Sunday 13 July 2014

Don’t like this temple? Choose another

Male priests offering prayers to Lord Ayyappan at
Sabarimala Temple
The imperious missionaries of liberalism have no respect for the diversity of India’s belief systems and have taken it upon themselves to reform everything they perceive as outdated and incorrect.

Do we want to create a world in which everyone thinks alike? A world in which there is no space for divergence of views or foolish people? I write this after witnessing poor Rahul Easwar, one of the young hereditary priests of Sabarimala, being flagellated on television for the nth time on January 7, 2013, for allowing the presiding deity of his temple to shun the company of female devotees.

The media’s job is first and foremost to inform and not browbeat people to “reform.” TV news programmes in particular have come to resemble inquisitions or kangaroo courts with anchors and their hand-picked panellists flagellating those with politically incorrect views, issuing diktats on everything from political views to religious practices and rituals, and even the conduct of gods and goddesses.

Intolerant
Just as our colonial rulers with their faith in the superiority of their monotheistic faith, despised Hindu religious practices, with their millions of gods and goddesses, our modern day missionaries can’t stand the temperamental nuances of our diverse deities. They have no problem in accepting that women are barred inside friaries meant to house Catholic priests who have taken a vow of celibacy. But they can’t stomach the idea of a male deity who has likewise vowed eternal celibacy avoiding the company of women. They take it upon themselves to cure this kink because in their moral universe with its borrowed vocabulary, this amounts to misogyny and gender discrimination!

Rahul Easwar has asked each television anchor who has grilled him over the years how would they deal with all those temples which only allow female devotees, where the presiding goddess forbids men’s entry. Would they likewise force “women only” temples to open their doors to men? Not one has ever condescended to answer this simple question; nor did any of the anchors tone down their aggression or hostility towards Rahul’s intelligent defence of his faith and his Ishta dev.

Following in the footsteps of our British rulers, who despite their disdain for our gods and goddesses, took away shiploads of priceless ancient idols to display as art objects in their museums and living rooms, so also our westernised elites have taken to displaying paintings, bronze and stone carved idols of diverse gods and goddesses as decoration pieces in their homes as proof of their aesthetic lifestyle. But their disdain for those who treat them as objects of worship remains as ferocious as that of our colonial rulers.

Respect for differences
If that were not the case, they would have no difficulty in appreciating that Hindu divinities are not unknowable, distant entities. They have distinct personalities, character traits, likes, dislikes. Even in matters of food, floral offerings, puja ritual, each deity has his or her preferences. If you don’t respect their unique temperaments, you are free not to worship them and choose the devata or devi that suits your taste.

Even the most illiberal among Indians do not insist on uniformity of rituals or modes of worship. They let each faith group, each sect decide for itself how to define their relationship to their chosen deity, what foods to offer her, what modes of worship they think appropriate to express their devotion and how they interpret her likes or dislikes. This spontaneous, mutual respect for differences in ways of being, ways of worship, singing, dancing, clothing, cooking and so on, is what enabled the rich diversity of India to survive through millennia.

But our self-proclaimed modern liberals can’t deal with these lived forms of diversity. They can only relish in museumised versions such as folk dances on Republic Day or as consumer goods. For example, possessing a collection of Kanjeevaram, Ikat, Chanderi or Patola saris, Madhubani and Worli paintings, Moradabad brassware, wood carvings from Kashmir, Tanjore paintings, Rajasthani miniatures, etc. is a fashion statement. But the moral universe of those who create these diverse art objects is unacceptable. It is assumed that they all need a dose of reform to cleanse them of antiquated beliefs and values.

For engagement
I won’t be surprised if tomorrow someone decided to reform the food habits of our gods and goddesses saying, for example, that modak and laddoo are both high cholesterol, high calorie food items. They encourage devotees to have pot bellies. Therefore, they should be banned in favour of sugar-free diet chocolates!

It is time the imperious missionaries of “liberalism” understand that our temples are not meant to be tourist centres — where entry must be free for all. Most of our traditional temples are run by specific sects for the devotees of that particular deity. If you don’t like the values of that sect, if the preferences of that particular deity are offensive to you, just avoid going to that temple. There are lakhs of others to choose from.

If I walked into the homes of our self-appointed reformers and insisted that they change their lifestyles and food habits, I’d be shown the door and asked to mind my own business. What gives these non-believers the right to dictate to Lord Sabarimala how he should live and act in his own abode or dictate terms to harmless little sects among Hindus who prefer to indulge in the whims and wishes of their chosen deities?


Young Rahul Easwar has been pleading for respectful engagement with faith leaders in order to bring about changes in allegedly outmoded customary practices and cultural values. In the Hindu faiths, nothing is written in stone. Devotees have the right to dictate their deities to change with changing times. But they can’t be ordered around by those who only have contempt for them. They cannot be bullied into surrendering their unique being and become colourless and soulless robotic creatures that yield to every new wave of political fashion we import from our intellectual mentors in distant lands.


First Published in The Hindu on January 17, 2013.




Friday 11 July 2014

Police & Judicial Reforms First Priority - Need for Surgeon's Precision while Amending the Anti Rape Law



Written and Oral Submissions by MANUSHI before the Justice Verma Commission
The countrywide anger and protest following the brutal gang rape of a 23 year old student has galvanized public opinion as never before. Even though the ostensible demand of protesters is to make the rape law more stringent, the real intent is to express "No Confidence" in the machinery of governance, especially the political class, police and law courts. That is why protests refuse to die down despite numerous pious announcements by the highest functionaries of the state- from the P.M to the Home Minister to the Chief Minister. True to character, the government has come up with a series of knee-jerk responses. These include appointing a Commission to suggest changes in rape laws in 30 days, a Special Task Force of all the big wigs in Delhi Government, proposal for chemical or physical castration of rapists, death penalty for all cases of aggravated sexual assault, mandatory registration of F.I.R.s in every complaint of sexual violence, special fast track courts, and gender sensitization programs for the police and so on.

Changes urgently needed in existing rape law: The most basic improvement required in the anti-rape legislation is to get rid of antiquated definition of rape as "outraging of modesty" of a woman. This needs to be replaced with "assault on the bodily integrity of a woman". The second important change required is to treat rape by security forces at par with custodial rape meriting stricter punishment than meted out to civilians because their job is to protect citizens, not violate them. However, this amendment should include safeguards against malafide complaints and misuse of law to weaken anti-terror operations.

However, many of the demands being made by the anti-rape protestors as well as those proposed by the UPA government have come as knee jerk reactions and are potentially harmful

Demand for stringent law: A common demand from both public and media is that the rape law should be made more "stringent". This overlooks the fact that in India, the gap between what the law prescribes and what actually happens in practice needs to be addressed as the first priority. When a law fails to deliver what it promises, instead of undertaking a cool headed honest review of what is wrong with the law and its implementation, the tendency in India is to assume that the law is not stringent enough, that it has too many loopholes which enable the culprits to escape punishment.

Unfortunately, most of those demanding changes in law to make it more draconian, including most T.V. anchors at the forefront of this mass hysteria, have not read the existing law.The rape law was amended in 1983 due to pressure from women's organizations following the rape of a young woman named Mathura in a police station of Hyderabad. It provides for a minimum 7 year punishment which may extend to life imprisonment. It also has special provisions for custodial rape including a minimum of 10 years in jail since Mathura was raped while in police custody. In case of brutal rape leading to murder, our law already provides for death sentence. Thus the existing law can hardly be called "lenient".

Proposal to chemically or physically castrate men indicted of rape: This has come from leading national parties, including the ruling party in the Centre. Such a punishment assumes that rape is all about uncontrollable sexual urge or certain men being oversexed. Apart from being an instrument of striking terror with a view to subjugate women, rape is often accompanied by brutal forms of violence of the kind the 23 year old gang rape victim went through. Rods were shoved into her vagina and her intestines pulled out. It is common for rapists to shove stones and other pain giving objects inside a woman with our without penetration of the rapists' penis. These pathologies and brutal acts will not be controlled by castration. In fact, there is evidence that men with performance anxieties are usually more brutal.

Demand that police be trained to be gender sensitive: Our colonial minded police are no doubt very gender insensitive and have a disgraceful track record of handling cases of violence against women. But it is not as if they treat men any better as is illustrated by examples below. Police are trained to understand only two codes: a bribe from below or a kick from above. Whether the hand that bribes or the one who gets the kick delivered is that of a woman, a gangster or a terrorist makes little difference to the police. It is well known that the likes of Dawood Ibrahim exercise enormous influence on the police and can make it dance to its tunes. Our police have no hesitation in harassing and brutalizing men. Women are no doubt doubly vulnerable but only if they are not well connected. Ask the poor slum dwellers, street vendors, rickshaw pullers, auto rickshaw drivers and other vulnerable groups who survive on the mercy of the police, whether the men among them have any special advantage vis a vis the police.

Compulsory registration of sex crime complaints: Another common refrain is that the police must be obligated by law to register an F.I.R on the basis of every complaint of rape or sexual harassment that comes to them and that rape should be made a non-bailable offence in addition to mandating longer and harsher prison terms.  It has also been suggested that women should be able to make online complaints of rape and it should be mandatory for the police to register instant FIRs on the basis of such online allegations.

It is also being demanded that the burden of proof in rape cases be shifted to the accused, even though in most other criminal cases, including murder, the burden of proof is on the complainant. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha has set a high benchmark by announcing a 13 point plan of action for her state which includes amendment to the Goonda Act to include sexual offenders. This law provides preventive jail for one year, with no scope for bail. To this list, Sunitha Krishnan, one of the most courageous and inspirational gang rape survivors has added another important demand that once the lower court has convicted a man of rape, appeal to the High Court or Supreme Court should not be permissible at all.

When we demand that every complaint must result in an instant F.I.R and that bail to alleged rapists be denied as a rule, we are opening the flood gates for fraudulent cases being registered by the police to extort money and other vested interests to browbeat those who stand in their way. If all those accused of sexual violence are going to be booked under the Goonda Act and kept in preventive detention for one year without the possibility of bail, as announced by chief minister Jayalalitha, there is nothing to stop extensive abuse of law given the lawless police we are saddled with. Let us not forget the kind of attacks R.T.I and other political activists have faced from police and politicians for exposing their criminal acts. (As an illustrative example see Indian Express report dated 3/1/13: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/bengal-crusader-against--rape--pays-with-his-life-because-of-police-harassment/1053560/)

The problem is not confined to police reluctance to register cases of genuine victims but also its increasing propensity to blackmail innocents by registering false cases against them as an instrument of extortion or implicate genuine victims in patently bogus counter cases in order to force them into withdrawing their complaints against powerful persons. This happens even in first world countries which boast of efficient police and law courts. The manner in which WilkileaksgeniusJulianAssange has been hounded by the US and European countries on what appears like a trumped up rape charge after adult consensual sex, points to the ease with which false criminal cases can be used to destroy lives, especially if you shift the burden of proof on the accused, as is being demanded.

This danger is even more acute in our country where we are saddled with a totally lawless police. I am myself saddled with the burden of facing a whole array of false counter cases on account of my policy reform work for street vendors which brought MANUSHI, into conflict with political mafias who prey on the illegal status of street hawkers. Every time I or other MANUSHI volunteers were subjected to murderous attacks from politically patronized gangsters, the goons succeeded in filing fake counter cases against me and other MANUSHI members involving serious criminal charges-- including attempt to murder, Section 420, impersonation, extortion and fraud-- with a view to forcing us to abandonour work.(Read http://www.manushi.in/articles.php?articleId=1586&ptype=campaigns)

One of our most active and valuable members Mehboob, has also been implicated in a bogus "attempt to rape" case through the use of call girls who he had never seen or met before. They just came to his shop and started beating him with chappals alleging that he had tried raping them. When one of the men named Sanjay who knew those call girls intervened to save Mehboob, he was attacked by local goons with iron rods and bricks which resulted in serious head and other injuries. He could have died from the injuries but the police refused to file an F.I.R. on the basis of his complaint though they quickly entertained the complaint of the two women hired by local goons to implicate Mehboob in a bogus "attempt to rape" case. This happened in 2008. Five years down, Manushi is still saddled with defending Mehboob in this false case. If there was no provision for bail, this poor street vendor would have rotted in jail for endless years.

The horror story does not end with Mehboob. When Sanjay insisted with the police that they file an F.I.R. against local goons who caused him serious injuries for defending Mehboob against false charges, the S.H.O. of KotlaMubarakpur police station arrested 5 adult male members of Sanjay's family, locked them up in the thana and threatened Sanjay that if he did not withdraw his complaint, all of them would be locked up and sent to jail under the Goonda Act. Those arrested included the old bed-ridden grandfather of Sanjay, plus his father who is a Class IV employee working as a maali in a government department. We took up this case to the Deputy Commissioner but got no help. Therefore, we had no choice but to advise Sanjay to withdraw his case. These cases, filed in 2008, have gone on and on without an end in sight. They have caused us endless grief, humiliation, harassment and a waste of time on addition to financial burden.

This is not a solitary case. Implicating innocents in false cases is a well-established practice of the police. The Muslim community is particularly vulnerable on account of the popular stereotype of their being pro-Pakistan and pro-terrorism. But even well-educated Hindus from respectable families are not spared wherever and whenever the police decide to hold them to ransom. For an account of how my brother became a random target of extortion by the police, read  "Police Can't Be Women Friendly without BeingCitizen Friendly".

In short, you cannot make our police "gender sensitive" by subjecting them to special training sessions or sermons unless they are made "citizen sensitive". This too doesn't happen by subjecting them to occasional sermons. It happens only by institutionalizing principles of accountability and transparency in the very structure of the police - including better recruitment criteria, and creating incentives for honest work.

In other words, the existing failure of the police to act honestly, to follow due diligence in investigating whether a complaint merits filing an F.I.R. cannot be set right by doing away with the need for honest investigation altogether. Let us not forget, even Rahul Gandhi was implicated in a gang rape case by some woman in his constituency. It was later pronounced as a fabrication. Not everybody has Rahul Gandhi's clout to escape being locked up in jail without bail.

Shifting the burden of proof: The demand that the burden of proof should be shifted to the accused appears reasonable in cases of brutal violence is also fraught with danger. It is noteworthy that under pressure from women's organizations in case of dowry related violence, the burden of proof has already been shifted to the accused and the bail made extremely difficult. Can anyone claim that dowry giving and receiving has stopped or that incidents of domestic violence on account of dowry demands have come down? Can we claim that all genuine victims have been dealt with fairly by the police and law courts as a result of stringent laws in favour of alleged victims of domestic violence?

On the contrary, we have plentiful evidence of gross misuse of law by the police, lawyers and their unscrupulous clients to implicate innocent families in false cases with a view of extorting money from them. Even in terrorism related arrests, the police have consistently misused provisions that shift the burden of proof as well as denial of bail to the accused. In the process, lives of numerous innocents have been destroyed while real terrorists roam free. If the police have failed to use these provisions responsibly in cases involving national security, why do we put so much faith in their ability to use them with integrity in cases of rape? There is no substitute for honest, professionally competent investigations by law enforcement agencies.

Denying provision for appeal to higher courts: The most dangerous of all is the demand that once a man is convicted by the lower courts, there should be no provision for appeal to the High Court or the Supreme Court. This is no doubt proposed with good intent by people who have seen how rapists go scot free by dragging the case for years on end through adjournments and appeals to higher courts which also function at a snail speed. During that time, the rapists roam free on bail and often intimidate the victims into turning hostile against themselves

Once again, the dysfunctionality and tardiness of our judicial system cannot be set right by doing away with the right to appeal. By that logic, why not do away with courts altogether and let the police deliver instant justice? The right to appeal is available even to perpetrators of terrorist attacks as well as those who indulge in mass murder. Those guilty of communal massacres are also protected under this constitutional right. To demand that this right be denied only to those who commit atrocities on women is to play with fire. When brushing aside of constitutional rights and due process gains legitimacy, it has a way of spreading into all areas like a virus and eat into the very vitals of democracy.

Marriage to rapist cannot be treated as rehabilitation measure: Police and courts have often pushed for such a settlement as a measure to "rehabilitate" the raped woman. Therefore, the message needs to go down strong and clear that forcing marriage between the two parties amounts to legitimizing rape.

However, what if a woman demands this "relief"? We need to take into account all those cases as well where the woman files a rape case as a retaliation measure against a man who refuses to marry her after a long standing sexual and/or a live in relationship. Several such cases are reported routinely in the press. I have personally been approached by a half a dozen such women but declined to take up those cases. We have also witnessed the ugly drama played out in the media, including on TV channels, by a young woman who dragged famous film director MadhurBhandarkar to court pressing rape charges when by her own account she had sexual relations with him over a long period in return for his promise to cast her as a heroine in one of his films. This in my view is a patent misuse of law. A woman who enters into pre-marital sex with a man or offers a sex bribe in return for a favour, ought to take full responsibility for her actions, instead of playing victim, if the man changes his mind and terminates the relationship or fails to deliver the promised reward as did Bhandarkar. This may amount to "cheating" but certainly not rape.

Demand that "marital rape" be included in the anti-rape law: Mahatma Gandhi was among the first in modern times to assert that a woman has the right to say "No" even to her husband. This was much before feminists came to demand that rape in marriage be treated as a serious offence. I strongly support the Gandhi's position but including marital rape as a punishable offence is a very tricky proposition. How does a man prove that the sexual relation on a particular day or night with his wife was with her consent? Have her sign an affidavit every time they go to bed together? The law against domestic violence already gives strong protection to a woman who alleges "cruelty" by husband with or without rape. This too has been subject to wide spread misuse because of insufficient safeguards against false charges. Adding "marital rape" is likewise fraught with danger unless strong safeguards are put in place against baseless, malafide complaints.

Selective fast track courts: The demand for special fast track courts in cases of rape comes from an unrealistic faith in "special measures". In a country where national security related crimes, including open and shut cases, take decades despite all the attendant "special" procedures, including suspension of due process requirements, to expect "special courts" for rape to act as a magic wand is to live in cloud cuckoo-land. Just as special police stations for women cannot perform miracles when the regular police stations are citadels of crime and corruption, so also "special courts" become mere tokens if regular courts are dysfunctional and court procedures are not thoroughly overhauled. In any case, there is no "fast track" provision in the High Court or Supreme Court. Our courts have not only failed rape victims, they have also failed victims of caste and communal massacres, hate crimes, victims of criminal mafias, as also those involved in simple property disputes.

There is much to be learnt from the fate of special dedicated courts set up in 1986-7 to deal with monetary compensation and rehabilitation of victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984. This case attracted widespread national and international attention. In full glare of national international media, first the Government of India played foul by making an infamous settlement with the Union Carbide in return for payoffs. Then it played foul in disbursing the pitiful compensation it announced. When gas victims sought the intervention of the Supreme Court, special courts were set up to deliver the measly compensation to be given to families of those who died of the poisonous gas as well as to those who developed serious illnesses.

The delays, deliberate hurdles, harassment and humiliation suffered by those who went to claim the money due to them was no less than those inflicted in regular courts. Hardly anyone got the full promised amount. Families had to accept far lower amounts than officially sanctioned and even from that they had to give cuts in order for payment to be processed. This when some of our best NGOs worked tirelessly to help victims make claims through "special dedicated courts". They brought the corruption and harassment suffered by victims to the notice of the Supreme Court. Yet the scam continued unchecked. It has been 28 years since the tragedy. Ask what the victim families think of these special courts!

Closer home, in February 2010, in response to a PIL by MANUSHI, the Delhi High Court passed a historic order banning the lawless confiscation and destruction of cycle rickshaws by the municipal agencies and police. This order was endorsed by the Supreme Court. When both these agencies continued flouting the High Court and Supreme Court judgments, the Delhi High Court set up a dedicated special court in June 2012 to investigate complaints of rickshaw owners whose vehicles had been confiscated involving contempt of court. Till date, the special dedicated court has been able to cross examine only 8 complainants! The procedure for cross examination remains as farcical as it is in regular courts. To add insult to injury, all of us complainants and victims are being treated as if we are in the dock. The entire attempt of lawyers representing government agencies is to prove us liars who brought in false complaints. All this is happening even though two of the best judges of the High Court, Justices Ravindra Bhatt and Murlidharan are monitoring the case.

Merely naming a particular court "special" cannot work as a magic wand to cure our colonial minded legal system of its deeply entrenched incompetence, inefficiency and deviousness.

Demand for special courts has come from many other disadvantaged groups- environmentalists, anti-corruption crusaders, victims of domestic violence, as well as those routinely displaced from their lands and villages through arbitrary land acquisition laws. The list of those demanding special fast track courts will keep growing if the entire judicial system is not reworked thoroughly. The soul destroying, torturous and corruption friendly court procedures require fixing for all cases, not just for those crimes that become hot issues thanks to high profile media coverage.

Need for accountability of lawyers: Among many other judicial reforms, one of the most urgently required measures is to clarify the role of lawyers as officers of the court. At present, it is taken for granted that the job of a lawyer is to defend his/her client and save the person from punishment, no matter what the crime and no matter how foul the measures used for the purpose. This makes a total mockery of the entire judicial system and renders it incapable of delivering justice. Those who can afford to hire competent lawyers can get away with murder, rape or worse. This is because giving false evidence and browbeating vulnerable victims through hostile and devious forms of cross-examination to mislead the court in practice is never treated as unethical. Perjury and false testimonies are almost never punished under our judicial system.

The job of a lawyer is to assist the court in arriving at the truth, in ensuring that no innocent gets punished, no wrong doer escapes the punitive action he deserves, and that the punishment is in proportion to the crime. Lawyers who encourage their clients to give false testimonies to browbeat the system should be dealt with severely.

Police and judicial reform first priority: In short, the situation calls for far reaching police and judicial reforms, not knee-jerk tokenisms. The rape law certainly requires improvements. But simply providing for "more stringent" punishment will achieve nothing except enhance the scope of abuse, if the police as an institution are not thoroughly overhauled to make it a fit instrument for ensuring safety of life and liberty of all citizens. Likewise, without simplifying court procedures, making laws more rational and investing heavily in improving the quality and proportion of judges and making access to justice more affordable, a few fast track courts here and there will inevitably rot out. In any case, if the police have messed up the evidence at the stage of primary investigation, what will fast tracking of the case achieve?

We have all witnessed the crude and mischievous ways in which the police used lathis, tear gas and false cases against people to break the morale of anti-rape protestors at India Gate in full view of T.V cameras. This was proven when some of the young men arrested for allegedly causing the death of a policeman were acquitted by the court because they could prove that at the time the police claimed they were stoning policemen at India Gate they were travelling in Delhi's Metro. This was corroborated by the CCTV footage provided by the Metro. The policeman who collapsed during the protests suffered a heart attack, he did not die on account of injuries caused by protestors as the police have falsely alleged. Can we afford to put AK-47s in the hands of those who routinely use their lathis to tyrannize people?

Finally, when demanding changes in legislation or legal procedures, let us not think of men only as potential rapists or wife-beaters. We are all connected to men in intimate caring relationships- as brothers, fathers, uncles, sons, nephews, lovers, husbands, friends, colleagues and caring neighbours. My pain and grief at the life of my brother or nephew being ruined on account of being implicated in false cases is no less than when I am directly victimized by our corrupt, criminalized police and dysfunctional judicial system. 

In short, we cannot let our concern for women victims of domestic or sexual violence blind us to the possibility of further damage by the already corroded police and judicial system of our country, leave alone blind us to the dangers of selectively depriving people of their constitutional rights. We need a surgeon's precision while amending the anti-rape law, not a butcher's hatchet. All cases deserve speedy trials without sacrificing due process. If so many countries in the world can do it, why can't we?

Immediate measures needed for improving police & judicial performance:
While the task of refashioning our police and judicial system requires many far reaching systemic reforms-something that can't be done in haste with unrealistic deadlines --the following immediate measures can kick start the process without delay:

  • Speedy implementation of the Supreme Court directives regarding police reforms. Contempt of Court proceedings against all those chief ministers, home secretaries, chief secretaries of state governments who fail to implement these modest guidelines.
  • Installation of CCTV cameras in all police stations to monitor how the police handle complainants and their work style.
  • Mandatory video recording of all complaints so that the police don't get a chance to distort the complainant's testimony. This should be made available to the court instead of shoddily written, incomprehensible F.I.Rs that are usually submitted to the court.
  • Institutionalised mechanisms for involving local communities in policing their neighbourhoods in coordination with the police.
  • Independent audit of the functioning of police stations every three months by qualified professionals.
  • Mandatory recording of court proceedings to monitor whether lawyers and judges do justice to their jobs.
  • Encouraging petitioners to argue their own case to reduce the dependence on lawyers.
  • Providing dedicated time to petitioners to present their case in person even when they are being represented by a lawyer, especially in cases of rape.
  • Restrictions on adjournments so that the case is not allowed to drag on endlessly.
  • Holding district magistrates under whose charge the police functions, and the Lt Governor in the case of Delhi, accountable for police lapses.

The following non police measures which can be implemented with speed can play a vital role in making our cities safe
  • Well lighted streets all over the city
  • Safe footpaths for pedestrians
  • Keep cities alive at night by creating citizen friendly public spaces with benches, vendor kiosks, night stalls, spaces for performances for local artists to keep the city alive at night. Deserted areas are more crime prone. Cities are safe only when they are walking friendly and ordinary families come out in the evenings to keep the streets and public spaces alive.
  • Massive investments in adequate and safe public transport-such as buses- in all our towns and cities as well as for connecting urban centres to villages equipped with CCTV cameras and other technological devices to monitor their movements.
At the same time, the government should facilitate a nationwide debate on the recommendations of various commissions on police reforms as well as proposals for judicial reforms suggested thus far in order to seek inputs from a range of concerned citizens as well as best available experts on measures needed to make our police and our law courts worthy of a democracy. This debate will be taken seriously only if the government announces clear time frame and mechanisms for implementing the systemic reforms arrived at by way of a national consensus.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Diagnosing and Remedying Backwardness- English Education Defines the New Brahmins and the New Dalits of India

The current simplistic debate over reservations as a key remedy for inequality, injustice and backwardness has been reduced to a single point — should educational reservations be caste-based or include economic criteria as well? The underlying mistaken assumption behind both these alternatives is that deprivation has only two facets in India — being born in a caste or tribe listed in government records as backward or depressed, and/or being born in a poor family.

In the process we are ignoring a vital aspect of deprivation and denial of opportunity that has come to acquire crucial significance in modern India. Today, in our society, the single most influential factor that determines access to elite educational institutions, and hence to important avenues of economic and social advancement, is the ability to use the English language with ease and facility. This is the magic wand that opens many doors that can lead to inclusion in the social and economic elite.

By operating the modern economy in India only through the English language, the ruling elites that emerged during the British rule have ensured their own perpetuation and continuing dominance over the rest of society. They have also ensured that most Indians are unable to attain a high level of proficiency in English, as a result of which people fluent in the language are in perpetual short supply. A person who has acquired even reasonable proficiency in English will enjoy a major advantage while competing for jobs while those few who have a good command over the English language behave and get treated like an imperial race. They have any number of highly paid jobs both in the public and private sectors to pick and choose from, no matter what their other abilities, class or caste background. The rest, who lack this skill, are made to feel worthless and therefore lose self-confidence.

However, someone who has failed to acquire this magical skill can qualify neither for entrance to any institution for higher learning nor for any decent white-collar job. He or she may be a first-rate scholar in Marathi, Hindi or Assamese but that will not make the person eligible for anything more than a peons’ job even within the linguistic boundaries of Maharashtra, UP or Assam — states in which these languages are spoken by millions of people. He/she may have great expertise in botany, the since of healing Indian architecture or astronomy. But that will not qualify her/him to any of the institutions of higher learning for these subjects.

A Passport to Privilege
Why is it that this routine and pervasive aspect of discrimination and elitism has ceased to bother us, while caste and class have long dominated the discourse of those who claim to oppose sources of privilege? Despite the widespread prevalence of caste-based deprivation, it is easy to cite any number of examples of persons from SC, ST and OBC backgrounds who have come to acquire high status jobs in both the government as well as the private sector. But it would be impossible for any of us to name people who have succeeded in getting admission into an IIT or any other elite medical, engineering or management institute, or cite instances of someone securing a high status job in the modern sector of our economy — public or private — without having acquired a certain level of competence in English.

If you want to qualify for medical school, you have to know English — even if you want to practise in rural or small town India, where very few of your patients are likely to speak in English. If you want to train to be an architect in India you have to know English, even to apply to a school of architecture. People who do not know English are treated as a lower species, unfit for any place in a modern society or economy.

A Vicious Divide
The English-speaking pan-Indian elite is entrenched in the higher echelons of bureaucracy, politics, the armed forces, corporate business and diverse professions —medicine, engineering, architecture, law and so on. Consequently, this tiny elite dominates the terms of intellectual discourse on most issues, be it social legislation, defence policy, farm policy, educational, legal or electoral reforms. They act as though that they alone have a national perspective on vital issues of national importance and the regional language elites represent narrow sectarian and divisive tendencies. They present English as the language of modernity and those rooted in indigenous languages are projected as being leftovers of a pre-modern, traditionalist, anti-progress, even obscurantist worldview. For all their nationalist pretensions, they insist on using a colonial language for their project of modernising India and project themselves as saviours of national unity and national culture as well as repositories of intellectual merit and progress. The only role they assign to the masses is to uncritically accept their version of progress and modernisation, which includes a good deal of denigration of their own cultural heritage.

Since the domination of the English-educated elite depends on preserving a centralised state structure, movements for political decentralisation have often been presented as threats to national unity. However, since this elite lacks social and cultural roots in Indian society, and their lifestyle and aspirations are all directed towards the Western world, they lack the vision and the competence to govern a society as diverse and complex as ours. That is why the laws they enact, including those for the ostensible benefit of the people, are observed only in their violation; the system of governance they preside over is marked by corruption, incompetence and tyranny; the law and order machinery they preside over has become increasingly lawless. Because their social reform discourse is couched in an alien language and uses an alien framework, the social reform measures they propose usually create a backlash or at best remain on paper.

The New Brahmins
By retaining English as the medium of elite education, as a requirement in the professions and in government offices, even after India was formally freed from colonial rule, we have ensured that the schism that was deliberately created by our colonial rulers between the English-educated elite and the rest of the society has grown even further and acquired deadly dimensions that are destroying the minds, souls and self-respect of the majority of our people. The edge that English-based education provides often trumps the traditional divides of caste and class.

Traditional Brahmins used Sanskrit mainly as a language of higher intellectual pursuits, for chanting mantras to gods and goddesses and performing certain types of religious rituals. The new Brahmins speak in English even when talking to their dogs or their little infants. They insist that their children learn their nursery rhymes in English. They use local languages only when ordering menials who service their needs.  The power of the old Brahaminical elite was effectively challenged by various Bhakti movements with women and people from castes supposedly lower down the hierarchy defying the dominance of the Sanskritised elite by asserting their right to talk to their chosen gods in the mother tongue. Today the descendants of those very castes are in such awe of the English language that they too have learnt to prostrate before its soul-destroying hegemony.

They do so because they see that you gain instant entry into the charmed circle of the social and cultural elite if you can speak English in a manner and accent deemed appropriate within the national elite, even if you do not come from the high castes, while the doors are as good as shut for those who can’t, even if they were born into the highest among twice born castes. They are assumed to be from a lower species.

People rarely ask me what caste I belong to. They simply assume I am from one of the twice born castes because I speak English with a noticeable public school accent. It is ironical that in order to draw attention to the damage being done by the unhealthy dominance of English, I have to write in English. If I wrote the same thing in a regional language and did not have a certain level of competence in English, my critique would be dismissed as an expression of envy of the incompetent.

No matter how high your caste, no matter how much land your family owns, if there is no good English-medium school within easy reach of your village, your children will end up at the bottom end of the job market. That is how the sons of Jats of Haryana, Punjab and UP, who constitute the landowning and political elites in these two states, end up as bus conductors and drivers if their families reside in villages that do not have good English-medium schools close at hand. That is how so many Brahmins end up as street vendors, selling paan bidi, vegetables or other tidbits when they migrate from poverty-ridden villages, which do not have reasonable quality English-medium schools within easy reach.

Conversely, Christian boys or girls living in certain districts such as Ranchi, where missionaries run far better schools than those run by the government in villages and towns of India, stand a far better chance of getting good education and good jobs than upper caste young men and women from backward villages without such schools. A person who has studied in Modern School or St Stephen’s College, no matter what his caste by birth, is easily accepted as a member of an all India Super Caste and thereby has far more opportunities than anyone can get by relying on his or her caste by birth as his main qualification.

Most educated people have come to consider this state of affairs as so ‘normal’ that this is not even seen as a matter of note, concern or alarm. However, the absurdity and injustice of this situation becomes obvious if we look around and observe the fact that there are not many other countries in the world where people suffer such severe deprivation and disability within their own motherland for having failed to acquire education in a foreign language.

Demands of Globalisation
It is true that, in a fast globalising economy, English language skills are somewhat at a premium in every country. However, in most of these countries, English is used for communicating with the outside world, for international transactions or exchanges. It is extremely rare for a country to adopt English as the language of internal governance, education (including technical education) or internal business dealings. A person in China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, France, Turkey, Iran, Chile or Germany can become a lawyer, doctor, architect or engineer without knowing any or much English. In India such a person will not be able to get anything above a menial, blue-collar job. A person who does not know the local language would not even be considered for any worthwhile job in most countries of the world and would be considered a weird aberration. India is perhaps the only country in the world where highly educated people who have been raised and educated within their country consider it a mark of status to declare that they are illiterate in their mother tongue and cannot speak ten sentences in either their mother tongue or in Hindi, which is officially the national language of India, without mixing in a good number of words and phrases in English.

Many will counter this by saying:

  1. It is not English language skills that are the key to success, but rather that the English speaking elite just happens to be overwhelmingly from the upper castes. Their real dominance comes from their caste and class position.
  2. English language skills can be picked up easily since there is no caste bar to learning them.
This is as naïve as saying that anyone can qualify for an IIT-type entrance exam merely because the test is open to all those who qualify on merit irrespective of caste or class background.

Despite the dominance of English in our education system for over a century, only a minuscule minority, even among the educated upper caste sections of our society, is able to use the language with any clarity and effectiveness. Most of our MAs and PhDs cannot write three correct sentences in English even though all their exams were given in English.

However, they get away with it because even the pretense of knowing English, no matter how poor the person’s actual language skills and knowledge, works better than being genuinely proficient in any of the Indian languages, if you are not simultaneously competent in English. That is why upwardly mobile segments of the middle and even lower middle classes are ready to sacrifice an incredible proportion of their social and financial resources in bribes and other forms of influence in order to get their children admitted to a school or college that provides quality English-based education, beginning with the crucial admission into one of the highly regarded English-medium nursery schools.

Denied Access to Knowledge
The growing preference for English-medium schools is primarily due to the poor quality of education imparted in non-English-medium schools and the low status value ascribed to learning in regional languages. If you are going to be treated as an illiterate for not being fluent in English, you have no choice but to prioritise learning it, even at the cost of other necessary skills. Given the lower standards that prevail in non-English-medium schools, it is assumed that those who have studied in English are better educated and hence make better teachers. This despite the fact that teaching quality is so poor in most of our English-medium schools, barring a few exceptional institutions, that most of our students are ill-equipped to make sense of even newspaper reports, leave alone read serious books in English. Yet, they spend just about all their energy trying to grapple with English and willfully neglect learning their mother tongue, Hindi or any of the Indian languages, which they could master with great ease.

In the process, they end up with nothing more than a pidgin language — a confused mixture of poor English and their mother tongue — that damages their over-all linguistic abilities for life. This also seriously impairs their thinking capacities because language is the primary tool for understanding the world, for grasping ideas and using concepts for effective communication. A person’s thinking is seriously impaired if they are not well rooted in at least one language. Linguistic cripples grow up to be intellectual cripples.

This is also one of the major reasons why there is huge deficit of good school and college teachers in India. Those who know good English ordinarily move on to higher status and better paying jobs. The few who choose teaching gravitate towards elite schools and universities, while those who have studied in Hindi-medium schools, or in schools using any of the regional languages, by and large end up being intellectually stunted because they have far less access to sources of knowledge and learning without good knowledge of English.

The dominance of English has consequences far beyond what most of us dare acknowledge. Those who study in various regional Indian languages, and know only a smattering of English, do not have access to all the knowledge and information being produced in various disciplines, including the politics, history, geography and sociology of India. Consider the absurdity and injustice evidenced in the following examples of the arrogance and callousness of our English-educated elite:
  • There are no medical or science, technology or social science journals in any of the Indian languages, including those that are spoken by millions. All scientists publish their findings in English. All technology institutions teach in English as if English is the natural language of science and technology. This is not the case in Thailand, Korea, China and Japan, not to speak of Germany or France.
  • The medium of instruction and examination in all our schools of architecture as well as the course content is in English, even though India has an exceptionally well-developed and distinct architectural tradition of its own.
  • It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find training manuals for plumbers, electricians or masons in Hindi, Marathi or Tamil. As a result, people who take to these occupations end up acquiring half-baked knowledge as apprentices on the job by observing the work of others, or by word of mouth. The children of our impoverished farmers and artisans learn what they can by simply following traditional ways or picking up new skills by observing others. There is hardly any educational material available to them in their own languages for upgrading their skills.
  • India is one of the very few places in the world where pharmaceutical companies do not bother to write the names of the medicines they produce in any local language. Almost all the allopathic medicines produced in India are labelled in English; the accompanying literature about directions for use, side-effects and precautions are provided only in English. Today, even the fashionable among Ayurvedic companies label their medicines in English. Most doctors, including those who work in government offices and service low-income groups, write their prescriptions in English. Given that only a tiny percent among the educated sections can make sense of things written in English, imagine what it means for those who are barely literate to decipher their prescriptions and understand the nature of treatment and medication prescribed to them.
  • Our lawyers draft petitions in English on behalf of even those clients who do not know a word of English; court proceedings, especially at the higher levels, are all carried out in English, legal judgments are delivered in English, the laws and precedents on which those judgments are based are leftovers of British law and are written in English. Thus most people who approach the courts for justice cannot comprehend a word of what their lawyers write or say on their behalf, or make sense of the verdicts passed in their favour or against them, except through the agency of their lawyers. The sense of helplessness and crippling dependence this creates is a major reason for corruption and unaccountability, and for the exploitation of the poor by our legal system.
  • India is the only country where no social science journal is published in any of the Indian languages. All “eminent” historians write their histories of India in English. All “eminent” sociologists publish their micro and macro level studies of Indian society in English. For those who are not well-trained in handling the English language, all the new knowledge being generated about the past and present of Indian society is inaccessible. There are no serious books or journals available to them in the subjects they study or teach. A large proportion of them have never read anything other than cheap student guidebooks, many of which are in turn written by poorly educated people. Consequently, most of our MAs and PhDs, especially those from small town universities, are so poorly educated that they cannot write five correct sentences in the language in which they have to submit their thesis. Not surprisingly, high status scholarly conferences on Indian history, politics, sociology and even Indian religions are mostly held in American,      British, even Australian and German universities rather than in Kurukshetra, Patna or Meerut universities where few even among the senior faculty are likely to be fluent in English.
One of the reasons why Indians have so deeply internalised the disdainful view of their colonial masters about indigenous Indian society is that very few among the educated elite are able to read or make sense of Indian language sources of Indian history and society. Consequently, we depend on the accounts written by colonial administrators, foreign missionaries and sundry foreign travellers to get a sense of our past. Scholarly studies and translations of Indian epics and dharmic texts are also mostly done by Western scholars. As a result, their biases, their interpretations, their critiques become ours. We begin to view our successes, our failures, our problems and delineate even our aspirations through the eyes of outsiders.

We celebrate those who are celebrated by the West. We ignore those who are disapproved of or looked down upon the West. Today, if you ask anyone among the English-educated elite to name three good current Indian literary authors, they are likely to name the likes of Vikram Seth, Shashi Tharoor or Amitav Ghosh. Very few will name OV Vijayan, who is one of the best writers in Malayalam, or Vijay Tendulkar, who wrote some of the finest plays in Marathi. Why? Because these writers wrote for fellow Indians in Indian languages and won Indian literary awards, not a British or American award. They have given us profound new insights into our society and made significant literary innovations both in form and content. But we do not consider these authors as important as authors who have won a Booker Prize. Can we think of an important Chinese, Japanese, German or French writer who has never written in the language of his/her own people? Writers elsewhere get international recognition after they have been read and admired at home. In India, we are intellectually browbeaten into admiring those who are smart enough to achieve recognition in the West.

Those who think English is the language of opportunity would do well to remember that while it opens doors for a select few and provides them the wherewithal to be internationally competitive, it shuts all doors on those who are denied the opportunity to get a good education in English. We are so obsessed with and enamoured by our ability to be able to communicate and work with people in New York, London, Toronto, Sydney that we don’t seem bothered by the fact that English acts as a barrier in communicating with hundreds of millions of people living in our own country and is making them feel like third class citizens.

English can never serve as a vehicle for mass education in India. Proficiency in English is unattainable for most and creates conditions of unequal competition for the vast majority. More than a century and a half after English came to be imposed as a language of governance and for the elite professions, no more than one percent of our people use it as a first or second language. For the majority, even of educated Indians, English remains at best a third language. Nearly 45 percent people live in states where Hindi is the official language while a significant percentage of people even in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kashmir, Assam, Punjab, Bengal, Andhra, Orissa have a working knowledge of Hindi. And yet, the English-educated elite gets outraged at the idea of Hindustani replacing English as a link language.

The Politics of Language
Regional languages have become the vehicle of mass literacy as well as a medium for the assertion of new regional cultures emerging through the process of subsuming many of the folk languages and dialects and non-official languages in various states. For example, Hindi as the official language of UP has marginalised Bhojpuri, Awadhi and the many other dialects of Uttar Pradesh and in the process homogenised the culture of the state, though at the cost of the latter. However, it is impossible for non-official languages to gain respectability if the official regional languages get treated with disdain. Though these languages are downgraded socially and economically, they are the vehicles of political discourse in states. It is no coincidence that today, there is only one Chief Minister of a state in all of India — namely Navin Pattnaik of Orissa — who is not comfortable in speaking in the language of his State. He too could not have won an election but for the tremendous goodwill built by his father Biju Pattnaik, who was well rooted in Oriyan culture. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi have both had to learn Hindi with sustained effort, after they developed political aspirations, whereas for the first 30 years of her life in India, Sonia Gandhi did not bother to learn Hindi nor taught her children to learn it seriously.  

The political power of regional languages and regional elite is evident from the fact that a person who is not deeply entrenched in the language and culture of his/her constituency is not likely to win an election, no matter how high his/her other qualifications. This is an indirect indication of the language policy that people actually endorse when they have the power through their votes. However, the judiciary, bureaucracy and elite professions are dominated by people who cannot write five sentences in the regional language, all because people have no power to influence the language preference of the elite in those areas, as they do in politics through their votes.

However, this has also meant that our politics has come to be dominated by people who have failed to acquire good quality education. Consequently, most of our elected representatives are ill equipped to handle the job they are meant for, namely, legislation. Therefore, bureaucrats and hired legal professionals end up conceptualising and drafting most of our laws, rather than people who get elected to legislatures. Thus the decline in the performance and standards of our political institutions is a direct consequence of the dual language policy we have adopted, which leads to poor quality education for the general mass of people in India.

First Published in Manushi Journal (Issue No. 154) : 
http://www.manushi-india.org/pdfs_issues/PDF%20Files%20154/MK%204-10.pdf






Madhu Kishwar

Madhu Kishwar
इक उम्र असर होने तक… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …اک عمر اثر ہونے تک