Category Archives: Indian History

Will India’s Mars mission inspire Quality India? (Successful abroad – but why aren’t Indians successful at home)

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Caste & Social position, Indian History

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When India’s .Mars mission successfully reached the red planet, I was impressed. It seemed inconceivable that for a mere 74 million dollars, man reached mars when the 1969 landing of the moon cost $365 million (what is that in todays currency) or the $671 million to launch the Maven satellite.

It showed Indians can excel. Of course, there have been many scientific summits crossed in the subcontinent, and scientist Abdul Kálam became India’s president.

So why do so many Indians excel overseas and not at home?

A study ranked the individuality-conformity of nations ranked India 48th on I-C scale[1] (tied with Panama; Ecuador, 49, Guatemala 50 Pakistan tied with Indonesia at 44) the most Individualistic nations were from 1 to 3, the USA, Australia, the Great Britain with the Netherlands and Canada tied at fourth more collectivist nations.

When nations see themselves in terms of their inner feelings (“I am patient, easy going, kind” they will sacrifice to the group good, even strongly loyal, but demand their own needs are l bound to fewer groups distinctions, have shallower relationships that may end. Collectivist nations see themselves as “I am a daughter, a nurse, an Indian”) with interdependent cooperative relationship, see strong in out group distinctions, are far more adept at reading body language and interpersonal clues seeking group harmony ad long term relationships.

Or as the old joke goes “You can tell Indian crabs because while crabs will climb out of a jar, Indian crabs will get back in.”

All cultures have a Pavlovian reflex to seek group approval. It seems more pronounced in the large communal population that we are quick to condemn non conformists. Unless that nonconformity leads to wealth or power.

Indians do seem to be gifted with a heritage of inductive logic, an intuitive grasp that seems to elude some of our more addictively minded Western contemporaries.

Perhaps its the meditation? Or is it the need to take a street smart hunch to get ahead homed by years of reading the subtle clues of community. Reading body language and expression is a fine Indian art, less developed   by more verbal nations who take you by your word alone.

Indians lead Microsoft and internet technology . Unfortunately, Indian born Nobel prize laureate scientists Hargobind Khurana, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar  and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan were no longer Indian citizens when they gained success.

“We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth” Ramakrishnan said.

Sadly “Indian” successes abroad have little to do with the fact that they are Indian. They succeed because they abandoned India.

India’s policy of exclusion that holds us back?  India forbids joint citizenship, so to get ahead you become a foreign national. Or is it because the history of caste exclusion?

Go to a repairman and there will be plenty of promises but little performed, unless it can be put off onto somebody else.

Or is it the culture of mediocrity that discourages achievement?

Perhaps it is by escaping the social confines of the group, moving to USA, Britain or Australia, where innovation is rewarded, their gifts now shine. Many will not succeed  of course: I have seen many arrive expecting the Pan Indian network to land them a career. Misplaced nostalgia does not work.

Where personal effort and innovation counts, the hard work to simply get by in India, may find results for those seeking solutions. Colonial Britain wrongly criticized Indians as lazy, failing to realise the lazy Indian simply did not want to work for something that meant nothing to him.  The new Industries nations incentivise solutions. Where oversees there is personal reward – in India family  nepotism may swipe your profit.

I hope the successful mars mission inspires us to prove we can do it home in India. There have been great Indian successes when industries broke away from the mould. Let’s build the infrastructure to keep leaders where India needs them.

[1] Hofstede’s national scale 1980 study ranked 117,000 employees of a multinational corporation in 40 countries, that was expanded in 1983 to 50 nations. (Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham, The Psychology of culture shock, Routledge, 2001, Philadelphia.)

The day I walked into Union Carbide ….

27 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by in Indian History

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Whatever you see creates it’s echo within you, and in some deep sense you become like that which you see.”
– Osho Hidden Mysteries

For two years I avoided Union Carbide. True, when I first arrived in Bhopal the accommodation building was pointed out from the road. Another time with a Swiss tourist in the car, it was pointed out as we wizzed down new Brahmpur Bridge Road.

I had walked Bhopal’s old city before ever realising how close I was to the fenced off site.

You know it is there but no one really talks about it. Just as bodies are dissolved on a pyre, the still toxic site remains permeating Bhopal’s collective soul.

For the few protests I sense a general malaise.  Protests allow  a sense of action. They show that people can do something – a something that meant everything stayed the same.  But the eros of protest rarely brings lasting change.

13416bhopalhorrorIn a recent visit to Australia, the Uranium sales  contract signed by Prime Ministers Modi and Abbott, inspired many Australian friends to ask me “Is it safe? Look what happened in Bhopal.”

Perhaps the legal decisions of previous governments (Both in  India and the USA) will bind Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Couhan. But I hope the upcoming 30th anniversary will be a plat form for social and business reform. The hubris of scientific progress has often been used to minimize industrial safety.  Double dealing of admitting liability in USA and not in India where some people want blood.

The Bhopal Municipal Corporation site claims 2000 died the night of December 2/3 in a city of then 800,000 and 8,000 since.

“The leak was caused by a series of mechanical and human errors. A portion of the safety equipment at the plant had been non-operational for four months and the rest failed. When the plant finally sounded an alarm–an hour after the toxic cloud had escaped–much of the harm had already been done.
The city health officials had not been informed of the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide factory. There were no emergency plans or procedures in place and no knowledge of how to deal with the poisonous cloud.”

 

2014-09-21 14.42.17resSo two years later I find myself crossing the crumbling damp earth to a painted brick fence . Behind the white blocks  that encircle the site shantis are leaning. Washing hangs from branches into the property.

The monsoon is past but the sun has already left a sting on my face and exposed hands. The soil is soaked and rutted, wet and crumbled.

On a chalky patch of white a sitting  sari-d woman is pounding  the ground. Nearby three naked youths pull themselves from a long concrete water tank near bye. Towelled and dressed, they offer (more like foce me) to take my picture for piase, money.

Union Carbide Hole

There is a clear breach in the wall, half filled in by layered rocks.

But I feel an intruder. The world needs to experience Bhopal and to learn from this disaster. The thought of Toxic tourism feels an unwelcome intrusion. And tourists do have a reputation of destroying the landscape and  solemnity of the places they wish to see.
The terms ecotourism or cultural tourism seem oxymorons. Tourists are seen as culturally ignorant, Tourism often changes the very thing come to see. Frustrated sceptics feel justified in describing Social Justice tourism as “self righteous arrogance”, “hypocritical” and “ironic”.

But I am not a tourist. I rent on the other side of town.

I am not seeking to satisfy morbid curiosity. People ask me about the disaster as if I should know as the 30th anniversary approached.

Emails to MPtourism and anyone else I can think of have been ignored.  One website claims permission can be granted in 24 hours, but no organisation matching the claim was found.  I approached the police at the Collectorate Office. I am given an address but that’s a dead end too.

Talk of tours has upset some locals, but one of my Bowen Therapy clients, a former UC employee is frustrated there is so much myth and exaggeration about the disaster in the hope of making money. I am not so sure.

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I had followed my nose past the Taj ul Masjid without a map, bought an icecream opposite the Chingari Rehabilitation Clinic  and knowing I must be close recognised the fence line almost by accident.

No, I am not a tourist!

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I understand, the locals expressed concern about opening the site to tourists for the 30th anniversary.

However we spend more on tourism than on eating, so disliking tourists is a bit like disliking who we are who we have become our culture and who we stand for.

It’s like resigning to what is and saying we can never do better.

Bhopal is sadly the premier example for Toxic Tourism.  India and the world have not learned the lessons. In US toxic “human sacrifice zones” shock even locals by the nearness to homes playgrounds and schools.

I do not wish to discredit the beauty of Bhopal or to make a clown of human suffering.

I do want people to see what is hidden and denied. A life worlds apart that is right next door.

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But If Duponte can creatively advertise “better living through chemistry” or GE claim “We bring the good life” why is it wrong to use creativity to remind people of hidden and denied toxicity? World over, such tours reveal how close toxic industries are to residents

Bhopal is a beautiful city. This is the beauty I want people to see. Yet to inspire change, perhaps we need to evoke the ugly sensibilities of our world.

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An appearance rust and brick like any other forgotten factory is before me.

Amongst the rusted frames, life is mixed with death and new growth. Greenery isa graphic symbol of renewal in a scarred and contaminated landscape. I sense life from death.

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But unlike Hiroshima or the Twin towers there is no iconography of memory. Yes, outside ruth watermans memorial captures despair but is barely noticed. Some laugh at it: “What is that supposed to mean?”

https://www.facebook.com/urban.photo.rhizome

source: facebook.com/urban.photo.rhizome

Urban Photo Rhizome Bhopal 2011

In 2011 The Urban Rhizome Photo project rebelliously showed that may Bhopali’s do not want to be defined by the tragedy.  This shadow boxing with the past reminds us that environmental disasters carry a universal burden.  Bhopal may have been a local tragedy but intricate links question our entire global society.

Union Carbide may be a local phenomenon but it’s response must be global.  Landscapes are not just rock and tree scapes but memories evinced from our past. Healing is therefore an ongoing and constant renegotiation of individual and collective meaning we as a society give to this tragedy.

Unfortunately, the survivors have become an ongoing subjects in the collective experiment of industrial failures.

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Images haunt. There is a whole mythology built on this fact: Cezanne painting till his eyes bled, Wordsworth wandering the Lake Country hills in an impassioned daze. … ‘It is like being alive twice.’ Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is. … Some feeling in the arrest of the image that what perishes and what lasts forever have been brought into conjunction, and accompanying that sensation is a feeling of release from the self. …Only the moment is eternal.”
—“Images,” an essay in Twentieth Century Pleasures (Ecco, 1984) by Robert Hass

As I look at the green shrubbery pushing through rust and concrete I am reminded that India is a land of images.:Images that link us to its myths.

How will the night of the gas be remembered? How can we explain the larger implications of industrialisation?

More than just words are required. In Tantra it is taught that we enhance our senses and evoke our inner mantra. So what emotive experience  -what feeling – could move people to action? There are so many conflicting memories to interpret and rehabilitate.

How do we recognise contemporary needs with conflicting painful past and remember  Bhopal’s beautiful palaces and not just a disaster?

What legacy will lesson balance public memory with the marginalised, equity with ecology?

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The images of this mantra of death are as tactile as a poem that brings up the sensations of the past and present. But it is too easy to see life like fragments of ghazzals rather than appreciate the beauty – or pain – of the poem.

The recent movie recreation “Bhopal: a prayer for rain” has again projected history across the movie screen of the mind.

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But in the silence of metal and concrete I hear a mantra in my mind.   Mantras  reminds us of the power of silence and reflection and meaning and how, like life, springs from the humus of death.

Bhopal must mean something for the world or the rusting hulk will become just an industrial product another. It’s mantra must be of  industry, ecology and decontamination.

As I left I turned down the main road. The front gate to Union Carbide land was wide open.

It is up to us to determine by what songs  future generations will remember December 1984.

Workers repackaging the toxic waste atthe Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.— Photo: A.M. Faruqui

Workers repackaging the toxic waste atthe Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.— Photo: A.M. Faruqui

Greed or forced conversion? Mahmud and Aurengzeb are not the future

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Indian History, Religion & Spiritualty

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Prime Minister Nehru described India as a palimpsest, a manuscript page, either from a scroll or book, its text scraped or washed clean to be reused. Arcehoeollogists find the text is never quiet removed, the past remains to be examined. India, a land of four main racial types, and innumerable migrant cultures has allowed the ‘prajas’ or the common people more or less remained peaceful. Meanwhile Raja’s and Nawabs periodically fought against each other in the military sport of kings.

At times invaders came to wipe the slate clean, or at least that is how many see India’s British and Muslim past.

Sadly the story that  Medieval India was peaceful before Muslims arrived “at the point of a sword” ignores that for centuries previous Muslims had made many diverse inroads into India settling as mostly peaceful traders.

Atrocities occurred, but India’s future success on taking responsibility for the present. India will not grow if it continues to blame former Mughal or British rulers.

Unfortunately, Nationalism is rewriting history to help promote Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra.A review of Muslim and Christian websites reveal other religions are equally able to fall in the same trap. However, the size of Hindu population could result in discouraging the essential questioning required by historians seeking to learn from history o make a better India.


Greed or conversion?

Souce: Urduseek.com

Souce: Urduseek.com

We cannot deny Mahmudh attacked the Somnath but it was with the help of Hindu generals who equally enjoyed looting. Mahmud, with the help of a Hindu king Anandapal, also  destroyed the Muslim town of Multan and every mosque within it.

The ruthless ferocity of the Somnath attack remains scarred in public memory:  50,000 Hindu troops died, it is said that the Shiva lingam was destroyed by Mahmud himself, and 6.5 tons of gold, and the famous, intricately carved, temple doors were looted.
“The communalist interpretation portrays Mahmud as someone who harbored a special hatred for Hindus, but there is nothing he did to Hindus that he did not also do to Muslims, especially Muslims he considered to be heretical.’

As Guru Golwalkar wrote[1] “it was the Hindu blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul, who stood in the vanguard of Mahmud’s army. These are facts of history…”
Perhaps cleric at times pressure d some Muslim rulers, but I suggest temple destructions were driven by more  Machiavellian motives , to quote, Jayanti Alam , than forced conversions, balancing political and financial powers and plundering of gold and precious gems.

Then, as now, political decisions often involve many other pressures often forgotten to history. Temples were destroyed by Muslim and Hindu alike for for the wealth within them.

Period historians often want their rulers to appear saintly and evout, when greed was a bigger motive.

auragnzeb2 (1)Consider Aurangzeb: He razed the Vishwanath temple of Kashi, but  he also gave ‘jagir’ to the Jangambari temple in the same city.  Aurengzeb extensively destroyed many temple and yet built a Ram temple at Chitrakoot, paid for  ‘ghee’ ensuring the  earthen lamps at Ujjaini’s Mahakal temple remained lit perpetually, donated ‘Jagirs’  to the Allahabad’s Someshwarnath temple, the Umananda temple at Guwahati, Dattatreya Gurumandirat Mohanpur  in Maharashtra, the Dantadhavan mandir at Ayodhya, Nageshwara  and to temples at Junagadh, Gaya and Mount Abu. He had also donated to Shatrunjay Jain temple at Ahmedabad and to some gurdwaras[2].

Muslim legend claims he was gifted with being able to speak to dead Saints and destroyed as false the Muslim shrines of saints who did not answer his call.  He also executed Sufi Said Sarmad who supported Prince Dara Shikoh as heir to the throne. Perhaps then, Aurengzeb’’s motives mixed were greed and power with displays of religiosity, or even a genuine attempt to seek the divine.

Even today  Mafioso and war lords are extremely religious,  because they believe only god can understand why they are compelled to violence! But it is not faith that drives them.

The religion of power has been drawn Indian rulers of all religions to simultaneously exploit and at times support their peoples.

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Peace after Babri?

More recently, the agitation t rebuild Ayodhya’s Ram temple ‘further polarised India. The Ramayana, which has many versions, inspired many nationalist symbols during the Independence struggle. Sita was the model for Gandhi’s non violent struggle, and claimed “a devotee of Tulasidas from my childhood and have, therefore, always worshipped God as Rama[3].”

So the believed birthplace of Rama is very close to the heart of many Hindus.

More recently, swirls and  swastikas discovered beneath the ruined Babri mosque, suggest a Hindu, Jain or Buddhist structure preceded it. Contrary to media hype this does not prove  this is the birthplace of Rama, god or not. That question is beyond scientific ability to prove.

I remember that as a foreigner I was advised to stay indoors as Babri  Masjid court case was decided. There was less reaction than many feared. A few people pelted a bus nearby.   But as a  lover of archaeology I was bemused by claims that Rams birth place had been discovered.

When questioned by journalist Christopher Kremmer[4], archaeologist Dr Swarajya Prakash Gupta author of the ASI report Ayodhya 2002-03 clearly the researcher believed the 50 plus pillar bases discovered proved the Babri mosque was built directly on top of a pre existing Hindu temple placed behind a hall supported by 84 pillars.   Gupta exhibited a malencholic love of his work, but also a fiery love of his religious tradition. The professor, in a weaker moment, argued you cannot prove scientifically Muhummad visited heaven from Jerusalem, or Jesus was born of a virgin. True, it is beyond the realm of science, as it is to prove where Rama was born.

However, archaeologists of all persuasions can give into politics. In Israel skeletons at Masada were proclaimed remains of freedom fighters against Rome, but why were they buried with pig bones? Meanwhile archaeologists bemoan flushed out artefacts from cleaning activities in the temple mount, beneath the Dome of the Rock unable to be excavated.

I believe the Hindu tradition is strong and vibrant enough without needing to politicize the past by bending history into a narrative of us versus them.

During the Independence struggle, Indian versus Invader had a strong political pull. Will it help now? War with Pakistan perhaps fuels, is used to fuel, fear.  As world economies decline history predict s the rise of fear based politics.

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But why dismantle a centuries old mosque?

As journalist Praful Bidwari wrote “Can the vandalism of the past justify revenge driven-vandalism today?[5]”  ’The claim of peaceful Hindu coexistence would be better served by building a new temple beside the Babri mosque instead.

Sadly political euphoria took over.  Bidwari asks if destroying monuments to avenge the past is akin to the Taliban’s destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas.
We must remember that in Ayodhya over a hundred Buddhist Viharas and 10 Hindu mandirs remained un-destroyed. This suggests there was there more to the temple destruction than Muslim intolerance. It also reminds us that Ayodhya was not just the holy place of the Ram bhaktís[6].

While Hinduism has been remarkably tolerant, it is wrong to deny Brahmin antagonism against Buddhism at times.

Some  Buddhist temples were destroyed or converted to Hindu use. Vivekananda claimed the Jagannath temple of Puri was built on Buddhist ruins[7]. We can list other Hindu wrongs through out History: Jaina temples destroyed by the Shaivites in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra. Parmar king Su bhat Barman, Kashmir k ing Shriharsha, Chola king Rajendra and various o hers like Shashanka, Pushyamitra Shunga,  Mahendra Barman and Pula-keshi II, destroyed Jaina and Buddhist temples to prove their power1.

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Source: Telegraph.co.uk

The greatness of past Hindu civilization, with its scientific discoveries, are reinforced in the concrete and marble slabs of Delhi’s very beautiful Akshardham monument in Delhi. Rather than agree with the “The Hindu’s did everything, but the Muslims stole the credit”’ view of history, I suggest Islam better used and spread earlier Hindu science, much as Rome built from, and added too, the sciences of Ancient Greece.

As India weakened from within many shrines were forgotten over time, to be rediscovered by the British, Sanchi, Ajunta, Ellora were all over grown and forgotten. Even the Taj Mahal gardens declined as Mughul wealth shrunk.

Nationalism is like erotic love: the moments of passion can quickly die into indifference. At times, those who proclaim their heritage can as quickly misuse money for temple maintenance, or corruptly neglect their shrines.

The great civilization of India does not need exaggeration or misinformation to prove its worth. Reformers like Gandhi or Vivekananda recognized that Brahmin Hindu’s need to be reformed and corruption removed. However, they had also preserved the tradition as the Hindu world declined.

Rulers throughout history have had only one religion, the religion of power and domination.

Sanatana Dharma is  timeless, even if some of the many differing details may disagree with archeology.  Let science discover cold hard facts because transcendent truths will still remain. People will always be seeking meaning that transcends the religious formalism.

To quote the Rama devotee, Mahatma Gandhi,

“ I myself have been a devotee of Tulasidas from my childhood and have, therefore, always worshipped God as Rama. But I know that if, beginning with Omkar, one goes through the entire gamut of God’s names current in all climes, all countries and languages, the result is the same. He and His aw are one. To observe His law is, therefore, the best form of worship2.

india calling-religious unity

[1]  The ‘Organiser’, January4 , 1950 quoted by Jayanti Alam see 2

[2]  ‘Bigots’ and ‘Fanatics’,  Jayanti Alam Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 14/15 (Apr. 3-16, 2004), pp. 1463-1464 URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4414860 .Accessed: 26/11/2014 00:57

[3] “Mind of Mahatma Gandhi” 24-3-1946, p56

[4] Christopher Kremmer, Inhaling the Mahatma, pp. 287-295, Harper Perennial, 2010, Sydney.

[5] Praful Bidwari, ‘No Voodoo archaeology, please’, Rediff.com 26 March 2003, p.239.

[6] One counter view by Ambedkar scholar Balwant Singh Charvak, in his book Ayodhya Kiski?Na Ram Ki, Na Babar Ki (‘Whose Ayodhya? Neither Ram’s Nor Babar’s’ suggests the site was once a Buddhist temple.

[7]  Swami Vivekananda, ‘The Sages of India’ , The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol 3, p264, Advaita Ashram, Calcutta

Bhopal: Why build a toxic factory in a city?

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Indian History, Madhya Pradesh

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“I offer up a thousand thanks to the all-powerful God who has granted that Bhopal enjoy the signal protection of Her Imperial Majesty so that the brilliance of Western science may shine forth upon our land …” proclaimed Bhopal’s Begum Shah Jahan had declared. It was November 18, 1884, when Bhopals railway station was inaugurated with fireworks.

When Begum praised the promise of science, it was inconceivable mismanaged science would causes its greatest shame.  Yet, 100 years and 16 days later, Bhopal’s KaIi grounds, close by a rail junction, would witness one of the world’s worst industrial accidents.

But why was a fertilizer plant built in the middle of Bhopal city?  The running commentary of Media often fails to analyze the decisions of distant memory that lead to disasters, amplifying trivial risks and obfuscating serious ones.

For many, the factory seemed to offer hope. The rush to industrialize India and the end of poverty promised by the Green Revolution, and a project at first touted for its safety and science were a potent mix.

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A little economic history

With Independence, Nehru had promised complete self sufficiency, built on heavy Industry, steel production and large reservoirs.

However economic growth was slow, “the Hindu rate of growth” as it was nicknamed of 3.2% from 1952 to 1980 was slightly above the population growth. Apparently slow, it was still higher than the 1% experienced under Britain during the first half of the 20th century.

And a self sufficiency that seemed blessed by the British Labour government at Independence.  But Nehru’s plan performed poorly. Overwhelmingly rural , only 16% of Indias rural 320 million in 1952 could sign their name. The average life expectancy was only 32.

In ages past, perhaps India’s youth saluted the sun in prayer, their crops sprung from her new-formed soil, spreading freshness in a primal impulse of gratitude. India needed land reform, but local Congress Big wigs blocked his efforts.

In a land where 4/5th of the people were on the land, the rural budget declined from 1/3rd during the 1952 five year plan, to 1/5th in 1957.

The failures of Nehru’s socialist Swadeshi  was apparent when in 1967 Indira Gandhi, appointed Prime Minister the year before,  dependent on food aid to feed her people, was forced by the USA and IMF to devalue the rupee. It was hoped increased exports would bring India foreign exchange[1].

Indira had promised that the eradication of poverty should be India’s first priority. Criticism of  her failures  later  revealed her dictatorial streak to a legal challenge resulting in the Emergency, when Democracy was suspended and social reforms such as birth control  forced on the populous.

While we mourn the loss of Bhopal, let us remember that the Green Revolution has seen Indias average life expectancy rise to 66 years.

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The Rush of Industry

Carbide India Ltd. (UCIL) was founded in 1934, an produced batteries, carbon products, welding equipment, plastics, industrial chemicals, marine products  and chemicals. In 1966, Union submitted a proposal to the Indian government for “erection of facilities for the manufacture of up to 5000 tonnes of Sevin Carbaryl insecticide”.  Unacted on, in  1970 Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) revealed a new technology using Methyl Isocyanides (MIC) that halved the production cost of the pesticide Sevin.

30 years on I have talked with an ex Carbider, who with her husband continues noble charitable work in Bhopal, while recognizing the company’s responsibility, questions why the government should not take responsibility for allowing people to live near the plant.

It is a good question.

In 1975, M. N. Buch, a top bureaucrat respected throughout India for his efficiency and integrity, had asked Union Carbide to move the plant away from its present site because of the rapid growth of residential neighborhoods around it.

Mr. Buch was transferred from his post.

Had there been no disaster, corruption may have been seen as necessary to power India’s Green Revolution.  But it did, contrary to assurances of safety.

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Government Collusion?

When journalist journalist Rajkumar Keswani discovered irregularities in the allocation of industrial licenses and discovered collusion between Carbide and the local government. Since then, Wikileaks has confirmed the Government of India allowed Union Carbide, USA to bypass the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, and obtain loans from American Exim Bank instead of an Indian financing agency. This was supported by the USA. Diluting the FERA allowed Union Carbide to retain majority ownership . In the 1970’s UCIL managers were in constant contact with the US embassy to lobby for exceptional terms favourable to the company.  Then US ambassador has since confirmed moneys been paid to Congress officials.

A fire in 1978 there had been a fire and in December 1981, Mohammed Ashraf died after inhaling phosgene. After collecting witness statements and was smuggled into the plant by a dismissed trade union leader Bashir Ullah, Keswani accused Carbide of violating its own safety standards. In May 1982, three American engineers from the USA had “uncovered over sixty breaches of operational and safety regulations” which were cited by Keswani.

Keswani wrote three articles of warning of the serious risk of disaster in 1982, and a fourth in June 1984. He also wrote a letter to Chief Minister Arjun Singh was ignored, and the minister assured the Assembly that he personally inspected the Carbide plant and nothing was wrong.

Meanwhile, plant manager Warren Woomer, left India believing all the problems revealed by the safety review would be resolved and Sevin would help India’s peasants. He also strongly recommended his successor keep a strict minimum of dangerous materials and MIC always be rigorously refrigerated.

Warren may have  “belonged to a breed of engineers for whom one single defective valve was a blight upon the ideal of discipline and morality[2]” but drought cut sales. Under the series of future mangers cut backs followed.

As the son of an employee said “Plant medicines are great when things are going well. But when there’s no water left to give the rice a drink, they’re useless.”

Carbide flooded the countryside with posters of a Sikh holding a packet of Sevin proclaiming “My role is to teach you how to make five rupees out of every rupee you spend on Sevin.” Only  2,308 tons, half the production capacity,  were sold in 1982, and 1983 looked worse.

Even as staff was halved, many still believed that Carbide would ride hard times and always remain for Bhopal and India.

Carbide wasn’t just a place to work. It was a culture, too

“Carbide wasn’t just a place to work. It was a culture, too. The theatrical evenings, the entertainment, the games, the family picnics beside the waters of the Narmada, were as important to the life of the company as the production of carbon monoxide or  phosgene” stated mechanical engineer Arvind Shrivastava.

“The management created cultural interest and recreational clubs. These initiatives, which were typically American in inspiration, soon permeated the city itself. The inhabitants of Bhopal may not have understood the function of the chimneys, tanks and pipework they saw under construction, but they all came rushing to the cricket and volleyball matches the new factory sponsored. Carbide had even set up a highly successful hockey team” wrote Lapierre in Five Minutes past Midnight in Bhopal.
“As a tribute to the particular family of pesticides to which Sevin belonged, it called its team “the Carbamates.” Nor did Carbide forget the most poverty stricken. On the eve of the Diwali festival, …an official delegation of Carbiders hand[ed]  out baskets full of sweets, bars of chocolate and cookies. While the children launched themselves at the sweets, other employees went around the huts, distributing what Carbide considered to be a most useful gift in overpopulated India: condoms.”

Sadly, the loyalty it inspired could not last.

As Keswani observed  “I have published a report in the state as to how many of the relatives of the politicians and bureaucrats were employed by Union Carbide. And apart from that, the guesthouse had a beautiful guesthouse which was being used by several people like Arjun Singh and Madhav Rao Scindia. At one instance, the Congress party held a convention in Bhopal and used it as a place of stay for several ministers. That only shows what kind of clout they had. Those were the times when a multinational company coming to India was greeted with open arms, they were given all kinds of concessions and treated like demigods. There was absolutely no question of anybody going against a powerful corporation like Union Carbide. The company was one of the biggest chemical companies in the world.”

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A lesson for the new India?

I often walk past the guest house gate, abandoned besides the Bharat Bhavan, just as I have walked through the Union Carbide site. As I read of the mismanagement of disaster funds, of the poor health management that followed and the incredible delay to undertake a study of the effected I wonder if the the then government has as much to be ashamed off as Union Carbide.

Perhaps, that is why justice is so long in coming.

As the 30th anniversary of the disaster approaches, I am reminded of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. world hopes of technological progress were mortally wounded when the by an iceberg and along with confidence in Britain’s social class structure,  killed off by World War I.

The forces that held back Indias economy in Nehru’s time have changed by information technology. In contrast to China’s labour intensive economy, India’s economy is capital intensive, under utilizing hundreds of millions of unskilled labourers, many leaving the land.

Bhopals disaster is not loudly discussed in the City of Lakes, but its presence is always felt.

150 television channels now allow the poor to see a the glitter of good they are supposed to want but can never afford. Bhopal reminds me that long term India must involve the rural poor, or risk the discontent of the underclass left behind by the new India.

… and justice?

Wikileaks revealed that as late as 2007 the USA threatened to link investments in India to the country’s stand on Dow Chemicals, one of that nations largest corporations that bought out Union Carbide.

[1] Writer Edward Luce (In spite of the God’s, p. 32, Abacus, London 2011) the death knell to this dream followed the loss of India’s foreign currency reserves when Iraq torched Kuwait’s oil fields at the Gulf War.

[2] Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster, Grand Central Publishing, 2009.

The power of Gandhi’s passion Hindu and Christian

26 Sunday Oct 2014

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Gandhi was a passionate man. As an ascetic he channelled his sexual creativity beyond immediate gratification.

His pursuit was partly inspired by his reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Unable to assist theosophists’ in London who hoped he could translate Sanskrit, so he read the Bible.He also tapped into a tradition 2000 years older than Jesus with renewed vigour.
Shiva, lord of the Dance and Beasts, is depicted a yogi from the 3rd millennia BCE.  Like Jesus fasting 40 days among the wild beasts, yogi’s reflected of in nature learning the meaning of breath, mind,  and   tapas  or suffering.

Tapas is used in the Vedas of the creative heat of Tad Ekam, That One, Later tapas refers to the laser like power of focused yogic concentration.

In Christianity the suffering of Jesus crucifixion is called the Passion and in mystical Christianity personal transformation is attained through the burden of carrying our own cross.

Gandhi’s own passion for selfless service courted violent contempt by those unable to grasp his determination to give up wealth and comfort to break the evil of injustice. Each prison cell he proclaimed a “temple” or “palace”, the yogic self sacrifice of fasting had a “delicious taste” and pleasure was found in pain suffered for the common good.
He gained congress admiration, eve as Gokhale thought his methods impractical,  and radicals despised his cal for non violence.

He was passionate in his Satyagraha campaigns against the injustices in Gujarat and Bihar. He transformed Congress moderate reform agenda of Congress into a mass movement for freedom. Critics may point to his Spartan simplicity, ruder in many cases than the poor endued,  as publicity. His simplicity of dress made him one of the world’s most recognised figures, alongside Charlie Chaplin and Hitler.  His insistence on third class train travel turned carriage into a mobile office, unless he was on foot or in prison.

Gandhi was a contradiction: He rejected the sensual and acquisitive realm of this world, and shivered naked in winter like the poorest. He retreated fro power on the brink of victory and suffered the summer heat without complaint.

Offered complete control of Congress, he declined, grooming younger men to wear the “crown of thorns.” He would abandon his own party when it lost its ideals to might, money and greed.

Gandhi recreated in himself a passion for the pain of the masses of poor, who saw in him the”Mahatma” or Great Soul.

“The purer the suffering (tapas) the greater the progress. Hence did the sacrifice of Jesus suffice to free a sorrowful world. .. If India wishes to see the Kingdom of God established on earth, instead of that of Satan which has enveloped Europe …we must go through suffering.

He would march his own Via Dolorosa” to freedom along with the poor who followed not a warring Maharaja but a yogi who mirrored their own suffering.

nkgandhi

Creatively he subjugated his own suffering transforming Western passion and Indian tapas into a force against Empire. He turned himself into a cauldron of suffering that radiated an aura of compassion and goodness that magnetised the oppressed to his cause.

Just as the words tapas and passion express contradictory opposites, Gandhi’s own expressed passion is  equally ambivalent.

Sensitive to the potential of sexual brutality Gandhi sought of return to Brahmacharya, the first stage of upper class life, or studenthood, before initiated into the sexual life of marriage. For four decades Gandhi struggled passionately for total conquest of desire.

He devoted his life to seeing God, perfecting his life to live in harmony with divine attributes.

“Truth (satya) is God” he wrote, and elsewhere he equated God wit Ahimsa, or non violence, which he called Love.

His embrace of tapas paced him at odds with society’s norms and demonstrated it was possible lo liberate oneself from self imposed shackles, as well as the shackles of tyranny. As a young man he had already been excommunicated from his caste for the act of travelling over the seas to London.

He knew rejection early in life, excommunicated from his caste for travelling across the ocean to study..

However, Ahimsa, Satya and tapas empowered him with a divine conviction beyond his physical body.  He openly wrote of personal failings, or for the “Himalayan blunder” of prematurely launching his 1905 Satyagraha campaign. More importantly he learned from them transforming mistakes into stepping stones to success.

He had sought “purity of means” but sadly this legacy was not retained by India or by the Congress Party that he left, disappointed that power and money spoke more to politicians than selfless service.

Did I find the worlds smallest mosque?

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian History, Madhya Pradesh

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Passing the Shaukat Mahal, I am seeking the tomb of Bhopals founder, Dost Mohommad Khan.
The Shaukat Mahal across from the Iqbhal Playground, where budding cricketers in white qurta and knitted skullcaps practice. Post Renaissance and Gothic, it’s design blends occident and orient in a style conceived and designed by a decadent Frenchman who claims decent from the French Bourbon Dynasty.
Next door, the entrance of the Sheesh Mahal seems more parking lot for cars Sadar Manzil Gate.

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The delicate beauty of the past now houses the Bhopal Municipal Corporation.A fountain past the entrance catches my attention as I ask a a guard for directions. They invite me in for a look. I am saddened that nearby Taj Mahal is a closed deteriorating shell while this beautiful building is a business hub that few tourists can be entered within to experience.

However, my goal is slightly farther, within the campus of Gandhi Medical College, besides the tomb of Dost Mohammad Khan and his wife Fateh Bibi . I am even more interested finding on the campus the worlds smallest mosque.

tomb Dost Mohommmad Khan

Panoramia.com I was not permitted to photograph inside the mosque tomb

the tomb of Dost Mohammad Khan and his wife Fateh Bibi

I quickly found the asjid Dost Mohammmad Khan as I wound past  a temple and mosque inside the entrance. Within to the side are the tombs.

I had first to negotiate a barrage of personal questions. “Foreigner? Which country””Mai Bhopal main rahta hai), and offering profuse assurances I would not photograph inside the mosque or tomb, I was checked several times to ensure I did not take photos within.

Built by son Yaar Mohammad Khan in the year 1742 the tomb sits on a raised square platform, the tomb is surrounded by a 3 metre  high wall with corner minars and three entrances.

Eight arched pillars support a dome, which typical of the early Bhopal rulers, is not proportionate. Beautifully, amalgam horse shoe and lotus shaped brackets  in between the pillars are proportionately balanced multifoil arches. Lattice marble screen surround the tomb.

Dost Mohammad Khan was a complex man. Brutal in conflict, he enlisted under Mir Fazlullah, Emperor Aurangzeb’s Keeper of Arm and led forces during in the final brutal years of collapsing Mughal rule.  A risk taker, who broke military conventions, often at great risk to his own life.

However, he had earlier learned to appreciate culture when he fled Afghanistan after he killed a man in self defence. In Delhi, There he met his old  Mullah Jamali of Kashgar. For a year, Khan studied Quran and witnessed the culture and  tolerant ideals of Shah’s Akhbar and Jehan.

A mercenary during the wars of Mughal Succession, he married Kunwar Sardar Bai, who later converted to Islam and adopted the name Fatah Bibi and established a small mustajiri (rented estate) near Mangalgarh, called Berasia.

Khan was invited by Bhopali Ghond Queen Rani Kamlapati to revenge her husbands death. Bhopals upper lake was then inhabited by around 1000 Gond and Bhil tribals.,and Khan usurped her kingdom then invited her to join his harem. She refused, choosing suicide.

He decided to fortify the town with a wall with six gates and built Bhopal’s first, and the worlds smallest, mosque so fort guards could perform namaaz.

The fortified city of called Sher-e-khas enclosed 1.5 sq kilometre by a wall 10m high 2 to 3 m thick included  hammams, with windowless chambers for public bathing,  hathi khannas to house elephants and their mahaots , serias to house  travelling merchants, and mosques. Buildings, three or four floors high, enclosed narrow streets, a few 4 metres wide at the most,  matched each other as children played on pattias or raised platforms to sit out the front of a house.

Ironically, after chai with my new – still inquisitive – friends, they did not know where the worlds smallest mosque was! Overhearing, another man pointed me a few hunnded metres around the bend.

 Dhai Seedhi Ki Masjid, the Mosque of two and a half steps

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russinansmallestmosque

Russia’s World Smallest Mosque

“Er …. where is it?” was my first reaction, reading the sign, sadly aware that unable to find the watchman I would not see inside. The padlocked gate also prevented me from climbing the steps.

Dhai Seedi Ki Masjid sits atop a watchtower, at one of the cities highest points it offers a commanding view of a city built in turbulent times. Initially a makeshift mosque for the prayer of the guards,  the mosque of 2 and a half steps was built during the construction of Fatehgarh fort begun by  Dost Mohammad Khan.

But  the words smallest mosque? Daniel McCrohan paced  the floors interior dimensions to 16 metres square, smaller than another “world’s smallest mosque” of 25 metres square in built in 2002 at Naberezhnye Chelny, in honour of those who fought Ivan the Terrible.

Harar Ethiopia Tree Mosque [Travelod.com]

In Harar it is claimed the smallest mosque is in a tree!!

For me, the Dhai Seedhi ki Masjid, built for the defenders of Fatehgarh Fort, is a reminded that we have a spiritual yearning that needs to be answered even when defending our kingdom.

As I wandered the grounds hoping for a better a photographic angle, I found this more worldly reminder of the modern world.

Mosquetwohalfsteps no ragging res(8)

Yes, we must live in this modern world. First we must transform ourselves if we are to transform the planet. After visiting the Mosque, I found that Lonely Planet had made the same trek with better success finding the watchman.
Hence, complements of lonely Planet I present the inside of the Dhai Seedhi Ki Masjid.

4x4: The main prayer hall of Dhai Seedi Ki Masjid. Image by Daniel McCrohan / Lonely Planet.

4×4: The main prayer hall of Dhai Seedi Ki Masjid. Image by Daniel McCrohan / Lonely Planet.

The mosque was perched on top of an overgrown stone turret, which formed a corner of an old ruined fortress wall. The hospital, it turns out, was built inside the grounds of the 18th century Fatehgarh Fort, so that soldiers deployed as guards could perform their daily prayers. And, according to an old city tourism sign standing outside the locked gates, this was the first mosque built in Bhopal, a city that now boasts more than 400.
– Loney Planet

The Birla Museum is a must for lovers of archaeology

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Indian Art, Indian History, Madhya Pradesh

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Together with the Lakshmi-Narayan temple next door, the Birla Museum sits serene in a beautiful setting on the on the Arera Hills. The red and white sandstone building entered by steep steps, it houses an extensive 4,000 volume library of art and culture, terracotta sculptures and manuscripts.

The Birla Museum is a must for lovers of archaeology, but there is little effort to keep for the average “Philistine” tourist interested.

A lover of history, I was enthralled. I immediately began photographing the gardens, aided by one of the staff, only to be told that photography was not allowed. I would have loved to show you more of the very special artefacts inside!

Durga Trimurti, 12th century, from Sagar. [art-and-archaeology.com]

Durga Trimurti, 12th century, from Sagar.
[art-and-archaeology.com]

Not to be missed is the 12th century Durga Trimurti. In her Trimurti form, Durga where the goddess is depicted with the attributes of the Hindu Trimurti of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. The central image shows her on her lion, flanked by her depicted standing.

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The colourful Kondapali toys make for a refreshing display. These toys traditional to Andhra Pradesh are made of soft wood and tamarind powder and enamelled gums. They are painted with bright water colours to depict mythological figures and village scenes.

Varaha, Paramara dynasty, 13th century from Samasgarh

Varaha, Paramara dynasty, 13th century from Samasgarh

A ninth century image of Varahi, the feminine form of Vishnu’s boar avatar in the Devi gallery. A head of a Salabhanjika, or stylized woman grasping a branch, depicts a tree spirit.

Paramara dynasty, 10th century, from Ashapuri .

Paramara dynasty, 10th century,
from Ashapuri .

A 12th century Vishnu holds a conch and discus, surrounded by attendants and deities, including Brahma and Shiva.

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Unfortunately, in our over hyped super sensory world. Tourists can be a necessary but despised breed. Wanted for cash, but despised for their Philistine disregard for subtlety of tradition.
Tourists need to be engaged or they lose interest.

This is perhaps why the Birla Museum is not rated highly on TripAdvisor.com. People complain it is boring, and not been allowed to take photograph means you walk in look around and leave. Perhaps, a guide, or an audio headset that explains each display will engage people more.
For lovers of archaeology, there a booklets for 20 rupee detailing the artefacts with black and white images. Six colour post cards are available for 20 rupees for the set. I hope the collection will be digitized, perhaps as a CD so people can enjoy the beautiful art when they return to their home country.
Apparently, the museum workshop makes limited display replicas for purchase. Without a vehicle, I will return later to purchase one.

The terms ecotourism or cultural tourism seem oxymorons. Tourists are seen as culturally ignorant and tourism is accused of changing the very thing come to see.
Thinking of the neaby Union Carbide site, I recognise frustrated sceptics feel justified in describing Social Justice tourism as “self righteous arrogance”, “hypocritical” and “ironic”.
However, museums importantly allow locals to appreciate their heritage, and tourists a chance to treasure a world I hope is never forgotten.

2014-10-02 16.39.14res

10 Rupees adults 5R children
50 rupees foreigners.
Open 9:30 AM – 8PM
Monday closed

The Crisis of Modernity post socialism

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Indian History

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Since Indira Gandhi India is officially a socialist Secular state. Not that it ever was, even though Nehru held informal socialist sympathies. Third World was a term that meant non aligned with NATO (First world) or Communism (Second World), and as a leader of the non-aligned movement, leaders such as Nixon were sceptical of India falling to Russia.

I suggest that India’s diversity illustrates what was one of the biggest problems in Socialism. Governments have been forced to sink or swim in the maelstrom of the world market modernist critical culture keeps free imagination alive.As long as they are they are, as Octavio Paz put it “condemned to modernity” we will see the Third World marching to its chaotic drum.

Although during the Emergency Indira Gandhi altered Indias Constitution to describe the nation as Socialist as well as secular, I don’t ever think India truly has been socialist.

It seems social theorists, including Marx, have often called on myth, usually Grecian, as metaphor of their world view. In a land that defies any definitions, perhaps this is why neither Socialism nor Capitalism seem to quiet fit here.

Herbert Marcuse and Hanna Arendt criticised Marx for celebrating the value of labour bur neglecting other aspects of the human spirit – for a lack of moral imagination.

In his Eros and Civilization  Mercuse attacks Marx culture hero Prometheus  as “a culture hero of toil, productivity, and progress through repression … A trickster and (suffering) rebel … Archetypal hero of the performance principle.”

Marcuse prefers the image of Orpheus, Narcissus or Dionysius who “stand for a different reality … Theirs is the image of joy and fulfilment, a voice that does not command but sings, the deed which is peace and ends the labour of conquest”  he said.

Marshall Behrman in his wonderful All that is sold melts into the air – the experience of modernity, admits Marx imagination lacked the joys of peace but qualifies this adding Marx fetish is “the free development of physical and spiritual energies” ; “development of a totality of capabilities in the individual themselves” and “the free development of each will be the free development of all.”

Marx wants to embrace Prometheus and Orpheus says Berman, he says differing with Mercuse.

Mercuse and the Frankfurt school promoted the goal of harmony between man and nature. The problem was it would require an immense amount of Promethean energy to create it. The endless task would turn mankind into Sisyphus cursed to push a boulder to the top of a hill only to see it role down and be forced to return it for eternity!

Hanna Arendt in The Human Condition suggests another idea relevant to my view of India – the problem of Marx is not draconian authoritarianism but that that Marxism lacks a real basis for authority.

“Marx predicted correctly, though with unjustifiable glee, the ‘withering away’ of the public realm under the conditions of the unhampered development of ‘the productive forces of society’.”

Communists find themselves “caught in the fulfilment of needs that nobody can share and which nobody can fully communicate.” The depth of Marx individualism can lead to nihilism.

In a society where the free development of each is the free development of all, what will hold them together?

If they share a common quest for infinite experiential wealth  this would be “no true public realm, but only private activities displayed in the open”. It risks a sense of collective futility: “the futility of a life which does not fix or realise itself in in any permanent subject that endures after its labour is past.”

Arnedt doesn’t get closer to solutions but is  unclear what right action is supposed to be. She does distinguish the political and day to day production “the cares of the household” which is in her mind devoid of the capacity to create human value. She does rightly note that Marx did not develop a theory of political community this is the problem of modernism nihilistic thrust is unclear of what or who modern man can be, explains Behrman.

Ironically Behrman points out that those who criticise modernity the most need it the most. He suggests Marx is not  away out of life’s contradictions but a way back in.

 “He knew that we must start where we are: physically naked, stripped of all religious, aesthetic, moral haloes and sentimental veil, thrown back on our own individual will and energy, forced to exploit each other and ourselves in order to survive; and yet, in spite of it all, thrown together by the same forces that pull us apart, dimly aware of all we might be together, ready t outstretch ourselves to grasp new human possibilities, to develop identities and mutual bonds that can help us hold together as the fierce modern air blows hot and cold through us all.”

But I wonder is that completely true? Yes Modern India risks losing some of its charm in the rush to globalise.  However, India’s  deep religiosity could take it in (atleast) two directions.

Indian life is in many ways sacramental, daily life is elevated by rituals that offer meaning to the mundane. Could this be India’s saving grace? Or will religious nationalism pollute the search for inner meaning and tear the country apart?

I have never been a Marxist, yet suggest Marx idealised society was a gestalt not individuals but the sum of the interconnections between them. The whole was meant to be greater than the sum of its parts.

The focus seemed to be both the surface effects and the internal relations that produce them.

In India there is the conflict of class, especially caste, but we do have an agency greater than our natural needs.  We labour for some structure in a changing, contradictory and some fear self destructive modernity. But Marx could have never for seen how Capitalism and labour would mediate new forms of social independence.

In the 19th century, Newtons laws of Thermodynamics were the metaphor of change.  Now a protean transformative energy now fuels the world with chaotic quantum speed.

The philosopher von Weber’s metaphor was the power of rational ideas. Yet seems most discourse is illogical. The ‘argumentative Indian’ that Amartya Sen writes of, seems to want to argue for arguments sake. As long as he has a voice he will speak, but forget to listen.

But as Ilya Romanovich Prigogine reminds us that systems become more chaotic and either form new levels of order or collapse. So, It is up to India to decide if her new unleashed energy will create an new world or collapse into chaos.

What Weber succeeds in explaining – and matters for India today – is that the even in a religious society a prophet succeeds when he can articulate rationally his message and systematise the  living conditions and forces of his time. Then his charm is seen as genuine.

In the diversity of India who has a clear vision big enough? Markets have delivered prosperity but at a cost of the deep yearning of soul that fires the nation.

Perhaps India needs another Gandhi like figure. What if life becomes an art form or sacrament? Could this be India’s saving grace.

Wendy Doniger: When Westerners say what Indians tell me in private

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Indian History, Religion & Spiritualty

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Recently I found a forum debate about the relationship between Karna and Drapaudi suspended. It was considered too controversial. I thought this odd because the Mahabharata is full of ambiguity, “dharma is subtle” it proclaims, as each character has his shadow and shining light, her aspirations and secrets.

But why? There are hundreds of recessions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata that often contradict. To some Ravan is a demon, in Sri Lanka a just king. It seems to me that the contradictions tell us something of India’s colletive psyche?

Then I remembered the reactions over Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, pulped by Penguin Books rather than go through a long drawn out legal battle.

I believe the Hindu faith is strong enough to withstand criticism without having to resort to legal challengers. Legal action reveals more about the emotions of the complainants than the diverse broad spectrum of ideas expressed under the Hindu umbrella.

Indeed, as a reader of history, I realise one of the best ways to spread an idea is to ban it. (Look at Islam, now the fastest growing religion on earth, in part, I suggest, in response to  negative media publicity since 911). I know I had ignored The Hindus until I heard it was pulped.

I believe banning The Hindus reveals India’s sensitivity to Colonial attacks, more than the book itself. I also feel it reveals that the slowness of India’s judiciary is blocked by a culture of complaint.

Indian nationalism developed  British milieu that castigated sex. Hindus were effeminite and oversexed, proclaimed Britian, made weak minded by early marriage and the  British fear that Tantra and the image of Kali inspired the Independence movement. As a result Hindu reformers from Ram Mohan Roy to Dayananda Saraswati questioned what they saw as corruptions of Vedic truth which included the stories of Krishna’s amorous adventures.

For decades, Doniger has argued that sex was part of Hindu literature. The lignum as an erect penis, and that Krishna’s 160000 consorts reveal an India that Brahmin history ignored or suppressed. That Brahmins forbade a practive reveal there were people doing it.

You are welcome to believe Doniger misrepresents Hinduism. Some have even labelled her work “pornographic… Skewed and superficial”.

But many Hindu’s have argued Hinduism was corrupted. Ram Mohan Roy persuaded Britain to ban sati and Dayananda claimed the Puranas of being mostly unbelievable and false, but retaining a seed truth.

 “Now the life-sketch of Krishna given in the Mahabharat is very good. His nature, attributes, character, and life-history are all like that of an apta (altruistic teacher). Nothing is written therein that would go to show that he committed any sinful act during his whole life” wrote Dayandanda in Satyartha Prakasha (Light of Truth), “but the author of the Bhagvat has attributed to him as many vices and sinful practices as he could. He has charged him falsely with the theft of milk, curd, and butter, etc., adultery with the female servant called Kubja, flirtation with other people’s wives in the Ras mandal,* and many other vices like these. After reading this account of Krishna’s life, the followers of other religions speak ill of him. Had there been no Bhagvat, great men like Krishna would not have been wrongly lowered in the estimation of the world.”

Of course, Colonial Britain and the then USA had also sanitised many of the potentially erotic moments in the Bible. However, I don’t see much in Donigers book that is not suggested elsewhere, even by some Indian and Hindu authors.

It seems the objection to Doniger is who said it.  Is it because she dares to put it all in once place?

When as  a Westerner I speak what many Indians tell me in Private, it is politically charged with an over sensitivity to past Colonial pain. …. And at times there is good reason. Many non Indians are obsessed with a sexualised misunderstanding of Tantra or Khajuraho.

For example, In Tàràpíåh, Western Tantric writer Hugh Urban “tried to question one skeptical and worldly older Aghorí about the infamous “fifth M” of Tantric practice—maithuna, or sexual union with a female partner. After my repeated prodding, he finally lost his patience and exclaimed, “All you Americans want to know about is sex. Don’t you get enough of that in your own country? Go back home to your ‘pornography’ and your ‘free love.’” On the other hand, I also met a wide range of gurus who were quite proud of their powerful esoteric knowledge and seemed more than happy to “advertise their secrets” to a well-funded Western researcher.”  The other extreme I read a Muslim blog posts that described Khajuraho as “the Playboy Mansion”.

She may have found her book banned, but Wendy Doniger rightly reminded us that Brahmin writers winged about women because there have always been those who refused to buckle under. Gargi rather immodestly challenged the wisest sage of her time. Draupadi challenged the legitimacy of her husbands selling her to slavery miraculously reclothed by those seeking to disrobe her.

Khajurahos exude mystical allure is often misrepresented in western fantasy as an ideal feminist sexual Elysium. And for those who long for the days when society seemingly applauded such ostentatious displays of erotica, Devangana Desai‘s stern rebuff: “There were double standards – men could have sex with as many women as they could afford while women were confined to their polygamous husbands. In fact, I think today’s generation growing up in cities with nightlife is much freer now.”

India has been a land of moral contradictions: of Manu’s moral stricture and Chandelas ppolygamous culture that loved the delights of women.

However, one inherent value of Hindu philosophy is the search for truth.

Of course, even Gandhi seems to have seen fit to realise at times politics requires you publicly with hold facts. (Gandhi’s hiding the name of Sheik Mehtab, a disreputable friend who nearly tempted him to partake of a prostitute was, I presume, because it would have inflamed division between Muslims and Hindus).

But for Truth to be found, all ideas must be fairly debated. Hence, I believe Penguins decision to pup the book a mistake.  Had the publishers taken the issue to the supreme court I suggest the book would have won the case on grounds of freedom of speech. Asking questions of history is not the same as deliberately provoking public outcry or causing a religious riot.

beautiful and the damned

Perhaps Penguin gave up because they had been stung before.

For example, in India,  Siddhartha Deb’s The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India is published without the first chapter.  ” A man who does not appear in the disputed chapter for the simple reason that I was unaware o f his existence” sought an injunction after this a chapter was published in on the first chapter the February 2011 issue of Caravan magazine.

Since cases can take a decade, it is cheaper to pulp than fight.

“There is a sad irony to the fact that a book about contemporary India, while available in full in most o f the world, appears only in partial form for Indian readers. But that in itself says something about the state o f affairs in India these days, where critiques o f the powerful and wealthy, no matter how scrupulously researched, are subject so often to intimidation. It is easy enough to find, in the media, outrageous claims by corporations and celebrities as well as their demagogic doubles, whispering in the social media about conspiracies and backroom deals. What is missing, too often, is the kind of essay or article or book that tries to make sense o f such phenomena without succumbing to their allure, and that tries, in its own way, to offer a semblance of truth.” said Deb in an introductory explanation to his book.

Of course the convenient abuse of religious sensitivity s used by all religious persuasions to get personal, social or political advantage.    Of course, I hear Musims and Hindu argue Christians would not allow criticism of Jesus. But a look at the Australian TV tells me different. Comedians regularly lampoon Jesus and the Church, at times there is outcry, that is soon forgotten.

Whether you agree with her or not,  i think it is important that female historians speak in the important debate of history.

Ambushing the Hijacker. Hero or Villain? You Decide

07 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by in Caste & Social position, Indian History

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On January 22, 1993 Satish Chandra Pandey hijacked flight IC810. On board the Focker F-27 en route from Lucknow, was journalist Christopher Kremmer along with 47 other traumatised passengers as the hijacker threw fake paper bombs and surrendered.   Despite the probono services of a star lawyer it took four years to get conditional bail. He was not permitted to leave his village except to report monthly to the Lucknow Police. Meanwhile his father and mother died.

Five years later, Kremmer decided to pay Satish a visit.  The small, imperfectly formed man did not recognise the journalist in his jacket and tie. Kremmer told a ‘half truth’: he had heard of Satish defence of the temple movement and wanted his views on the upcoming 1998 elections.

Before arriving from the fields, the family filled in the family back story.  Son of a junior commissioned officer of the Ordinance Department, his rootless upbringing took him across the country, changing schools and once evicted from a missionary school when he and others reported the illicit relationship of some teachers. His wife died  giving birth to a child that did not survive.

On bail,  as eldest son he had responsibility of hours of backbreaking labour on the farm. For three generations his poor Brahmin family had owned eight bighas, about five hectares, in the ‘cow belt’ of Uttar Pradesh.  The five villages of Saraiya Maafi have no running water, and no electricity people carry 12 volt batteries five kilometres for recharge. The nearest landline phone was 19 kilometres.

Once the home of patrician Congressman a more secular India at times has made UP’s cow milking Yadavs and Sighs the butt of jokes for their betel nut chewing earthy speech. The Cow Belt, once honoured for between the Himalayas and Vindhya mountains is now derided as crude, backward, lawless, poor and illiterate.

Still, in the cow belts of UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan politicians routinely declare their love of the cow.

Premature hints of gray, betrayed his a teen like face, and youthful black hair, Side on his smile seemed more the grimace of a man who longed to be happy. His furtive glances e seemed to need to be seen giving darshan to this foreign visitor. A small crowd of children gathered.

“Having spent years thinking of him as an irresponsible fool, my subconscious had tricked me into expecting contrition, not pride.” The 1857 Rebellion had been triggered by UP Brahmin Mangal Pandey and Satish Pandey was equally defiant.

Panday was protesting against the then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s assurance-soon after the demolition of the Babri Masjid-that “it will be reconstructed”.

“I was ready to die. Ready for the pilot to lose control, or for the commando’s to shoot me. In any case, I knew, I didn’t need to buy a return ticket. The night before leaving the village, I showed the family my air ticket, I said, “I have to go to Delhi.””

He asked his brother to cycle him 19 kilometres to the train station and told him “make sure you get tomorrow’s newspaper.” However, police would arrive to search the family home before they had a chance to pick up a copy.

In the Spiritual hypermarket of Hinduism, the many gods express the humanities diversity and the many hidden parts our psyche.  This allows us to express the polytheistic nature of our competing inner life.

The Bhakti movement rejected ritual sacrifices and knowledge in favour of love and devotion often to the divine avatars of Rama or Krishna.  A person of the West is probably familiar with devotees people chant with ecstatic devotion the names of Krishna. They claim in the degraded present age of Kali, the meaning of caste and ritual is so corrupted and chanting the names of God is enough.

Bhakti would become a nationalist force. Aurobindu Ghost called on the divine warrior Kali to cleanse India of Britain. Long before Britain claimed the unemployed ex mercenaries turned criminals were a religious fanatics, were over sexualised Thuggees determined to destroy civilization.

The activist Tilak used the  Bhagavad Gita to call for violent overthrow. Gandhi, on the other hand, claimed a Bhakti of ahimsa, or non violence, twisting the Gita‘s call for the warrior Arjuna to fight injustice into a spiritual struggle for non violence.  His interpretation was similar to Jesus Sermon on the Mount and was influenced by Tolstoy’s interpretations of Jesus words.

Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse invoked the Gita when blaming the massacres of Partition on Gandhi’s  ahimsa.

Ronaldshay described the Tantric image of Chinnamasta, who cut off her own head to feed others as “symbolized the Motherland (India) ‘decapitated by the English, but nevertheless preserving her vitality unimpaired by drinking her own blood’.”

 

One act of Nationalist Bhakti that inspired Satish Sandra Pandey was the call by Lal Krishna Advani for the construction of a Rama temple at Ayodhya where a mosque stood over an ancient temples remains. It is claimed the birthplace of Rama.

Only India and Nepal are Hindu nations, reasoned the hijacker, their are Christian, Buddhist and Muslim lands, so why cannot India defend her religious integrity? A month after the demolition of the Babri Mosque, Satish decided to act as Hindu nationalist leaders were rounded up to prison to try as attempts were made to keep social order.

It seems he was noticed in high places he said. Asked about being publicly scolded by Vajpayee for using “wrong methods”, Satish suggested the journalist should know better.

“Atal-ji has to talk like that. He’s a politician. He doesn’t need to promise to liberate Hindu sites. People like me will take care of that.”

The Mask, as the Opposition leader was called, could smile selling hard-line policies and Satish returned with a personally signed letter from Atal Bihari Vajpayee dated June 27, 1996 typed in English with the official letterhead of the leader of the opposition.

“I share your grief” Mr Vajpayee had written, in condolence of the death of the hijackers father. “I pray to the Lord for your fathers soul and [to] give the family members the strength t bare this.”

Kremmer was shocked describing “the nexus of mainstream politicians and the mob is one of Indian democracies unhappy features.”

Recognition came in prison, Satish claimed, when the BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, also jailed at that time, bribed guards to spend time with him.

Their cause was united but patient and cautious Vajpayee methods differed to the gamble of desperate Satish.  Vajpayee could lose much, Satish had nothing to lose. Both were part of a loose confederation of the Hindu nationalist family or Sangh Parivar.

Perhaps Kremmer had the last laugh.

Kremmer slyly admitted to a “hidden purpose” and explained four five years his plan had been brewing from the fateful day when, flying to be reunited with his fiancé,  48 eight passengers had been hijacked had been traumatised.

“The revelation that he was sitting accross from one of his own victims drew a sharp intake of breath from the hijacker. His eyes darted left and right, vainly searching for support from among his audience of children and ruminants. ‘But what did I do?’ his helpless, innocent expression seemed to say. He was, I realised fearful. Had I come alone? Was I armed with some form of weapon, legal or otherwise? Now Satish knew what it was to be ambushed. He might be sitting in the courtyard outside is own home, in his own village, in his own country but, suddenly, anything could happen to him.  If I felt as strongly about honour,a premeditated act of violent revenge was not out of the question. He could be a dead man.

Reaching into my pocket, I produced a white handkerchief which I used to wipe the barfi crumbs off my fingers. Then I extended my hand towards the hijacker in friendship.

“Koi baat nahin” I said to him. It doesn’t matter.

I have never seen anyone look so relieved. The realisation that he was Okay, that he would not suffer the consequences released an audible gasp from the young farmer.

“You didn’t think I wanted to take revenge did you?” I said ribbing him. He laughed ruefully, apologising for any inconvenience to my family.  He called for more sweets, the traditional gesture of felicitation.

However, the bravodo returned. He had no regrets.

“You know, the Hindu nation was threatened. And if the Hindu nation is threatened, I will do anything.”

“When the law respects Hindu sentiment, then I will respect he law.”

But what is Hindu sentiment in a religion of diverse and conflicting views?  The Mahabharata reveals the complexity of human aspiration and duty. “Dharma is subtle” says the sage, and like modern politics each opposing camp has justifiable concerns.

We have various levels of understanding and expression, the many nations of India it is hard to find unity of what can be condemned?

The story raises in me some questions:

Modern India is proclaimed a Sovereign, Socialist (officially since Indira Gandhi), Secular, and Democratic Republic. A nation is expected to defend her soveriegnty, but civilization means the law is taken from the hands of vigilantes and placed into the hands of appointed leaders.

A core existential value is truth. Gandhi claimed God is truth, but admitted that in hi pursuit of this ideal at times his own personal truth changed. God is the only absolute truth.

The path of truth, or Shreya, can be  unpleasant and ruthless as is shown in the Hindu epic of the Mahabharata. But Untruth, or Priya, seems to have taken hold under the tide of populist politics. Many now hope with a change of Government will grasp hold of India’s challenges and tackle them.

Tolerance and compassion are also theological values. Unfortunately the fault lines of tribalism between  caste, village and ethnicity has reduced tolerance to a buzz word. Many individual groups fought for freedom from Britain, but seem to find it difficult to accept the right of any authority – even an Indian one – over their own sectional interests.  It seems strange compassion moves city governments  to desex stray dogs, rather than put them down, but allow homeless to die exposed to the elements.

I fear the likes of Satish Chandra Pandey would only find another fight if their goal was achieved.

The soft-spoken former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh once had the indignity of escorting terrorists and setting them free in exchange for passengers of hijacked flight IC 814 in 1999, had some excellent advice.  “The best security against forces inimical to India is for us to remain united.  A divided India can only benefit its adversaries.”
But will people listen?
“I am nobody to advise anybody. I am a stray passenger in this train of politics, party colleagues act as they see fit,” says the former minister to the (then) Prime Minister Vajpayee .