Ramachandra Guha is No Bigot: The Leftists Should Not Echo the Modi-Bhakts in Binaries

 

The piece is intended as a rebuttal to JNU research scholar Saib Bilawal's piece The stench of bigotry: Why is Ramachandra Guha turning into Chetan Bhagat? (for our reference, Piece 2), which in turn, is actually a rebuttal to Ramachandra Guha's piece Not the Emergency by any stretch of the imagination (for our reference, Piece 1).

I write this piece not because I am a fan of Guha’s (which I indeed am), for a public intellectual of his stature doesn’t need an ordinary individual like me to defend him from baseless and possibly inconsequential allegations, but because I wish to address a larger malaise that plagues our intellectual discourse, in which centrist and close-to-centre voices are often dismissed by ultra-leftists as right-leaning and by ultra-rightists as left-leaning. Acknowledging the validity of an argument coming from a school of thought one doesn’t subscribe to or acknowledging that disagreement with your position can be genuine rather than necessarily borne out of some hidden agenda of rightist or leftist bigotry or being sponsored by vested interests is unfortunately becoming rarer by the day (which is indeed sad, and as Aristotle said  - "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it"), and as a concerned Indian, I do wish to offer my two cents in this regard.

On the JNU Controversy

 

Since the issue is rooted in the JNU controversy, let me begin by addressing my views on the same, before I start deconstructing and exposing the fallacies in what Bilawal had to say. These are strictly my own views, and don’t necessarily have anything to do with Guha, and my view of the applicability of sedition laws in this context is most likely totally different from Guha’s.

The way the Modi sarkar handled the controversy was unpalatable. From Rajnath Singh citing a fake Twitter handle to allege LeT-backing, to Smriti Irani’s aide circulating doctored videos of Kanhaiya to BJP MLA OP Sharma having the accused beaten up in court, this was plain unacceptable.

However, the BJP may not have been able to demonstrate any of this authoritarianism were it not for what happened at JNU and the Press Club of India. I do think that slogans calling for India’s ‘barbadi’ or hailing a man convicted for terrorism as a martyr, endorsing the act he was accused of, are deeply problematic and do amount to sedition in my view, and those who actually shouted those slogans deserve punishment (even though I respect the view that otherwise harmless students can be less sternly dealt with, but I don’t see why adults entrusted with voting for India’s brighter future shouldn’t be expected to have better sense), though I would respect the judicial verdict. Communal hate speech is not always loaded with content of directly provoking violence, nor is it always followed by retaliatory violence from the other side, but is punishable nonetheless and so should this be. These anti-India slogans too were capable of provoking a violent backlash against those raising them by that yardstick. Also, there is some confusion about the very nature of sedition. There are other laws specifically dealing with violence, vandalism or even conspiring to that effect, and sedition is about expression by way of words or other means (like paintings or gestures) to the effect of seeking to undermine the rule of law under the constitutional setup, and does not even explicitly necessitate advocating violence (which calling Afzal a “martyr” does, by the way, amount to), but even advocating disorder or disturbance of law and order comes within its ambit as per the landmark Kedar Nath judgment, and Article 19(2) of our constitution explicitly mentions that freedom of speech and expression can actually be restricted for the sake of the unity and integrity of India.

While it may well be intellectually fashionable to talk about humanism without nationalism (for nation-states are, after all, man-made constructs), till such time as nation-states are real, they need nationalist cohesion for progress and security, and just as loving your family over other humans is not inhuman, nor is identification with one’s country. All those Muslim rightists pleased by strong denunciations of nationalism in general should indeed realise that those critiques would even apply to global pan-Muslim (Muslim ummah) nationalism, with territorial nationalism based on a shared political and economic destiny being much more rational, and global pan-Muslim nationalism is anachronistic, even going by the Muslim scriptures, as I have discussed here (I know that some Muslims would question whether I, as not being a Muslim, can give my own interpretation of Islam, but if non-Muslims are not expected to study and analyze Islam, how do Muslims expect non-Muslims to not have prejudiced views about their faith and why are non-Muslims praising Islam assumed to be authoritative on it?). Country-oriented nationalism does not have to be and shouldn’t be the type presupposing the morality of your government in the realms of foreign policy and engagement with secessionist forces to be axiomatic, only complaining about its naiveté or passivity, and one should be open to hearing out counter-narratives, but counter-narratives cannot entail supporting attacking the parliament, and seeking the ‘barbadi’ of a nation, which is a section of humanity, isn’t humanistic either. And yes, if statist nationalism of any kind is supposedly always a bad thing, then so is the Kashmiri separatist movement that strives to create a nation-state or has affinity to the Pakistani state. And their brand of nationalism, on the whole, isn’t secular (SAS Geelani has openly condemned separation of religion and state) and is not in favour of modern freedoms and gender equality, despite some pretensions to the contrary and some genuine exceptions. From girls’ rock bands shutting down to molestations of girls participating in a marathon alongside boys to no cinema halls functioning in the valley owing to militants’ diktats to most of the Hindus being displaced from the valley, that actually represents the true face of Kashmiri ‘freedom’ but what Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz has called the “regressive left” just simply fails to see it, and many other well-intentioned people are often ignorant of the facts and form an opinion seeing only a part of the picture. (I would urge those with leanings in favour of Kashmiri separatism to read this other article by me, in which I discuss its legal and moral invalidity.) Even if you declare the Indian state (and not the nation in general) established under the constitution to be your enemy, which is different from criticizing a specific political leader or party, that is an abuse of freedom of speech when you claim it under the same constitution. And though I do not use whataboutism as a line of argument, by the way, I would also mention that we didn’t see the free speech fundamentalists routing for those shouting those slogans routing for the likes of Kamlesh Tiwari arrested for outraging Muslim religious sentiments.

For all those questioning the judicial verdict pertaining to Afzal, the Supreme Court did not declare that they were awarding the death penalty to Afzal only on the basis of “collective conscience” and without evidence. There was a reference to “collective conscience” to justify awarding him the death penalty rather than a life term, and that had no relevance to establishing his guilt, which was based on evidence admissible under the Indian Evidence Act.

Whether one thinks the judgment was good in law or not is another debate which someone can initiate only after having read the entire judgment (and not just by listening to what Guru’s lawyers who lost the case or activists for Kashmir’s ‘freedom’ have to say), but it would be totally wrong to cast aspersions on the Indian judiciary as a whole, thanks to which many innocent civilians – Muslims, Adivasis and others – falsely framed as terrorists, have been exonerated, including two people even in connection with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and even Kashmiri Muslims were acquitted in connection with a terrorist attack in Lajpat Nagar in Delhi in 1984. It is the judiciary which has convicted hundreds of rioters in connection with the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 (in cases relating to massacres such as in the Best Bakery, Ode, Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya), hundreds in connection with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 (though some prominent politicians in connection with the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 are indeed yet to be convicted) and the anti-Christian riots in the Kandhamal district of Odisha in 2008 (in which MLAs like Manoj Pradhan were convicted), and recently, it upheld the right of the Greenpeace activist to travel abroad and even struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, a UPA legacy the Modi sarkar was shamelessly seeking to retain, as unconstitutional.

Besides, a letter supposedly written by Afzal Guru acknowledging his crime has been verified as being written by him by his own brother, and there are indeed several other such letters too. He even gave interviews acknowledging his guilt, as you can see here and here. Chidambaram’s recent statement suggesting Afzal’s possible innocence was most likely politically motivated, given that Rahul Gandhi was being attacked for associating with the pro-Afzal folks, and though the Congress party as a whole disassociated from Chidambaram’s statement, which it had to for Afzal was hanged in their tenure, the Congress often likes to speak in multiple voices to please all kinds of people, as does the BJP.

On Guha’s Supposed “Unnatural Turn”

Now, coming to the specifics of Bilaval’s article. Bilaval claims that Guha, has, in Piece 1, which is dated 28^th February 2016, demonstrated “the unnatural turn of condemning the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty for perhaps the first time”. This insinuation by Bilaval reflects Bilaval’s own ignorance as also his lack of research acumen as a research scholar that he is. Guha, has in his writings and interviews, time and again expressed his great admiration for Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, while being very critical of Indira, Rajiv and Rahul, and even his admiration for Nehru hasn’t been uncritical, with Guha having critiqued Nehru for not having done enough in the sphere of wiping out illiteracy and for mishandling the Sino-Indian border dispute.

Guha has been among the few gems in our intellectual circles who cannot be affiliated to any political party, him having criticized without any inhibitions the Congress, the BJP, the Left and the many regional parties. However, since the focus here is on him having never earlier criticized the Congress, it would indeed be useful to have a look at these articles and videos of Guha’s.

On Guha’s Observations in Piece 1 and Bilaval’s Rebuttals in Piece 2

Guha has contended that the current scenario is not exactly similar to the Emergency for the following reasons-

(a) One has seen street protests against and intellectual criticism of the Modi sarkar, even on the JNU issue, in Delhi and in BJP-ruled states, without any clampdown, showing that our constitution stands, unlike the Emergency or the fascist rule in Germany under Hitler where all dissent was undemocratically sought to be silenced.

(b) The BJP is not in power in many states and UTs and has no control over governments of states it does not govern, unlike the Congress being in power in most states during the Emergency.

(c) Comparing the RSS with the Nazi Party is absurd for the RSS is not planning territorial expansion, as much as it may fancy Akhand Bharat, and while it is deeply suspicious of Indian Muslims and Indian Christians, it’s not planning their wholesale extermination, the way the Nazis massacred Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, often in concentration camps.

As for the first two points mentioned by Guha, no further elaboration is required. The last point may be seen as a bit contentious, for our media and even academicians have often obfuscated genuine differences between right-of-centre and extreme right in the Hindu context (though often emphasizing the same in the Muslim context), which I have discussed in considerable detail here.

On the other hand, Bilaval, in trying to rebut Guha’s argument, advances sentimental rhetoric, which completely fails to repudiate what Guha said.

Bilaval argues that the current government has employed goons and the police to do their bidding, as the Congress did during the Emergency. However, even other than during the Emergency, almost all major political parties have had goons targeting dissidents, be it the CPI-M (remember Nandigram?), the BJP, the Shiv Sena, the MNS, the SP, the DMK and even the Congress, given its goons attacking the restaurant Aditi Pure Veg in Pune for making fun of UPA corruption in its menu or even killing leftist theatre artist Safdar Hashmi back in 1989, but none of this is similar to Nazism or the Emergency wherein all opponents from the civil society or the political class were locked up in jail or even killed.

Further, Bilaval contends that the RSS wishes to do away with our democratic constitutional framework altogether and seeks to establish a full-fledged theocratic dictatorship, but offers no evidence to substantiate his claim, as much as this insinuation may be “common sense” for those who have been exposed only to some left-leaning perceptions of the RSS largely propagated by its opponents and implicitly endorsed by a large section of the English language media. Bilaval has also equated the RSS/BJP stand on homosexuality and their attitude towards Adivasis with the Nazi attitude towards homosexuals and gypsies, and on this too, he is completely off the mark. The RSS and BJP have never talked of exterminating homosexuals, and a senior BJP leader like Arun Jaitley has dissented from the party line to openly declare his support to decriminalising homosexuality (not quite like the Nazi Party!), and the RSS, in the light of much talk of openness to homosexuality in ancient Hindu literature, had earlier talked of possibly revising their position on homosexuality, now having recently declared that it ought not to be a crime, and has, I reiterate, never advocated exterminating homosexuals Nazi-style or even Iran-style. To state facts about the RSS and dispelling misconceptions about them doesn’t amount to subscribing to their worldview. And while successive governments (BJP and non-BJP) had neglected Adivasis’ concerns till UPA-I laudably introduced the Forest Rights Act, when did the RSS or BJP advocate any genocide of Adivasis? If anything, they have actually been trying hard (with some success) to incorporate Adivasis in their fold.

Next, our friend Bilaval claims that the movement against the authoritarianism of the Congress during the Emergency premised itself on Indian nationalist sentiments, as did the agitation led by Anna Hazare, but the scenario now is different, with the JNU folks and other anti-BJP folks being branded as anti-national elements, which makes the current scenario more dangerous, but even then, he fails to explain how there is an Emergency-like clampdown of civil liberties today when he could himself write Piece 2 without facing any arrest. I concede that the Hindu right has managed to gather more space by portraying itself as more nationalist, but in this, our so-called liberals are more to blame. Rather than continuing to rightly espouse secularism as a means of national cohesion and integral to Indian nationalism, they have taken their talk of internationalism and humanism to abstract levels, without politely deconstructing it for but with their hypocrisy evident to the common man of India, who does very rightly feel surprised when many of those claiming to represent the “idea of India” are apparently more disturbed by the cancellation of a Ghulam Ali concert in Mumbai than Indians dying in a militant strike in Pathankot or how these 'liberals' seem to be more outraged at the hanging of Yakoob Memon than the terror strikes in Gurdaspur, preaching how it’s not a good idea to be friends with Israel but how it should be ‘aman ki asha’ with Pakistan (which has occupied Balochistan, which was a sovereign state like Nepal and Bhutan in March 1948, and oppressed the Baloch, even subjecting them to aerial bombings) at all costs. This is not the secularism Nehru or Shastri stood for, but supposedly very left-leaning folks like Arunadhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra, without any clarity of ideological framework, almost dismiss the entire constitutional setup and romanticize (though without endorsing) terrorism and militancy without offering any concrete solutions to any problem, as Pakistani-American writer Omar Ali has discussed here and Ramachandra Guha has discussed here, and the Roys and Mishras seem to have hijacked the mantle of secularism for some time now, which does make the Hindu right appear much more nationalist (and yes, even I would say that sections of the Left did commit a grave error in explicitly siding with the Chinese during the war in 1962 when they could have instead chosen to stay neutral, for taking such a stance would only invite suspicion about how they could not be trusted, and the Sino-Indian border dispute is a complex one, with neither side black or white, and there was absolutely no reason for any Indian Communist to blow the Chinese trumpet in a sensitive, war-like situation). But the only solution to this is to lay threadbare the BJP not only vis-à-vis communalism, but other aspects of their governance, to expose them as the opportunistic and corrupt politicians they indeed largely are, on one hand and to deconstruct and expose all the fallacies and contradictions of their ideological framework on the other. However, none of Bilaval’s discussion on an attempt at appropriating nationalism by the Hindu right, in the least, has anything whatsoever to do with rebutting what Guha said.

Bilaval has quite curiously also accused Sardar Patel of having territorially expansionist ambitions for India, a rather unsubstantiated claim. While I am not an uncritical admirer of Sardar Patel, and am aware of his Hindu-rightist and racist leanings that I have discussed in some detail here, Patel, far from being expansionist, was reluctant to incorporate in India Muslim-majority J&K bordering Pakistan, something MJ Akbar, much before joining the BJP, had described in some detail in his classic book Kashmir – Behind the Vale.

On How Centrists and Nehruvian Liberals Are Not Exactly Relevant As Per Bilaval

So, Bilaval believes that being a centrist or a Nehruvian liberal subscribing to our constitutional values isn’t good enough. What is needed of us is to brand almost all Hindus who happen to be born in a non-SC/ST family as casteist and communal, and sympathise with violent extremism against them, possibly for setting up totalitarian regimes. The modern democratic institutions should be derided and the only analysis of intellectual worth is of the likes that Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra produce.

Also, Bilaval has suggested that the likes of Amartya Sen and Ramachandra Guha are not “real, tangible individuals” (I last thought they existed in flesh and blood), and instead, the students of the prestigious JNU and Jadavpur University ought to be taken more seriously. While this statement is not backed with any reasoning, would Bilaval, who feels so much for minority rights, assert that the non-ultra-leftist minorities at these universities, who would even concur with Guha and whose voices are often stifled, ought to also be taken as seriously?

On Comparing Ramachandra Guha with Chetan Bhagat, treating Chetan Bhagat as an Object of Ridicule

Chetan Bhagat is a commercial fiction writer who supported Narendra Modi for PM, but should that make him an object of ridicule? Those supporting Modi included several acclaimed public intellectuals like Andre Beteile, Lord Meghnad Desai (soaked in the Marxist tradition), Dilip Chakrabarti, K. Gopinath, Kapil Kapoor and the likes.

However much one may despise Modi, should their scholarship be written off on account of their believing that Modi was a reasonably good administrator, and was the best option for India at the time (as compared to a then thoroughly discredited Congress, an inexperienced AAP and a potentially unstable Third Front), with one not possibly being completely sure of his involvement in the riots in Gujarat in 2002 and given Modi’s many efforts at demonstrating his commitment to religious pluralism? (I may clarify that I, for one, I did not wish to see Modi as PM, and I voted for the AAP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.)

Moving on, has Chetan Bhagat just blindly supported Modi or the BJP on every occasion and has he ever exhibited bigotry towards the minorities? His views on the religious minorities can be seen in these articles of his, which don’t exhibit the faintest trace of bigotry. Nor, as these articles make clear, is he a blind fan of Modi or the BJP, nor was he even before Modi became PM.

Finally, coming to Chetan Bhagat’s credentials as a fiction writer. He is not a very literary writer and writes commercial fiction in a sincere, though not serious, manner that appeals to large sections of the youth, telling their stories, and he raises legitimate issues like sexism, regionalism, communalism, income divides and drawbacks of the education system in our country, with fairly interesting and gripping plots, which have even done well in cinematic adaptations. While one may not like his genre, to ridicule him as a writer is just symptomatic of an intellectually elitist superiority complex, which doesn’t suit left-leaning folks. This article exposing Bhagat's snobbish critics would make a good read in this regard, as would this one on Chetan by Aakar Patel, who is interestingly also a known Modi-basher.

On Ramachandra Guha Being Accused of Bigotry

Saib Bilaval has accused Guha of dismissing any concerns of Hindu majoritarian nationalism by saying-

“Mr Guha says worry about the environment and public education instead. In addition, some of us wonder why JNU was attacked in the first place if not for objective and quite democratic critiques of the Modi government.”

But while Guha did talk about the environment and public education as the third and fourth worries of the state (not necessarily in order of priority, but which serially happened to find themselves as the last two, and they indeed are valid concerns for any right-thinking person), he did also, in Piece 1, explicitly state as the first worry-

“(C)ontrary to what many people expected or hoped, the RSS is laying down the agenda for governance at the Centre. In Gujarat Mr Modi may have marginalised the sangh, but after he moved to New Delhi he has largely deferred to them. And the sangh remains a patriarchal, chauvinist, organisation with a medievalist mindset, wholly unsuited to taking India forward in the 21st century.”

Calling someone a bigot just because he doesn’t agree with you, when he hasn’t advocated any intolerance, is a sign of …… bigotry! Well, then, who’s the bigot here?

By:

Karmanye Thadani

(The author would like to thank his friend Suvankur Sukul for his inputs.)

WILL LEGALISING PROSTITUTION LEAD TO LESS NUMBER OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT CASES?

Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, it is said. Every day we read so many articles about it, some favouring prostitution, while some are against it; some calling it against our culture, while some refer to the Vedas to claim that it isn’t against Indian culture. Whatever the Vedas may say, today, more than half India’s population is against this prostitution. With the culture of silence that has developed around the issue, whatever the layman knows about it is either through prejudices that have been passed on or articles in the paper that catch one’s eye. Till now we have been indifferent towards this issue, acting as if it doesn’t even exist, forcing the sex workers to live in misery, but now we need to acknowledge it, analyse it and discuss it.
This profession that is considered to be a blotch on our society, is actually estimated to be an 8.4 billion dollar industry, just in India.  Many of the hypocrites who complain about how sex workers have blemished the culture, are the ones who feast on them for without the requisite demand, the sex industry would have never thrived. Going further, we refuse to accept the plight of these sex workers. The only thing that we have done for them is label them as ‘prohibited’. Denied even basic human rights, their lives are nothing but a continuous struggle.
The National Commission for Women recently stated that prostitution should be legalised in India, reigniting the old debate. In a country where the word, “sex”, is considered a taboo despite rapes and sexual crimes being ever so frequent, legalising prostitution was bound to raise many eyebrows. While some thoroughly oppose it, others believe that legalisation can reduce the incidence sexual crimes. There might be substance to the latter argument. With the closure of brothels in 1959, Queensland, Australia experienced a 149% increase in incidents of rape. Most sexual offenders are psychopaths, and a possible psychological explanation lies in that sex is a human necessity with depravity pushing a person to commit such crimes. An example of this manifestation is the recently viral article, in which a tourist shared her experience of how a man masturbated to her in a bus in India. By legalising prostitution, this depravity can be controlled and hence it can reduce the incidence of such crimes.
Our personal like or dislike toward this profession is immaterial with regard to whether or not it should be legalised. The difference between the two matters lies in the truth, which is, that whatever we do, we cannot eliminate prostitution. It is a reality that has always been there, because of which it would be better to legalise it in order to at least protect the rights of the sex workers.
It is disconcerting to even think that there exists a world so removed from the one that we live in, where little girls no older than 10-11 years are sold into the menacing lanes of a red light area. Around ten million children are estimated to be part of the sex trade. Once they are in it they have to trade their existence for survival for the rest of their lives, as there is no escape for them. They are harassed, beaten and left wounded with no one to take care of them. They get pregnant at such a young age, go through abortion and get pregnant again. Their kids, too, go through a tough life devoid of the respect and security that they deserve. Hence, legalisation would ensure that only consenting adults get into this trade and no other, especially a minor is forced into it.
Sex workers are the most marginalised members of society. They are mistreated and harassed throughout their lives, and receive no protection or justice from the law, as they are engaged in an activity that is illegal, and hence do not exist within the official radar of the state, with no official identity documents or even a bank account. What they require is protection. Legalising their profession would ensure their security. They are exploited by pimps, clients and obviously, the police. Once it is legalised, pimps and brothel owners would be held responsible for the treatment of these sex workers. Mandatory h checks will also reduce the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. It will ensure better work conditions, better wages for them.
Legalisation will be able to provide a life for these women, a life of security and respect, which is what they deserve instead of being criminalised for the choices they make or, more often than not, are forced into.

By-VARTIKA CHAUDHARY

CAN RELIGION BE THE BASIS OF A STATE?

Recent events like the Dadri lynching and the killing of Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi have clearly put the secular credentials of the country under question. Incidents like the Trilokpuri and Muzzafarnagar riots in the past have also dented the constitutional principles of the state. These incidents not only weaken the very principle of equality but also bring in a feeling of discrimination and marginalisation within the society. A statement by President Pranab Mukherjee, in October last year, underlined the importance of retaining diversity and tolerance. He re-stated the same opinion in his visit to Israel in which he mentioned that religion must never be the basis for a state. Israel, in which the majority of the people are Jewish has been at war against Palestine which started because of communal hatred. Recent attacks on people who consume beef has only aggravated the seriousness of the issue. This issue has sparked tensions among the intellectuals of the country with many litterateurs previously returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, concerned about the silence of the government over the rising intolerance.
“Despite being a Muslim, APJ Abdul Kalam was a great nationalist and humanist.”
The above statement came from the Union Minister of Culture Mahesh Sharma during an interview with India TV. Was it really necessary? Statements like these instil fear not only among the minority communities but also among the majority, as these statements trigger widespread communal riots which are tragic for the whole society. Communalism has taken the centre stage from the beginning of the new government’s tenure which was selected with the hopes of development and stability and it has succeeded to some extent but the rise of communal tensions have overshadowed the efforts of the BJP government, and Mr. Narendra Modi being the prime minister of India will certainly not want this to happen. He has launched many successful initiatives so far, such as the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”, “Digital India”, etc, and it is high time for him to act a little more seriously with regard to the issue of rising communal sentiments. Nirmala Seetharaman (a colleague of Mr. Modi) also put forward a controversial statement in which he seemed to be debating on the existence of communalism instead of opposing it.
The Modi government’s response to all these incidents has been lukewarm and disappointing. Instead of promising concrete measures, he blamed the state governments for the riots and avoided taking the onus. Using the same clichéd arguments of law and order and merely expressing sadness will not help the issue. Instead he should condemn the controversial statements made by BJP ministers, recently, and also acknowledge that communalism of the majoritarian kind will not be tolerated. The intellectual community of the country (especially those returning their Sahitya Akademi awards) is losing the faith they had in the government and the BJP has to take steps to stop this chaos and bring back the faith people had in the party, the faith that it would bring in economic development, not communal violence. Secularism is the backbone of the country’s constitution and what needs to be debated is how to separate religion from state instead of fuelling debates on communalism.

By-Tushar Dev

The Real motive behind Mark Zuckerburg’s IIT Delhi visit

Mark Zuckerburg visited IIT Delhi on 28th October 2015. His visit may very well be one of the most important highlights of its academic year. Mark is a youth icon for achieving so much in such little time and engineering students look up to him as no less than a demigod. He has achieved all the three things that every student and entrepreneur aspires to achieve, namely: fame, respect and money.
So, as expected tickets to his town hall event were hard to come by. Only one in six students were able to attend the event as even IIT Delhi’s Dogra hall was only able to accommodate about a thousand students. With a student population of over six thousand students, students were desperately trying to arrange for passes or exchange them for money.
Dressed in his signature round neck t-shirt and jeans. He looked like an average youngster but, indeed, he is the CEO of a 250 billion firm. There was clearly a gleam of excitement on the faces of students, a bit of curiosity and of course respect when the 31-year-old entrepreneur from Silicon Valley began speaking.
But, was there an ulterior motive rather than Mark’s vision of India becoming facebook’s biggest market. Facebook supports internet.org and for a long time, has been pushing for its implementation in India. Internet.org is about providing access to free internet but you can use the internet mainly to access facebook.com only. It violates net neutrality, according to which unrestricted access must be provided to all websites and access speeds must not be throttled down.
After facebook’s Digital India fiasco in which it injected a small script, wherein  people who supported Digital India initiative online also unknowingly supported internet.org. According to the company spokesperson internet.org was a variable that the developer had used but seldom do developers use such complex variables. So clearly, Facebook had been caught red handed.
His visit to India may very well be to sugar coat internet.org and to persuade people to support internet.org so as to then seek approval from the telecom authority citing existing support for the same. But the fact remains that internet.org is just a marketing gimmick to hook more people to its platform and not about providing freer access to the internet.
Today’s youth is much more intelligent than Mark and his team perceives them to be, and students could clearly see that the townhall event that he announced with much fanfare and excitement was nothing but a marketing gimmick for the internet.org initiative. With no clear national framework on net neutrality, intenet.org may very well be a grey area that large corporations such as facebook exploit for their selfish motives.

By - Archit Aggarwal

SPANISH GENERAL ELECTION 2015

The Spanish general election 2015 was held on 20th December, Sunday to elect the 11th Cortes Generales (national legislature) of the Kingdom of Spain.  Since the Spanish transition to democracy, with a gap of 4 years and 1 month since the previous general election of 2011, it marks the longest time span between two general elections. Analysts deemed the polls to be the most unpredictable Spanish general election in decades, as a consequence of the two major political parties giving way to a new political landscape and the introduction of two new parties, who are popular with the public.

The ruling party, People’s Party (PP), with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, has been credited for successfully steering Spain out of recession and boosting the country’s economy. However Rajoy’s term had been plagued with allegations of corruption. Furthermore, the party is known to have a strong Atlanticist ideology, fostering closer ties with the US and the UK, instead of France and Germany, and is therefore believed to be harmful to Spanish interests in the EU. Though never credited as an honest leader, Rajoy has tried to sell himself as the only viable option for safeguarding Spain’s economic recovery, despite the fact that the country’s unemployment is still the second highest in Europe, after Greece. Betting on continuity in fiscal policy, it pledged to bring the number of employed people up to 20 million by 2020.

The Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE), ideologically located to the left of centre, considered this election to be an opportunity to return to power after 4 years in the opposition. Pedro Sanchez took over as party leader in 2014. With the charisma of being a former basketball player, he promised a revival of the party following its crushing defeat in the last general election, a result of its much-criticized handling of the beginning of Spain’s economic crisis. However, Sanchez struggled to really stand out during the election campaign. The party proposed to respect Eurozone fiscal rules, trying to negotiate looser deficit targets for the coming years, to amend the balanced budget rule introduced in the Spanish Constitution in 2011, and to scrap the ‘Labour Market Reform’ passed by Rajoy’s government.

Popular newer parties on the political stage include Podemos (Spanish for “We Can”) and Ciudadanos (Citizens in Spanish, C’s). Podemos, a radical-left party, was founded by a political science professor Pablo Iglesias, 37 just a few months before the elections as a coalition of anti-capitalist political organizations, social activists who opposed the ruling People Party’s adjustment policies and a few science scholars who had attained popularity in Spanish media. It did much better than expected in 2014 European elections and even played a part in the election of left-wing mayors to Barcelona and Madrid, as part of left-wing coalitions. As part of its manifesto for the general election, it proposed to increase income tax for higher earners, boost public spending and scrap Rajoy’s ‘Labour Market Reform’.

Ciudadanos began as a regional party in Catalonia in 2011 by leader Albert Rivera, 36. After launching nationwide during the first half of 2015, it did well in the 2015 regional elections. A centrist party with liberal views on social issues and more conservative views on economy, it poses a threat to both PP and PSOE. It used the social media to attract young voters and recruited 15,000 “cyber activists” to spread the party message on social media. It proposed to respect Eurozone fiscal rules, while asking the European Commission to slightly relax the deficit target for next year, along with promising to provide newly hired employees with full protection rights.

This election was largely dominated by economic factors - particularly with regard to unemployment. Spain is among the fastest growing economies in the EU despite its economic recovery over the past two years having been exclusively driven by domestic demand. However, doubts remain over the long-term sustainability of this recovery in a country where debt is projected to remain above 200% of GDP until at least 2020.
The result, as expected, was inconclusive – the ruling PP won maximum votes but fell short of the required absolute majority of 176 seats, raising the need for a coalition or re-election. In the 350-seat legislature, PP won 123 seats (and a vote-share of 28.72%), PSOE won 90 seats (and a vote-share of 22.01%), Podemos won 69 seats (and a vote-share of 20.66%), and Ciudadanos won 40 seats (and a vote-share of 13.93%). The results only brought on the onset of what could be weeks of complicated negotiations, leading to a deeply fragmented parliament. Although, the results do leave open the possibility for Rajoy to become one of the first leaders in Europe to be re-elected after imposing harsh austerity measures, but he faces a tremendous uphill battle to take power as the PP has limited possibilities when it comes to the alliances it needs to form a stable government. “I’m going to try and form a government,” Rajoy told cheering supporters on Sunday as the results came in. “But it won’t be easy.” In order to be able to govern for the next four years, PP will have to rely on other parties, suggesting that a protracted process of negotiations lies ahead for Spain’s political leaders.
Several scenarios are possible; many analysts had predicted that the new government would be made up of the PP and supported in some way by Ciudadanos. But now the two parties are still short of a majority. Any alliances would require a third partner which will be very complicated. An equally unlikely option is that the PP and the Socialists could get together and form a “grand pact” like that of Germany but the problem with that is that the two parties are wholly opposed to each other in terms of their beliefs. Another alternative, echoing developments in Portugal, would be a coalition of the Socialists, Podemos and Ciudadanos. Such a coalition would clash over issues such as Catalan independence – with Ciudadanos opposed to any talk of a referendum. This complex coalition calculus is unprecedented for Spain.
Despite a result that ranks as their worst in the party’s modern history, the Socialists are now key to the question of what comes next. However, even if the Socialists are able to amass enough votes to gain control of the lower house of parliament, their government’s attempts to push forward initiatives such as constitutional reform would likely be quashed by the country’s senate, where the election left the PP with an absolute majority.
Spain’s King Felipe VI, who will soon have to name the party that will have the chance to try and form a government, has highlighted the need for shared constitutional values in spite of regional diversities. The public is left with a large question mark over their heads on whether the Eurozone’s fourth-largest economy is threatening to become ungovernable, just as it emerges from a humiliating bailout and its worst economic crisis in over 20 years. All signs point to a difficult period of negotiation, followed by either a weak minority or coalition government or new elections if the issue is not resolved within two months, which seems like the only way; the problem is that of the 28 seats not accounted for by the 4 biggest parties. “The next government will be fragile, and the political backdrop is set to become more volatile,” Antonio Barroso, a political risk analyst with Teneo Intelligence, wrote.  He further added that, “a new election should not be discarded”. After the results came in, Ciudadanos’ head Albert Rivera addressed supporters and the media. “Spain has changed. Enough of a red and blue Spain,” he said, echoing descriptions of the U.S. electorate. He was right. The percentage of the vote received by the two big parties fell from more than 73% in 2011 to barely over 50%. But how the mix of colors that will be formed next functions is far from clear.

REFERENCES
Scarpetta, Vincenzo. Spain heads to its most unpredictable election in decades. December 16, 2015
Jones, Nathan. The 2015 Spanish General Election: How a Sea Change May Not Yet Have Reached the Shore of Spanish Politics. December 14, 2015
The Spain Report Ltd. Spanish General Elections: News, Updates & Analysis.
Velloso, Agustin. Spain’s PSOE Socialist Party Follows The Same Foreign Policy As The PP Under Aznar. December 11, 2007
Mount, Ian. Spain’s Election Results Are a Mess. December 21, 2015
Kassam, Ashifa. Spanish election: national newcomers end era of two-party dominance. December 21, 2015
Llamazares, Ivan. Spanish general election preview: Podemos. December 15, 2015
Duarte, Esteban & Sills, Ben. King Felipe Says Spain’s Election Results Show Need For Dialogue. December 25, 2015
The Local. Spanish general election: the key players. December 20, 2015

- Riya Brahma
(Member, India-Spain Youth Forum)

Are the Syrian Refugees Security Threats or Economic Assets for Their Host Countries?

The ISIS is indeed an international security threat, but those fleeing from it cannot be labelled as security threats, even if most of them share the same religious affiliation as the ISIS. To label all Muslims as supporting terrorism would be an extremely bigoted attitude, which is far from reality. Many of the men and women who have laid down their lives fighting the ISIS and helped rehabilitate Yazidis and Christians do happen to be Muslims – whether Kurdish, Syrian, Iraqi or Emirati. While Shias and adherents of Sufi Islam (yes, Sufi Islam does exist even in the Middle East) are branded as heretics by the ISIS and have been targeted, even very many adherents of relatively puritan versions of Sunni Islam have  refused to accept Baghdadi’s caliphate and many such tribes in Iraq have violently taken on the ISIS.

It’s not as though rightists under any religious banner, except arguably those actually resorting to killing innocent civilians, should be dehumanized or can never be logically made to modify their views, as the must-watch Indian movie Road to Sangam, based on a true story, does demonstrate, and to draw an analogy, you can see this video of a Muslim who initially wanted to become a terrorist wanting to blow up Jewish civilians but changed his standpoint about Israel for the better after visiting that country. It is not as though Muslims are another species that can’t be rationally engaged with, the way some extreme anti-Muslim rightists make all of them out to be, portraying Muslims in general as cruel, slimy, backstabbing and aggressive (many Muslims whom the non-Muslim readers would know personally would not exhibit such traits if the non-Muslim readers were to analyze dispassionately, rather than making baseless presumptions, and some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by the likes of Hitler and Stalin, who were not Muslims, nor was Chengiz Khan who was an animist), but like many people in other communities in different contexts, some (not all) Muslims are in the stranglehold of anachronistic ideas like a global pan-Muslim fraternity and the upholding of Islamic law, other than having prejudiced notions of an exaggerated sense of victimhood, and I have dealt with how to ideologically combat Muslim extremism in some depth in this article.

Terrorism, even terrorism citing a theological basis, is certainly not a Muslim monopoly. As you can see here, very many instances of terrorism globally, even in the name of religion, have been carried out by those identifying themselves as Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and even Buddhists, the victims of the acts of terrorists from each of these religious groupings not always being Muslims. However, just like most people of these religious groupings are not terrorists or supporters of terrorism, and they do not believe that their religion preaches terrorism, the same is the case with most Muslims (and not supporting terrorism even applies to even most of those Muslims with other regressive and not-so-liberal attitudes on issues like gender and homosexuality).

It is possible to quote any scripture (allegedly out of context according to its liberal adherents) to justify malpractices, like some verses in the Bible namely Deuteronomy 13:12-15, Samuel 15:3, Leviticus 24:16 and Matthew 10:34 seemingly advocate violence against “non-believers” and the Purusha Sukta of the Rigved, an ancient Hindu scripture, is taken by some to justify caste discrimination, but these verses do not define the entire religion. This article mentioning an anecdote from the British parliament does make an interesting read in this regard, as does this video make an interesting watch in this connection. There are Quranic verses like 2:256, 5:2, 5:8, 5:32, 6:108, 6:151, 10:99, 49:13, 60:8 and 109:6 preaching peace, religious tolerance and human brotherhood, as does the letter from Prophet Muhammad to the Christian monks of St Catherine’s monastery and there are episodes from Prophet Muhammad’s life, as per Islamic lore, indicative of such an approach too, such as his allowing a woman to throw garbage at him daily and his succeeding in ideologically, winning over her by way of humanitarian affection. Those suggesting that peaceful verses in the Quran are superseded by violent verses (which the vast majority of practising Muslims globally regard as contextual) would do well to note that verse 109:6 appears towards the end of the book, and indeed preaches nothing but peace.

There is a fairly well-known website run by an apostate and basher of Islam who has even offered a cash prize to anyone who can disprove his allegations against Prophet Muhammad (but there are books by apostates of other religions criticizing their former religions too, the most famous one being ‘Why I Am Not a Christian’ by Bertrand Russell, and there’s also ‘Why I am Not a Hindu’ by Kancha Ilaiah, levelling very strong allegations), but practically, he is the judge of the debate, or to go by what he is saying, the “readership” of the website, a rather non-defined entity. In fact, he has acknowledged that he came across a Muslim who “intelligently argued his case and never descended to logical fallacies or insults” and while that Islam-basher “did not manage to convince him to leave Islam”, that Muslim earned his “utmost respect”, which implies that practically, the Islam-basher is the judge of the debate. Likewise, that Islam-basher has mentioned with reference to a scholar of Islam he debated with, that the latter was “a learned man, a moderate Muslim and a good human being” and someone he (the Islam-basher) has “utmost respect for”. So, that Islam-basher’s critique of Islam, whether valid or invalid, has no relevance in terms of making blanket stereotypes about the people we know as Muslims or even practising Muslims. By the way, that Islam-basher bashes Judaism too. And it is worth mentioning that I’ve encountered several practising Muslims on discussion groups on the social media, who have, in a very calm and composed fashion, logically refuted the allegations against Islam on such websites. Indeed, as you can see here and here, there are several other apostates of Islam who have stated that while they personally left Islam thinking that the extremist interpretations are correct and moderate ones wrong (as is the case with apostates of many other religions), they have equally explicitly emphasized that that doesn’t in the least mean that they believe that most people identifying themselves as practising Muslims support violence against innocent people.

And in fact, even speaking of the West, a report submitted by Europol, the criminal intelligence agency of the European Union, showed that only 3 out of the 249 terrorist attacks (amounting to just about 1.2%) carried out in Europe in 2010 were carried out by Muslims. Even in the United States, most terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2005 were not carried out by Muslims. And no, I am not in the least seeking to undermine the heinousness of the crimes committed by some in the name of Islam by pointing to others having committed similar crimes under other ideological banners, for a more highlighted wrongdoing is no less of a wrongdoing than a less highlighted wrongdoing, but only to point out that viewing only Muslims as villains, and that too, all of them, would indeed be grossly incorrect. However, despite jihadist terrorists being a microscopic minority of Muslims, Islamist terrorism has become a bigger global threat for its well-coordinated international network since the 1990s. And, let us not forget that when we had the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, the victims included Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim police officer who died fighting the terrorists (and by the way, there are more French Muslims in the local police, including those who have died fighting jihadist terrorists, than in the Al Qaeda unit in their country), Mustapha Ourad, a Muslim who was one of the magazine staff members killed in that attack and there was Lassana Bathily, a Muslim shopkeeper who gave sanctuary to many innocent civilians during the hostage crisis in Paris that followed. Even in the context of the more recent attacks in Paris, a Muslim security guard Zouheir, risking his own life, prevented one suicide bomber from entering a packed football stadium. More recently, Kenyan Muslims laudably protected fellow bus commuters, who were Christians, from jihadist terrorists.

There is indeed absolutely nothing to suggest that most of the refugees are terrorists or even supporters of terrorism, and indeed, they escaped the very same terrorism that Westerners do indeed very understandably dread. Having said that, a certain degree of caution is necessary, for the nefarious designs of the ISIS do involve targeting innocent people across the globe, and so, the possibility of some ISIS members having joined the peace-loving refugees cannot be ruled out. In this regard, it is noteworthy that in the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, one of the terrorists involved was a migrant who had come in with the refugees. It would be prudent to exercise caution by cross-checking with the Middle Eastern governments and those heading the Kurdish fighters the identities of the migrants, and this has actually helped in some cases.

Terrorism apart, it is important that the refugees, even if coming from socially conservative backgrounds, do respect the culture of their host countries and respect women, even if they do not sport headscarves and wear short dresses. They cannot try to impose their own versions of piety and decency on others and the instances of crimes against women in Cologne were a disgrace, and one of the molesters displayed ingratitude, saying they shouldn’t be arrested, for they were Angela Merkel’s guests! That said, of course, the commission of crimes against women is not exclusive to any ethnicity or religious grouping and has a long history (the disrobing of Draupadi in the Mahabharat demonstrates that such occurrences weren’t unheard of in ancient India, for example), and does need to be checked by vigilant policing.

As for whether the migrants offer an economic opportunity to their host countries, on the whole, the answer seems to be in the affirmative, by way of bringing in more players in the labour market, especially unskilled labour (of which countries like Germany have a great shortage), though there are legitimate concerns about the host countries’ spending on basic facilities for migrants as also whether competition with migrants would deprive locals of jobs. However, fortunately, the evidence tells us otherwise.

The Economist points to a study in the OECD’s International Migration Outlook, which estimates the net fiscal contributions of migrants in 27 advanced countries. The net direct contribution of migrants is indeed lesser than that of the locals, but this is owing to the fact the migrants pay less taxes and not because they claim more benefits. The primary reason for them paying less tax is lower levels of employment, especially among women. The net fiscal contributions of migrants could therefore be increased by increasing their labour force participation. The overall inference is that migration is “neither a significant gain nor drain for the public purse”.

When ethnic Indians were expelled from East Africa in the 1970s, conservative British newspapers had expressed alarm, with The Telegraph talking of the “Invasion of Asians Forces Borough to Call for Help”, but forty years later, a conservative minister described them as “one of Britain's greatest success stories.” Indeed, migrants in Denmark, many of them Muslim, actually helped boost productivity and enabled local Danish people to acquire more skill sets owing to competition, as Mette Foged and Giovanni Peri have explained in a research paper dated April 2015. As a report in The Atlantic points out-

“Economists generally agree immigration is mostly good for a nation. They even have a term for it: ‘Immigration surplus’ refers to the positive effect immigration has by creating new demand for goods and services, which encourages employers to hire more people. And if migrants replace incumbent workers, even though wages are lowered, goods and services are produced more cheaply.”

According to a new report from the OECD, despite the ongoing refugee crisis, the Turkish and Lebanese economies will indeed both advance at a steady rate in the near future. Despite an influx of refugees that now amounts to more than 10% of its population, Jordan, too, is bearing up. Its GDP will rise by about 3% this year, according to the IMF.

These figures prove that even in countries facing huge influxes of refugees, the impact on the economy as a whole is usually not enormous. Indeed, there is a cost to screening, housing, and feeding the entrants, but even in Turkey, which has received more Syrian refugees than any other country, this cost has proved manageable. Turkey’s annual GDP is about 800 billion dollars. At about 1.5 billion dollars a year, the cost of resettling the Syrian refugees has been less than 0.2% of the GDP.

Another concern that has been expressed regularly about refugees, especially in Europe over the past few months, in response to the influx of refugees there, has been that refugees take jobs from native workers and reduce wages. The evidence of these Syrian refugees suggests that this is possible and even has happened on some occasions, but isn’t a very large-scale issue. In many cases, refugees take jobs that are rejected by the natives. They also set up businesses of their own and provide more customers for domestic enterprises.

 Not all the migrants are unskilled workers, however. Another study by Soner Çağaptay, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointed out that many Syrian traders from places like Aleppo, which has been devastated by the civil war, have moved their operations across the border to cities in southern Turkey, boosting business there. In general, Çağaptay wrote, “Turkish business, and the country’s trademark export market, has registered remarkable success in dealing with the fallout of the Syrian crisis.”

Indeed, the Syrian crisis is a humanitarian one, and should be seen as such. Many people from the West have displayed their compassion, which is indeed laudable.

By:
Karmanye Thadani