Spectres of the national anthem
If the US administration moves forward with its proposed plan to build the wall and fund it by imposing a 20% tax on Mexican imports, Peña Nieto’s government has options for retaliation. It could implement a crackdown on American citizens – many of them retirees – who overstay their tourist visas in Mexico, or impose reciprocal tariffs on American exports.
Indeed, the US should not take Mexican friendship for granted. As Mexican historian Enrique Krauze has pointed out, despite recent good relations, Mexico has a series of historical grievances against the US, which remain deeply rooted in Mexican collective memories.
First, the US invaded Mexico in 1846, annexing half of its territory. This event was so traumatic that it became the main theme of the Mexican national anthem.
Then, in 1913, the American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson plotted to have democratically elected president Francisco Madero murdered. This incident plunged Mexico into a fierce civil war and postponed effective implementation of democracy in the country for 90 years.
Finally, in 1914 US marines occupied the city of Veracruz, triggering a prolonged period of hostile relations. The bond between Mexico and the US only normalised again in 1942 with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbour policy.
To maintain this peaceful coexistence, both Mexican and American governments have usually taken into account the complex historic relationship between the countries.
Trump’s novelty is that he seemingly has no interest in or intention to contemplate the conflicted history of Mexican-American relations – not even considering the strategic importance of Mexico for his nation.
Trump and Peña Nieto during the Republican candidate’s controversial August 2016 visit to Mexico. Henry Romero/Reuters
The Twitter president
Instead, his policy decisions seem based on social media metrics.
Mexican writer Jorge Volpi believes that Trump’s use of Twitter as a privileged medium says a lot about this president. Twitter favours speed over analysis, wit over depth, and aggression over reflection. For Volpi, these are very Trumpian character traits.
The global consequences of such Twitter diplomacy are unknowable. But in Mexico, beyond generating a diplomatic crisis, Trump’s actions are successfully arousing the dormant spirits of Mexican nationalism.
Social media platforms are on fire there. Denise Dresser, a respected liberal intellectual, declared that though Donald Trump’s presidency may last eight years, Mexico has existed for thousands of years. The historian Rafael Estrada Michel has called for Mexico to renegotiate not NAFTA but the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty, which established the current US-Mexico border after the Mexican-American war.
If US-Mexico relations continue in this line, Mexicans will be forced to pay a terrible price for Trump’s antics. NAFTA established a prosperous free-trade zone in North America, and without its main trade partner, Mexico will have to entirely reinvent its global alliances and its economic structure. By the way, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative website – which, in our brave new world of alternative facts, might be taken down soon – US manufacturing exports have increased 258% under NAFTA, and 40% of Mexican exports into the US are actually originated in American inputs.
It is also likely that the US will find it seeking Mexico’s support in the near future. Neighbourly collaboration is still necessary to face the myriad challenges both countries share, including climate change and cross-border drug policy. Will Mexico be there next time the US needs it?
It now falls on American and Mexican citizens to defend and foster the peaceful relationship that has been built with much suffering over decades – not with Twitter diplomacy, but with human feeling.
Author is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
Two scholars dipped into 100 texts, and found that yoga is not as culturally homogenous as the Right Wing makes it out to be.
Yoga is not a culturally homogenous, all-Hindu, Vedic tradition, as is often portrayed by revivalist demagogues and those who have set up a raucous campaign to reclaim its roots. It is, in fact, a liberal, eclectic tradition that absorbed freely from Buddhist, Jain, even Sufist ascetic practices.
Roots of Yoga, a new academic work by renowned yoga scholars Mark Singleton and James Mallinson, is an intensive study of over 100 core texts on the subject. These date from 1000 BCE to the 19 century CE, from early Upanishads and Mahabharata to Jnaneswari and Hawz al-Hayat (The Spring of Life), and include rare texts in several languages, including Tamil, Avadhi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Pali, Tibetan, Arabic and Persian.
The book, five years in the making and launched last week by Abhyas Trust in Delhi, punctures some of the popular myths around yoga. To begin with, there is no evidence that yoga started as a religious tradition.
“Yoga was a sort of floating technology between various religious systems,” said Singleton. “The Dattatreyayogasastra (13CE), for instance, says that yoga can be practised by anyone irrespective of religion or caste, ascetics, Brahmins, Buddhists, Jains, tantrics and even materialists.”
Dattatreyayogasastra has some pithy things to say about religious figureheads in “ochre robes” claiming to be great yogis, while lacking practice, faith and wisdom – “men like that do not practise yoga but attain their ends through words alone, one should shun those who wear religious garb”.
What inspired the book, Singleton said, was the desire to relook at the hegemony of a handful of texts, mostly Patanajil’s Yogasutras (2CE), in the modern recap of yoga history. “There is a vast range of thinking on yoga through different texts and they don’t necessarily repeat the Yogasutras,” said Singleton. He and Mallinson are also part of an ambitious ongoing five-year research project at SOAS, a university in London, on the evolution of one of the branches of yoga – hatha yoga.
Mark Singleton and James Mallinson
Another widely-held theory is that yogas are a Vedic practice, traceable back to 1500 to 1000 BCE. This is part of a common revivalist tendency to push the antiquity of knowledge traditions further back in history to give them greater importance. Some wishful thinkers in fact push it as far back as the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300-1300 BCE), pointing to the Pasupati seal that depicts a seated figure and was discovered at Mohenjo-daro. As the book points out, there are images in Mesoamerica that resemble yogic asanas more than the seal.
The book also traces what is now referred to as yoga, particularly dhyanayoga (meditation), to a much later period – 500 BCE, also the period when Buddhism began its rise to prominence. The Vedas had certain elements of mysticism, posture and breath control critical in yoga, but by no means does that make for evidence of a systematic yogic practice in Vedic era, say the authors.
It was a bunch of renunciant ascetics called Sramanas (strivers) seeking nirvana and moksha (liberation) around 500 BCE whose practices created the earliest template for yoga, though they did not call it that. “These groups, which probably developed independently of the Brahmanical Vedic traditions, but were influenced by them to varying degrees, included Buddhists, Jains and the lesser-known Ajivikas,” says the book. Ajivika was an ascetic sect that challenged the Brahminical grip on Hinduism.
Janis C Alano/Reuters
Buddhist practices, texts and deities indeed exerted a strong influence in the shaping of yoga, taking its early practice, under other names, to Tibet and Sri Lanka. “The first major text on hatha yoga is Amritasiddhi, an 11th century tantric Buddhist work,” said Mallinson, who has researched extensively on extreme practices in yoga and written a book on the esoteric tantric practice of Khecharividya.
Research now shows that the Buddhist Yogacara school and its texts predate Yogasutra by two centuries. And the use of several asanas and mudras “bear a close similarity to ascetic practices first mentioned in the latter half of the first millennium BCE, shortly after the time of the Buddha”. “In the second millennium, the new techniques of haṭha yoga began to be incorporated into the vedantic mainstream, and new texts were composed – such as the so-called Yoga Upaniṣads – which assimilated these technologies and presented them as part and parcel of the tradition,” said Singleton. “Previously, authorities like Shankara had rejected yoga as a spiritual path. Increasingly, hatha yoga became accepted as a practice suitable to householders rather than just renunciants.”
The vedantic appropriation of yoga reached a high point with raja yoga, popularised by Swami Vivekananda towards the end of the 19th century. It combined vedanta, yoga and western “spiritual” techniques. It is the heady mix of yoga, spiritualism and nationalism propagated by him that makes him the favourite philosopher and yogi of the Right-Wing establishment.
Yoga has, over the last couple of years, been personally pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Yoga Day spectacles on June 21, the drive to ensure it greater place in academia and institutions, and the aggressive stance on issues taken by babas and yogis have ensured that the tradition has now acquired a muscular nationalist profile.
Alongside, the US-based Hindu American Foundation has been protesting what it calls the cultural appropriation of yoga by the West. It accuses the Western countries of tearing the tradition from its Hindu roots. There are an equal number of Christian and Islamist organisations that see yoga as a Hindu practice. Singleton and Mallinson themselves were at the receiving end of blunt comments at the 2017 Jaipur Literature Festival: what are two white guys doing writing on yoga? They are often asked confused questions about yoga’s religious roots and antiquity.
But yoga itself has been robustly open to the idea of taking diverse cultures into its cultures throughout its history. “You often find greater details in some of the Persian texts on yoga than in Sanskrit,” said Mallinson. “In fact, the first illustrated manuscript on yoga, Bahr al-Hyat (Ocean of Life), was commissioned by Prince Salim, later Emperor Jahangir.”
The district administration has imposed CrPC Section 144 in parts of Rohtak district as a precautionary measure in view of the call given by a section of Jats for a fresh round of quota agitation from January 29.
The assembly of five or more people in about 500 metres from national and state highways, along with railway stations in the city has been banned, an official said today.
The Haryana government has sought 55 companies of paramilitary forces from the Centre besides deployment of 7,000 Home Guards in the state which saw 30 deaths and widespread vandalism during a similar stir last year.
Rohtak and some of its neighbouring districts, including Sonipat and Jhajjar, had been worst-hit by the violence.
The agitation had also affected Delhi as the protesters cut water supply to the national capital.
The call for fresh stir has been given by some Jat outfits, especially those owing allegiance to the All India Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti (AIJASS) headed by Yashpal Malik.
The Jat community outfits, while accusing the Manohar Lal Khattar government of not fulfilling their demands for reservation, have threatened to launch the next round of agitation from January 29.
“Although the leaders of various agitating organisations have promised to hold dharnas in a peaceful manner, still the administration is fully geared up to maintain law and order,” Haryana’s Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Ram Niwas said.
All the Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents of Police have been directed to ensure that highways and railway tracks are not obstructed and no damage is caused to property, officials said.
Meanwhile, a mahapanchayat of some Khaps (caste councils) was held at Rohtak today, in which they reiterated their call to hold the peaceful agitation from January 29.
During the mahapanchayat, Khap leaders maintained that the release of arrested Jat youths from jails, withdrawal of cases registered during last year s agitation and grant of government jobs to the kin of youths killed during last year s stir were their immediate demands.
Om Prakash Nandal, new chief of Nandal Khap, who was the convener of the Mahapanchayat meeting held at Rohtak, assured that the stir will be peaceful.
“Since the reservation matter is in high court, we will wait for it the final outcome,” he said.
Another prominent Khap leader Surinder Singh, told reporters in Kurukshetra that the Jat leadership knows it that the issue of Jat reservation was a legal battle and not a political one.
“However, some of the Jat leaders who belong to other states are using coercive methods of threatening to re-launch agitation across the state for vested interests,” he said.
शुक्रवार को डायरेक्टर संजय लीला भंसाली के साथ जयपुर में शूटिंग के दौरान हाथापाई और मारपीट हुई है। इस फिल्म का विरोध कर रहे कुछ राजपूत समूहों की भीड़ ने जयपुर के जयगढ़ किले में लगे फिल्म के सेट के बाहर प्रदर्शन करते हुए भंसाली को थप्पड़ जड़ दिया और उनके साथ मारपीट और अभद्रता की।
राजस्थान के जयपुर के जयगढ़ किले में चल रही संजय लीला भंसाली की पीरियड ड्रामा फिल्म ‘पद्मावती’ की शूटिंग के दौरान राजपूत करणी सेना के कार्यकर्ताओं ने जमकर हंगामा मचाया और तोड़-फोड़ की। हाथा-पाई के दौरान प्रदर्शनकारियों ने भंसाली को थप्पड़ भी मार दिया।
मीडिया रिपोर्ट्स के मुताबिक, करणी सेना का कहना है कि उन्हें अलाउद्दीन खिलजी और रानी पद्मावती के बीच कथित रूप से फिल्माए जा रहे लव सीन पर आपत्ति है। फिल्म में शाहिद कपूर, रणवीर सिंह और दीपिका पादुकोण प्रमुख भूमिकाओं में हैं। दीपिका चित्तौड़ की रानी पद्मावती की भूमिका निभा रही हैं।
हंगामा करने वाले संगठन करणी सेना का दावा है कि संजय लीला भंसाली ने अपनी फिल्म पद्मावती में अलाउद्दीन खिलजी और रानी पद्मावती के बीच एक बेहद आपत्तिजनक सीन डाला है।
This conversation with Bezwada Wilson and TM Krishna was part of the Indus Conversations series by Tulika Books.
This conversation with Bezwada Wilson and TM Krishna was part of the Indus Conversations series by Tulika Books, 11th December 2016. TM Krishna, a carnatic music vocalist and social commentator, and Bezwada Wilson, National Convenor of the Safai Karamchari Andolan, are recipients of the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Awards. TM Krishna was honoured for his work toward "social inclusiveness in culture", and his sustained efforts to bring music and arts to the marginalised sections of society, particularly in the underdeveloped rural areas of Tamil Nadu. Bezwada Wilson has spent his life campaigning against manual scavenging. He founded the community based Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA) to fight for the eradication of manual scavenging.
The conversation of the two awardees with writer Nilanjana Roy probes a range of issues from the meaning of liberty and equality, and nationalism and freedom, to the experience of caste based discrimination, and the role of art in changing our perpectives of the world.
RSS sees the Indian Constitution, with its progressive provisions, as a roadblock for establishing the Hindu Rashtra.
RSS sees the Indian Constitution as a roadblock for establishing Hindu Rashtra.
For a long time, RSS and other right-wing groups have been peddling lies that Dr B.R. Ambedkar wanted Reservations for the SC/STs to be discontinued 10 years from the inception of the Constitution.
The Sangh Parivar, a strong believer of the Manu’s (a)dharma code, does not believe in the empowerment of the lower castes and women. It sees the Indian Constitution, with its progressive provisions, as a roadblock for establishing the Hindu Rashtra. The RSS leaders have been making statements on the need to ‘revisit reservations’ or end it. Manmohan Vaidya, at the Jaipur Literary Festival, recently said that caste-based reservations should go. Prior to that, RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat made a similar statement just before the Bihar Assembly elections. Did Ambedkar really want reservations to end? In this context, it is important for us to know how the reservations have come about and what the constitution has to say.
Snapshot of Reservation Policy in Modern India
Reservations for the backward classes were introduced for the first time in 1902 by Chatrapati Sahuji Maharaj of Kohlapur. Later, in 1919 it was implemented by the King of Mysore on the recommendations of the Miller Committee. It was suggested by the Committee that there has to be a fair representation of non-Brahmins in matters of employment and education. This practice was replicated in the Madras Presidency in 1921, where for every 12 posts, five had to go to non-Brahmins, two to Brahmins, two to Muslims, two to Anglo-Indians or Indian Christians and one to the depressed classes (read Untouchable castes).
The struggle for social justice in the modern period began in the Southern regions of India. It then spread to other parts of the country, with the entry of Dr B.R. Ambedkar into the political scene around the 1920s. During the same period, the Depressed Classes were getting organised politically and were approaching the British administration to address their grievances. The struggles of the untouchables were recognised by the British and they provided some nominated positions with the enactment of Government of India Act, 1919. Untouchables were categorised as the Scheduled Castes (SC) in 1935 Act and specific seats were reserved for them in the political sphere. Gandhi sat on a hunger strike at the Yerawada Central Jail against the provisions of separate electorates for the SCs. A compromise position was struck between Ambedkar and Gandhi by signing an agreement known as the Poona Pact. The right to choose members who truly would work for the betterment of the lives of the ati-Shudras was lost forever. Many people believe that the progress of the Scheduled Castes was derailed by the joint electorates where the majority (upper castes) of the population had a larger say in who gets elected.
On the jobs front, reservation in services was extended to the Scheduled Castes in the year 1942 as a policy of the British government. After India gained independence, though a liberal democratic framework was adopted, the Constitution had certain provisions to safeguard the interests of the marginalised – Dalits, women, minorities and children.
Constitutional Provisions for Reservations
The provisions in the constitution which enable policy makers to institute reservations or affirmative action policies are under three sections: Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles of State Policy and Special Provisions Relating to Certain Classes.
Articles 16 to 16 (4B) of the Fundamental Rights specifically addresses the government to reserve posts in employment or posts that are not “adequately represented in the services under the State.”
Article 46 states that, “The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.”
Article 335 of the Constitution directs the policy-makers to have reservations in services and posts of governance.
This article (Article 335) allows governments to provide reservations for the SC/STs in employment and other posts, related to state governance. If Dr. Ambedkar intended to end reservations in services, he would have incorporated a relevant clause. He believed that there should be proportional representation in matters of services and education. He says that, “The question of entry into the Public Service is an important question for all minority communities. But to the Scheduled Castes it is a vital question, a question of life and death. There are many reasons why this must be so. In the first place, it is a question of opening up a career for young men[/women] from the Scheduled Castes. This is an aspect of the question which the Scheduled Castes, and even the Government of India, cannot ignore.”
Ambedkar, for whom representation of Dalits in services was a matter of life and death would not have been so casual about the issue as the conservatives/RSS want us to believe.
Ten-year Limitation for Reservations for SC/ST MPs and MLAs
Babasaheb Ambedkar definitely talked about a set time period for reserved seats in legislative assemblies and the parliament. He introduces the article 295A in the Constituent Assembly:
“… [R]reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes either in House of the People or in the Legislative Assembly shall cease to have effect on the expiration of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution. This is also in accordance with the decision of the House.” Thus, it is clear that Ambedkar said a limitation of “ten years” should be imposed upon reservations on legislative positions. Reacting to these provisions, on 21 November 1949, S. Nagappa, a Member of the Constituent Assembly, stated in his concluding remarks:
“We too would have been glad to forego our reservations if we had the status of other minorities, the economic status, the social status and the educational status which the other minorities are enjoying today. The responsibility lies more on your shoulders, as you have taken the pledge that you should bring us upto your level within 10 years' time. I hope with this goodwill, with your generosity, we will be able to come to that level.”
The hope Nagappa had, that the untouchable castes would achieve the same level of development as others, remains till date a distant dream.
Though Ambedkar did not say anything about the need to end reservations in services, either in the Constituent Assembly or in any of his works, the RSS thinks that a ‘lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth’. But, it forgets that the exploited lot who swear by Ambedkar are not going to be fooled by such propaganda. This was proven in the Bihar Elections, where the electoral battle was fought on the issue of social justice vs the Hindutva agenda and the people rejected the BJP.
Now with the upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh and four other states, the Sangh Parivar is back to its favourite topic of ‘revisiting the Reservations’. However, people are aware of the dangers if the BJP captures power in the these states.