India can do better than Modi or Rahul

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/india-can-do-better-than-modi-or-rahul/article4640436.ece?homepage=true

"I would rather be poor than inhuman!"

The country needs a good human being who also has practical ideas on how to bring progress and positive change

As the whole country views on television and reads in every newspaper the battle between Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Rahul Gandhi, I am only worried that we have actually come to this. We don’t care anymore about thought, kindness, honesty, action, responsibility, courage, leadership. We have one person who refuses to answer any question on the blood on his hands as Chief Minister and another who is being projected as a mature philosopher when we actually need a dynamic leader.

Recently at one of his many public appearances, Mr. Modi was asked whether he would take moral responsibility for the 2002 riots, to which he replied that he had already answered questions about the riots numerous times. But the same man has over the last few months been willing to answer time and again the same questions about his developed Gujarat.

Growth and humanity

Every time Mr. Modi’s name is discussed, the riots are a part of the narrative and the criticism is that we are trapping him within that event. But why not? Any person with some human essence must ask those questions time and again. Whether or not he was party to the violence is up to the courts to decide, but he was the Chief Minister of the State and has refused to say that he should have acted differently. How can we ever ignore that? In fact we should not. In my travels I have always met so many middle class Indians who think Mr. Modi is the Bill Gates of Indian politics. “Go to Gujarat and see the transformation, development, bridges, roads, IT companies, the speed of decision making and you will realise why he is the right person for us.” When I hear these statements I am filled with sadness that we as a society can easily erase people from our minds. We say that the courts have not convicted Mr. Modi, but we readily accuse someone else as being a criminal even when no verdict has been proclaimed. Essentially, economic growth seems to erase all sense of human decency.

I am also told that “after all the Muslims have also voted for him.” Honestly, I don’t care if all the Muslims in the world voted for him. I care that people died, not Muslims, Christians or Hindus. I am not aware of the voting patterns of Gujarat, that’s for psephologists. But I am aware that reasons for a minority community to behave in a certain way are usually driven by the behaviour of the dominant group. The “dominants” manipulate and coerce the weak to act in certain ways. The positive economic changes seen in the lives of the majority also influences the behavioural pattern of the minority. I am not saying these are the reasons but let us just keep this in mind.

We as human beings are built to empathise and feel for others. Let us not lose sight of this basic quality of humanity in the dream of economic comfort or seeming political “stability.” I would rather be poor than inhuman! Mr. Modi, I will not stop asking you this: “Will you take moral responsibility for the riots?” You owe this country an answer.

Point of trust

While this is one end of the political narrative, there exists another in the form of a smart, genuine young man who needs to know what he is doing. Someone has to tell Rahul Gandhi that he is not a philosopher and India doesn’t need one in him! We need a strong individual who is honest and willing to show courage. He need not constantly mention the problems of the political and bureaucratic class. We are only too aware of its failings, and are constantly made aware of them. We do not need a “magic wand” but someone with a will to change things and has not until date shown any will. Mr. Gandhi has floated thoughts on “what ails Indian society.” So, what next? There seems to be a stupor hovering over him, a cloud of inertia and intellectual lethargy. The country can ill afford a slumber of ideas, courage and determination in a man who is meant to be waking the nation up. What one misses in Mr. Gandhi is not earnestness of intent, not sincerity, but a crucial breaking of the trust barrier, a totally convincing breakthrough in winning the nation’s trust. He can fight all his political battles with Mr. Modi or anyone else but first he must be willing to fight the battle of his life for this country. Unless the nation sees him do that how can it entrust its future to him? His advisers don’t seem to see that the absence of a trust breakthrough in Mr. Gandhi is what Mr. Modi is cashing in on and substituting with his own brand of “I can do it” in surplus. India needs a good human being at its helm but also a proactive person with serious, practical ideas of how to change this nation. We have in him an exhaustingly long prologue; what we need now is the main action.

Watching this presidential style battle being played out in the media on an everyday basis has only further increased my disappointment in us as a society. Urban India is intoxicated by these two people, and the so-called “real India” is being manipulated by the same individuals. The end result is that India seems to have reached a political cul-de-sac. What other options do we have? We can not only look for other options but can actually force a change from these two. It is up to us to demand decency and human empathy, responsibility-owning from Mr. Modi and courage and determination from Mr. Rahul Gandhi. If neither have it in them then they don’t deserve our votes, and nor do their parties, bereft as they are of ideas for change.

(T.M. Krishna is a Carnatic musician.)

Five Curses on India

India with great diversity of language, culture, religion has been plagued with a curse of suppression and hindrance from expression of its innate potential. For the country to realize its innate potential, the conscious of the people and the direction they expend their energies  is important and will determine the fate of the nation.  For a nation under a foreign occupation that fate can take another detour of a century with many pitfalls, missed opportunities and unnecessary sufferings to realize its dreams. I would like to elaborate on the curses that have befallen India.

Under the British rule

For more than a century , the British exploited India for its resources. They sparsely invested in education and built almost no infra structure and they did everything to sap the creativity of the people. They laid railroads for their convenience of  transport and moving raw materials in and out of the country. They used India as a master uses a slave. Due to this gross negligence of the people, India suffered several famines under the British rule. Such horrors were committed by the Western civilization in the East with nonchalance is unfortunate. The most one can get educated was to be a clerk under the British officers. They used unjust taxes, laws to hinder any prosperity for the population. India slowly was dragged into such slumber that the spiritual ideal of the religion were lost and superficial rituals and caste system took hold of the outer consciousness of the population. These practices divided people further with the discrimination of the higher castes towards the lower castes and a whole lot of superstition. There were often spiritual leaders in India who tried to eliminate this ritualistic and outer superstitions of the religion and  brought  religious harmony and a culture of plurality in several regions of India. There were spiritual leaders like Chaitanya, Guru Nanak and many more who showed that inner spiritual ideals were more important than the outer superstitions and divisiveness.

After Independence

One would think after the independence the country would unshackle from its long slumber and find its true national spirit and express its inner potential but to build a nation the citizens should be in a position to unveil their creativity. Citizens have to move forward and overcome their past national inabilities. How can they when the country was left with severe poverty, poor infrastructure, economy and education? How can the cultural uniqueness flower in such a dearth of human resources?

The burden was left for the national leaders to bring this nation from sickness of an immobile body to first stand on its own feet and heel the deep wounds left by the foreign occupation. Nehru became the first Prime Minister of the country. The country was plagued by the curse of religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. The religious harmony that brought many religions to India was instead replaced by hatred and politics of separation of the country into two independent nations made the country even weaker. Nehru was a secular leader and he did everything possible for the Muslims of India to live in harmony with the Hindus. India was declared a secular country with freedom to practice any religion. Extremism, hatred and fundamentalism have not left and given a chance sprouted out of religious skirmishes. Also Pakistan declared itself as a Islamic State and one can observe from the present day national life that it has done worse and harbored extremism and fundamentalism that the whole world now deplores and has become a threat to the world security.

Even in democratic India, pluralism, acceptance and freedom have been endangered by religious extremist groups both from Hindu and also the Muslims. If British rule can be called for the first curse, this extremism and fundamentalism is the second curse of India.

Nehru was heavily impressed with the soviet model of socialism of the economy and implemented it in independent India. This I call the third curse of the country. The country was always short of wealth to build creditable institutions of education and proper health care for its citizens. Instead a lot of effort was put in building dams and encouraging agriculture since most of the population was dependent on agriculture. Other sectors of the economy were neglected and the state own all the sectors. It was almost impossible for the private sector to establish any profitable business under the corrupt and permit Raj of the state. The government could not raise enough tax revenue since most of the State enterprises were losing money and the private sector was heavily taxed which discouraged investment.  Another three decades were lost due to the failure of socialism. All these years Congress was having its unilateral monopoly in politics but later other regional parties and a strong opposition BJP whose roots come from another hindu extremist group RSS came into existence.

There are no longer spiritual leaders or national leaders of the stature of Rabindranath tagore, Ambedkar, Gandhi and Vivekananda who encouraged plurality in national life and religious harmony. We see more and more extremism from the Hindu right wing BJP party which appropriates Hindu spiritual leaders like Vivekananda to capture Hindu vote. The politics are manufactured to arouse religious hatred and divisiveness and it has become a normal practice on the way to be elected. The fourth curse  is that the spiritual and national leaders of the country who should be opposing such divisive politics using religious hatred as leverage are no more active in national life. The spiritual leaders have taken an oath not to involve with national life and are busy pursuing salvation in their respective ashrams. The spiritual ideals of especially Hinduism forbid such quietude on the face of perverse and iniquitous use of religion in politics. We need spiritual leaders who spread the message of spiritual unity and also who have the courage to stand up to those ideals in public life.

Economic Liberalization

The economic restrictions were lifted off in 1991, when the State was almost bankrupt after implementing socialist policies for four decades; all this time the basic services were not provided to the population. The state was poor, there were no profitable enterprises and there was not enough tax revenue to spend on services for the citizens and coupled with corruption, India was doing horrible in terms of poverty, hunger, education and disease. India has the worst child birth, mortality and education. Caste system was still playing a huge negative role in dividing the people. The culture of condescension, superstition and rituals have replaced the spiritual ideals of plurality, acceptance and oneness. Other countries in South Asia have implemented economic reforms earlier than India and have prospered and brought basic service like education and health to all of their citizens.

Now after another two decades of economic boom with the liberalization of India, still the ruling governments have neglected the basic services and the population has tripled. The population was 250 million at the time of Independence and now it is more than a billion people. This is another consequence of not initiating reforms and investment in education and health sector. The economic liberalization has benefited the middle class but the poor are still waiting for the boons of economic development to trickle down to them. In terms of sanitation and health the country is one of the worst in the world and a new survey says that more than quarter of the population does not have enough toilets for defecation. As a result, filth and dirt overhand the slums of every city. The poor mostly lower castes are left to themselves with some affirmative action benefits given to them. People are resentfulness and anger is brewing with the corruption at every level of state governance. One cannot get any service done without a bribe to government officers.

This I call the fifth curse for the country where basic services like education and health have been neglected and corruption has infested every department of the state mercenary. Also the ideals of the great leaders who fought and suffered for the independence of the country are forgotten by the youth of the country. Extremist politicians have used every reason to exploit the vulnerable and uneducated population for vote capture. Also for a well functioning democratic India, the government has to invest in institution building for preventing corruption in private and public sector. The judiciary has to deliver justice faster.

Conclusion

Mother India is still waiting for the people of this country to realize the spiritual ideals of this great nation. To be a country of acceptance, plurality and oneness. However, this may take a longer time for the citizens to understand the value of spirituality and why it may be more important in the future of the country. Economic progress is a must for any country to deliver the basic services but at the same time,  the stock markets cannot be the barometers for the health of the country. This commercialization and competition of life can take a toll on the social values and spirit of fraternity among individuals. One often forgets the social service as selfishness and productivity become the core aim of the society.
When the government delivers the basic services to the poor and invests in the human development, education and health and when people realize that the  future of this nation depends on cooperation and not competition that this nation will seek redemption from past curses.Of course the private sector needs to be competitive to be creative but we also need a public sector that delivers safety net, health and education.
We should not let the light rising in the horizon to recede once again because of our ignorance and self interest  and fall into the pit of self interest. Huge challenges lay ahead and we need great and selfless leaders to take this country to a safer shore. Leaders who understand that life is to be celebrated and India is best when its diversity and ideals of spiritual oneness coexist.


Jai Hind.

Secularism as development

At a convention in IIT chennai, Chief misister of Gujarat, Mr. Narendra modi described the genealogy of the word secularism. He said that the word has been changing its meaning every 5 years. Initially it used to be used for religious harmony, then under the Congress governance it took the meaning of supporting minorities, then using minorities as vote bank then hurting hindus is called secularism. Now he has come out with a new meaning of secularism and that is " Secularism is development".

Can secularism be called as development? Will development bring the religious harmony so that there does not happen another massacre in Gujarat like the one happened in 2002? Of course one of the responsibilities of the government is to lay down the infrastructure and create environment for the private industry to invest and create jobs. But that is only part of the responsibility, the rest is to create suitable health care services, primary education and public transportation and many more. But development in the sense of creating opportunities for the private industry to invest cannot be the only aim of the government. Gujarat had done well under Modi in some areas like creating jobs, bringing electricity to wider population which Modi likes to talk about, which is better than doing nothing for the state. Even with all these achievements the ideal of development as secularism is wrong.

Invoking Swami Vivekanand

Modi is hugely popular with the youth since he talks like a true patriot and true son of Gujarat. In his recent talk at the Vivekanand convention,he wants the youth to realize the dream of Vivekanand who at a young age brought development to the west. I would ask what kind of development did Vivekanand bring to the west? Swami Vivekanand brought spirituality to the west and he was often not very happy with the youth of India for not following the spiritual ideals. He represented Hinduism at the Parliament of World's religions on September 11th, 1893 in Chicago.

In all this talk, Mr. Modi said nothing spiritual nor does he have any understanding about the spiritual teachings of Hinduism. He is a good orator and can make the crowd excited with pithy jokes. He often talks about how Indians are victimized by Pakistan Muslims and Bangladesh immigrants. Swami Vivekanand dreamed about spiritual development in his homeland. How is that Modi missed this point is hard to comprehend.

Dereliction of duty by religious Hindu leaders and educated media

How does one get away with such misrepresentation of Swami Vivekanand in public arena and does not get any critique from any quarters of Hinduism and especially from religious leaders. Our religious leaders have long left the field of action and have succumbed to the goal of pursuing salvation away from the field of action and preach dharma that our youth no more think actually applies to reality. But as we all know that was not the teaching of the Bhagavat Gita.

On the other hand, why is there no critique from the educated media about this misrepresentation. Our educated lot have also left the field of religion or have no understanding of the spiritual ideals of religion. This is the double misery of India now, where the spiritual message when duped as economic development has no one not even the true spiritual leaders of the land nor the educated people of the country question the underpinning of the false development claims as the ultimate aim of the spiritual tradition. This basic education is lacking in social conscious and this void is now filled by party propaganda and no one has a clue if this is right or wrong.

And the youth is duped into thinking that this is the real development Vivekanand dreamed about and Gujarat is the pioneer in bringing that great dream to reality and Modi is the messiah who revoked the forgotten dream of our great spiritual leader.  One needs to understand that the underlying philosophy of the BJP party is hallow and it needs to appropriate the images of the Hindu spiritual leaders to capture the Hindu vote bank. If Congress is pandering for the muslim vote bank by sanctioning gifts to minorities, BJP is doing by appropriation of Hindu spiritual leaders and misrepresenting the spiritual message for its own party agenda while the true spiritual leaders have abandoned the active life and retired in their respective ashrams.

Conclusion

Swami Vivekanda was dynamic, active and wanted to spread the spiritual ideal of Hinduism . True secularism according to the Bhagavat Gita is to know the spiritual underpinning of all human beings and to realise the oneness of mankind by experience of higher states of conciousness which we also call as God.  Outward differences fade away and a new vision of oneness from within comes with this kind of spiritual realization and man changes from within and not from outside. Economic development and prosperity have their place in society but that will not change human selfish nature. A human being if he has to love other humans of other religions then he has to realize this spiritual oneness underlying our existence.

What makes a popular leader in Indian context?

Understanding politics can be perplexing and sometimes people's verdict in electing leaders can also be confusing. There are leaders who against all odds, analysis and pundit opinions still win elections notwithstanding their poor policies, corruption and performance in public service. What makes on leader get elected even if his real policies are a complete fraud and a sincere opponent with genuine policies to help people lose in the election? One may blame that people are ignorant, uneducated and whatever. But the reality is that a man of knowledge should be able to understand the psychology of the masses and then penetrate the message to them. A good leader should not only be a good policy maker but also should know who to convey his message to the masses so they understand the importance of politics and active citizenry.

After the Gujarat violence of 2002, Narendra Modi was elected twice again with great majorities in that state. One would wonder how is it possible that after such a heinous massacre in a democracy, that he is still in power and chances are that he would also win the next election. How did he manage to evade investigation although some of his inner circle has been charged and prosecuted? What are his abilities

unfinished.......