Delhi state Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and leader of Aam Aadmi Party

The announcement was made on the eve of Independence day in his address on the launch of ‘constitution at 70’ campaign. The Delhi CM said that children need to learn about patriotism so that when they grow up they will become responsible citizens who will not take bribe, discharge their duties honestly and will have love and respect towards the nation and the ‘guests’ who come from other countries.

He said that the decision has been taken after detailed discussions with Education Minister for state Manish Sisodia.

The CM said that feelings of patriotism arise only when there is a cricket match or when there are tensions at the border. This feeling is absent in our day to day lives. Therefore the objective of this curriculum is to instil love and respect amongst the students for their country.The children will also realise the problems the nation is facing such as farmers’ suicides and poverty and that they need to be solved by all.

“We have to create a sense of ownership among all children that they have to take on the challenges we are facing as a country head on and address them. Third, we have to instill among children the passion and commitment to be prepared to sacrifice anything for the nation,” he said.

Calling the curriculum as a ‘gift to the nation’, Kejriwal said that the teachers and the principals of the government schools will be consulted while designing the curriculum.

This decision of ‘desh bhakti’ curriculum is seen as a step to be with the flow of the prevalent mood of ‘nationalism’ and also as a strategic step for the upcoming assembly elections in the next year.

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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The offence of sedition has always been at the center of controversy, given its impact on freedom of speech. However, during this election season the debate was given a new angle, with the Home Minister Shri Raj Nath Singh and the BJP President Shri Amit Shah promising to make the offence more stringent. On the other hand, the Congress in its election manifesto had promised to scrap the section from the statute books. I aim to answer the above controversy (i.e. whether the law on sedition should be made more stringent or scrapped?) in the present post.

The post shall first explain Section 124-A (‘Section’) and how the Courts have interpreted it. This shall be followed by a discussion on the actual implementation of the section by the government machinery. The article shall conclude by discussing whether the provision should be made more stringent or not. What is Sedition? The offence of sedition is defined in Section 124-A as the expression by words (spoken or written) or visible representations that excites disaffection or generates hatred against a government established by law. The punishment for the offence ranges between three years to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court of India laid down the test for the application of the Section in the locus classicus of Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar [A.I.R. 1962 S.C. 955 (India)].

The Court held that the Section is applicable when: An individual commits an act which creates disaffection/hatred against the government established by law; and The act is committed with the intention to create public disorder by violence or cause incitement to violence. The exception to the above is a bona fide criticism of government actions, without exciting or attempting to excite hatred [Explanation 2, § 124-A].

These phrases are explained below. Government established by law: The phrase government established by law means either the central government or the state government. It does not include the persons who for the time being are engaged in carrying on the government machinery. For instance, if an individual criticizes and raises slogans against the army, she/he cannot be booked under the Section as the ‘army’ does not constitute a ‘government established by law’ but is only engaged in carrying on the government machinery [Bilal Ahmed v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1997) 7 SCC 431; Balbir Singh Saini v. State of Haryana, 1988 SCC Online P& H 616]. Similarly, an individual cannot be booked under the section for criticizing the Prime Minister or her/his actions.

The Court in Javed Habib v. Govt. of NCT Delhi [2007 SCC Online Del. 891], dealing with such a challenge remarked, “Where the leader of a political party becomes the head of the government, any criticism of the person and his policies as head of the political party or Government cannot be viewed as sedition.” (5) Intention to create public disorder by violence or cause incitement to violence: The second requirement of the Section is that the alleged act is committed with the intention to create public disorder or cause incitement to violence. The Court’s threshold of incitement to violence and creating public disorder is very high. In cases where an individual merely utters certain provocative statements, without eliciting any violence or response, the Section is not attracted. For instance, on the eve of Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, two individuals raised slogans such as ‘Khalistan Zindabad’ and ‘Raj Karega Khalsa’. The Court here held that the individuals could not be booked under the Section as their acts were mere ‘casual raising’ of some slogans without the intention to incite people to create disorder [Balwant Singh v. State of Punjab, AIR 1995 SC 1785]. On the contrary, where an individual commits visibly violent acts which make clear her/his intention to create public disorder the Section is attracted. For instance, the Section was applicable where the accused kidnapped several hostages with a view to secure the release of his associate, who had been detained for the offence of Hijacking an Air Craft, killing of innocent passengers and collection of Arms and Ammunition [Nazir Khan v. State of Delhi, (2003) 8 SCC 461]. Similarly, the Section was attracted when an individual in a poem titled ‘Srujuna’ called for violence and overthrowing of government with arms [P. Hemalata v. Govt. of AP, 1976 SCC Online AP 197]. Given the rise of social media, the Courts have started looking at online activities of the accused individuals i.e. Facebook messages, statuses etc. to identify whether the accused had an intention to cause public disorder and incite violence [Arvinder Singh v. State of Punjab, 2018 SCC Online P&H 762 at par. 11]. Bona fide criticism of the Government:

The Section itself allows for bona fide criticism of the government action and policies. Therefore, strong words used by an individual to express disapprobation of the government actions, for ameliorating the conditions of the people, would not attract the Section. The only caveat is that such criticism should not result in incitement of public disorder or use of violence. Interestingly, renowned politician Mr. Arun Jaitely was charged under the Section for criticizing the Supreme Court’s verdict in the National Judicial Appointment’s case. Quashing the charges, the Court held, “A citizen had a right to say or write whatever he likes about the Government or its measures by way of criticism or comments so long as he did not incite people to resort to violence against the Government established by law or with the intention of creating public disorder.” [Arun Jaitley v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2015) SCC Online All 6013].

The bottom line is, as long as one indulges in ‘advocacy’ of an idea even if critical of the government, she/he is protected. However, once the advocacy calls for or results in incitement to violence, the protection is lost and the individual can be charged under the Section. The likelihood of incitement should be real and not remote. Mere use of words like ‘fight’ or ‘war’ does not automatically attract the application of the Section. Actual Implementation of Sedition Law- As discussed above, the Section is attracted only where an act is committed with the intention to cause public disorder or incitement to violence. The threshold for proving the same is very high, making sedition an exceptional offence. However, in practice the government bodies apply the provision in the ordinary course. For instance, as per a study by The Hindu, in Kashmir a lecturer was booked under the Section because he added questions on the unrest in the Kashmir Valley in an examination. Similarly, a Times of India editor was booked under the Section for questioning the competence of police officials and their alleged links with the mafia. In the above cases, none of the requirements of the Section were attracted but the arrests were still made. The reason for such blatantly illegal arrests is to stifle criticism of the government authorities by arresting the dissidents and putting them through a cumbersome legal process. Even if the dissidents are ultimately freed later, the long legal process acts as a punishment and a deterrent. Statistics back the above statement as well.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, between 2014-16, 179 people were arrested under the Section and no charge sheet was filed till the year end. In 2016 alone, 34 individuals were booked under the Section and only one was convicted. Need for a stringent Sedition Law? BJP President Shri Amit Shah during the election season had remarked that we need a stronger sedition law, otherwise how will we send ‘tukde-tukde’ gang members to jail. I humbly disagree with the above statement. First, our Penal Law has several provisions which provide for punishment if an individual commits an offence against the state i.e. waging war against the government or abetting the act of waging war (§ 121, IPC), conspiring to wage war against the government (§ 121A) etc. Furthermore, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 criminalizes acts which support claims of secession or question the territorial integrity of India. Second, the existing law on sedition in India achieves the perfect balance between the right to freedom of speech and that of a stable government. By making the laws more stringent, dissent would be stifled and citizens would be mere yes-men to government actions. Any scope of amelioration by dialogue would be nipped in the bud. Concluding Remarks: Sedition as an offence was created by the British government in its colonies to curb dissent. During our freedom struggle leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and Annie Besant were all booked under this law. While other former British colonies have abolished the law, India continues to have it in the statute books. During the framing of our Constitution, several members of the Constituent Assembly had called for scrapping the law, including Pt. Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.

However, these calls were not paid heed to and the law continues to exist. Interestingly, our colonial master i.e. UK which enacted this law has itself scrapped it in 2010 stating that it stifles free speech and has a chilling effect. * Even if scrapping seems to be an extreme step given the peculiar nature of India and its conditions, at least the status quo on the interpretation of sedition should be maintained. Making the law more stringent would although create a facade of nationalism where nobody says anything against the government, the growth of the Indian democracy will be crushed. Justice Menon in Aravindan v. State of Kerala [1983 SCC Online Ker 26] succinctly explained the need for a balanced approach to the Section. He opined, ‘9. A Government which keeps quiet when public peace is endangered from whichever quarter is really abdicating its duties. However, it is also necessary to remember that no opinion or ideas could be suppressed by imprisoning those who hold them. Political advocacy that criticized Government or urged unorthodox ideas, if forcefully presented, would create some possibility that it would lead to undesired action. But then what would be the result of suppressing such political advocacy.

Apart from the fact that such suppression of ideas may merely divert public opinion from serious social problems which need to be heeded, cutting off opportunity for expression is likely to intensify hostility, drive opposition underground, and prevent the solution of problems by reason rather than by force… Groups which advance anti-democratic ideas do not operate in a political vacuum. They are often motivated by fears, grievances or other conditions which the society should understand and confront. All the more in a country like India where the gap between the rich and the poor is so wide and where a large percentage of the population live below poverty line.’ Recently, a Member of Parliament called the killer of Mahatma Gandhi a ‘true patriot’. The statement reminds me of Voltaire’s famous words that ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to death your right to say so.’ Such an approach should be the bedrock of a modern progressive democracy which India aims to be. Therefore, while the statement of the MP is shocking and I condemn it, I disagree with the demands that she should be booked under the Section. The MP had the right to say what she said, even if the majority does not agree with her statement.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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It was the beginning of last year when the obsession of Indians with starting their day with a deluge of ‘Good Morning’ messages flooded WhatsApp, and generated a lot of chuckle. But it but also raised serious concerns such as the overloading WhatsApp servers, and clogging Android phones.

We were told how millions of Indians were getting online for the first time and how everyone was getting hooked on to WhatsApp. Their obsession with sending such messages was causing “..[s]ome serious pain for Internet giants.” Not only WhatsApp but even Google researchers in Silicon Valley had noted how “[I]nternet newbies are overloading their Android phones with Good Morning messages.”

Nobody then had any premonition that India would shortly come under scanner for the spread of online disinformation and fake news resulting in a string of murders and growth of anti-minority sentiments. A report published by BBC’s Beyond Fake News Series had tried to corroborate this.

In the programme, Santanu Chakrabarti, the head of audience insight at BBC World Service, who conducted the study, shared how the “rise of the Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, had made many Indians feel as though they had a patriotic duty to forward information.”

According to Chakrabarti, Indians “..[a]re effectively looking for validation of their belief systems and on these platforms, then, validation of identity trumps verification of the fact.” The large study, focussing on Kenya, Nigeria and India, studied how people react to and spread fake news. Cheap cost of data coupled with rising (what is construed as) nationalist sentiment was found to be behind the widespread sharing of fake news.

Actor Prakash Raj, speaking on the challenges posed by fake news at the ‘Beyond Fake News Conference’ organised by BBC attributed this phenomenon to the Bharatiya Janata Party and summarised it by saying how “They have intermingled nationalism, religion and patriotism and so they flood posts on social media blurring historical facts to push this agenda,”

What was worrying was that this investigative report clearly suggested a strong overlap between fake news and pro-Modi political activity. It suggested that the ruling party was actively and effectively peddling fake news about Prime Minister Modi across social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook’ .

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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Rajasthan, India. Children dressed as Mahatma Gandhi during Gandhi Jayanti, the national festival marking his birthday, on October 1, 2018. Shaukat Ahmed/press Association. All rights reserved.

It was the best day for Gandhi, it was the worst day for Gandhi. The President, Prime Minister, Governors and Chief Ministers paid tributes to Gandhi’s memory, some Hindu nationalists took to social media to pay tributes to Gandhi’s killer, thousands garlanded Gandhi’s statues, a few saffron-clad Hindus garlanded his killer’s statue, the world celebrated Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2 as Nonviolence Day, some countries marking the day by violent thoughts and deeds. In India, the day saw police action against poor farmers trying to enter Delhi to highlight their plight. Indian political leaders read out homilies, they sucked morality out of politics, they called on the nation to follow the Gandhian path, while their governments promoted economic policies that went against Gandhi’s vision.

In seminars and TV studios, some said Gandhi was more relevant today, some others said Gandhi was outdated in the modern age. Gandhi placed the poorest of the poor in the company of God by calling him Daridra Narayan. Politicians talk about the poor during the election campaigns, but once in power help the rich accumulate more wealth.

Gandhi is ignored by those who oppress the lower castes and women, deliver hate speeches against a minority and indulge in violence. Such incidents have increased and what is more vicious, the admirers of Gandhi’s killer have found a new voice through social media. They have “come out”. Their outpouring is linked to the Hindu-Muslim issue that features prominently in the mainstream TV channels and in the First Information Reports filed at the police stations in violence-hit towns and villages.
 

Godse-admirers come out

To mark this birth anniversary, scholar Vinay Lal had to write on “the killers of Gandhi in modern India”. The newly introduced “muscular” politics is on his mind as he refers to Gandhi’s killer, Nathuram Godse, angered by the Mahatma for effeminising Indian politics:
“The so-called toxic masculinity that is on witness in the streets of every town and city in India is not only a manifestation of Hindu rage and a will to shape a decisive understanding of the past, but also a reaction to the androgynous values that Gandhi embodied and which the Hindu nationalist tacitly knows are enshrined in Indian culture.

“What is different about the killers of Gandhi today is that they act with total impunity. They are aware of the fact the present political dispensation is favourable to them, and that much of the ‘ruling class’ despises Gandhi. The official pieties surrounding Gandhi Jayanti may be nauseating to behold, but October 2 is a necessary provocation.”

Vinay Lal says the display of respect is just to cover up the complete contempt and hatred for the “Mahatma”. He refers to a poem circulating on WhatsApp calling Gandhi a fool and traitor to the nation and to the fact that Gandhi’s assassin can be installed as a deity in a temple! Lal promises to write about this poem.

Avijit Pathak, who teaches sociology at the famous Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes: “Every year on October 2, I feel somewhat uneasy. From Rajghat (Gandhi Memorial) to Parliament, from the declaration of “pro-people” policies to the empty slogan initiated by the political class, I experience the death of Gandhi.”

He refers to the normalisation of the brute practice of stigmatising the “other” through lynching and cow-vigilantism. “From Gandhi’s time of colonialism, religious reform and the nationalist movement, we seemed to have moved towards a new reality characterised by what I would regard as a mix of neoliberal capitalism and militant cultural nationalism, and market driven consumerism and technocratic developmentalism.”
 

Attenborough’s Gandhi

India’s public broadcaster dutifully screened Richard Attenborough’s famous film Gandhi. It shows the Mahatma stopping communal violence in Calcutta by going there and fasting. It shows Gandhi failing to prevent India’s Partition on the basis of religion. The film moves the secular Hindus to tears with Gandhi calling Hindus and Muslims as the two eyes of mother India. It angers the Hindu nationalists when Gandhi is shown pleading with Jinnah to give up his demand for Partition and to be the Prime Minister of an undivided India!

Those committed to social and economic equality feel enthused by Gandhi’s advocacy of the untouchables and women. But the extremist patriarchs and the high-caste goons perhaps switch off the TV! The pacifists thank the film-maker for reminding the nation of Gandhi’s warning that an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. Some others see it as a conspiracy to weaken Hindus.

Fortunately, the screening of the Richard Attenborough film passed off peacefully! He made the film just in time. He shot it in India when ultra-nationalism was not in vogue and sectarian elements used to express their views in private. Political marginalisation of Muslims was unheard of. A civilizational state was yet to aspire to be a nation-state.

Attenborough’s film introduces Gandhi’s key principles even to those who only know that Gandhi was born on October 2 because on this day the schools and offices are closed. Through simple dialogue, the film highlights the foolishness of India imitating the western consumption model, and not building self-reliant village communities, ignoring the value of handicrafts and local resources and indigenous skills. Gandhi’s critics have considered these views quaint, anti-modernity and anti-industrialisation, while even some scientists have admired Gandhi as an “innovator”. R. A. Mashelkar coined the term “Gandhian engineering” to popularise his concept of frugal techniques for “doing more for less for more”.

Ironically, it was Gandhi’s call for Swadeshi, (spirit of self-reliance) that fired the Indian scientists to develop high technology when India was denied it in fields ranging from super-computers to atomic energy and from space to military hardware. While roads in India named after Gandhi have shopping malls stuffed with imported underwear and toys, the leaders of America and Europe have become firm believers in Swadeshi by campaigning against imported goods and people!

But now, since some western economists and activists have started admiring the Gandhian vision of sustainable development, the TV debates are not dominated by the sceptic experts. It was Gandhi who relentlessly tried to impress on the world leaders that the earth has enough for human needs but not for human greed!

Gandhi would have been quite amused to observe all this. One wishes to hear his typical humorous comments. He would have quipped on seeing a photo of his statue being vandalised or on reading a news report that the tallest statue in India will not be of the Father of the Nation but of his follower Sardar Patel!

Globalising Gandhi

Gandhi’s birth anniversary yields a rich harvest of cartoons exposing the political elite’s hypocrisy and its use of the ceremonies held on this national holiday. The expected editorials appear on the lip service being paid to the Gandhian principles. The visual media displays the images and symbols associated with Gandhi.

Gandhi remains relevant for publishers and for collectors of images and sketches. He remains invaluable for the brand mangers hired by politicians seeking votes and the commercial organisations seeking customers.

With his global appeal, Gandhi enhanced India’s brand image. Gandhi even figured on an Apple hoarding in Silicon Valley! On this 149th birth anniversary, the Government took a rare public diplomacy initiative by producing a video with collected clips of artists from 124 countries singing a line of Gandhi’s favourite song that says that only the one who feels the pain of others can be said to be a good person. “Vaishnava jan to tene kahiye, je peed parayi jaane hai…”, the 15th century devotional song in Gujarati, was in the set of hymns sung every day in Gandhi’s Ashram. It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea to present this song to a global audience.

A unique product popularised by Gandhi during the freedom struggle has got noticed internationally, thanks to some well-known fashion houses in France and other countries. Khadi, hand-woven cloth made from hand-spun yarn, attracted experts by the feel and look of its texture. For the same reason and not for the underlying Gandhian principle, many affluent Indians too started buying superfine khadi. On Gandhi’s birth anniversary when khadi is subsidised by the Government, New Delhi’s flagship khadi store did a record sale exceeding 100,000 pounds sterling. It had to extend its business hours to handle increased footfall. So, in this case the ideological past profitably fused with the materialistic present.

Gandhi used his spinning wheel every day for meeting his own requirement. He spun yarn for a piece of lace that he gave as a wedding gift to Queen Elizabeth. (The Queen gave this piece of lace to Prime Minister Modi whose minister promptly claimed that the gesture showed the esteem in which Modi is held! The Queen’s magnanimity silenced those who want Britain to return the Kohinoor.)

Gandhi popularised khadi as a substitute for the British cloth. He propagated khadi as an instrument of uplifting the rural poor and making communities self-reliant. Khadi provided livelihood to countless village artisans. In the post-liberalisation India, the khadi movement suffered, and the impressive turnover of a few glamorous metropolitan outlets does not tell the entire story. Many khadi centres remain in a bad shape and heavily dependent on the state subsidy. Take just one example of a khadi centre opened by Gandhi in 1925 which is “dying, much like his legacy”. The news report says the trust running the first-ever All India Spinners Association in a Punjab village was once famous for its khadi but is now dying of neglect. Today 20 of the state’s 28 khadi trusts are running into losses. As a result, the artisans have either migrated or changed their profession.

The famous fashion houses have given a “modern” touch to khadi. This year the simple but elegant Gandhi memorial in the national capital has been equipped with digital displays! The memorial was spruced up after a court criticised its poor maintenance.

Displaying devotion to the museumised Father of the Nation and ignoring his principles have gone hand in hand for years. “Gandhi and iconography” has been studied by scholars. The image of his reading glasses came in handy for publicising a public sanitation campaign launched by Prime Minister Modi. All see the spectacles Gandhi used to wear and read the reports of sanitation workers killed by lethal gas while cleaning the sewage lines. The contractors do not give them the gas masks and the same tragedy is repeated over and over.
Incidents of the Dalits and Muslims being lynched are not rare. Gandhi would have launched a movement against the atrocities being committed against them. He would not have remained silent about the criminalisation of politics. Some 30 per cent of the legislators have criminal cases registered against them. The Supreme Court says it cannot bar them from fighting elections unless they are proven guilty.

India’s youth today does not feel inspired by Gandhi who faces worse than neglect from the Hindu nationalists, capitalists and the middle classes of the new India. The trusteeship principle has been abandoned by the capitalists many of whom had once responded to Gandhi’s call. Moderation has been marginalised. The money-mad Indians indulging in conspicuous consumption wear their contempt for Gandhi on their sleeves. Sustainable development has never been taken seriously by the governments.
 

Gandhi magic

Do many new Indians read Albert Einstein’s words that generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon the earth?

Or Nelson Mandela’s words that Gandhi was the first person to show us the method of organised, disciplined, mass protest. Gopal Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson, asks: What does one say of the ‘mass’ politics and the ‘causes’ of today’s India? “On its thoroughfares, streets, by-lanes, village tracks and a hundred different hideouts, it damages, disfigures, destroys.”

Richard Attenborough’s film picturises Gandhi’s fast in Calcutta as he extinguishes the fire of communal violence and restores sanity. Viceroy Lord Mountbatten writes to Gandhi: “In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and large-scale rioting on our hands, In Bengal our forces consist of one man, and there is no rioting. As a serving officer, as well as administration, may I be allowed to pay my tribute to the One-Man Boundary Force…”

What Mountbatten saw as a heroic feat is viewed differently by those promoting communal strife to use it as a political tool for consolidating Hindu votes through religious polarisation! For them Gandhi’s fast made the evisceration of secularism a bit more difficult.
It is said that Gandhi could work his magic on Britain, but he would have found it difficult to deal with Hitler’s Germany. “One of Gandhi’s achievements was to show Britons the reality of their own consciences, to reveal to them the gulf between their religious pretensions and political ideals, and their actual practice as imperialists”, writes author George Woodcock.

Gandhi worked his magic on Indians of his time. Years later in mid-seventies, some Indians told V. S. Naipaul that since the death of Gandhi truth has fled from India and the world! Naipaul saw an inversion of Gandhianism in the emergence of a violent Hindu cult like the Anand Marg and wrote about the “ease with which Hinduism can decline into barbarism”. Now in 2018 there is no Anand Marg, but many Indians share Naipaul’s fear.
 

Gandhi redivivus

The 149th birth anniversary provokes one to fantasise about Gandhi’s appearance in today’s India. Suppose in his prayer meeting he talks about the Gita and the Sermon on the Mount in the same breath and says that the latter “went straight to my heart”. Suppose he eulogises India’s syncretic tradition and calls for freedom from fear and from cultural insecurity that have been inflicted on the people. Suppose he repeats his words that “religion is outraged when outrage is perpetrated in its name” and that “truth is God”. Suppose he asks politicians not to tell lies. Suppose he tells them to stop abusing their opponents and start loving them.

If that happens, Gandhi will have to abruptly end his prayer meeting and go on a fast! Will Indians ever again march on the street singing Gandhi’s favourite song about the Supreme Being named Ishwar as well as Allah and praying to Him to bestow sanity on all human beings?
Writing on Gandhi in an India stricken by faux patriotism and jingoism causes gloom. A poem in Indian English written in the seventies by Nissim Ezekiel provides an antidote.

The Patriot  begins:
 I am standing for peace and nonviolence.
Why world is fighting and fighting
Why all people of world
Are not following Mahatma Gandhi,
I am simply not understanding….

L K Sharma has followed no profession other than journalism for more than four decades, covering criminals and prime ministers. Was the European Correspondent of The Times of India based in London for a decade. Reported for five years from Washington as the Foreign Editor of the Deccan Herald. Edited three volumes on innovations in India. He has completed a work of creative nonfiction on V. S. Naipaul  His two e-books The Twain and A Parliamentary Affair form part of The Englandia Quartet.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/

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Americans have long differed over whether patriotism should be pushed in their nation’s schools. vepar5/www.shutterstock.com

As our new book “Patriotic Education in a Global Age” demonstrates, such debates are longstanding in American history.
 

Posting schoolhouse flags

Seventy-five years ago, at the height of America’s involvement in World War II, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that guaranteed public school students’ right to refuse to stand in patriotic salute.
Barnette’s origins go back to the late 19th century, when patriotic societies such as the Grand Army of the Republic – a Civil War veterans’ organization – and the Woman’s Relief Corps – the organization’s women’s auxiliary – launched a campaign to place a flag in every public school classroom. “The reverence of schoolchildren for the flag should be like that of the Israelites for the Ark of the Covenant,” the organization’s commander-in-chief William Warner enthusiastically declared at a rally in 1889.

Three years later, in 1892, the schoolhouse flag movement received a huge boost when The Youth’s Companion – one of the nation’s first weekly magazines to target both adults and their children – hired minister-turned-advertiser Francis Bellamy to develop promotional strategies to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to America. Bellamy’s national Columbus Day program involved assembling millions of students at their local schools to recite a pledge in salute to the American flag. The magazine profited from flag sales leading up to the event. The United States didn’t have an official pledge of national loyalty, however. So Bellamy composed his own: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Over the course of the next 40 years, the pledge underwent three revisions.

The first occurred almost immediately following the Columbus Day celebration when Bellamy, unhappy with the rhythm of his original work, inserted the word “to” before “the Republic.” Between 1892 and the end of World War I, this was the 23-word pledge that many states wrote into law.

The second modification occurred in 1923 when the American Legion’s National Americanism Commission recommended that Congress officially adopt Bellamy’s pledge as the national Pledge of Allegiance. Fearing, however, that Bellamy’s opening phrase – “I pledge allegiance to my Flag” – permitted immigrants to pledge allegiance to any flag they desired, the commission revised the line to read, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”

Over time, schools adopted the revision. Finally, in 1954, after the federal government included the pledge as part of the U.S. Flag Code during World War II, Congress reacted to the so-called godless communism many believed was infiltrating U.S. public institutions by adding the phrase “under God.”
 

Mainstreaming the pledge

Throughout the early 20th century, states across the nation passed laws that required student recitation as part of a morning flag salute so that by the time the United States plunged into World War I against Germany in 1917, pledging allegiance to the flag had become the standard beginning to the school day.

This explains why, in October 1935, 10-year-old Billy Gobitas and his 11-year-old sister Lillian were expelled from school after they refused to salute the flag. As Jehovah’s Witnesses who believed that venerating the flag violated God’s prohibition against bowing to graven images, the Gobitas family argued that the flag salute infringed the children’s First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court eventually heard the case Minersville School District v. Gobitis – a misspelling of the respondent’s surname – and decided for the school district. “We are dealing with an interest inferior to none in the hierarchy of legal values,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote for the court’s 8-1 majority, as France was overrun by Hitler’s army: “National unity is the basis of national security.”
 

Court declares rights

Controversy ensued. Throughout the country, newspapers reported on debates over the flag salute.

Acts of violence were committed against the Jehovah’s Witnesses. These included beatings acts of arson and even a case of tar and feathering.

At least partly because of the public’s reaction to the decision, the court agreed to hear another case that involved the flag salute just three years later. This time the case was brought by the families of seven Jehovah’s Witness children expelled in Charleston, West Virginia. Surprising many, the justices decided 6-3 in favor of the families and overruled Gobitis.

On Flag Day, 1943, Justice Robert Jackson delivered the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” Jackson declared. “If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.”

Although the Barnette decision held that students could not be forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the pledge has remained a mainstay of U.S. public education. Meanwhile, parents continue to oppose the pledge as a violation of their children’s constitutional rights.

Consequently, legal challenges persist. One of the most recent cases challenged inclusion of the phrase “under God” in the pledge. In this case – Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow – the court did not rule in the matter because the plaintiff who brought the suit lacked standing. Since the case did not address the underlying issue of religious freedom, future challenges are likely.

Similarly, Barnette did not address other pledge-related questions, such as whether students need parental permission to opt out of the flag salute. Cases that address this question, among others, continue to be pursued.

Whatever unresolved issues may remain, Barnette established as a matter of constitutional law and fundamental principle of American public life that participation in rituals of national loyalty cannot be compelled. The Supreme Court that rendered that decision clearly understood that non-participation can be well-motivated and should not be construed as a sign of disloyalty or lack of patriotism. The court was also clearly troubled by the vicious attacks on Americans who exercised their constitutional right not to participate.

We should be equally troubled now when we see public school leaders harshly condemn Colin Kaepernick – or any protester, for that matter – for how they choose to exercise their constitutional right to demand equal liberty and justice for all. Kaepernick decided to take a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African-Americans. The question we would pose to Kaepernick’s critics is this: How is taking a knee to affirm our country’s highest ideals anti-American?

Randall Curren, Professor of Philosophy, University of Rochester and Charles Dorn, Professor of Education, Bowdoin College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Rabindranath Tagore, the composer of the poems that serve as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, wrote an essay on nationalism in which he asserted, “it is my conviction that my countrymen will gain truly their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.” In a letter to a friend, he wrote, “I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

My concern, as I watched Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi, was about how the film handles its central tension – between the values of humanity and patriotism.

The plot is, by now, well known: in 1971, with the Bangladesh war impending, the film’s protagonist Sehmat is approached by her father to take his place as an Indian spy who enjoys the confidence of the Pakistani military establishment. She agrees to the unusual arrangement: where she would be married to a Pakistani army officer Iqbal, who is himself the youngest son of a senior Pakistani army officer. The film follows this plotline to depart from the usual jingoism and demonization of Pakistan that usually marks spy thrillers. The Pakistanis in the film are humane, gentle, and upright, and the relationship between Sehmat and her husband Iqbal is tender and loving. Inevitably, then, the viewer finds it unusually difficult to empathise one-sidedly with the protagonist when she murders the family retainer who discovers that she is a spy, and then, to cover up that murder, cold-bloodedly follows orders from the Indian intelligence establishment and murders her brother-in-law who is on the verge of discovering the truth.

The viewer, like the protagonist herself, is torn with feelings of remorse for having caused such pain to her loving in-laws. She has sleepless nights, is haunted by the memory of the family retainer in her dreams, and is racked with sobs over and over at having had to kill her brother-in-law.

This tension is written into the script early on. During training, when Sehmat is taught by the Indian intelligence agent how to use a poison to ‘remove someone from the way’, she asks, ‘Remove someone? You mean kill someone?’ He responds, ‘Any problem?’ and she replies, ‘Shouldn’t I have a problem?’

The film disappoints in its resolution of this tension, because it falls short of courage. Instead of exploring the full moral and ethical implications of espionage and war, it falls back on formula: the reassuring idea that decent people of every country must inevitably jeopardise and betray every loving relationship (father-daughter, husband-wife) to obey the imperatives of espionage and war. Other commentators have already remarked on the fact that the film inverts the patriarchal notion that a woman, once married, takes on the identity and loyalties of her husband’s family: but is her father’s assumption that he has a right to use his daughter as a spy any less patriarchal? Sehmat answers her father’s doubts on this count by asking, why then do we send sons into war? That, indeed, is the profound question. But the film, after teetering on the brink of asking why war and espionage and its terrible human costs are inevitable – draws back from really looking into the abyss and facing the answers. It stops short of questioning the inevitability of wars that require the sacrifice of sons and daughters. It stops just short of asking hard questions about the ethical obligations of soldiers and spies in battle: should soldiers/spies follow orders to endanger or kill civilians and children and console themselves that such collateral damage is inevitable and permissible? This question is a serious one, that the world has made an attempt at answering. The Geneva Convention, for instance, that soldiers have “the right and duty not to obey” any order that involves violation of the Convention, for instance through custodial executions or forced disappearances. The film ‘The Reader’ explores the issue of the moral obligation of guards at a Nazi concentration camp to disobey orders they knew to be immoral. But Raazi turns away from these questions that stare it in the face.

The film has enough of tension between the impulses of humanity and patriotism to be extremely disturbing, however. Sehmat’s anger at her handler for ordering the killing of Iqbal (and the woman the handler thinks is Sehmat) is not assuaged by his answer, that “Many innocents are killed in war. In a war, nothing else matters but the war. Not you, not I, just the war.” She draws away, shaking her head tearfully and saying, “I can’t understand this world of yours – where there is no respect either for relationships or for life. I want to get out of this before I become completely like you. I want to go home.” Later, when she realises she is pregnant, she tells her mother, “I won’t abort Iqbal’s child. I can’t commit another murder.” The film also hints at the lasting mental trauma of the acts of violence and betrayal Sehmat committed: she is shown in an unknown bare room that could possibly be a mental asylum.

Were these acts of violence really needed by India? Did India really need to help ‘break off a piece of Pakistan’ (the phrase used by the Indian military officer in his speech in the opening shots of the film)? Whether we are Pakistani or Indian, must we not ask ourselves why our rulers demand that we sacrifice our humanity at the altar of ‘patriotic’ wars? Must we not seek to redefine love for our country in a way that makes it compatible with peace in the world?

The Pakistani army officers, shown laughing at Bangladesh’s demand for independence from Pakistan, point out that ‘mukti’ in the name Mukti Bahini refers to ‘azaadi’ (freedom). That, again, is a tantalising reminder of the cries of azaadi in Kashmir. In a film which showcases a Kashmiri woman as a postergirl of Indian patriotism, this scene could, possibly, serve to subtly nudge the discerning viewer to ask why India enabled Bangladesh’s azaadi from Pakistan but brands it intolerable even to give a sympathetic ear to the cry for azaadi for Kashmir.

Unfortunately, though, the film resolves this tension with the anodyne conclusion that country is, indeed, greater than the ideals of humanity: Sehmat’s and Iqbal’s son ends up as an officer in the Indian armed forces, and while the forces are encouraged to remember the human costs of war, the implication is that these consequences are tragic but inevitable. “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die” – or kill, as it may be – this is the message the viewer is left with. I suspect, though, that the discomforts the film generates are too strong to be appeased with this message. This is a spy film, a war film, after all, that leaves you recalling the tragedy of the death of the ‘enemy’ soldier Iqbal for hours after you leave the hall. This is a film that has no antagonist, no villain whose downfall we are able to contemplate with satisfaction. You could imagine a ‘Strange Meeting’ between Sehmat and Iqbal, in which the latter tells the former, “I am the enemy you killed, my friend” – in the words of the great anti-war poem by Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting.

As I write about Raazi, I recalled an exchange from the last few pages of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose set in an abbey in medieval Europe. Adso, the acolyte, asks Brother William
 

Isn’t affirming God’s absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist?

What follows is this:
 

William looked at me without betraying any feeling in his features, and he said, “How could a learned man go on communicating his learning if he answered yes to your question?”
I did not understand the meaning of his words. “Do you mean,” I asked, “that there would be no possible and communicable learning any more if the very criterion of truth were lacking, or do you mean you could no longer communicate what you know because others would not allow you to?”

I wonder if, in our country today, questions about the human costs, ethical implications, and necessity of war and espionage can only be raised while genuflecting to the idea that patriotism must trump humanity. If so, we have moved backwards from the times of Rabindranath Tagore, who even as an anti-colonial freedom struggle was raging, could assert that humanity was greater than country – without being subjected to hateful abuse branding him ‘anti-national’.                  

Kavita Krishnan is Secretary, AIPWA, and Politburo member of the CPI(ML)

Courtesy: kafila.online
 

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The image and the textual commentary that made its way around opened the ’emotional floodgates of nationalistic pride’, with many expressing deep admiration of the people photographed, their unabiding love for the nation being largely compared to the sacrifices of militarymen at border outposts. As ABP-News made no attempt at concealing, this image was particularly affective because

a.) it featured Muslims, and
b.) the blackboard at the background mentioned a school address which did not read in Hindi.

The imperial projection of the Hindu-nation was therefore complete: its tentacles espousing unflinching respect had spread beyond the periphery of the Hindi-speaking belt, and had deeply ingrained itself within the Indian-Muslim community even in its furthest crevices. The rabble-rousing minority community was now fully co-opted, managed and cleverly placed within a majoritarian discourse that respected the national flag even under dire circumstances.

Rehman’s image automatically drew comparisons with the French semiotician, Roland Barthes’ encounter with a magazine cover which he mentions in his book Mythologies. [1]

Visiting the barbershop one day, Barthes came across a French magazine Paris Match, which on its cover had the picture of a ‘young Negro in a French uniform saluting with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on the fold of the tricolor’.[ii] Barthes argued that at the preliminary level of meaning-making, the image conveyed a simple literal message only – a soldier, an uniform, a raised arm, eyes lifted, a French flag. However, on further digging, he asserted that, the image revealed a lot more. The sign, the boy, the flag, the gestures in the first level merely became signifiers in the second level of signification: they carried another, a higher order of truth within them. Such a step-by-step analysis, Barthes insisted, provoked him, and possibly the reader alike to ask as to “What was Paris Match telling us, by using this picture of a black soldier saluting a French flag?”[iii] Barthes averred that one such plausible meaning would be that the magazine wanted to convey the greatness of the French empire, and ‘that all her sons, without any colour discrimination’ faithfully served under her flag.[iv] Moreover, ‘there was no better answer to her detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so-called oppressors’.[v] Barthes’ line harrowingly echoed the nationalist celebration of Rehman’s image – the detractors who alleged cultural colonialism by an overbearing Hindu nation upon a defiant muslim community had to now acclimatize themselves with the image of Muslims voluntarily saluting the flag, their zeal calibrated to the eternally rising flood-water levels.

Barthes felt that with the heady concoction of militariness, French-ness and racial anxiety, the image itself had, in fact, become a myth: a seemingly benign sign drawn to convey a larger truth, a medley of smaller signs that cumulated into a larger, more abstract one, a cascading series of meanings where the final brew could appear only as ‘natural, stilled and timeless in time, both distant and auratic, and simple and self-explanatory.’[vi] Aiding this myth-making process was the textual commentary itself – the Paris Match issue spoke nothing of France’s colonial ambitions, just as Rehman’s original text was forgotten in the midst of social media circulation, his identity and his plea for help getting lost amidst the countless “Vande Mataram, Jai Hind” texts that now accompanied the image. Even as the text drew parasitically upon the image, it nevertheless rationalized the image in the given context of a hectoring nationalist aspiration, sublimating it as something entirely detached from Rehman’s original post, a desperate call for help to these humane individuals. Now rationalized to convey a ultra-national political ethos, the photograph nevertheless was forced to weigh in on its sensory reality. While one could readily see, feel and experience the salute as a credible, well recognized gesture, one also had to negotiate the dilapidated building, the waters, and the flag hastily tied to a bent bamboo pole in its material reality. However at the same time, the image became ‘tamed’, ‘transparent’ and docile.[vii] The history of the image was either forgotten in due course of circulation or perhaps mildly remembered to highlight that Independence Day is a celebrated reality even in the worst flood-affected regions of the country. Here meaning was tapped only to resurrect a nation’s ethos, but swiftly dismissed to elide the ‘what, how and why’ of the image and the people involved. Therefore, when news started pouring in about the image a couple of days later, these media reports specifically engaged in a myth busting activity, tracing the origins of the image, and the contexts around which they might have come around in the first place. The journalists reported that one of the reasons why this photo was taken was because, it had to be sent to first to Amir Hamza at the cluster-resource co-ordination centre in Dhubri, who would then forward it to the block officer, and who in turn would send it to the education department, so on and so forth. All of this was in fact a response to an MHRD circular dated 7^th August which ‘instructed’ schools to organize a set of programmes around Independence Day, asking students and teachers alike to promise to rid India of ‘corruption, terrorism, communalism and casteism by 2022’, and also document, share, upload and promote the same on social media.

A Huffington Post article claimed that by the headmaster’s admission, two children who knew how to swim were only chosen to stand near the hoisted flag, while the other kids stood at a distance of 10 metres from the flag, singing the national anthem. “We hoisted the flag, sang Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram while the rest of the students followed us from the road. In my 22 years of service, this is the first time we faced flood on Independence Day,” the headmaster informed the paper. While Rehman’s original motivation could not be known for certain, questions about why it was at all mandatory for schools to record Independence Day celebrations in a state reeling under heavy floods came to the forefront. More so for Dhubri, which is not only one of the worst-hit districts in Assam, with nearly 9 lakh people affected, but also a district with a majoritarian Muslim population. Soon after, the internet was also rife with this expose, expressing pleasure, sadness and anger in equal measure at this piercing of nationalist pride, illuminating the real reasons that lay behind the image.

While the image began to circulate as a discourse-generating object, it increasingly found itself playing a game of hide-and-seek, between a history that established too much of itself in the image, and a history that had to be obliterated for the myth (of the nation, of the photo) to sustain itself. And yet, as Barthes continued to hover around my experience/encounter with the image, one also re-realized that the actual site of myth-making about the nation was not necessarily only in the History textbooks that erased the Mughals, or the Aurangzeb Road that had to be re-named as Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Road. The actual site of the murky nationalist fervor, the writing of myth-as-history, lies in the thousands of hate-speech clips, small churnings of fears, doctored clips, magazine covers or even ordinary images like the one here which can easily travel, gather momentum of their own, shape-shift as the need be. Nationalism lay, in fact, in the quite ordinary. As Barthes wrote elsewhere, “within each sleeps that monster, the stereotype, which is itself a repetition” of all that precedes it.

A myth is something therefore that pleads for repetition, returning each time to fulfill its presumed destiny with a ritualistic obsession, like an always unfinished GIF that performs its cycle of incompleteness time and again. There is no nationalism without its symbols (beef or beef ban, national flag, anthem, Hindu vs. Muslim social law, caste system, language, gender, occupations etc.) but there is no nationalism without a ritualistic repetition of symbols either. Hence the perpetual need to share and validate, the perpetual need to devise, develop and pass various patriotic tests, the perpetual need to answer shrill calls of endurance and sacrifice. The waters are rising, and like the kids in Rehman’s image, the marginalized find themselves dangerously close to being washed away.
 
[1] Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 115.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Presentations and Signifying Practices (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997), 39.
[iv] Barthes, op cit.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid, 111-115.
[vii] Ibid, 118.

Courtesy: raiot.in

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A recent release by Sugata Bose, presently Trinamool Congress MP and grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, has traced the history of Vande Mataram. He says in his book that when top Bengali litterateur Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay first composed the national song “Vande Mataram”, his reference was to “Bangamata or Mother Bengal”. 

Explaining that “there is no specific mention of Bangamata or Mother Goddess”, Bose, who is a politician and a scholar, says, the national song’s reference to the “magic number of seven crore refers” essentially “to Bengalis”.

Hence, the song, translated by Bose into English, reads, “Seven crore voices in your clamorous chant,/ twice seven crore hands holding aloft mighty scimitars,/ Who says, Mother, you are weak?” Bankim’s hymn to the Mother, says Bose, was “originally written and printed in 1875 as a filler for a blank page in his journal “Bangadarshan (Vision/Philosophy of Bengal)”. 

“It was inserted into Bankim’s novel ‘Anandamath’ in 1882 and set to music and sung publicly for the first time by Rabindranath Tagore at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1896”, says Bose in his book “The Nation as Mother: And Other Visions of Nationhood”, published by Penguin Viking.

Abanindranath Tagore’s Bharatmata
Sugata Bose, 59, who is currently Gardiner Chair of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University, is also Director of the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata, a research center and archives devoted to the life and work of his grand uncle Netaji. He also serves as MP from the Jadavpur Constituency in West Bengal.

Coming to perhaps the earliest “visual evocation” of Bharatmata, Bose says, it “came in 1905 with Abanindranath Tagore’s painting ‘Bharatmata’, adding, “Visualised as a serene, saffron-clad ascetic woman, the Mother carried the boons of food, clothing, learning and spiritual salvation in her four hands.” 

However, points out Bose, “A conscious creation of an ‘artistic’ icon of the nation, Abanindranath tells us in a memoir that he had conceived his image as Bangamata and later, almost as an act of generosity towards the larger cause of Indian nationalism, decided to title it ‘Bharatmata’…”

However, at the same time, Bose says, “The name Bharatavarsha for the subcontinent as a whole was commonly used in the political discourse of Bengal, certainly since the Hindu Mela of 1867”, adding one of the “earliest literary evocations” of the concept of Bharatmata was in a poem by Dwijendralal Roy.

Roy’s poem, as translated into English, reads, “The day you arose from the blue ocean, Mother Bharatavarsha,/ The world erupted in such a joyful clamour, such devotion, Mother, and so much laughter.” 

About 50 years later, suggests Bose, the consciousness of “Bangamata” continued, as reflected in the newsmagazine “Millat” (Nation), in an editorial on April 11, 1947, where it accuses the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha of “together raised a sharpened pickaxe to slice ‘Mother’ into two”, referring to the partition of Bengal – “Banga-bhanga”.

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
In fact, “Millat” Bose quotes “Millat” at accusing Congress “for half a century”, talking “big” and preaching “many high ideals”, wondering, “What had happened to them so suddenly that having taken off their mask they were dancing on the same platform with the Hindu Mahasabha?”

Bose says, Bankim got the credit of “Vande Mataram” as having been written in praise of Bharat Mata first by Aurobindo Ghose, who argued in 1907, “It was thirty-two years ago that Bankim wrote his great song and few listened; but in a sudden moment of awakening from long delusions the people of Bengal looked round for the truth and in a fated moment somebody sang Bande Mataram.”

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Image: quora.com

 Forget about the ordinary Muslims, even the outgoing Vice President, Hamid Ansari, was roundly criticised by the government for his assessment that India Muslims were feeling very edgy with the new government in power. He was asked to go where he felt comfortable: which meant that he was being told to migrate to a Muslim majority country. Coming from an illustrious family which was part of the national movement and himself having served the country for long, such a parting shot would continue to singe the outgoing VP for years to come. And yet one is painfully aware that such a treatment of Muslims in India is not the first nor even it is going to be the last.

They are community caught in a perpetual loyalty test. Seventy years after Muslims decided to choose this country as theirs, they still have to give these periodic loyalty tests. No other community in India has to go through this demand to display their patriotism publically. No other community can understand what it means to be a Muslim today in India. To reduce this just to the current government would be an exercise in simplification. Muslims have always had to tread a fine line due to their identity and have been punished at times for even speaking their mind. There is a way of ‘looking’ at the Muslims in the country and that way has been decades in the making. Singling a political party for the affairs on Muslims today is crass simplification and an attempt not to go into deeper introspection. Not just parties, but Muslim leaders also are to be blamed for such a state of affairs.

Madrasas have been treated as belonging to a dark sphere in Indian society. Part of the problem, of course, is with the madrasa authorities who have deliberately kept the madrasas out of any scrutiny because they have to protect their financial needs. But the bigger problem lies with successive governments who have refused to modernise madrasas and have treated the population therein as a captive vote-bank. In their desire not to interfere in their curriculum and functioning of madrasas, they have perpetuated social, economic and intellectual backwardness amongst Muslims. It is not surprising therefore that despite their existence in the Indian subcontinent for centuries, there is very little that is known about them especially by those who are in power today and who do not happen to be Muslims. The BJP has been born out of a warped understanding about Muslims. For them, the Muslims are the internal enemy: a minority which remains perpetually maladjusted due to their religion. The fact remains that their ideologue Savarkar always suspected the Muslims for their allegiance to the country because Muslims Punyabhumi (holy land) and Matribhumi (motherland) were not the same. Islam in India, despite centuries of presence, was to be treated as an eternally foreign religion.

But other so called progressive political parties are no better. During its heyday in Bengal, the then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee termed the madrasas in Bengal as breeding grounds of terrorism. The fact remains that Muslims and their madrasas have been anything but anti-national. During the freedom struggle, they were at the forefront of the struggle against the British. The role of Deoband in cementing the tie up with Congress Party cannot be discounted. In the process, they brought scores of Muslims within the ambit of the freedom movement. Deoband must be taken to task for other problems which it has beset the community with; chief being its conservative interpretation of religion, but then there were many such conservative forces amongst the Hindu community also. Why blame Deoband alone?

It is not that those in power do not know the history of Deoband. They very well do and it is recorded in the annals of history. Then why is it that they are singling out madrasas to exhibit their patriotism? It was another matter if the UP government had sent a common circular to all government aided institutions. But what we have is the specific targeting of a community to force them to prove their patriotism. Such a move can only be a product of gross suspicion and abhorrence of a community. It is logical to ask whether the Uttar Pradesh government can carry on with its daily business despite harbouring deep suspicions about a large number of its minority population. The problem is that they have reaped benefits through such a politics of hate and suspicion and there is no reason why they are going to abandon it soon after coming to power. It was the anti-Muslim which brought them to power in Uttar Pradesh in the first place. Showing them their proper place is not just an outcome of suspicion; it is also a message to the Hindus who voted them to power that they are putting the Muslims in their proper place by humiliating them.

The Hindu Right is in a win-win situation. If the Muslims reject the move to sign the national anthem as an imposition, then they will be castigated as traitors. If they decide to sing it, then the Hindu Right will claim that that have taught the Muslims a lesson and shown their proper place. In both these situations, the die is cast in favour of the Hindu Right. The Muslims must devise a strategy not to fall into such a trap. From some of the reactions which have come from the Muslim clergy, one can only say that they have willingly walked into that trap.

Arshad Alam is a www.NewAgeIslam.com columnist.

Courtesy: NewAgeIslam.com
 

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Image credit: Dailyo

A Lokniti-CSDS-APU/KPS first round survey report conducted among youth during 2016 focussing on the four states of Gujarat, Haryana, Odisha and Karnataka, published in the Indian Express Monday and Tuesday has thrown up some disturbing findings as regards perceptions about Indian Muslims.

According to the survey findings most non-Muslims considers Muslims as the least patriotic among Indian Muslims.

 
Interestingly, while Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs consider themselves the most patriotic, Christians think Hindus are more patriotic than their own community. Sikhs have the greatest doubts about the patriotic credentials of Muslims and Christians.  

Paradoxically, however, most also seem to agree that Muslims are falsely implicated in terror cases.

A majority of the Hindus, Sikhs and youth overall agree that Muslims are falsely implicated while Christians have a different view.

The BJP is unlikely to be very pleased with the finding that while they figure on top of the most preferred list, only 20% of the respondents gave them the thumbs-up.

As to their attitude towards religion, every third youth is either very highly religious or highly religious.

On issues of greatest concern to them, unemployment, poverty and economic equality and corruption are issues of greatest concern to the youth, in that order, while casteism and communalism find their place way down the list.

As regards the ideas and attitudes on related issues, most of the respondents disagree with what are considered liberal values.

What should be a matter of great concern is the finding thst more than 80% of the respondent youth are highly anxious or somewhat anxious about their future.

Read the full report of the first round survey published by the Indian Express on Monday here and on Tuesday here. 

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