Friday, August 18, 2006
When you can't win a face to face
I was reading a book - ‘Eminent Historians’ by Arun Shourie a couple of days ago. I really enjoyed a small incident in that book. I shall share the same with you and relate it to what happened very recently- just after Shourie gave talk at IISc.
Manoj Raghuvanshi, host of ‘Aapki adalat, Apka faisla’ had called Arun Shourie and K N Shrimali for a debate related to saffronisation/distortion of history by the right wing people. The drama unfolds…. (The questions & answers are not verbatim)
Manoj asks Shrimali: Why do you say the history is being distorted? Can you exemplify?
Shrimali: In the ancient times beef was eaten, it is written in the Vedas. But these people deny that.
Manoj: Can you quote a verse substantiating your stance?
Shrimali fails to recall & says I have not brought the books there. To his horror, someone from the audience hands over the four Vedas to him. Shrimali fails to show any verse which substantiates his statement. Then he says he was talking about the verses in Vedic literature but not Vedas themselves. Again, when asked to quote a verse, he fails to quote.
After that, Manoj himself reads out a few verses which say that cow is sacred, should not be killed / eaten. Now change of stance by Shrimali!- Few verses in Vedas opposing the beef eating does not indicate that they were not eaten at all !! (True. IPC section 304 opposes murder, but that doe not mean there are no murders at all. But the original stance of Shrimali is backtracked and has run out of resources. Also ancient people revered cows. These are the points to be noted.)
The story shifts to Aurangzeb and his fanaticism.
Manoj to Shrimali: Do you think Aurangzeb was intolerant towards other religions?
Shrimali: Of course no, he had several Hindu nobles in his court. (Shrimali is trying to fool people here. Efficient people will be kept in any King’s court. That does not suppress his religious intolerance.)
Manoj to Shourie: Yes, he was a fanatic. Religion was his motive to expand his state. Shourie quotes from proceedings of Aurangzeb’s court.
..Program continues. And at the end of the show Shrimali has lost out badly. What does he do? He starts attacking the program itself in a column in “The Hindu”. ...The host was biased, partisan editing to weaken my stance, showing Shourie’s quoting from questionable sources … So this is how a historian like Shrimali fights, lose out in face to face, and then criticize the program itself. These are the people who have spent a considerable amount of time in ICHR (Indian Council for Historical Research). These are the people who play a major role in how our social science curriculum should be.
Now the analogy. Shourie gave a talk in IISc about reservations. XYZ (A Professor whose name I don’t want to take) was sitting & listening to the talk. He did not utter a single word there. Just a couple of days after, XYZ writes a blog on what Shourie said and why Shourie is wrong. I saw his blog in another blog by ABC (a retired IAS officer). Now, we all know about the cross & circular references of our left historians. This was no different. ABC refers to XYZ’s blog and vice-versa. I asked ABC: “Why didn’t XYZ question Shourie in the talk itself?” ABC replied “may be XYZ did not want to stoop down to Shourie’s level”. That is the last thing he could have thought of because both ABC and XYZ are nowhere comparable to Shourie in stature. Naming them will not help either. XYZ himself did not answer my questions on his stance, his counter arguments about Shourie’s talk related to reservations. Next time you see someone criticizing a speaker or a program just ask “were you there in the thick of the action during the program?”
oh, right, of course! :)
Visiting your blog for the first time, Ananda. i don't know if you recall our exchange of e-mails some time back.
With regard to that exchange, you might find this interesting.
: 5:44 PM oh, right, of course! :)
Visiting your blog for the first time, Ananda. i don't know if you recall our exchange of e-mails some time back.
With regard to that exchange, you might find this interesting.
: 5:45 PM << Home
Thursday, August 17, 2006
This could be your experience as well.
This is a situation that you also might have come across when you were a kid. It might all look a bit too emotional. In any case I shall try to put it as neatly as I can.
I was studying in a small school in Kadirenahally, an area close to Padmanabha nagar. This was a govt. aided school. Every time when the new academic year begins, there used to distribution of free books, uniforms etc. to the backward class students. Even in my class there were several friends who beneficiaries of this scheme. And I always used to wonder “why don’t they give me? We are nowhere economically well off”. This is not just me; few of my other friends felt it too. I don’t want to put too many details of economic and educational conditions of my family here. My idea is not to emotionally hijack you, and I leave that trademark thinking/writing to our progressive friends.
Now the other side to the story. There were several beneficiaries who were economically not backward at all, about half of them. At times I visited their homes. And looking at their conditions I used to ask them “you are economically so well off, then why does the school give you free books etc.” The answer was very frank. “I don’t’ know, but it is given because of we are SC/ST/Backward caste. In fact, we can do away with these things; we don’t need them at all.” Thus were the situation and our thoughts when I was 3rd – 7th Standard. None of us knew what an SC/ST or a backward caste was, what politics was.
Fifteen years have past by, the situation remains the same. No, in fact the situation has worsened. Our politicians and progressives have reinforced the caste to such an extent that one wonders whether it is really possible to overcome the predicament we are headed to. Our progressive judges are also equally responsible. They have said, at times, that the economic criteria cannot be considered for reservations, which in turn used as a scale for awarding other benefits too, because there could two people in the same family who fall on the either side of the criteria. This would mean an anomaly as per them. They are ready to assume a hypothetical situation, but at times have failed to cross-check the ground reality. How can we change this ugly trend?
By the way, have you experienced anything similar?
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
The Volker-Natwar Saga
The Volker controversy has come to the limelight on the eve of the submission of the report by Justice Pathak.
In the justice Pathak report on Volker controversy, notice a few points below. (Note that these are the points noticed off the cuff, a detailed reading may reveal few more like this)
- The committee itself says in its report that it is unable to investigate enough to see whether Congress party was involved.
- It says the name of Congress party must have come because Natwar must have given such an impression.
Now we must question why the committee was unable to investigate enough? The reason is that the committee was not given enough powers to do so. They were constrained in the sense that the report and the investigations were purely based on the documents that were submitted to the Pathak committee voluntarily. The onus was on the ruling parties to allow the committee to investigate to the extent required to bring out all the involved people. But they did not choose to do so.
Secondly, the committee is making a guess that the Congress party was named because Natwar must have given such an impression. How did the Pathak committee read the minds of Iraqi officials?
Now Natwar says he and the congress party are inseparable. He says how congress can escape by making him a scapegoat? In this regard he must be allowed to make his case. He must be allowed to say whether the Congress party was also a beneficiary of the scam. And the investigators must be given a free hand to bring all the culprits to the court of law.
Congress party is trying to escape saying that “An eminent former chief justice headed the committee. He has completed the investigation in a reasonable quick time. It is not fair on the opposition to question the ability & sincerity of the justice”. But when the committee itself had limited power offered, whom should we blame that for?
Sunday, August 06, 2006
When Arun Shourie Speaks... - Part 2
In the last article, I had left out some important points in the latter half of Shourie’s talk. One of my friends- Ramana, suggested me to include those points. Hence I made an effort to add some more points, thanking Ramana. I also thank Indraneel for his feedback on my typos and grammar.
In his talk Shourie stressed an important point. The political class, as closely seen by him for 30 years now, recommending reservation has nothing to do with compassion towards the backwards classes. It is purely vote bank politics. To know the true color of these politicians their social practice must be closely watched. For example, which doctors do they go to when they are ill? In one of the cases, a politician wanted a German made dialysis machine, nothing less, and in spite of the machine being an easily operated one, he wanted two Germans to come down all the way to operate the machine. All these at the cost of taxpayers’ money!
And how did the Mandal commission come about? Devilal, the vice president then, had to quit his post in a forged document case. He challenged to gather a mammoth 10 lakh people, supporting him. V P Singh panicked and to nullify the effect of this he brought about Mandal commission. Compassion, heart crying for the poor etc. are sheer concoctions.
To put an end to this stupid caste based reservations, we must come up with alternatives. So what are those alternatives?
- Reservations must not be given based on caste, religion, birth etc. It must be completely based on secular aspects.
- None of the jobs, seats in the educational institutions, promotions etc. must be given as an entitlement. Everyone must strive to get it. Else it will hamper the growth.
- We must provide positive help for enabling everyone to compete and aspire for reaching higher status. Provide better food, space, books, computer facilities, scholarships etc.
- All the support must be given to the individuals but not a group.
- In identifying the individual to whom the benefits must be given, secular criteria such as his income, assets must be seen.
Caste based politics can only lead to disaster. Just like there was a backlash because of the reversal of Shah Bano case verdict which ended in the bringing down of the Babri Masjid, this reservation will also result in a backlash. And its effects will be much more than what you and I could imagine. Its time for us to put a halt to this caste based rhetorics which otherwise would spell disaster for all of us.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
When Arun Shourie Speaks ...
Last Thursday Dr. Arun Shourie was giving a talk on “Equal Opportunities: Alternatives & their Efficacies” (no prizes for guessing that the talk was against the reservations) at IISc through our students’ forum called Prasthutha. It was an absolute delight to listen to him. I put some key points of his talk here.
Indian Constitution has given high prominence for equality. But has also said that the ways and means in which it should be brought about should not affect the efficiency and hence the growth of the nation. Else it would lead to other adverse repercussions. But what is happening today? We have become experts in identifying inequality. Courtesy: Leftist rhetorics. Our eyes are strained to look at injustice, problems, inequality etc. So we start writing about it. Then the people suffering from so called inequality read it and come to us, and then we write more about it, and if that is exhausted we go around and discover inequality. Finally, if we can’t discover inequality we invent it!!!
There is no historical evidence to prove that Manusmriti was practiced in actuality. No one has ever given evidence regarding its practice. Marxist historians keep referring to the same few verses in it and say more than a millennium was full of upper cast extortions. Even just for the sake of it if you consider it were to be true, the makers of the Constitution were no fools to recommend reservation for just 10 years to compensate for the mistakes of one full millennium. So, the Constitution does not recommend reservation to compensate for the historical mistakes. It was inevitable at the time of Puna pact, 1932- when Gandhiji had to agree to it to avoid separate electorate based on caste.
Now we take a look at one of the progressive judges making some statements in his judgment. What do you mean by equality of opportunity if it does not produce equal outcome? If the outcome is not equal then the equal opportunity was a sham!! That is the (il)logical level to which our progressive judges can go!! He quotes to a write up called “Merit My Foot” (written in Rise and Awakening of Depressed Classes in India by a backward cast propagandist) in his judgment and states “nowhere merit is given such high importance as in
Finally few lines about Madal commission. What was the basis for deciding caste based reservation in 1992? The 1931 census report! Because, after 1931, there was no caste based enumeration in census. But if you read the census report of 1931, you will see that province after province the chief commissioners of census have reported that the caste system was fluidic and it was undergoing a rapid change. They had a great difficulty in caste based enumeration. To illustrate the problem just one line is sufficient: The total population of
These are few glimpses of what was there in the talk. To listen to the complete talk visit http://www.iisc.ernet.in/prasthu The entire talk can be downloaded. If you want the video file of the talk, I will be more than happy to provide you. Mail me at ananda.sreenivas@gmail.com. Also read Shourie’s book ‘Falling Over Backwards” to know more about these issues. Once again the statement turns out be true: “When Shourie speaks Marxists vanish”
