Quota is not the way: Arun Shourie

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Published on Sun, Jun 25, 2006

Karan Thapar: Hello and Welcome to Devil’s Advocate. My guest today is one of the sharpest critics of India’s reservation policy. In a book published this month Falling Over Backward, he exposes its intellectual hollowness and its moral two-facedness. But is he against reservation specifically for the Scheduled Castes? And if he answers this as yes, then how does he think India should respond to the centuries of discrimination they have suffered? Those are the two key questions that I would put today to Arun Shourie.

Mr Shourie, let me start with a simple question to establish your position. When you say you are against reservation per say, are you also including reservation for the Scheduled Caste?

Arun Shourie: Yes, I think so. Because reservations are not meant to compensate for historic wrongs. They are meant for helping people at the moment.

Karan Thapar: Well, that’s what I want to put to you. The Scheduled Castes have been treated as untouchables for centuries. In fact, even their shadow was considered to be polluting. Their dignity has been trampled upon. Their individuality and humanity has been questioned. Why do you believe that reservation is not an appropriate way of giving them confidence and status?

Arun Shourie: Firstly, these are clichés without particular examination of historical records. Because a passage occurs in something called Manu’s doctrine or Manu’s compilation, I mean I have not met a person who realises or who acknowledges the fact that this compilation was done over 700 years.

Karan Thapar: Let's leave Manu Smriti out.

Arun Shourie: No.

Karan Thapar: When you are saying these are clichés, are you saying that in fact the untouchables have not been treated in the way that history acknowledges?

Arun Shourie: No. They have been in parts of India. Let's say in some districts of the South. And the real remedy to that has been in modernisation. In overcrowded trains... Indians make five billion railway journeys every year. Five times of our population. In overcrowded buses, are you first verifying what is the caste of the person standing next to you?

Karan Thapar: But what happens when you get off the bus? It’s an argument in your book.

Arun Shourie: No. No.

Karan Thapar: Equality may be forced upon you in a bus, because you have no choice. But when you get off the bus, inequality reigns supreme. It is that inequality that I am talking about.

Arun Shourie: It doesn’t. That’s not the argument in my book at all.

Karan Thapar: I am not saying it is the argument in your book. I am countering your position that reservations are not justified for Scheduled Castes. I am asking you why you believe that centuries of discrimination should not be countered by reservations?

Arun Shourie: You asked me that and I gave you the answer that reservations were and are not meant in the Constituent Assembly as a compensation for historic wrong.

Karan Thapar: They can be used for that?

Arun Shourie: But… My friend, let me answer. Because there are better ways to lift people. Poor must be helped, they must be lifted. That’s the duty of society, but reservation is not the way and that’s why I argued.

Karan Thapar: Let's come to the better ways in a moment's time, I very much want to talk about them. But for most people listening to this interview, it will come as supreme shock that you believe reservations for the Scheduled Castes, who have suffered centuries of discrimination, are unjustified. Let me put to you why people disagree. Even today, Valmiki graduates are unable to get proper jobs and have to scavenge because they are considered untouchables. Even today, the Mushahars of Bihar are forced to eat rats and mice because they are too poor to access proper meal. Are you saying to me that reservations for such people are wrong?

Arun Shourie: Yes. Because the way to help them is to give them jobs and to give them access to education so that they don’t eat the damned mice. And the very fact that after 50 years of reservations, they are still eating mice is a conclusive argument against the compassion that you are showing.

Karan Thapar: Except for the fact that they don’t get jobs because they are untouchables.

Arun Shourie: Absolutely bunk. It is the other way round.

Karan Thapar: Why then are there Valmiki graduates scavenging for a living?

Arun Shourie: But there are Brahmin graduates who are doing it because of inadequacy of jobs.

Karan Thapar: But there is a difference. In one case, there is discrimination and in the other it is the inadequacy of jobs.

Arun Shourie: No. No. You just don’t let me speak. In China, people are scavenging and eating rats. Not because of caste, but because of 110 million of floating population who have lost their jobs.

Karan Thapar: Chinese eat snails, they eat eels, they eat snakes. There is a different culture and cuisine.

Arun Shourie: No. Just one second. I am talking of the 110 million Chinese who have been dislocated by modernisation. You read any Chinese text and you will find that. The point there is that I am all for the stopping of eating mice and elimination of poverty and giving people jobs, but it is wrong to presume…

Karan Thapar: Aren’t you missing the point here? There is difference.

Arun Shourie: No, I am not missing the point. You are not letting me make the point here. But when they are being discriminated against, the persons who are doing that most, who are beating them, who are responsible for the massacres as reported by Mandal himself are the so-called OBCs, who own land.

Karan Thapar: But that’s not the question I asked you.

Arun Shourie: But that’s the question.

Karan Thapar: No, that is not the question. The question is this. There is a difference in dislocation because of modernisation that affects people of all classes, of all castes. I am talking about discrimination due to untouchability, due to a wall of prejudice, which has affected people for centuries. Surely, today modern India has a moral obligation to atone and to recompense for the way it has treated the Scheduled Castes. You are denying that?

Arun Shourie: Karan, I completely would put aside this moral outrage that many of you put on.

Karan Thapar: It’s not put on, it is a reality for the people who are affected.

Arun Shourie: Just a second. Yes, but the so-called modern people do put on this compassion. The fact of the matter is that great progress has been made by our social reformers. That is the real way for dealing with this. Swami Dayanand, Swami Shraddhanand, Sri Narayan Guru in the South…

Karan Thapar: I am afraid it hasn’t changed the situation at the ground.

Arun Shourie: You are absolutely…How do you know the situation? Will you please just let me speak?

Karan Thapar: Can I just answer that?

Arun Shourie: No. First let me speak. Let me first answer your question when you assert that the situation has not changed, that is what I call a cliché. You have to listen.

Karan Thapar: Can I justify that?

Arun Shourie: No. Just one second, let me complete it. I will give you the documentary evidence. You see what Sri Narayan Guru reported in Kerala at the turn of the century. You see what Gandhiji found in the 1920s and you compare that with things today.

Karan Thapar: Compare it with 2006. Name one village out of India’s 6,00,000 villages where the Dalits are permitted to stay in the centre of the village. Not only are they banished to the outskirts, but in most cases, they are required to live in the south side so that the wind that blows over them doesn’t pollute the village. That is the extent of discrimination they still suffer.

Arun Shourie: And the wind in all of South India comes from the south my friend. I don’t know where you get this nonsense from?

Karan Thapar: Chandrabhan Prasad, perhaps one of the few Dalit intellectual scholars, who can easily confirm the facts to you.

Arun Shourie: Well, maybe. We have all got impressions about India. India is a large country. Almost every statement about India must be true, but the south business is quite silly because if you come to Goa my friend, you see the wind coming form the south. You come to Kerala, you see the wind coming from the south.

Karan Thapar: Ok. Let's approach this matter differently. Let's not talk about it in terms of moral obligation or recompense and atonement. Let me put it like this. Do you believe that reservations are intrinsically wrong because they lower standards, because they sacrifice merit as a way of giving people access for the wrong reasons?

Arun Shourie: Yes, they are for all these reasons and many more. For instance, especially when they are caste-based, then they reinforce caste as they have done in South as they are now doing in the North.

Karan Thapar: That’s disputable. You can only fight caste discrimination in terms of caste. Leave the caste basis aside. Your concern is that it affects merit.

Arun Shourie: But why it is caste-based? All reservations in India are caste-based. How can you just put it aside?

Karan Thapar: Because you are correcting caste prejudice. If the Dalits have been discriminated against as untouchables, you have to be given reservation on that very basis to make up for it.

Arun Shourie: That was the argument my friend. That is how things were rationalised in the end when the Constitution specifically forbade caste-based reservations. Then there has been discrimination on the basis of residence. There has been discrimination in India, it has been alleged, on the basis of language as in every other society. On the colour of one’s skin.

Karan Thapar: Quite right.

Arun Shourie: Just one second. So why not have reservations on the basis of the colour of one’s skin?

Karan Thapar: Well let's not talk about hypotheticals. I am trying to understand your concern about reservations.

Arun Shourie: I am not talking about hypotheticals. You said that there is discrimination on the basis of caste.

Karan Thapar: It’s a fact.

Arun Shourie: So I said there is discrimination on the basis of the colour of one’s skin. Why not have reservations for that? You are not answering it.

Karan Thapar: Because I am saying to you that the level of discrimination that has been practised on the basis of caste and because of untouchability is infinitely and incomparably greater. The comparison doesn’t arise.

Arun Shourie: How do you say that, my friend? Where is the basis?

Karan Thapar: Let's come back to the question that I began with. The real reason, if you are not accepting the moral obligation, that you find reservations wrong because they undermine merit, that they sacrifice standards?

Arun Shourie: Yes. That is one of the reasons.

Karan Thapar: But can I then point out to you that special concessions on the grounds that we are talking about have been granted to Indians since at least the 1850s, upper castes were beneficiaries. Let me give you an example. When the first college was set up in Madras in the late 1850s, British records show that the pass marks had to be reduced form 40 per cent to 33 per cent and a whole new concept of third division was introduced to help the sons of Tamil Brahmins. If it can be done for them in the 1850s, why can’t the same concession be given to the Dalits today?

Arun Shourie: Firstly, we are in 2006. The demand for proficiency is much greater. You look at the range of jobs at that time and the skills required for those jobs and…

Karan Thapar: But the problem is the same?

Arun Shourie: No. Firstly if that was the case, it was wrong. Second, if I have to learn typing and you give me a concession on that as in the case of N M Thomas vs. State of Kerala, then it is one thing. But if the job that is required is a highly skilled job in a medical institution and you lower the standards, the consequences are much greater. It’s not typing that you are lowering the standards for.

Karan Thapar: But talking about lowering standards to give them admissions and entrance, we are not talking about lowering standards of graduation. What we are talking about is just creating an opening field.

Arun Shourie: My friend, you have just not studied the Constitution in which it has now been provided that standards will be lowered even for promotions and standards have been lowered for post-graduate courses for reservations.

Karan Thapar: No, I am not questioning the extent…

Arun Shourie: You are. You just said this and then you run away.

Karan Thapar: No, I am not. I am not questioning the extent to which reservations have been taken. I am questioning the position you began with which is that reservations at the very outset for Dalits and Scheduled Castes is wrong. I am putting to you that similar concessions were given to Tamil Brahmins. Let me add. As the Indian University’s Commission says they were even given in 1935.

Arun Shourie: To hell with Tamil Brahmins, man. I am not defending. Dekho Tum baat hi nahin karne detein. Tamil Brahmins be damned. I wouldn’t care two hoots of what the British did. My whole argument is that the British sowed many of these things like separate electorates to divide Indian society.

Karan Thapar: All right. Let me give you a modern example. Yogendra Yadav did a study this month (in June) of 315 key positions in journalistic organisations and he chose 37 national journalistic organisations -- both television and print -- and he discovered that not one of the top 315 positions is manned by a Dalit. That is an example surely of the manner in which discrimination keeps out people of talent only on caste.

Arun Shourie: Absolute bunk. I cannot believe that Karan Thapar is not going to employ a proficient person whether it is for camera or for assisting him just because of caste. Karan Thapar is not like that.

Karan Thapar: Then how do you explain 315 top organisations and 37 media houses, including the papers you have worked for?

Arun Shourie: Because it takes time for that kind of competence to be acquired. Journalism is one of the freest professions as sports are, as entertainment industry is.

Karan Thapar: So, you are saying to the Dalits wait a century? Wait two centuries? Do you think time is on their side? You don’t think they need a helping hand?

Arun Shourie: Of course they do. But you don’t let me tell you what the helping hand has to be. Not reservations.

Karan Thapar: Why?

Arun Shourie: Because I have answered it 10 times and you keep going back to the same question. Repeating the very words. Just look at your own recording Karan, you are just repeating. You are taking up time.

Karan Thapar: You have answered it in terms of the moral obligation. Let me point out to you the efficacy between ’47 and ’97. In those 50 years alone, the number of Dalits who as a result of reservations went to schools and colleges grew from 1.74 million to 27.92 million. During the same period, the number of Dalit graduates jumped from 50,000 to over 5.5 million. That’s an example of how reservations have helped and you are denying this to them.

Arun Shourie: You have just picked up a few statistics.

Karan Thapar: Very meaningful ones.

Arun Shourie: Just one second. For the total number of persons going to school, what is the statistics from 1947 to 2006?

Karan Thapar: What do you mean the total number?

Arun Shourie: Irrespective of Dalits. The total number of school-going population in India from 1947 and now. Tell me.

Karan Thapar: I don’t know the answer, but the point that I am making is that the percentage of both has increased. I am saying the percentage of Dalits has increased because of reservations. Otherwise the system would have kept them out.

Arun Shourie: How do you say the last sentence?

Karan Thapar: I will illustrate it by taking government employment.

Arun Shourie: No. But firstly, you did not know what was the total growth.

Karan Thapar: Do you know it?

Arun Shourie: No.

Karan Thapar: You don’t either. You are simply trying to question whether the two have increased equivalently. I am saying that in fact the reason why the Dalits have increased. It's because of reservations and not because of general improvement in society.

Arun Shourie: That is just an assertion of yours.

Karan Thapar: It is a fairly valid one that most people would accept.

Arun Shourie: How do you say this? Then we have two contradictory assertions.

Karan Thapar: So you neither accept the logic in terms of morality or in terms of efficacy?

Arun Shourie: Yes.

Karan Thapar: On both grounds, you think reservations are wrong?

Arun Shourie: Absolutely.

Karan Thapar: Arun Shourie, since you are implacably opposed to reservations for the Scheduled Castes, what is your preferred way of tackling the discrimination they have suffered for centuries?

Arun Shourie: Firstly, I am not against reservations only for the Scheduled Castes, but for everybody. Second point is yes, if they have suffered that kind of discrimination and we have got good records of this kind of thing happening in the South, for instance in many parts of Tamil Nadu, then the best way is social reform and these great reformers who have made an enormous difference to India in the last 200 years as testified to by the Christian missionaries themselves.

Karan Thapar: Is there a second way beyond social reforms?

Arun Shourie: Yes, there is. Second is economic growth and modernisation.

Karan Thapar: Third?

Arun Shourie: Third is to find out what is the real reason for the poor performance of the child. For instance, he cannot retain what he learns in class because of poor nutrition, give him four free meals a day.

Karan Thapar: Individual attention?

Arun Shourie: Yes, absolutely.

Karan Thapar: Is there a fourth?

Arun Shourie: Yes. There are many things. He doesn’t have a place to study, make free dormitories. He needs free textbooks, he needs training and education.

Karan Thapar: That’s all part of individual attention. But is there yet another measure you would like to implement to help the Dalit? Because let me tell you why I am asking you all the things you have talked about -- social reform, economic growth, individual attention, they are very slow. They are unenforceable, they are difficult to monitor, they are certainly not transparent and in most cases, they are voluntary. The reason why people prefer reservations is because they are transparent, they are enforceable, and they are monitorable.

Arun Shourie: And for 50 years you have not monitored them? Even the government.

Karan Thapar: But that’s not the failure of reservations? That is the failure of the administration.

Arun Shourie: No. No. You don’t understand. Reservations are going to be implemented by whom? By the Americans in India?

Karan Thapar: Reservations have been implemented badly. That’s not an argument against reservations per se?

Arun Shourie: That is the usual argument of Five-Year Plans. Plan was good, but was not implemented properly.

Karan Thapar: But in this case, it is the truth?

Arun Shourie: It is not the truth. It is an assertion that you keep making. The fact of the matter is that these free lunch programmes, midday meals have helped a great deal in reducing dropout rates, in retention of what is learnt. We should do that. That is what requires painstaking work and the very fact that things are not being monitored…

I will give you an example if you please permit me. Recently in the Standing Committee of the Parliament on Social Welfare, there was a report available in May, in which the Secretary of Social Welfare was asked: "You have a backward classes of financial corporation, how do you distribute the money between he states?" He said: "Madam, we distribute it according to the proportion of OBC population in different states." She said: "How do you know the number?" He said: "We don’t know the number." She said: "What is the total number of OBCs in India?" He said: "We don’t know." "What is the total number of Scheduled Caste people?" He said: "We don’t know." If we don't know the number, we don’t know the distribution, we are not monitoring who is getting what.

Karan Thapar: It is a little facile to knock down reservations on the ground that the administrators who are responsible for administrating them are fools. That’s what you are proving. You are proving the administration, not the policy of reservations, is wrong.

Arun Shourie: I am saying more. Many commentators are just assertives. I will not listen to…

Karan Thapar: The assertion could be on fact?

Arun Shourie: What is the fact?

Karan Thapar: I can argue that your refusal to accept this is based on prejudice.

Arun Shourie: No. The caste people…

Karan Thapar: I being the asserter, you could be the prejudiced.

Arun Shourie: Could be. The Scheduled Caste people are saying that the benefits of reservations are being hogged by a Creamy Layer within Scheduled Caste.

Karan Thapar: But at least they are getting it. The Creamy Layer didn’t have it 50 years ago.

Arun Shourie: It is impossible to argue with that.

Karan Thapar: Why? It is a fact.

Arun Shourie: What is the Creamy Layer?

Karan Thapar: Once the Creamy Layer has benefited, you can remove them, but let them benefit before you remove them.

Arun Shourie: But you can benefit the people by having an economic criterion for identifying the individual. Why not?

Karan Thapar: You know that each time milk boils, it forms a Creamy Layer. You just remove it. Each boiling brings a fresh layer to the top.

Arun Shourie: Milk could be made to boil many time over, provided you identify the state policy by the unit of the individual and you identify the beneficiary individual by economic criteria. You would then not be fortifying precisely the types of regressive institutions within Indian society like caste, which you want to get rid off.

Karan Thapar: Except that the people who are untouchables were not created untouchables because of their individual character but because of the group. That’s why the group is being focused upon.

Arun Shourie: It reinforces the kind of group. This was Panditji’s view. I believe that this has been vindicated by time that we have reinforced that group identity to the great evil of society, to the ill results of society.

Karan Thapar: This will unfortunately have to be my last question. That many Dalits listening to you will say that ‘he may be a liberal in many matters, but he is a hard-hearted, callous man who simply doesn’t understand what it’s like to be oppressed under centuries of discrimination.’

Arun Shourie: They said that to me when I wrote about Bhindrawala. He is a Hindu, Arya Samaji, does not…

Karan Thapar: The two situations don’t equate.

Arun Shourie: They do. When I wrote about the Shariat and the consequences of Shah Bano, everybody said he is communal, he is Hindu. And now? So wait for time.

Karan Thapar: So the verdict of your peers or the verdict of the majority of society is water off a duck's back as far as Arun Shourie is concerned.

Arun Shourie: I don’t know what the majority of the society. Karan Thapar doesn’t speak for them either.

Karan Thapar: Arun Shourie, a pleasure talking to you.

Arun Shourie: Thank you.

Fashion-Setters and their Well-Honed Technology

Arun Shourie
Before we get to explanations, consider some examples. To begin with, they seem unconnected. But only, "to begin with".

No one in the twentieth century has done as much to rid us of untouchability than Gandhiji. He attached more importance to ridding Hinduism of this accretion than to attaining Swaraj. He brought upon himself the hostility of orthodox opinion in western India, in the South by his uncompromising stand on the matter. But the other day, speaking during the commemorative session of Parliament, Kanshi Ram asserted that abolishing untouchability was never on Gandhiji's agenda. Not one person stood up to contradict him, not one stood up to point to the record of forty years of our country's history.

Similarly, consider what the press would have been saying and doing if some government other than one headed by a "Dalit" had spent Rs 100 Crore on a park, and contrast it with the way it reacted to Mayawati doing so. Or how it would have screamed itself hoarse if a government had used public funds to put up statues of Lord Rama, and contrast that with the silence it so studiously maintained as Mayawati used the very same funds to set up statues of Ramaswami Naicker, Ambedkar, and Lord Buddha.

Take the project she launched towards the end of her six months. She instructed officers to hasten and give gun-licences to "Dalits", in effect to persons her party-factotums certified as ones who should have guns. Such a venture is bound to spell disaster. When Mulayam Singh comes to power, he would follow this initiative up by ordering officers to give licences to the "other backwards", that is to cohorts of his party. Thus armed, gangs of the two would swiftly plunge UP to the depths of Bihar. No divine foresight was needed to see this sequence. But the press remained completely silent.

From personal knowledge born of his extensive travels in areas where Muslims are congregated and from his intimate acquaintance with them, in his Indian Muslims, Need for a Positive Outlook, Maulana Wahiduddin states that as a community Muslims are so much better off than they were, say at the time of Partition. He gives telling instances in support of this fact. But, he says, to acknowledge the fact in public is regarded among Muslims as betrayal of the community.

Till the collapse of the Soviet Union, our Communist parties, and Communists secured "assistance" of all kinds from the founts in Moscow and elsewhere. From the silence they maintained, it would seem that it was mandatory for liberals to remain silent about the "assistance". Not just that. For the Communists to take "assistance" was taken to be entirely legitimate -- woe upon the one who hesitated to believe that they were doing so only for a higher cause. On the other hand, for those who were not of that persuasion to be honest was to be "puritanical", it was to make a "fetish of honesty", to make an exhibition of it.

"I would like to review your book myself," said the editor of one of our principal newspapers. "But if I praise it, they will be after me also. I too will be called communal, high-caste and all that." "Brilliant, Arun, it was fascinating," said a leading commentator who had written a review that inclined to the positive. "But, you'll understand, I couldn't say all that in print. But it really is brilliant. How do you manage to put in this much work?"

The very selection of reviewers tells the same story. If there is a book by a leftist, editors will be loath to give it to a person of a different point of view : "They will say, I have deliberately given it to a rightist," the editors are liable to explain. On the other hand, if it is a book by a person they have decided is a rightist, they will be loath to give it to a reviewer who also has been branded a rightist : "They will denounce me for deliberately giving the book to a person who was bound to praise it," they will bleat. Therefore, in such cases they deliberately give the book to a person who "is bound to condemn it"!

A newspaper quotes a friend as saying, "Arun Shourie has quoted verbatim from the 5 volumes of Making of the Indian Constitution vis-�-vis Ambedkar. The mistake he has made is that he has selectively quoted from the book. He hasn't quoted from the part where Dr Ambedkar said that he was the chairman of the Drafting Committee but there were others like Iyer, B N Rau and T T Krishnamachri, who had helped in framing of the Constitution. This kind of selective omission and to condemn the person and take it in the context of his life is not fair..." I don't understand the latter part of the last sentence, but its obscurity may be the contribution of the correspondent. But on the main point about selective omission, and the example that is given : it so happens that the friend has actually been among the most helpful in disseminating the volume; and that particular passage he cites is reproduced in full at pages 596 and 597 of the book. Now, I have not the slightest doubt that the friend knows me well enough to know that I wouldn't do the kind of thing he has ascribed to me. I have no doubt too that he could have easily located the passage -- it is mentioned in the Index itself. "But he had to say all that so as to be able to continue to help you," explains a friend who knows us both.

I get evidence of this compulsion to conform every day. The number of persons who have taken the trouble to reach out and tell me that I have done "the greatest possible service" to the country by exhuming the facts has been overwhelming -- among these have been persons from several political parties, as well as some very conspicuous names from among non-Mahar "Dalits" too. Indeed, it is not till the Ambedkar book came out that I got to know what the non-Mahar "Dalits" think of the idolization of Ambedkar. But all this has been in private, much of it furtive. On occasion, the very same persons -- having not just thanked me profusely for nailing the myth, but having actually purchased a substantial number of copies of the book for distribution among influentials in their state -- have denounced it in public, they have even joined in the demand that the book be banned!

Or take the even more pervasive phenomenon. As our commentators never tire of reminding us, Party publications and a few exceptions apart, our newspapers are owned by capitalists. And yet it is these very newspapers which have for as long as anyone can remember denounced capitalism, which have for decades extolled Naxalism, which have enforced the taboo against talking the truth about the Soviet Union, about Mao's China.

The examples seem disconnected at first sight, in fact they testify to the same phenomenon : the force of the intellectual fashion of the times. For the last half century, in India this fashion has been set by leftists. Now, this is a miracle that needs some explaining, some understanding. For on the face of it, that this lot should have been able to set the standard is a total incongruity. They had been ranged against the National Movement for most of the preceding decades. They had brazenly been proclaiming that the Soviet Union was to them "The Only Fatherland". Every forecast made by their much-vaunted "theory" had been totally belied by the course events had taken : that the rate of profit would decline in capitalist economies; that the masses would be progressively immiserised; that the capitalist economies would be convulsed by progressively more intense crises; that the toilers would get progressively organised; that they would form behind the phalanx of a Communist Party; that the exploited would then overthrow the exploiters, that the expropriators would be expropriated...

Everything went the other way. In the end, their proclamations failed on the one test they had said was the only one that mattered -- namely, that of practice : the Soviet economies collapsed by the sheer weight of their wooden inefficiencies. But they still set the standard in India!

The explanation consists of several layers. In spite of their record during the Independence Struggle, it is to the Macaulay-Marx class that power devolved after 1947. There were to begin with the intellectual fashions in Europe : the new rulers, Pandit Nehru in particular, were much affected by them. More than just "affected". As is well known, the Communists used to abuse Panditji day-in-and-day-out: "the running dog of Imperialism" was one of their milder epithets for him. But the more they abused him, the more, it would seem, Panditji became anxious not to fall further afoul with them. He would over-compensate in other areas. He would extend his umbrella even farther to shield and protect them. Mrs Gandhi of course had no inkling at all about theories, evidence about theories and the rest. She had adopted the progressive idiom for harvesting votes. These people had had a copyright on this kind of sloganeering. She adopted them as her natural allies, always straining to ensure that they would furnish the certificates she needed to continue to convince the poor, and groups such as the Muslims that she had their interests at heart. This anxiety, coupled with her innocence of their "theory" and its record in practice, as well as her great faith in her own ability to handle others made it that much easier for leftist operators to surround her, and occupy positions from which they could place their henchmen in vital posts -- in universities, in institutions like the Indian Council of Historical Research.

Tenure has ensured that their evil has continued after them! And that it will continue for a long time as yet. Tenure in the universities, and its counterpart in the press, the Working Journalists Act, will by themselves ensure that it is a decade and more before the grip of that fashion over what is taught, over what appears in print, over the questions and answers on which persons are adjudged for services will be loosened. So, the first set of explanations are historical, almost accidental, followed by institutional inertia. But there is more.

There is specialization for one, and with it a technology honed over decades. While they have always talked in terms of "the masses", these people have from the beginning realized the importance of the influentials, of the fact that decisions in societies even as vast as India are taken by just a few thousands. Among these are the ones who man the apparatus of the State and the opinion-makers. Accordingly, they have always paid great attention to these groups. Often getting at one through the other : those who man the State are greatly influenced by the intellectual fashions of the day; those in the media can often be had through the patronage and information which can be doled out through the State. Paying attention to these sections might seem obvious, but other groups seem to have been taken in by the talk of "the masses" being the ones that mattered, and have not paid the attention to the influentials which these progressives have.

The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble that they swiftly select one of the recommended names. This result is made all the more certain by the fact that, realizing the importance of ideas and books, progressives have made it a point over the years to have their kind fill positions which others considered marginal in journalism -- such as that of the person looking after the books-page, the one looking after the "Letters to the Editor" columns.

You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses : and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other's books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like... Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink.

Again, you and I would not think this to be an effort of much consequence : so what if one set of publishers is given a leg-up by this agency purchasing a few hundred or even a thousand copies of some book, we would ask. But that is only because we do not know the publishing business : given the minuscule print-runs of our publishers, the fact that a publisher can be sure of selling, say, five hundred copies of one book through this network in the case of one book, and not have this assurance in the case of another book will prove decisive.

So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other's books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles -- and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities...

And books are but the smallest of their activities : Letters to the Editor are orchestrated in the same way. As are "analyses" : one of them asserts, "The book is nothing but the last war-cry of the twice-born". Writing in another paper, another says, "As the leading commentator... in his trenchant analysis of Shourie's latest diatribe has shown, the book is nothing but the last war-cry of the twice born..." Assertion becomes a thing established!

In an unorganized, unsuspecting society such as ours, even these well-honed organizational maneuvers by themselves prove decisive. But in a sense, even these devices are results, not causes. After all, why is it that those who were in positions of power found this lot so useful ? Why did intellectuals gravitate to this world-view in spite of the fact that every shred of evidence showed that it had no basis at all?

India Connect
October 18, 1997

Fascism will be Inevitable if Aggression is Called Resurgence

Arun Shourie

'Dalits fight back,' 'Dalit resurgence,' 'Dalit politics will never be the same again,' 'Mumbai massacre a watershed' -- headlines, news stories, comments in the wake of the firing at the crowd in Mumbai. There was a little hiccup -- the leaders of the 'Dalits' whom these publications had been building up for years were thrashed by the 'Dalits' whose resurgence the same press was celebrating! But the prophets of resurgence soon regained their vigour.

That 'resurgence' which our press detected, the 'resurgence' it was celebrating, its prophecy -- 'things will never be the same again'. How do that 'resurgence' and prophecy look two months later?

There is a pattern to this. Two years ago the press was full of analyses, 'resurgence of OBCs.' There is no talk of that today -- Laloo Yadav having shown the uses to which that particular resurgence was put, the resurgent Yadavs and the like having shown in massacre after massacre what they will do to the other group, the 'Dalits', whose resurgence the press is hailing. Before that -- what with killings in Punjab, in Kashmir, in Assam and the North-East -- the press was full of analyses proclaiming the resurgence of 'sub-nationalism', the 'coming into their own' of 'sub-national groups'.

And before that the Muslims were the ones who were proclaimed to be resurgent -- the killings in the wake of the demolition of the Babri mosque, the rise of the Islamic Seva Sangh: 'Muslim politics will never be the same again,' the press declared, 'Muslim youth alienated, will turn militant.'

And before that Naxalbari was to light the prairie fire. And after that -- what with Charan Singh, Tikait, Devi Lal -- the 'peasants' were proclaimed to be resurgent. And then of course there were the original resurgents throughout - the 'workers'. No talk of any of those resurgences today -- the resurgence this time round is of the 'Dalits'.

Notice, they proclaim resurgence only in regard to groups which constitute parts, never the whole, indeed to qualify as resurgent the group must be denouncing the whole -- for instance, you wouldn't catch any of these analysts seeing in the destruction of the Babri mosque resurgence among Hindus -- that was vandalism, a return to barbarism!

But the terrorists -- so long as they were Sikhs as in Punjab, or Muslims as in Kashmir -- they represented the resurgent sub-nationalities. So, it isn't that our intellectuals detect resurgence anywhere and everywhere. The group must be repudiating the whole, then whatever it does is a manifestation of that resurgence, and, accordingly, by definition entirely in order.

The first point thus is fanciful theorising. The second is purposeful theorising. The third point, indeed a necessary adjunct to both those kinds of theorising, is to block out the reality of what is going on. In the resurgence of workers, the fact that the leaders were just traders in unions had to be overlooked.

In the resurgence of peasants, the all-too-manifest petty politicking of Charan Singh, of Devi Lal and the rest had to be shut from view. In the resurgence heralded by Naxalbari, the fact that the Naxalites were just murdering and extorting had to be buried.

In the resurgence of OBCs, the fact that these were the very ones who on Mandal's own telling, and of course as evidenced by scores and scores of massacres since -- were belabouring the Scheduled Castes had to be obscured, Laloo's loot had to be obfuscated. The latest resurgence has made similar demands. It wasn't clear at all -- two months after the incident it still is not clear -- who put those shoes around the statue in Ramabai Nagar: A rival faction of the Dalit leadership, said many; the Congress out to create a case for the dismissal of the state government, said as many; the Congress acting through the suddenly respectable don, Arun Gawli, said others: Each theory as plausible as the other.

But our press was interested in only those things which could be used to reinforce the bad name it has given to the Shiv Sena-BJP government. Not only was Arun Gawli suddenly respectable -- the new manifestation, like Haji Mastan earlier, of resurgence -- Chhagan Bhujbal -- till the other day 'the gauletier of Thackeray' -- became a hero-victim just as suddenly. That too required strong amnesia.

With the solitary exception of The Observer, not one publication cared to recall what this very man had done not long ago -- the 'Dalits' held a demonstration around the Martyrs Memorial at Flora Fountain in Mumbai; Bhujbal led his followers the following day, and had the Martyrs Memorial and the area around it washed, he had pujas done, he staged an elaborate Shuddhikaran ceremony at the site: The 'Dalits' have polluted the place, he ' declared, and he is having it cleansed with Gangajal.

The resurgents silence the propagandists: No talk of the resurgence of sub-national groups after Bhindranwale, after the Kashmir mercenaries; no talk of workers and peasants after Dutta Samant and the Communists; no talk of the OBCs 'coming into their own' after Laloo Yadav. I have little doubt that the Ambedkarites will, with comparable thoroughness, silence the ones who have read into the latest events the empowerment of yet another group.

Our intellectuals make out that, because the group has been wronged, it has the right to behave as it will, that it has a right to flout norms and rules: It is but natural, and therefore it is but right, their theories go, that the long-suppressed should have no patience with institutions, norms, rules and such fetishes; after all, the theories go, these rules and norms are devices by which the rest keep this group down.

When these two notions are compounded in the consciousness of a group -- the notion that it has been wronged, and that therefore it has the right to do as it will -- Fascism is the certain outcome: A Laloo Yadav acting above the law, his goons taking over the streets when a step is taken to bring him to book - that, if only our press gives up its blinkers, is the real Fascist force.

As are those acting in the name of 'Dalits' today -- the muscle they deploy, the amounts they exact, the brazenness with which they proclaim their exemption from every norm. No society can survive the abandonment of norms, of rules. On the other hand, at each step by reading resurgence into the latest aggressive group, these intellectuals are goading that very shredding of norms.

Soon enough the group which these theorists stoke suffers too. Along with the leaders, these intellectuals make it believe that it has a right to receive without working, that it has a right to grab -- for what the others have today is what belonged to it in the first place, that it is what they have grabbed.

In a word, the intellectuals rationalise aggression, and thereby foment it. This has immediate consequences. Work is no longer a duty, on the contrary the notion that we must work for what we want or need is proclaimed to be a device of the exploiters to keep the group in bondage. As the group becomes aggressive, other groups get pushed and thereby a strong reaction against that particular group develops.

That is what happened in regard to the Sikhs, it is what happened in regard to unionised labour, it is what has happened in the last five years against the Yadavs. What is being done in the name of 'Dalits' will ensure the same outcome against them.

When a group has been taught that it is right for it to be in a rage, rage becomes its second nature. Flying off the handle becomes a habit, even a fashion. And once a habit, it doesn't remain confined to exploding at outsiders: Members of the group -- and the leaders of the group really are the leaders in this regard -- explode just as ferociously at each other.

You would have noticed how such groups split, and go on splitting -- workers' and peasants' organisations, Naxalites, the OBCs, the uncounted factions of the Republican Party, every single group which has been worked up.

The leaders had started by exploiting the sense of insecurity in the group. Intellectuals started by fabricating 'reasons' for the group to feel suspicious of others, and to feel insecure. But the sequence compounds the insecurity. The reaction the aggressive behaviour of the group ignites gives genuine ground for feeling insecure -- that is obvious.

But I have observed a deeper, subterranean reason in addition. The entire chest-beating in the name of the group -- the chest-beating by intellectuals as much as that by the leaders -- comes to be based on gross exaggerations, indeed on wholesale falsehoods. This in turn becomes another reason for being even more aggressive -- the way these leaders and intellectuals descend to scotch the mere attempt at examining their assertions has been put in full view in the last decade.

That screamed-out righteousness, that worked up rage give the game away: They show that the leaders and intellectuals know that there is nothing to their assertions, that the moment examination begins, their shops will shut.

The group suffers -- but our intellectuals will not give up their practised trade any more than the leaders will. So intense is their need for these worked-up groups that, if one ground for stirring them falls through, they immediately latch on to another. Notice how every leftist denounced caste till the other day: 'class, not caste,' that was the war-cry. And today, every leftist is a casteist -- 'in India, caste is class,' that is the new analysis.

The need flows first of all from the high opinion these worthies have of themselves. They are convinced that their anointing is very important: It is vital strength for the group, they are certain. In their own eyes, and something they are even more keen about, in the eyes of others of their kind, shouting on behalf of the latest resurgent group is to declare oneself, it is to take a stand.

Then there is calculation: These intellectuals have convinced themselves for ever so long that shouting 'injustice,' 'exploitation' will get them a following in the target group: To see how potent this lure is you have just to read the internal Communist party documents of the late forties, documents in which the high-command explained that supporting the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan on the ground that Muslims would never get justice In a united India would attract Muslim middle class youth to the party.

But there isn't just calculation, there is compulsion, a psychological one: The very trade of these intellectuals is denunciation of India, of the whole as against the parts. When a group within the whole screams in anger, they feel vindicated: Hence, they ignite the group, 'it is right for you to rage,' they convince it; when it is enraged, they proclaim in triumph, 'see, this is an unjust society.' Even more compelling is the hunger of the impotent. These revolutionaries-by-proxy are a timorous lot, gnawed at by feelings of irrelevance and impotence. They search for the latest group that is stirring into aggressiveness. They gravitate to it. They goad it along. Then, shouting on its behalf, they convince each other they are a part of it, and thereby make-believe that they have power, that they count for something!

Society suffers as a consequence. The group suffers. But by then our friends are on to the next group. Jharkhand Tribals, next round?

The Observer
September 12, 1997

Premises and their Inevitable Consequences

Premises and their Inevitable Consequences
Arun Shourie






On January 2nd, 1937 a Professor of Philosophy from Poland, Krzenski came to see Gandhiji. Krzanski told Gandhiji that Catholicism was the only true religion.

"Do you therefore say that other religions are untrue?" Gandhiji asked.

Krzenski: "If others are convinced that their religions are true they are saved."

Gandhiji: "Therefore, you will say that everyone would be saved even through untruth. For you say that if a man really and sincerely believes in what is as a matter of fact untruth, he is saved. Would you not also hold, therefore, that your own way may be untrue but that you are convinced that it is true and therefore you will be saved?"

Krzenski: "But I have studied all religions and have found that mine is the only true religion."

Gandhiji: "But so have others studied other religions. What about them? Well, I go further and tell you that religion is one and it has several branches which are all equal."

Krzenski: "I accept that no religion lacks divine inspiration but all have not the same truth, because all have not the same light."

Gandhiji: "It is an essentially untrue position to take, for a seeker after truth, that he alone is in absolute possession of truth. What is happening to the poor astronomers today? They are changing their position every day, and there are scientists who impeach even Einstein's latest theory."

Krzenski: "No. But I have examined the arguments in favour of other religions."

Gandhiji: "But it is an intellectual examination. You require different scales to weigh spiritual truth. Either we are all untrue -- quite a logical position to take -- but, since truth does not come out of untruth, it is better to say that we all have truth but not the complete truth. For God reveals His truth to instruments that are imperfect. Raindrops of purest distilled water become diluted or polluted as soon as they come in contact with mother earth. My submission is that your position is arrogant. But I suggest to you a better position. Accept all religions as equal, for all have the same root and the same laws of growth."

Krzenski: "It is necessary to examine every religion philosophically and find out which is more harmonious, more perfect."

Gandhiji: "That presupposes that all religions are in watertight compartments. That is wrong. They are always growing. Let us not limit God's function. He may reveal Himself in a thousand ways and a thousand times."

Now the Professor switched on to the next question viz., that of fighting materialism.

Gandhiji: "It is no use trying to fight these forces without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth."

Krzenski: "But I have a great respect for your religion."

Gandhiji: "Not enough. I had that feeling myself one day, but I found that it was not enough. Unless I accept the position that all religions are equal, and I have as much regard for other religions as I have for my own, I would not be able to live in the boiling war around me. Any make-believe combination of spiritual forces is doomed to failure if this fundamental position is not accepted. I read and get all my inspiration from the Gita. But I also read the Bible and the Koran to enrich my own religion. I incorporate all that is good in other religions."

Krzenski: "That is your goodwill."

Gandhiji: "That is not enough."

Krzenski: "But I have great respect for you."

Gandhiji: "Not enough. If I were to join the Catholic church you would have greater respect for me."

Krzenski: "Oh yes, if you became a Catholic, you would be as great as St. Francis."

Gandhiji: "But not otherwise? A Hindu cannot be a St. Francis? Poor Hindu!"

Krzenski: "But may Take your photograph?"

Gandhiji: "No, surely you don't care for materialism! And it is all materialism, isn't it?" (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 64, pp. 203-4)

Gandhiji's acuity and wit! On the other side, the trap the dogma of certainties lays for its adherents.

For the position that Krzenski was articulating is the standard position, it is the ineluctable position that every adherent of a revealatory, milleniar- ist religion must take.

The premises of such religions -- of Christianity, of Islam, of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism -- are that there is one Truth; that it has been revealed to One Man -- the Son of God Jesus, the Messenger of God Mohammed, the Culmination of Philosophers Marx; that it has been enshrined by him or on his behalf in One Book -- the Bible, the Quran, Das Kapital; that this text is very difficult to grasp and, therefore, one must submit to and be guided by One (external, overarching) agency -- the Church, the Maulvi, the Party.

Now, as the millennium shall come only when, but immediately when all accept the Revelation, it is the duty of the agency - of the Church, of the Islamic rulers and maulvis, of the Party - to see that everyone sees the Light. If even after The Light has been shown to a person, he refuses to subscribe to it, he must be put out of harm's way.

For, in that circumstance, the man is not merely harming himself, he is coming in the way of the mandate of God, of Allah's Will, or as in Marxism a Utopia.

The presumption Gandhiji was nailing in that representative conversation follow necessarily from these premises: there is no salvation outside the Church or the Faith or Party -- the poor Buddha, with all his compassion, just cannot be a St Francis.

What must be done also follows inevitably from those premises: the Church must convert, Lenin and Mao must export the revolution, Khomeni must export the revelation. These are inescapable responsibilities.

The Results

Conversions have, therefore, been going on for 2000 years. They have been proclaimed to be an essential of Christianity, a duty of every Christian. They have become one of the principal preoccupations -- in some cases, as with the evangelists, the principal business of the Church.

An incredibly vast organisation has been built up, and incredibly huge resources are expended to save souls.

It costs "145 billion dollars to operate global Christianity," records a book on evangelisation. The Church commands four million full-time Christian workers, it runs 13,000 major libraries, it publishes 22,000 periodicals, it publishes four billion tracts a year, it operates 1,800 Christian radio and TV stations. It runs 1,500 universities, and 930 research centers. It has a quarter of a million foreign missionaries; and over 400 institutions to train them. And those are figures from a book published in 1989 -- since then these has been the surge in Eastern Europe and Russia.

And the numbers are indeed impressive. Europe and North America are almost wholly Christian. 97% of the population of Latin America, 92% of Phillipines, 36% of Africa, 32% of South Korea is Christian.

Are they -- either the continents or the converts -- closer to the spiritual? Is their conduct better?

Such were the questions that Gandhiji asked the missionaries about the ones they had converted in India. The questions are as telling in regard to converts the world over...

Also, the sudden jumps in the number of adherents during famines and other privations testify to the use to which such times were put.

Swami Vivekananda admonished the missionaries in the harshest language for the means they adopted, for the use to which they put the people's despair: his Collected Works are full of his extreme fury on these counts...

A polish student brought a photograph to Gandhiji and asked him to autograph it. There is a school run by Catholic fathers, the student explained, "I shall help the school from the proceeds of the sale of this photographs."

Returning the photograph, Mahadev Desai records in his Diary, Gandhiji said, "Ah, that is a different story. You do not expect me to support the fathers in their mission of conversion? You know what they do?" "And with this he told him...", records Mahadev Desai, "the story of the so-called conversions in the vicinity of Tiruchengodu, the desecration and demolition of the Hindu temple, how he (Gandhiji) had been requested by the International Fellowship of Faiths to forbear writing anything about the episode as they were trying to intervene, how ultimately even the intervention of that body, composed mainly of Christians, had failed, and how he was permitted to write about it in Harijan."

"He, however, had deliberately refrained from writing, in order not to exacebrate feeling on the matter." If the Harijans had awakened to matters of the spirit and had acquired the ability to assess these things, he told the student, "I would bless them for voluntarily embracing Christianity."

But that is not what is happening. He went on to recall how the weakness of his own son had been used by persons to convert him to Islam. "The young man could see the deep pain with which Gandhiji was speaking", Mahadev Desai records. "He did not press him to give the autograph and took his leave." (Collected Works, Vol 63, pp 47-8)

The Observer
February 4, 1994