right to overrule

The "Right to Food Campaign" is an informal network of organisations and individuals committed to the realisation of the right to food in India. We consider that everyone has a fundamental right to be free from hunger and undernutrition. Realising this right requires not only equitable and sustainable food systems, but also entitlements relating to livelihood security such as the right to work, land reform and social security. We consider that the primary responsibility for guaranteeing these entitlements rests with the state. Lack of financial resources cannot be accepted as an excuse for abdicating this responsibility. In the present context, where people's basic needs are not a political priority, state intervention itself depends on effective popular organisation. We are committed to fostering this process through all democratic means. [emphasis mine]

that's the foundation statement of the right to food campaign.please check the highlighted line again: don't our elections produce 'popular' governments? if elected governments don't represent 'popular' organisations, who does?

the barely concealed contempt for india's politics, democracy and the ordinary indian who considers himself a participant in both can also be noticed in the dazzling rhetoric of other 'right to..' campaigners. indian politics can't handle this serious stuff, so here's what the indian state, through its 'civil', hence neutral and untainted by the filth of politics, bureaucracy needs to do to deliver these 'rights'. in effect, what the campaigners want the state to do is to overrule the the 'politics' of the elected government.   

and they've been succeeding. the nac is filled with these campaigners, and the nac, of course, talks to sonia gandhi more often than the elected government does. and why does the elected government have to consult with sonia gandhi? because sonia gandhi is the party. if she didn't nominate every one of the 'elected' lawmakers (down to panchayat sarpanches and even ward members, sometimes) and if her endorsement wasn't required for the 'election' of the lowliest official in her party across the country, you could have said: the congress is bigger than sonia gandhi.

---------------------

that was a draft i had worked on 7 months ago. a couple of days ago, i see that sonia gandhi is not just congress party, or the government. she is god. food and consumer affairs minister k.v.thomas says:

“The draft Bill is ready now. I don’t say it is in line with NAC or not. But it is in line with what is in the mind of Madam Sonia Gandhi,” he said.
“The principle of Sonia Gandhi is that every citizen of the country should get legal cover toward a certain quantity of nutritious food, not simply foodgrains,” he shared.

in the 7 months since i started on this post, the priests of civil society have moved much closer to god, through the lokpal coup d'etat, pushing parliament into more 'ineffectiveness'. this current move shows utter contempt for not just parliament, elected through popular vote, but also ignores totally a majority of those who participate in the popular vote-- cultivators and workers. one wonders if god, while nodding her assent to all the sanctimonious mumbo-jumbo her civil society priests were chanting before her, had thought even a little about the answers they didn't have?

* who shall pay for the increased procurement? the fci procures, and if it pays a higher msp to the farmer, the govt will have to dole out a greater amount by way of subsidies to the pds. in balancing these two actions, will the farmer always not get paid less to keep the subsidies lower? or will the msp not be a function of the pds prices, always? should cultivators and workers continue to pay with stagnation and death for the food security of the urban middle classes?
* wheat and rice, the brahmin grains, will drive this increased procurement, as always. what about the farmers who produce less brahminical cereals like jowar, bajra etc?
* will surpluses continue to be procured from 3-4 states? wouldn't that destroy any incentive for food security in the majority of states, like it has done in all these years?
* shouldn't food security be a concern of the states, primarily, regions within the states, and districts within regions and blocks within districts and villages within blocks to be more meaningful?
* rice is a water-guzzler and has taken away a much needed resource from millions and millions of ordinary citizens, especially in northwest india, a region which never produced rice in much quantity before the so-called green revolution.. who will pay for this water, which means thirst, hardship, lack of basic sanitation.. dry toilets and again stagnation, caste and much more?
* there is increased competition among many states to build costly but ineffective irrigation systems to tap water to grow rice and other such crops.. who will pay for all the bad blood among states and regions? for the ecological disasters and the adivasi displacements? does india need more rice, at such heavy costs?

questions. one can think of many more questions, but the priests know better, i guess.  

the death of merit

This documentary is second in the series of our efforts to document caste-based discrimination prevalent in Indian higher education system resulting in large number of suicides of Dalit students in Indian campuses.
It is based on the testimonies of parents and family members of Dr Jaspreet Singh, 22 years, who was a student of Final Year, MBBS at Government Medical College, Chandigarh. He committed suicide on 27th January, 2008, by hanging himself on the 5th floor of his college’s library.

go watch the the testimonies of jaspreet's family and others on how a certain professor, and the indifferent administration of the college, drove him to death.

also watch, in the same post, the earlier documentary on dr.bal mukund bharti of all india institute of medical sciences, delhi, who was hounded by five, not one, casteist professors until his death in march, last year.

or, don't watch. if you don't wish to know that they didn't die of 'academic pressure', 'failed love affairs' or 'depression'. 

linesh mohan gawle

that was his name. google asks whether you meant dinesh mohan gawli? some news sites had chosen that name. most reported the death of linesh mohan gawli.

you'll also find his name in the List of PhD. Applicants Short-listed for Written Test/Interview in SCHOOL OF BIOSCIENCES & BIOENGINEERING of iit bombay (# 203), and also here and a couple of other such lists.

he usually got short-listed. 'scored 98 percent marks in the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) test' as fellow students say. he was very bright, topped classes through his career. he was as meritorious as those who consider themselves the best interpreters of merit. so, what killed him?

when madhuri sale was killed six months ago, i'd started on a post titled 'another murder', but couldn't finish it. here's the draft:

in education, there are two ways of producing 'excellence': giving everyone the best, or picking the 'best' among everyone and giving them the best. 

the second method is something hitler would have wholeheartedly endorsed. he was so big on excellence and purity, as everyone knows, that he was as keen on keeping un-excellence out, or dysgenics, as he was on eugenics, in improving racial stock. 

listen to what nehru had told his chief ministers in 1961: 'I dislike any kind of reservations. If we go in for any kind of reservations on communal and caste basis, we will swamp the bright and able people and remain second rate or third rate. The moment we encourage the second rate, we are lost. This way lies not only folly, but also disaster.' 

swamping 'the bright people' with the 'second rate or third rate' people? definitely not. nehru was as against varna sankara, as you can see, as hitler. 

lost in all this discourse on excellence and merit i will never be able to figure out why a state has to work towards producing the best engineers or best doctors or best international relations graduates. how are those goals different from trying to produce beauty queens? 

that's why i have never understood the need for the iits, or the iims or jnu or any other elitism in education.

being the 'best' could be a personal goal, not the goal of a society. unless the society in question is hitler's germany or nehru's india.

our media, or society, couldn't even get linesh's name right, the first time they wrote about his 'suicide'. and most first news reports about madhuri sale also got her name wrong, as madhuri salve. obviously, india is a society which clings to abstract ideals, like merit and purity, and ignores concrete realities. can it ever really be best in anything hard, cold, real? if there is such a thing as the best, objectively defined, of course. 

so it does the next best thing, always, adopting a winning combination of the two methods described above. it picks a class of people as the 'best' from birth (like 'fascist' hitler) and gives them the best, but makes it seem like the whole process is very democratic by designing a whole environment which weeds out everyone but them, from any contest (a 'socialist' nehru innovation). but when someone like linesh gawle or madhuri sale, people who couldn't even pick decent sanskritic surnames, come along, leaping over all walls and fences into this custom-designed environment, how can the meritorious tell them, openly, that merit is all about caste, and not merit? so they all die, suddenly, of 'depression' or 'failed love affairs'. or buckle under 'meritorious academic pressure' imposed on them by their gurus.    

Echoes of stillborn histories

What can we learn from this documentary, ’The Death of Merit’?

Bal Mukund Bharti was determined to become a doctor. And his teachers were also very determined: ‘you’ll never pass MBBS’, they told him.

Bal Mukund didn’t give up, nor did his family. Father, mother, married sister, uncle, aunt– they were all determined to support him in his ardent journey, which was steadily converted into an uphill struggle by AIIMS, to become a doctor. They scraped, pooled together whatever meagre resources they could to send him to AIIMS.

Uncle says they invested everything they earned in his education. Sister who made only 2,500 rupees a month helped whenever father, who worked in a job which sometimes made him wait 3 long months for wages, couldn’t. It wasn’t a small dream; if realized, it could have become a source of hope and pride for many more people outside the immediate family.

As Bal Mukund’s proud father says, ‘he was the first one from our community to become a doctor in fifty years!’. Bal Mukund’s intelligence and superior scholastic record instilled that kind of confidence in the family, stoked such high hopes.

Imagine: the first doctor from a community in fifty years, or in two millennia, possibly. Also imagine Rakesh Sharma or Kalpana Chawla, people of the ‘wrong’ race, being told by the Russians or the Americans: ‘you’ll never go into space’.

But AIIMS was determined it would see Bal Mukund only as a ‘harijan’, as a person from the ‘wrong’ caste. Imagine history being snuffed out in the womb. That shouldn’t be very difficult to imagine if you step two years back into history and think of Senthil Kumar of the University of Hyderabad.

please read the rest here. 

terrorists, and still strutting around

random news:

BJP president G Kishen Reddy said national leaders and important functionaries from other states would also come down to participate in the `jan jagaran' programme. As part of the week-long phase I of the programme, the party would reach out to the people and expose the corrupt Congress government on price rise, black money and scams like 2G spectrum, CWG, cash-for-votes and Adarsh society. "We will distribute pamphlets, take out padayatras, scooter rallies and public meetings from April 6 to 11. During the 10-day second phase beginning April 20, rallies at mandal level and public meetings will be held. During the third and final phase of the programme, national level leaders would participate in the district level meetings," the BJP state president said.

the whole world knows now that the parivar was behind the mecca masjid blasts. the ruling congress establishment seems unwilling to investigate the parivar's connections with other blasts in hyderabad. and the bjp now is one of the foremost champions of telangana. the left-liberals, from all the universities in the region happily collaborate with the parivar hordes in the so-called telangana movement. they're all hindutvavaadis now.

it isn't as easy for the ruling classes to shove the few top parivar leaders in the state into prison as it is to pick random poor muslim kids in hordes and to torture them, i suppose. but why doesn't the parivar itself organize some kind of a 'jagaran' programme to tell us how it planned and executed those bomb attacks? to reach out to the 'people' who were not bombed? no one's going to question them, anyway. definitely not the separatists. 

mEmavudaam

wrote some mad verse in telugu:

నీకూ నాకూ
మధ్య అడ్డుగోడై
ప్రేమా దోమా
యేదైనా వుంటే
కూల్చేద్దాం!
మనం మేమవుదాం
చేతనైనంత వెలమవుదాం
వాడికి మేతవుదాం
దేవ్డిల వెట్టవుదాం
రెచ్చిపోయి రెడ్డవదాం
అదందాం ఇదందాం
అదవదాం ఇదవదాం
అడ్డంగా నరికేద్దాం
యెవడూ దొరక్క పోతే
పోనీ పోతే
యీ ఫోరడి ప్రాణం
యింకో పోరడి ప్రాణం
ఆత్మహత్యై
ఊదుబత్తై
ఉద్యమ పద్దై
గల్లా యెగిరేసుకొని
చెప్పుకొనే గొప్పై
నీ గుడిసెల నిప్పై
వాడి భవన్లో నోట్ల కుప్పై
నోటికొచ్చిన తత్వమై

అమ్మ కడుపును తన్నిన
అయోమయమై
నిన్ను చంపిన వాడి
అమరత్వమై...

అమరత్వం ఆధ్యాత్మ్యం
అల్లమెల్లిగడ్డ
వాడవసరం
మన ధర్మం..
అంతా యెనకట్లాగనె
సనాతనంగా
తలొంచుకుని పాటిద్దాం
మెడలిద్దాం యేళ్ళిద్దాం
పాలిద్దాం చేళ్ళిద్దాం
వాడింట్ల కాకి
పక్కోడు కొడితే
మనం గాయపడదాం
వాళ్ళిద్దరి నదులు వాళ్ళకు
పంచుకుందాం
మన నోట్ల మట్టంతా మనదే కదా?
పెంచుకుందాం..
వంచుకుందాం
వాళ్ళిద్దరి పగలూ
పోటీలూ
మన కుండళ్ళోకి
గొంతుళ్ళోకి గుండెళ్ళోకి
బేగాని షాదిల..
అంతా అప్పట్లెక్కనే
బుద్ధున్ని కూల్చి
శివున్ని
జైనుల్ని కొట్టి
విష్ణువుకి పెడదాం
మనం వండిన ప్రసాదం
మనం అడుక్కుందాం.

no phule, no ambedkar..

..no ayyankali, narayana guru, periyar or even lohia either. and definitely no kanshi ram. no mayawati. or annadurai or even devraj urs or laloo yadav. one notices the glaring absence of a long, sustained anti-caste, mass movement in the political history of colonial and post-colonial andhra pradesh.

in the last two centuries, the telugus have produced many thinkers, writers and political activists who had risen against many kinds of oppression -- against feudal rule in telangana, against colonial rule and against zamindaries in coastal andhra and rayalaseema, against exploitation of adivasis in telangana and coastal andhra.

but there has never been a large, sustained, mass movement against caste and brahminism in recent history.

caste wasn't the primary focus of either the telangana peasants struggle, the biggest militant movement of its kind in 20th century indian history, or of the four decades old naxalite movement, both of which produced thousands of dalitbahujan martyrs.

there have been many movements, agitations against caste based oppression but none challenged caste like the movements led by all the visionaries i named earlier. now some dalitbahujan supporters of telangana think that a sociopolitical transformation will happen in a separate state because the population of the obcs in telangana is a few percentage points higher than in a united state. add to this irrational belief in the 'magical solution' of telangana the conviction that upper caste brahmin, velama and reddy politicians and intellectuals will help produce not only the 'magical' solution but also perhaps the social transformation later: is there anything illogical in the srikrishna committee report's dismissal of the idea?   

raising mass consciousness, even at the political level, against caste is a long, tough job. ask dr.ambedkar. if you can't go so far back in the past, ask kanshi ram who walked, cycled around a much larger state than telangana and andhra pradesh for nearly two decades before he got anywhere close to his objective.

and while dalitbahujan youth participate in large numbers in the agitation, nursing their beliefs, hapless dalits are being hunted down as witches in villages close to even the state capital. adivasi girls are being killed or being sold.

will the upper caste politicians or intellectuals/activists leading the movement exhibit the same spirit of brotherhood towards the 'impure' classes if the dalitbahujan youth started asking questions about the upper caste hunters of witches and sorcerers in choutuppal and elsewhere?

dr.ambedkar didn't wait for independence or political 'freedom' to press his demands for the protection of the depressed classes.

but these bands of dalitbahujan supporters will wait for the 'magical solution' that'd first empower the obcs, supposedly, and then the dalits. has the empowerment of a few obc communities, as in u.p., tamil nadu or karnataka ever ensured better progress in the war against caste? political empowerment of a few obc communities has never meant broad political empowerment even of all the obcs, leave alone the dalits. and substantial social transformation is still a long way off in all those states. and the valuable lesson we've learnt from all those states is that it is the empowerment of the dalits that should be the primary goal of any sociopolitical  movement that challenges caste: because any anti-caste political movement that is led by a few obc communities (like the yadavs, kurmis, mudaliars, gounders, vanniars, vokkaligas etc) shall ultimately result in only reinforcing caste, by only slightly altering the hierarchy.

i hope they'll revisit kanshi ram.

manoj mitta's lathi-wielding logic

If a woman who was forcibly married asks for a divorce on grounds of cruelty, can a court rule against it? Can a court rule that she cannot be liberated from her marriage, however bad, without her husband's consent? That's the kind of dubious logic the Sri Krishna Committee employed when suggesting, as its "second best option", that the Telangana region (the erstwhile Hyderabad state) cannot be divorced from the Andhra and Rayalaseema regions (the erstwhile Andhra state) unless the latter agree.

when an issue involves more than 80-100 million people, you can rest assured that there'd be more than 80-100 million opinions. and when some experts are called into apply their minds to the issue, you can be doubly sure that they'd produce several hundred pages of observations and analysis on the issue. then the woman, whose case mr.mitta so passionately (and patronizingly) makes, becomes the women of telangana, andhra and rayalaseema. she also becomes the adivasis, the dalits and the muslims of the the three regions. and the obcs and all the varieties within them. and she splits further into sub-castes: and into dominant and marginalised communities, into urban and rural women, men and children. and into the various segments and divisions of views within all those fragments. mitta finds it hard to digest all that democracy, i suppose. so he squashes it to down an easily chewable one voice: a woman whose case needs to be made (because she can't make it herself, you see).

mitta should understand the difference between two people and a hundred million people. a recent article by ram puniyani on the ideology of the rss says:

According to this ideology a Hindu industrialist and the Hindu beggar are supposed to have similar interests! A Muslim entrepreneur and a Muslim sweeper or beggar is supposed to have similar interests. So a Hindu king in History and poor Hindu farmer-Shudra are on the same page. It looks at history as unified Hindu community standing against others and so on, as if all Hindu Kings were hunky dory with each other and supping with the Shudras and poor peasants of society. The communal ideology, irrespective of any religions in whose name it operates, changes the horizontal social differences into vertical ones’. The society has divisions according the rich and poor, privileged and deprived. According to this ideology what matters is the vertical divisions according to one’s religion. This ideology as such focuses on issues of identity and undermines the real worldly problems. It is an attempt to undermine and sweep under the carpet the unjust social system, where the major contradiction is social and economic. It is a way to hide one’s birth based privileges under the guise of religion. Religion is a potent instrument as faith is its central component. Abuse of faith for political goals generates blind social hysteria, which is used to promote the political and social agenda of communal organizations. This pattern applies to all the faith-religion based politics. 

mitta too reduces all horizontal differences into a vertical divide between telangana on the one hand and rayalaseema-andhra on the other. and further vulgarizes it by reducing it into a marital issue between one woman and one man. and mitta's choice of the figure of a woman to represent telangana in his folksy, khap-like, analogy: please note that there's no vertical division between mitta and the woman. he's her natural spokesperson, of course. in mitta's worldview, as all horizontal divisions between vast millions of people should naturally collapse into one coherent vertical schism, it's also very 'democratic' that all women (read: all those segments, divisions and fragments i talked about earlier) of telangana..and elsewhere should bow down, collectively, to men like mitta. or the hindu/patriarchal/upper caste 'majority'.

trust the times of india to never rise above its pimply-faced market.

the price of magical solutions

he's mostly been moonlighting as a politician, and not even for a very long period. until one year or so ago, he was a full-time businessman, or robber baron (as some critics would call him). look what he has to say to the 125 year old congress:

Jagan openly mocked at the Congress and the state government in Andhra Pradesh. “I am doing Congress a favour by asking my supporters (MLAs) not to resign. Had I wanted, I could have done it a long time ago. I am a gentleman. So I am doing a favour to the Congress party.” He did not mince any words in making his intentions clear.

for the first time in its long history, the congress must be feeling very sorry that it is in power in andhra pradesh. i don't think such a situation had ever risen in any other state, for that matter, in the past. given a chance, it'd rather be in the opposition benches again, i think, stoke wild aspirations and make vague promises about a new state, and win elections as it did in 2004. yes, given a chance, it'd definitely like to go back to 2004. given a chance, i think, it'd prefer to roll over and die now. but it seems like jagan and many others wouldn't give it even that chance.

dangling 'magical solutions' before the masses could ensure some temporary successes -- you tell jobseekers telangana would give you jobs, you tell farmers telangana would give you water, you tell the poor telangana would bring you wealth, you tell everyone telangana would bring you everything-- like an election or two. but when the masses come to collect, you can't tell them that there are no magical solutions. that you'd been fooling them all along.

the congress can't choose the srikrishna committee's best option, united andhra pradesh, and garner winning votes in telangana for some time. it can't choose the second best option, bifurcation, and hope to survive in coastal andhra and rayalaseema. but how did the congress manage to so dexterously antagonise people of all regions? even now, it's not the anger of the people it's worried about, it's the displeasure of the dominant caste groups in the state that worries it. 

i am not predicting that the congress would die in andhra pradesh. only that congressmen would disappear in droves into jagan's mob, or the trs for a while or... the survival of the congress until now has always depended on how happy it could keep the dominant castes in the state, distributing power and pelf evenly between regions, more or less. so the dominant castes in andhra were okay with telangana as long as it remained an election promise, but when the dominant castes in telangana saw in this promise an opportunity to corner all power over the economic 'engine' of the state, hyderabad, the entente between both groups started getting weaker. but i think the weakening of the alliance between the dominant groups in the state is temporary: they've many common social and economic interests. but what has suffered more grievous damage is the congress's reputation as an arbiter, a keeper of peace and balance, among these groups. the telugu desam, 25 years ago, had won the confidence of at least one group among these castes and managed to also groom leaders from among a sizeable section of the backward castes. the tdp too would suffer now because, as the srikrishna committee has observed, 3-4 large backward castes are also seeking a firmer place among the dominant groups. 

what was the telangana movement all about? it was, like i always said, about power-sharing. not about neglect, or poverty, or discrimination or colonization. certainly not about the people.

some substance, much sentiment and lots more magic

7.2.10 Hence, while "organised sentiment" was nevertheless highly visible, the grievances of people were often of a general nature. These have been objectively investigated by the Committee and found to have substance on some counts but not all. The developmental progress of Telangana region has generally been found to be robust especially for the last three decades (see details in Chapter 2). However, objective investigation does not easily take care of emotion and sentiment. The present movement has provided people the space to articulate many grievances which are a result of recent development trajectories that have led to greater Hyderabad-centric development as well as deepening of some inter and intra-regional inequalities during the process of growth. Political inequities and the desire for a greater share in political power, combined with the feeling that the historic Gentlemen‟s Agreement was violated, feed into the movement. Popular sentiment easily latches onto well defined "enemies" (in this case the "Andhras") and magical solutions – a separate state of Telangana, which would automatically provide water, jobs and education.

elsewhere, the srikrishna report, also hints that it is 'robust' growth which has fuelled the separatist sentiments (and ambitions) of upwardly mobile groups in some areas (in north telangana, especially). the babri masjid tragedy was the consequence of a long chain of political decisions which upheld the superiority of sentiments over facts. for the lest ten years, the ruling classes have again started finding much logic in sentiments. brace yourselves. some magical solutions might soon hit you.

finding soodrahood in telingana

It has also been noticed that in speaking the Teloogoo, the Soodras use very few Sanskrit words; among the superior classes of Vysyus, and pretenders to the Rajah cast, Sanskrit terms are used only in proportion to their greater intimacy with the Bramins, and their books; and when we find even such Sanskrit words as these classes do adopt, pronounced by them in so improper and rude a manner as to be a common jest to the Bramins, who, at the same time, never question their pronounciation of pure Teloogoo words, I think we may fairly infer to be probable at least that these Sanskrit terms were originally foreign to the great body of people. 

from  the 'Introduction' section of the 'A Grammar of the Teloogoo Language, Commonly termed the Gentoo...' by A.D.Campbell. published in 1816, around the same age as when the nizams of hyderabad were either gifting away or being made to 'cede' the coastal andhra and rayalaseema regions to their colonial overlords.

two centuries later, if campbell were still around, he'd probably notice again that the 'Soodras' still can't get a hold on any sanskrit word without taking little conscious preparatory pauses. and their pronunciation still causes much jest among both the 'bramins' and those 'pretender' classes who have developed a much 'greater intimacy' with the bramins.  

when the the srikrishna committee submits its report to the central government today, and when delhi acts on it: both actions should be seen as the 'bramins' exercising their suzerainty over the 'soodras' of 'Telingana' (as campbell calls the whole of telugu speaking lands, including what are now referred to as 'coastal andhra' and 'rayalaseema' and other regions which are now a part of other states) yet again. as implied in the short paragraph, forces 'foreign to the great body of people' have always played a great role in the life of the 'gentoos'. brahminism and sanskrit, holding sway for several centuries couldn't destroy the ethos of the soodras even until the nineteenth century. it remained 'pure teloogoo'. but that project is still on, because soodrahood, innate to such pre-hindu cultures as the telugu culture, still poses the greatest challenge to the brahminical idea of india. and will, always. but how long should the soodras remain tethered to the trenches, fending off one assault after another, never attempting to subdue the enemy? they have to realize that soodrahood can also be a weapon, not just a shield to ward off the bramin's attacks. 

i remember an excellent post by dr.p.keshava kumar, teacher of philosophy and occasional blogger, on how the dalit movement is trying to deal with brahminism in tamil nadu-- let me quote a passage from the post in which he tries to explain the political philosophy of thol thirumavalavan of the viduthalai chiruthaigal katchi:

Let me elobarate further, tamil identity is not just a linguistic identity. As an eminent philosopher Wittegenstein said language is the form of life. Life has to be understood as social life. Social life exists in our social relationships. The social relationships are much rooted in our cultural life. For Thirumavalavan, tamil identity means it is all. He believed that tamil society is much more democratic society. There is no trace of caste system and is different from Brahminism, Hinduism and Aryanism. This distinct identity is maintained for so many centuries. On contrary to this our existing relationships hierarchy prevails there exists one over the other. The caste system is responsible for this. The hindu religion had the sole responsibility for strengthening it. It is the characteristic of brahminism/Hinduism which is internalized into Indian nationalism. In the course of time even it influencing the tamilians. Again to revive tamil identity one has to necessarily annihilate this caste system.

the democratic roots of soodrahood in telingana (i mean campbell's telingana, of course) have to be found again. one needs to dig a little, but not very deep because an outsider like campbell could spot them quite easily a couple of centuries ago.

terrorists in telangana

everyone says india is a land of a billion hindus. but why do we see such a massively scaled down version of hindu india in this list of hindutva terrorists?

there are nearly 80 million hindus in andhra pradesh-- but why is none of the prominent conspirators in the mecca masjid bomb blast case from hyderabad or andhra pradesh? the cbi has just filed a chargesheet against them, against lokesh sharma, devendra gupta, sandeep dange, swami asimanand etc why is there no lokesh goud or devendra mudiraj or sandeep madiga among them?

it's not like the gouds, or the mudirajs or the madigas are not willing to die for any larger 'ideal'.. hundreds of them, some only bare schoolkids, have committed suicide for telangana. much older people reportedly drank poison when rajasekhar reddy died, and even when jaganmohan reddy resigned from the congress a few days ago. no, it's not that the other 'hindus' do not have the 'courage', or the passion. so why aren't they in the list? 

because the head, heart and soul of hindutva has always been the top three varnas. the shudras have always been useful only as the muscle, the lathi arm. which means, nearly 70 years after savarkar, over 70% of so-called hindus remain hardly hindu. and the dalits were never used as even lathi arms. rather, they bore the brunt of the dance of the swords and lathis mostly.

telangana in the last few years has been the battleground for two different kinds of hindutva politics:  while one frustrated faction of the hindutvavaadis planted bombs, the other aligned with the dominant upper castes and a few ambitious obc groups to demand a separate state. while the first kind of politics claimed a few muslim lives and led to the illegal detention and harassment of hundreds of young muslims, the second kind is steadily proving to be more dangerous. it not only targets muslims who oppose the creation of a separate state but it also bullies other dissenting groups from among the dalits and adivasis. i've always maintained that telangana is a majoritarian cause, and the parivar, one of its oldest supporters, has much to gain from it.  

while swami asimanand's gang of terrorists was planting bombs in the mecca masjid, his other pals from the parivar, bjp leaders in the region, were touring all the districts of telangana with the leaders of the trs and assorted other political groups, including many ex-ultra left radicals, promoting the cause of telangana.

it's sad that many bahujans are still willing to be used as the lathi arms of the hindutva gangs. it makes me very angry that the people from the parivar that planted the bombs in the mecca masjid are now lionised as one of the staunchest supporters of telangana.

the hindu non-sense of equality

suhag shukla of the hindu american forum writes in the huffington post:

But the single most important point to take home from this pivotal report, I believe, is that even though caste-based discrimination may have arisen in Hindu society, it is not intrinsic to Hinduism. Contrary to the wide academic and media conflation of caste and Hinduism, the practice of caste-based discrimination is in direct contradiction to the quintessential Hindu teaching that each individual is equally divine and has the potential to realize God based on his or her own effort.

caste is not intrinsic to hinduism? you only have to check the comments on the same article to see that that's pure cow shit. the gist of the top comment runs like this: 

Caste system is etched in our sriptures & hence is here to stay for ever....(sic)

and it never gets better as you go down. ms.shukla's drivel is all the more disappointing because she doesn't seem to be a fresh-off-the-boat desi, as they say in america, i think. she was probably even born there. and the people commenting? wherever they were born, and whenever (though i suspect most of them are quite young), they seem to be enjoying caste a lot. which reminds you of what dr.ambedkar said: that caste is about 'graded inequality'. meaning there will always be people enjoying caste, because they stand to gain from it. therefore caste is not simply about 'discrimination', the thrust of ms.shukla's argument. 'x', the mere discriminator, might kick 'y' off a bus because he's 'inferior' in his view. 'x', the brahminized individual, will kick 'y' off the bus because it is 'superior'.

hinduism, according to shukla, sees the divine in everyone. well, the atma in everyone might be equally divine, but the brahmin body is 'superior' and the dalit body is 'untouchable' and every body between the two is also ranked. to be hindu, in practice, is to be a human measuring scale, primarily. each individual might have 'the potential to realize God based on his or her own effort', but, as ilaiah pointed out, there is 'superior' work and 'inferior' work. which effectively means some have to work more than others, to realize god or mammon.

wholesome drought

there's a flood of angst against the uid here. you'd think they've a lot to say, but look at this:

The Unique Identification (UID) project is presented as a sunny solution to the nightmare of access to the Indian social benefit system. Though the Bill states that it does not relate to benefits and services, the spin, symbolised by the wholesome image of Nandan Nilenkani, is that it will end the deprivation of the poor.

hasn't all spin in india, over 'socialism' 'secularism' or 'development' or 'rights' always been symbolised by such 'wholesome' brahminical images as nehru, indira gandhi, aruna roy or p.sainath etc? yes, brahminized india does face a drought of more marketable images but the articles featured at the site also seem to reflect a drought of ideas. all the fury seems to be focused on only one theme: invasion of privacy. privation isn't as big a concern.

the private concerns of the brahminized classes have always been the biggest problem for indian democracy. from land reforms to public schools, which wholesome idea did they not sabotage? a member of an online group opposing uid says:

I am horrified just thinking of the potential of a Mayawati or a Lalu to abuse this scheme for political ends (for example)!!

as i said, the privations of the majority have always been less important than the private 'purity' of these folks.

until delhi dies

one after another stooge gets out of the a.p.congress legislators meeting, beams at the cameras and tells you that they've unanimously decided that sonia gandhi should make the decision. any stray reporter making hesitant comments (hesitant because most reporters too seem to have come to accept this farce as natural and 'democratic'; some 'working' journalists' leaders have often been waxing eloquently on the wisdom of the 'high command' on talk shows) about discussions and debates and elections is brushed off with: we've discussed and passed a resolution, unanimously, that we shall abide by sonia gandhi's decision-- why isn't that democracy?'

why indeed. it's what they do at khap panchayats: let the elders decide. but the elders at khap panchayats are not elected, voted into wisdom. they just grow old and collect a lot of ignorance, hate and malice in their souls and ultimately qualify for wise panch-hood. but to become 'high command' in the congress, you don't even need to grow old.

that was a few days ago. now, nearly half the congress legislators in the state are in delhi, lobbying for posts in the new cabinet. like sons in a traditional hindu family, these folks will never grow into adults until their father, or delhi, dies.

listen

listen to a lobbyist talk casually, protectively about how 'She has to follow what she’s father says, no' (sic). that's how close she's to 'kani'. listen to a journalist promise a lobbyist that 'they promised me that Azad will speak to her'.

thanks harini, for posting all those transcripts and tapes.that's how power is done in delhi, that's how the all-knowing, most wise, all powerful 'high command' congressmen in a.p., keep talking about like they were talking of god's baap listens to the troubles of the aam aadmi through its network of naradas in the media and 'civil society' and niras in business and industry. and that's how kcr and other separatist politicians have to reach delhi. grovel before the right narada or nira. so they in turn would have 'long chats' with 'ghulams' or 'patels' and implore the 'high command' to listen to the 'democratic' demands of the people of telangana.

listen to them dishing out high offices now, listen to them carving up or not carving up the people tomorrow, as casually.

the union is a coalition of estates

a. raja is being thrown out, but not the dmk. that's an important lesson for the dalitbahujans of telangana, andhra pradesh and india: geographic boundaries don't divide the social/economic elite politically. if anything, they succeed in dividing the dalitbahujans more.

mostly thinking aloud:

it's quite possible that a. raja's crimes are far less grave than his predecessors' ( arun shourie, pramod mahajan and dayanidhi maran ) misdeeds. or far more, as most other news stories seem to say. it's definitely possible that raja was not acting alone, that his masters in the dmk, and the congress, are equally involved. but in the eyes of the elite-- political, economic and social elite-- only raja is dispensable.

political democracy, as dr. ambedkar pointed out, does not ensure social or economic freedom. nominal recognition of the right to representation of the dalits through reserved constituencies has not produced a class of politicians who embody politics wedded to the ideals of dalit freedom, socially and economically. the political class (across parties) representing the brahminized classes, on the other hand, functions quite smoothly in concert with the social and economic elite of the country. from industry to big media to the intellectual classes in universities and elsewhere: the brahminized classes are overrepresented in all those areas. so, it'd have been tough to remove shourie or mahajan or even maran, because sizeable sections among the media, 'civil' society etc would have risen in support.

with the dalitbahujan presence in industry, or the media or the academia etc., being insignificant, what kind of support can dalit politicians expect from them if they devoted themselves to a broad dalit vision of transforming society? none, of course. so it is easier for politicians like a. raja, devoted to someone else's politics, to cling to power than for some more sincere dalit politicians.

so, how is it possible for a party like the dmk, representing regional elite, to hold such power in the 'national' elite as to claim exclusive rights over certain chosen portfolios such as telecom? because the 'national' elite is nothing but a collection of regional elites. so x reddy, a prominent minister in the central cabinet, could have a problem with y mudaliar, another prominent minister, but that'd never become a reddy vs mudaliar conflict. because they have common economic and social interests. and they're both an accepted part of the broad national --political, social, economic-- elite because they both are regional-- political, economic, social-- elites.

the reddies, kammas and velamas etc, are joint title-holders to the jagir, or estate, of andhra pradesh, and are thus a part of the 'national' elite. you can't divide them politically by dividing the state, as some over-optimistic dalitbahujan activists have been theorizing, because they have common economic and social interests, broadly, and those interests shall always be protected at the national and regional level by the national elite. if the dalitbahujans of andhra pradesh, or any other state in india, wish to challenge the hegemony of the regional elite, they have to avoid thinking up elaborate strategies on how to divide the existing elite, and start focussing on how to unite the divided dalitbahujans. first and foremost.

whose interest does telangana serve?

and who is paying, and will pay, the costs of this movement? gaddar's vision of telangana, or andhra pradesh or india or the world, for instance, is radically different from kcr's. he doesn't expect much from a 'bhougOlika telangana' (or 'geographic telangana'). he is fighting for a 'praja telangana' ('people's telangana') or andhra pradesh or india. he's been involved in the movement for nearly 15 years, much longer than kcr, but the people he works with count only as numbers to be loaded into trucks by the 'mainstream' upper caste leaders like kcr. or as suicides.

but who counts more in the 'mainstream' media and 'civil society'? gaddar or kcr? i've pointed out many times earlier that the separatist movement primarily serves upper caste interests: this article (it's a popular pro-separation site) and the comments following it, especially the comments, clearly illustrate the points i've been trying to make. please read to figure out what the position of the dalitbahujans will be in the vision of a separate telangana nurtured by the brahminized classes.

the empty politics of labels

shouldn't you consider nehru a neo-liberal for refusing to foot the bill for universal primary education? or a reactionary conservative for building iits for the brahminized classes (who'd already reached literacy levels of nearly 50-60% in some states by 1947) while he had no money for good schools for kids from the 'impure castes'? wasn't indira gandhi creating an oligarchy when she nationalized private banks which until now haven't been able to service more than 15% of all indians? in relative terms, their lending to such 'priority' sectors as agriculture and the poor hasn't expanded by more than 2-3% since 1969-70. in 40 years. was india socialist or neo-liberal in the 'socialist' era?

one grows sick of the hypocrisy of the brahminized classes who use empty labels, borrowed from other societies and other peoples' politics, to describe projects such as the uid as neo-liberal. it points to a very deep indifference on the part of indian universities, media and research institutions to take the pains to study the large, 'impure' sections of indian society firsthand.

if that's too much to ask: why don't they just check how many banks are making plans to expand their client base by millions in the near future because of the uid opening up new opportunities to do business directly with the 'impure', instead of directing them to microfinance companies and possible death? they might not be more touchable now, but they're definitely very good 'customers'. over 90% of them repay their debts promptly, and the figure could go up because the banks could charge much less interest than the microfinance companies. more credit to everyone: why don't we call it socialism?

reddy charitra

from here:

 One Karunakar Reddy from Anantapur district filed the petition in the SHRC, demanding that the commission order film director Ram Gopal Varma to remove certain scenes from the film which allegedly project the Reddy community of Anantapur district in a poor manner.

Accepting the petition, the interim Chairman Justice K Peda Peri Reddy adjourned hearing on the petition for Monday.

reminds me of the rajput indignation over 'jodhaa akbar' that i'd talked about in this post. and of some recent reddy charitra i'd discussed in this post. would mr.reddy have been satisfied if all the reddies in the film were portrayed just as the madigas, boyas, erukulas and others in the film were? as nameless, mindless, amoral killing hordes? i don't think so.