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Vol. 76 No 5

AUGUST 2012

THE RADICAL HUMANIST (Since April 1949)

Formerly : Independent India (April 1937- March 1949)

509

Founder Editor M. N. Roy

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The Radical Humanist

Download and read the journal at www.theradicalhumanist.com

Vol. 76 Number 5 August 2012

- Contents -

Monthly journal of the Indian Renaissance Institute

1. From the Editor’s Desk: I am a Woman: So What?

—Rekha Saraswat 1 2. From the Writings of Laxmanshastri Joshi: Spiritual Materialism: A Case for Atheism 2 3. Guests’ Section: In What Sense is the Self an Illusion —Bruce Hood interviewd by Sam Harris 5 European Crisis and India —K.S. Chalam 8 Strange Antics on Mercy Petitions/Death Penalty Pension for the Elderly: No Charity, a Human Right —Rajindar Sachar 11 An Apology to a Gentleman: Justice B. S. Reddy —Mastram Kapoor 15 4. Current Affairs’ Section: Minister’s Cost — N.K. Acharaya 18 5. IRI / IRHA Members’ Section: Excerpts from Innaiah Narisetti’s Autobiography —Innaiah Narisetti 19 Why FDI? The Anticorruption Movement —Jawaharlal Jasthi 22 6. Teacher’s & Research Scholar’s Section: Communal Violence Bill – Is It Enough?

—Manzoor Ali 25 7. Book Review Section: It’s Getting Better All the Time —Michael Shermer 29 Traitors to Ourselves —Dipavali Sen 32 8. Humanist News 34

Devoted to the development of the Renaissance Movement; and for promotion of human rights, scientific-temper, rational thinking and a humanist view of life.

Founder Editor: M.N. Roy Editor: Dr. Rekha Saraswat Contributory Editors: Prof. A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Dr. R.M. Pal, Professor Rama Kundu Publisher: Mr. N.D. Pancholi Printer: Mr. N.D. Pancholi Send articles to: Dr. Rekha Saraswat, C-8, Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India, Ph. 91-121-2620690, 09719333011, E-mail articles at: rheditor@gmail.com Send Subscription / Donation Cheques in favour of ‘The Radical Humanist’to: Mr. Narottam Vyas (Advocate), Chamber Number 111 (Near Post Office), Supreme Court of India, New Delhi, 110001, India n.vyas@snr.net.in Ph. 91-11-22712434, 91-11-23782836, 09811944600

Please Note: Authors will bear sole accountability for corroborating the facts that they give in their write-ups. Neither IRI / the Publisher nor the Editor of this journal will be responsible for testing the validity and authenticity of statements & information cited by the authors.

Also, sometimes some articles published in this journal may carry opinions not similar to the Radical Humanist philosophy; but they would be entertained here if the need is felt to debate and discuss upon them.

—Rekha Saraswat

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From the Editor’s Desk:I am a woman. So of people living in this world. My horizons what?I was born to parents after ten years of their marriage as their only child. It was a disappointment. All relatives and friends had expected a son. I was taught to live like a normal human being. It was a miserable failure. I had not learnt to exist like a woman (normal or abnormal). So, I had to be trained in the art of living specifically as a woman, afresh, on growing up, in the later years of my life. It was quite amusing but at times very annoying too.

My grandma would often affectionately admonish me. “Don’t laugh from the inside of your stomach.

What will your in-laws say?” Very confusing! How could laughing aloud and being cheerful annoy the new family? The woman in me would not understand. My mother would scold, “Why do you match your stride with your father? He is a man.

Take small, light steps. Learn to be feminine.”

Probably, walking side by side a man was an alien and improper concept. Treading a step behind was a native and decent tradition. My aunt would complain, “See, how she debates upon everything.

All the time, - this is right; this is wrong; this is logical; this is irrational. - How can a woman be so opinionative? She needs to learn to keep quiet and demure like a well-mannered girl.” How keeping my point of view before others would make me un-chivalrous was beyond my comprehension.

There were so many baffling queries. In those times, in the late seventies and early eighties there were limited means of gaining knowledge and exchanging information but for the written texts.

Phones and T.V.s were luxuries. Internet and its corollaries web-browsing, face-book, twitter, blogging were fine pieces of imagination and wishful thinking in our part of the world. Thus, the one man I would always turn to with my puzzling questions was my father. But, he would never reply directly. In response to my perplexity he would make me read books and more books; all kinds of them; books which talked about so many varieties

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expanded beyond national boundaries. Although, it was easy to confine a girl like me (who was trained by him to be more comfortable with a pen and paper than a ladle and spoon) in the safe haven of the home with a variety of manuscripts surrounding her but it was again a total disaster. I became a complete misfit amid my middle-class indigenous surroundings. For example, a girl talking so much about ideas, about life, about ideology, about philosophy and so less about men - something must be grievously wrong in her- my friends would ridicule me. I finally told my father that being idealistic is one thing and being realistic is another.

Roy cannot be born again and I need to stop finding him in every man around me. This most impractical man who was my father laughed aloud. He chuckled and said, “Don’t be disappointed. Keep your search on. At least this will save you from the charlatans.”

What happened next is a part of history. But the most astounding part of the whole story comes now. A candid revelation! It is astonishing but true!

Since the latter half of the first decade of the twentieth century I am myself turning (almost) into a typical Indian mother of a normal human being who is my daughter. The feeling is suffocating for me but devastating for her. Now, I am asking her to unlearn all that I taught her to be proud about. I am insisting upon her to play so many roles with innumerable masks on her face. In short, I am asking her to stop being a normal human being and to learn being simply a woman. The only difference between then and now is that they wanted me to achieve the art of being a successful north Indian middle-class house wife while I want her to attain the tactics of surviving with dignity as a woman in any part of this fearfully unsafe, technically modern yet culturally pagan world. I had asked my father then, “I am a woman, so what?” He had given me Roy’s Ideals of Indian Womanhood to locate my answer. But now, my daughter asks me again, “I am a woman, so what?” What do I give her, friends, to clear her doubts in the present circumstances?

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From The Writings of Laxmanshastri Joshi: Dawn of Sankhya Philosophy

Laxman S. Joshi

Spiritual Materialism – A case for Atheism Translated by —Arundhati Khandkar

[The book Spiritual Materialism – A case for Atheism, A New Interpretation of the Philosophy of Materialism written by Tarkateertha Laxmanshastri Joshi has been translated by his daughter, Arundhati Khandkar, who was formerly Professor of Philosophy at S.I.E.S. College, University of Mumbai, India. He passed away many decades ago but his contribution in building up the philosophical base of Radical Humanism has been no less. Roy acknowledged it in his life time and the followers of the philosophy continue to do so. I had requested Ms. Khandkar to translate her father’s major works from to Marathi to English for the benefit of the contemporary readers of RH. And to our pleasant surprise she informed that there is already the above mentioned book in English done by her. It is being serialised in The Radical Humanist June 2010 onwards. She has also promised to send us in English, gradually, more of his Marathi literature.

Laxmanshastri wrote this essay with the title Materialism or Atheism in 1941. How meaningful and necessary it is, even now, 70 years later, can be understood by the following paragraph given on the cover page of the book. —Rekha Saraswat

Sankhya ideology began first its evolutionary growth from the philosophy of Upanishads. It reached its prominence in the latter half of the Upanishadic period. Impressions of its reverberations are seen in Kathopanishad and in Shwetashwataropnishad in particular. The closest link that has taken place between the philosophical principles in Upanishads and the Sankhya Darshana is observed in Hinduism. The evidence for that is seen in the books such as Bhagavatgeeta, Mahabharata, Yogavasishtha, etc. and other books in the subject of Vedanta.

Sankhya philosophy evolved with the help of two important declarations which resided in the seed-form in Vedas and Upanishads. The plant that grew from that seed is the Sankhya philosophy.

The first declaration therein is as follows: ‘Sat, unimpeded in the past, present and future, all-pervasive, is the material cause of the universe.

And the universe is composed of Sat. The universe resides in Sat and disappears in Sat.’ The second declaration is: ‘That fundamental causal principle and the visible universe are one and the same thing.’

Out of the first declaration follows the doctrine that, ‘The inanimate Prakruti, a fundamental material substance, is the root cause of the universe’, which later evolved. Out of the second declaration, another doctrine was inferred, ‘The cause and the effect are one and the same thing.’

From the root cause the universe evolves, meaning that the root cause itself takes the form of the effect.

The effect before creation resides potentially in the cause! In other words, the effect is for sure, implicit in the cause. Here creation means manifestation. A series of events, the birth, the evolution and the death of the universe is like a cinema-movie. When the movie starts, the universe is born and when the movie ends, the universe is dead. According to the Sankhya philosophy, nothing dies really, what is dead is only cloaked under the cover of the cause.

Conclusion of Sankhya Philosophy: 2

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The following description of Prakruti, may be found strange by an average reader in modern times but may be found also charming, haunting by a sophisticated reader trained in modern physics.

Modern physics involves study of particles such as quarks, mesons, baryons, etc. Mesons and baryons possess various different attributes designated by terms such as strangeness, charm, beauty, bottomness, topness, and so on. It is hoped that the twenty-first century reader will empathise with the 5th century BC Sankhya philosophers in their struggle to describe their discoveries of the fundamental elements of the matter and the universe.

The primordial essence or the root cause of the universe is Prakruti. While explaining its attributes, Sankhya-gurus invented the idea of enumeration of the elementary objects by means of numbers. They hit upon the idea that the attributes of the root cause must be specified through definite numbers. Sankhya philosophers (Sankhya in Sanskrit means number) postulated three fundamental attributes of Prakruti: Satva, Rajas, and Tomas. The Sanskrit word for attribute is Guna which has a dual meaning: attribute or string.

Prakruti is constituted of triple-strings the primary element. These strings are different from each other, they are intertwined, and they are mutually opposite but cooperative. Attribute of Satva stands for preservation of unity among many, harmony, expansion and intellectuality. Rajas means creation, initiation and action. While Tamas accounts for motion, resistance, status quo, and inconsistency.

Beauty and goodness in the universe and life are the expressions of Satva string. Rationality, knowledge, joy, virtues, arts, organisation etc. are also the expressions of Satva string. Valour, dynamic tendency, hyperactivity and sorrow are the effects of Rajas string. Darkness in the universe, state of inertia, ugliness and resistance to develop in life are the outcome of Tamas string.

Sankhya philosophy says: Man and the universe, are composed of the triple string Prakruti. The 3

constituents of human experience happiness, sorrow and greed reside in the form of root cause inside the Prakruti and the universe. This is the implication of the statement: The core of the universe is happiness, sorrow and greed. Elements such as direction and time, included also in the cause, are the other attributes of Prakruti, which is an indivisible continuum that includes space and time as its characteristics. Inclusion, entrance and exit, are the nature of Prakruti. Therefore, Time which includes senses such as direction, sequential creation, rise and demise surely is no other than an attribute of Prakruti.

Sankhya philosophy could not accept one of the theories of Upanishads. It is regarding: ‘The causal substance of the universe as the soul!’ This principle was rejected because the soul or the self is experienced only in the human body. Atman, however, desires freedom by detaching itself through exit from the wordly activities and the struggle therein, fighting either against the evil or for the good. If the Supreme Being, the root cause of the universe and the soul were to be one and the same, the soul would not have desired detachment and it would also have been futile to detach.

Therefore, Sankhya philosophy had to postulate another primary principle, the Purusha, separate from the Prakruti. The core principle of the soul is freedom. Prakruti and its evolved form, the universe, is a limited field. If the causal elementary object of the universe would have been postulated to be the soul, the Supreme Being, freedom would have had no hope. Almost all other ideas in Upanishads were accepted more or less by the Sankhya philosophers, with some intellectual refinements. The Sankhya doctrine is an evolutionary development of the systematic enunciation of the Upanishadic theory!

Universe as an object is in its elemental form, indivisible, continuous, and unitary. Dynamics of the emergence of the universe from the nucleus of this object, and its disappearance are only a time-play. Essentially nothing emanates and nothing perishes. This indivisible eternal and

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pervasive object is the soul! With the study and debate of favour of the mystical principles such as the other this and similar thoughts in Upanishads, major world, asceticism, religious practices, mantra,

ideological movements had begun. Philosophy of Buddha thereafter is an important event.

Strange distinction of Philosophy of Buddha: Buddha’s ideology is unique and it is different from that of other founders of religion or mahatmas. It is remarkably distinct. From antiquity to date, founders of religion and the mahatmas have been asking us, ‘to cast aside our intellectual critique and keep faith in the divine commandments, experiences or revelations that we have received.’

As against this Buddha said, ‘This truth, which I am telling you should be received only after it is put to test by the touch stone just like gold. It should not be accepted because I am telling or because I someone great is announcing.’ Other founders of religion and the mahatmas have asserted that, ‘The truth and the preference of the other world and the supreme being should be understood as superior to that of this world.’ On the contrary, Buddha has explicitly instructed, ‘not to waste time in the discussion of things beyond the range of human mind such as the transcendental other world or those belonging to paramatma, the Supreme Being.

Buddha instead asks us to think of the unavoidable and the most difficult problems of life. Other religious founders have argued vociferously in

sacrifice, pyre, prayer, and divine chant on equal footing with morality. Buddha on the contrary, dismissed mysticism, its consequent practices and assertions and presented to man the Aryasatya meaning the eternal truths. Buddha preached these truths, untouched by any mysticism and clear like mathematics and instructed human beings to follow the middle path of self control. He revealed the supreme value of the human life over that of the other world, deities and god. He denounced also totally the means of sword and bloodshed, and their use any place anywhere, in human life. He pointed out to the consequences of egotism, obstinacy, and intolerance towards the views of the others. He felt that this kind of intolerance is more cruel and horrible than the sword itself. He also indicated how similar institutions are born in the womb of traditional religious faiths. Therefore, Buddha founded the religion which assigns premium value to tolerance, nonadamance, egoless conversion of opinion, rationalism and to the moral principles that can be determined with reason, clear like sunlight. From this only arose the various different Indian philosophies, the Darshanas, the beautiful visions.

Continued in the next issue..................

A Request to the Radical Humanists, Dear friends, We hope you are organising meetings & lectures or informal get-togethers wherever you are, in India or abroad to add your little bit in celebrating M.N. Roy’s 125th Birth Anniversary Year and not missing the opportunity of acknowledging his contributions to modern Political Philosophy.

Please send us the reports and pictures of such programs so that we may publish and post them in the RH & its Web Portal regularly during Roy’s entire Birth Anniversary Year.

—Rekha Saraswat

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exist independently of the person having the experience, and it is certainly not what it seems.

That’s not to say that the illusion is pointless.

Experiencing a self illusion may have tangible functional benefits in the way we think and act, but that does not mean that it exists as an entity.

Guests’ Section:

Bruce Hood [Bruce Hood is currently the Director of the

Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol. He has been a research fellow at Cambridge University and University College London, a visiting scientist at MIT, and a faculty professor at Harvard. He has been awarded an Alfred Sloan Fellowship in neuroscience, the Young Investigator Award from the International Society of Infancy Researchers, the Robert Fantz Memorial Award and voted a Fellow by the Association for Psychological Science. He is the author of several books, includingSuperSense: Why We Believe the Unbelievable. This year he was selected as the 2011 Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer—to give three lectures broadcast by the BBC—the most prestigious appointment for the public engagement of science in the UK. Bruce was kind enough to answer a few questions about his new book,The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity.—Sam Harris]

In what sense is the self an illusion? me, an illusion is a subjective Forexperience that is not what it seems.

Illusions are experiences in the mind, but they are not out there in nature. Rather, they are events generated by the brain. Most of us have an experience of a self. I certainly have one, and I do not doubt that others do as well – an autonomous individual with a coherent identity and sense of free will. But that experience is an illusion – it does not

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If the self is not what it seems, then what is it?

For most of us, the sense of our self is as an integrated individual inhabiting a body. I think it is helpful to distinguish between the two ways of thinking about the self that William James talked about. There is conscious awareness of the present moment that he called the “I,” but there is also a self that reflects upon who we are in terms of our history, our current activities and our future plans.

James called this aspect of the self, “me” which most of us would recognize as our personal identity—who we think we are. However, I think that both the “I” and the “me” are actually ever-changing narratives generated by our brain to provide a coherent framework to organize the output of all the factors that contribute to our thoughts and behaviors.

I think it helps to compare the experience of self to subjective contours – illusions such as theKanizsa pattern where you see an invisible shape that is really defined entirely by the surrounding context.

People understand that it is a trick of the mind but what they may not appreciate is that the brain is actually generating the neural activation as if the

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illusory shape was really there. In other words, the brain is hallucinating the experience. There are now many studies revealing that illusions generate brain activity as if they existed. They are not real but the brain treats them as if they were.

Now that line of reasoning could be applied to all perception except that not all perception is an illusion. There are real shapes out there in the world and other physical regularities that generate reliable states in the minds of others. The reason that the status of reality cannot be applied to the self, is that it does not exist independently of my brain alone that is having the experience. It may appear to have a consistency of regularity and stability that makes it seem real, but those properties alone do not make it so.

Similar ideas about the self can be found in Buddhism and the writings of Hume and Spinoza.

The difference is that there is now good psychological and physiological evidence to support these ideas that I cover in the book in a way that I hope is accessible for the general reader.

Many readers might wonder where these narratives come from, and who interprets them, if not a self?

I do not think there are many cognitive scientists who would doubt that the experience of I is constructed from a multitude of unconscious mechanisms and processes. Me is similarly constructed, though we may be more aware of the events that have shaped it over our lifetime. But neither is cast in stone and both are open to all manner of reinterpretation. As artists, illusionists, movie makers, and more recently experimental psychologists have repeatedly shown, conscious experience is highly manipulatable and context dependent. Our memories are also largely abstracted reinterpretations of events – we all hold distorted memories of past experiences.

In the book, I emphasize the developmental processes that shape our brains from infancy onwards to create our identities as well as the systematic biases that distort the content of our identity to form a consistent narrative. I believe

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much of that distortion and bias is socially relevant in terms of how we would like to be seen by others.

We all think we would act and behave in a certain way, but the reality is that we are often mistaken.

Answering the question of who is experiencing the illusion or interpreting the story is much more problematic. This is partly a conceptual problem and partly a problem of dualism. It is almost impossible to discuss the self without a referent in the same way that is difficult to think about a play without any players. Second, as the philosopher Gilbert Ryle pointed out, in searching for the self, one cannot simultaneously be the hunter and the hunted, and I think that is a dualistic problem if we think we can objectively examine our own minds independently, because our mind and self are both generated by the brain. So while the self illusion suggests an illogical tautology, I think this is only a superficial problem.

What role do you think childhood plays in shaping the self?

Just about everything we value in life has something to do with other people. Much of that influence occurs early in our development, which is one reason why human childhoods are so prolonged in comparison to other species. We invest so much effort and time into our children to pass on as much knowledge and experience as possible. It is worth noting that other species that have long periods of rearing also tend to be more social and intelligent in terms of flexible, adaptive behaviors. Babies are born social from the start but they develop their sense of self throughout childhood as they move to become independent adults that eventually reproduce. I would contend that the self continues to develop throughout a lifetime, especially as our roles change to accommodate others.

You talk about the role of social networking in the way we portray our self. Do you believe this technology is going to have a significant effect on us?

Honestly, I don’t know, and I spend a whole

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chapter speculating on this. We are increasingly spending more time on social networking sites, and I believe this will continue to become an integral part of the way we interact. These are still early days, and it is not clear how these new technologies are going to shape the social landscape, but we now have the capability to interact and be influenced by others in ways never before imagined.

There are some interesting phenomena emerging.

There is evidence of homophily – the grouping together of individuals who share a common perspective, which is not too surprising. More interesting is evidence of polarization. Rather than opening up and exposing us to different perspectives, social networking on the Internet can foster more radicalization as we seek out others who share our positions. The more others validate our opinions, the more extreme we become. I don’t think we need to be fearful, and I am less concerned than the prophets of doom who predict the downfall of human civilization, but I believe it is true that the way we create the narrative of the self is changing.

If the self is an illusion, what is your position on free will?”

Free will is certainly a major component of the self illusion, but it is not synonymous. Both are illusions, but the self illusion extends beyond the issues of choice and culpability to other realms of human experience. From what I understand, I think you and I share the same basic position about the logical impossibility of free will. I also think that compatibilism (that determinism and free will can co-exist) is incoherent. We certainly have more choices today to do things that are not in accord with our biology, and it may be true that we should talk about free will in a meaningful way, as Dennett has argued, but that seems irrelevant to the central problem of positing an entity that can make choices independently of the multitude of factors that control a decision. To me, the problem of free will is a logical impasse – we cannot choose the factors that ultimately influence what we do and think.

That does not mean that we throw away the social,

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moral, and legal rulebooks, but we need to be vigilant about the way our attitudes about individuals will be challenged as we come to understand the factors (both material and psychological) that control our behaviors when it comes to attributing praise and blame. I believe this is somewhat akin to your position.

Many people may find your conclusion about the self somewhat depressing. What benefit, if any, can a reader expect to gain from your book?

That was the same reaction I got from most publishers when we sent the book proposal out for consideration. I think they failed to appreciate that the self illusion explains so many aspects of human behavior as well as our attitudes toward others.

When we judge others, we consider them responsible for their actions. But was Mary Bale, the bank worker from Coventry who was caught on video dropping a cat into a garbage can, being true to her self? Or was Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant being himself or under the influence of someone else? What motivated Senator Weiner to text naked pictures of himself to women he did not know? In the book, I consider some of the extremes of human behavior from mass murderers with brain tumors that may have made them kill, to rising politicians who self-destruct. By rejecting the notion of a core self and considering how we are a multitude of competing urges and impulses, I think it is easier to understand why we suddenly go off the rails. It explains why we act, often unconsciously, in a way that is inconsistent with our self image – or the image of our self as we believe others see us.

That said, the self illusion is probably an inescapable experience we need for interacting with others and the world, and indeed we cannot readily abandon or ignore its influence, but we should be skeptical that each of us is the coherent, integrated entity we assume we are.

Interview taken from Sam Harris Blog: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-illusio n-of-the-self2

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Current Affairs Section:

K.S. Chalam

[Prof K.S.Chalam is a former Member, Union Public Service Commission, New Delhi. He was Vice-Chancellor, Dravidian University, Kuppam, A.P. and earlier Prof of Economics at Andhra University. He was the first Director of Swamy Ramanand Tirtha Rural Institute, Bhoodan Pochampally during 1997-98. He is known as the pioneer of the Academic Staff College Scheme in the country as the scheme was strengthened by UGC on the basis of his experiments in 1985. He became the first founder director of the Academic Staff College at Andhra University in 1987. He was actively involved in the teachers’ movement, secular and rationalist activities and served as the National Secretary, Amnesty International during 1984-85.Chalamkurmana@gmail.com]

European crisis and India third world scholars and thinkers like TheEdward Said and Samir Amin have raised the issue of Euro- centrism in history, culture and political economy. Economists on the other hand have developed theories of export led growth or import substitution strategies of development for developing countries. The euphoria of Washington consensus that has guided globalization seems to have slowed down due to the failure of market supported theories in most of the countries where there is gloom now. It is in this context, we need to look at the European economic crisis may be

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political turmoil in this region and its broad implications for India. Dr Man Mohan Singh as an economist in his recent visit to G20 and Rio has strategically used the situation in appealing to the West to invest in infrastructure projects as they were searching for investment destinations in the background of economic crisis. The economic predicament emanated with subprime crisis in the USA and is spreading to rest of the world.

Interestingly, Dr Singh seems to have realized that the solutions to our economic setbacks are to be sought within.

One may ponder over here that USA is not an isolated newfound land any longer. It is an extension of Europe. We will find that all the European nations are represented in the USA, but the population data does not speak about them and only lists Asians, Hispanics, African Americans and undocumented immigrants. The OECD and European Union are economic blocks of the Anglo-Saxon or occidental nations that have colonies in the present third world including India.

The desire to continue the past hegemony and the lifestyles based on plunder appears to be haunting them unconsciously through the policies and strategies recommended by them to the third world.

The nations that have seriously taken their advice are now in jitters despite of their sovereign entities.

It is due to the fact that their economies have been deeply engaged with them and the contagion is suspected to be imminent.

The European crisis has been discussed whenever there was an economic slowdown in recent months and particularly with reference to Greece, Spain, and Portugal etc. The economic crisis in Greece once seriously talked about as a failed nation in the media has suddenly disappeared once the right wing New Democracy took the reins of power in recent elections. The political economy of Greece is a very interesting case study to understand some of the contemporary issues. The political atlas of Greece was dominated by two political parties, PASOK, socialist party and N D, new democracy , the former a left oriented party and the latter a right 8

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wing group. There are several formations like the Euro communists and others playing second fiddle in the coalitions. It appears that the Indian political drama is enacted in Greece or vice versa. The successive governments, some of them called themselves as socialist, have expanded public sector and helped to improve the fortunes of interest groups. The system has acquired the character of according to some scholars, ‘bureaucratic clientalism’ , serving the interests of the political parties in power. This has facilitated the country to raise loans to tide over their economic needs. As a result, the fiscal deficit of the country has reached 15 percent of GDP and forced it to approach IMF, for a loan. The IMF has granted loan on very stringent conditionality that peeved the political establishment. It seems that was beginning of the crisis in Greece. Interestingly, two of the Greek innovations, democracy and tragedy are being performed live.

The GDP of the country according to World Bank data in 2010 was $302 billion. It has a total public debt of $481 billion, almost one and half of its GDP. It is a serious problem. The crux of the European crisis is that they have barrowed mostly from European Banks at an exorbitant rate of 18 per cent interest. It is reported that out of $2.84 trillion of the European Central Bank capital, $ 637 billion are given as loans to Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. The problem of Spain is not public debt but private debt where fiscal deficit has reached a peak at 8.9 percent of GDP in 2011. The private debt of Spain is alleged to be having links with real estate bubble that may go around 90 per cent of its GDP. The implications of the Greece profligacy according to some scholars is that, it has helped distrust on political parties that led to change of governments in quick succession. Rampant corruption seems to be both cause and consequence of demeanor of public servants. The popular Vatopedi land scam during the period of New Democracy in power is a case of how public properties were converted as private estates. The socialist party is also not impervious from this. As 9

in India, the Parliamentary committee appointed to enquire in to the allegations has failed to reach any conclusion except naming five ministers who were involved in the land scam.

The unemployment rate ranges between 16 to 19 per cent during the last few years. There are reports of riots by the unemployed groups and the emergence of a new movement called ‘I don’t pay tax’. The rate of growth of the economy has dropped to less than 0.5 per cent and to negative rates in recent years. Then why the Europeans and the Americans and therefore the world are worried about the events in Greece and other European countries noted above. As I pointed out earlier, the USA is not an autonomous sovereign country, it is an extension of the Europe and has been sustained by few families led MNCs that control the economic fortunes of the World. More than 50 percent of the World’s GDP is from USA and E U. Interestingly, out of 500 billionaires of the World (Forbes) 425 originate in USA and the exclusive share of Greece is 12 including the World’s richest person John Paul De Joria. The billionaires have accumulated the wealth through Banking, Oil and Gas, Pharmacy and Real Estate. One may notice that banking, real estate and related fields like cement and concrete mixture are the sectors in which Greece was deeply involved both within and outside the country. It is conjectural to say that the money must have gone in to the pockets of super rich that had political connections. Who knows, it may be a political game?

There is lot of discussion in India about the fall out of European crisis. It appears that India has very little connection apparently through trade. It is found that our trade balance with Europe is negative except for the year 2011. In fact, China along with Hong Kong has higher proportion of trade with India much higher than USA. Our trade with Middle East is very significant in terms of exports, imports and in proportion to our total value of trade. It is alleged that the real estate bubble is an artificial opportunity created for the Europeans to exploit the situation with their hedge funds to

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amass huge profits through financial and banking maneuvering. The Financial Crisis Inquiry commission USA 2011, has said that “the crisis was avoidable and was caused by widespread failures in financial regulations… to stem the tide of toxic mortgages, dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance…in accountability and ethics at all levels”. Why should India bother about it?

It is strange to find a country that boasts of a high foreign exchange reserves and an overall positive balance of around $ 55719 million in the year 2011-12 and a positive trade balance with European Union is behaving wobbly to look at the European crisis. What could be the reason? It is a known fact that 60 percent of the global currency reserves are in US dollars. It is said that the persistent current account surpluses of China and other Asian economies would serve to finance the US current deficit at favorable terms. This must

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have made some of the financial institutions in the US to act recklessly and have taken too much risk at others peril. Some analysts allege that the exchange rate and the dollar reserves are positioned in proportion to the strength of the military power of US. India is an open economy now and amenable to all kinds of investments including the toxic derivatives through the share and money markets route. It is perilous in view of the fact that the market capitalization in India as per SEBI data by the end of December 2011 was Rs 1.05 crore crores. It means that the value of the capitalization is one and half times that of our GDP. We do not know how the channels are operating in manipulating the markets despite of our sincere watch dog RBI. Those who are in the policy making with intimate connections with the markets and international agencies would alone know about the future of the Indian economy and may be politics in the months to come?

Letter to the Editor: Respected Madam, Expressing my profound respect for the Royist scholar Swarajbrata Sengupta, I pen down my dissenting note on his article Creative Imagination: Instincts, Impulses and Values’.

Three towering Intellectuals of the Nineteenth Century were Marx, Darwin and Freud. Of them, the ideas of Marx and Freud are not accepted as scientific theories because of the inapplicability of ‘the principle of fallibility’ to them. Yet each one’s genius shaped many defining features of the Twentieth Century.

Both Anthropology and Neuro-Science have outdated many prominent ideas of Freud. Freud’s stress on Aggression sex as the dominant landmarks of the unconscious has been challenged by leading modern Anthropologists and Neuro-scientists.

Freud stuck to his guns even when Einstein questioned him about the role of instincts in wars. In 1986, twenty leading scientist of the world gathered t Seville to make a declaration, “ It is scientifically incorrect to say that war is cussed by instinct or any single motivation”. To quote a leading Neuro-Scientist of the world, V.S. Ram Chandran. “ For most of the Twentieth entry, all we had in the way of offering were two theoretical edifices Freudism and Behaviorism, both of which would be dramatically eclipsed in the 1980 and 1990s.” (The Tell-Tale Brain : Preface).

Regards, Sincerely yours, Bhgwat Prashad (bagwat_prashad@rediffmail.com) Rayagada, Odisha

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Rajindar Sachar

[Justice Rajindar Sachar is Retd. Chief Justice of High Court of Delhi, New Delhi. He is UN Special Rapportuer on Housing, Ex. Member, U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and Ex-President, Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) India] I

Strange Antics on Mercy Petitions visa-vis Death Penalty Patil just before her retirement President has been the subject of strong criticism allegedly for accepting over 35 mercy petitions and commuting death sentence to life imprisonment of these accused convicted of rape and murder of children – an action which causes justifiably disbelief and alarm. She is even said to have commuted the sentence of a person who died 5 years ago (showing a kind of sloth in disposing of such delicate matters).

The Presidents office being naturally piqued at getting the blame and finding an unexplained and unfair silence from Central Home Minister Mr. Chidambaram refusing to clarify that it was he who had recommended the pardon has had to come out with a press statement that all commutations are “not playing to the gallery” by the President but rather she has acted on the aid and advice of Home

Minister”. The President is on firm footing – it has been held by the Supreme Court that pardon under Article 72 of the constitution being an Executive action by the President is to be exercised on the advice of Central government i.e. Home Minister, Govt. of India. Hence it is incumbent on Mr. Chidambaram to explain to the public as to what were the special considerations which led him to recommend pardon to these 35 accused held guilty of most heinous crimes. This is an instance where explanation from the Home Ministry is urgently required if faith in even and serious dealing with such sensitive matters is to the accepted by the public – more so when President Patil is retiring in next three weeks. Mr. Chidambaram owes to President Patil to remove the unfair cloud, the blame for which if any has to be taken by him, and not by her, who only did the ministerial act of following Home Minister’s advice, which she was bound to accept under the constitution. The reasons

by Mr. Chidambaram need to be placed in public domain, so that electorate can profitably be amaze how such serious matters of life and death is dealt with the home Ministry.

It also needs explaining that while Chidambaram has had all the time for consideration and to give such unlikely pardons but, he has not found time to even consider and deal with cases of Afzal Guru (J&K. Govt. has pleaded mercy for him). The killers of Rajiv Gandhi (T.N. Assembly, and even Sonia Gandhi has recommended it for some killers) and the case of Rajoona where Punjab Govt. has pleaded for him.)

This is all the more urgent because previous Presidents had specifically formulated certain guidelines before death sentence should be imposed. Thus President APJ Abdul Kalam who had 25 mercy petitions pending before him only dealt with two, rejecting one and pardoning the other. He took keen interest in laying down specific criteria for consideration of the petitions. He made detailed queries from the Home Ministry about the poverty of the accused and whether the accused had proper legal help for his defense and made queries

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about other petitions and remanded them to the Home Minister for further clarification.

President K.R. Narayanan, also chose a similar role by disposing one only out of 10 petitions pending before him. Of course we had the opposite case of President S.D. Sharma who rejected all 14 mercy petitions filed before him. These illustrations show that even is disposing of mercy petitions, President though objective is yet sub consciously influenced by major inarticulate premise of their personal views on the question of the death penalty. Thus a certain kind of arbitrariness at granting pardons is bound to happen. Let me clarify – for people like me who advocate the abolition of death penalty, even a messy policy of pardons is to be welcomed, because at least by this process the horror of death penalty is somewhat lessened, because I fully accept stand of Dr. Ambedkar, who said, “I think that the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether” and that of Jaya Prakesh Narain, Socialist leader who said, “Death sentence is no remedy for such crime”.

Ironically, after the rarest of rare doctrine of death penalty was propounded in 1980 by the Supreme Court, it confirmed death penalty in 40 per cent of cases in the period 1980- 90 whereas it was 37.7% in 1970-80. For the High Courts the figures confirming death sentence rose from 59% in 1970-80 to 65% during 1980- 90. The vociferous opposition to abolition of death penalty springs from myth that it can lead to increase of murders.

Facts show otherwise. Thus, in 1945-50 the State of Travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders whereas during 1950-55, when death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders.

A survey conducted by the United Nations in 1988 concluded that research has failed to provide any evidence that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment.

A survey released in September 2000 by The New York Times found that during the last 20 years the homicide rate in the states with death penalty has been 48 per cent to 101 per cent higher than in the

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states without death penalty.

The death penalty has been abolished since 1965 in U.K. The membership of European Union is dependent on having no death penalty. This has been done obviously in the confidence that murders do not get automatically reduced by retaining death penalty.

Since 1973, 123 prisoners have been released in the USA after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.

So far 139 countries, from all regions of the world, have abolished the death penalty and 150 have put a moratorium on death penalty. Mahatma Gandhi openly proclaimed “I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows, God alone can take life because he alone gives it”. Must this land of Buddha and Gandhi continue to present such a negative face against human rights by retaining death penalty?

II

Pension for the elderly: It’s no charity, but a human right is a truism, though painful, that the ItCentral government’s priorities in fiscal matters are determined by the perceived sensitivities of the foreign and Indian corporate sector and the richer class rather than the urgent and humanitarian considerations for the poor and old citizens of India. How I wish that instead the government was to show urgent attention to the plight of about 10 crore elderly people (8 per cent of the Indian population, with 1/6th of them living without any family support). No doubt, under the Central government’s pension scheme, persons above the age of 60 get a pension of Rs 200 and those above 80 years Rs 500 per month, but this is applicable to those below the poverty line. The uncertainly is increased by the ever-fluctuating determination by the government of what should be

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the poverty level; pensions vary in different states — Delhi paying a maximum of Rs 1000 per month while others like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, etc, only Rs 200 per month.

Of the total elderly population, only 1.97 crore are beneficiaries of IGNOAPS, which means that only about one in every five persons over 60 years receives old-age pension.

Employment-linked pensions are restricted to the elderly in the organized sector or to those who are among the rich and upper middle class categories.

But the groups that are most in need of old age pension are largely in the unorganized sector.

Between the year 2000 and 2010, the organized sector added less than 0.3 per cent workers annually to the workforce while the GDP of the country more than doubled with an annual rate of more than 7.55 per cent. It is clear that much of the contribution to this growth came from the workers in the unorganized sector.

But unlike the organized sector, workers in the unorganized sector do arduous manual labour often in the most difficult physical circumstances and without adequate nutrition and rest. Forcing them then to work beyond the age of 55, in order to survive, amounts to a form of punishment. The demand for old age pension is thus not a demand for charity but a demand for recognition of their contribution to the economy, and the need-based constitutional principles which are to be applied.

As Chief Justice of India S. H. Kapadia has expounded in Human Rights Year-Book 2011, “What is the need-based approach? Supposing there is no statute but the right to life is involved, is it open to the defense to say tight resource, financial crunch? The answer is ‘no’ because the right to life is there in Article 21 of the Constitution and the defense cannot toll the bell of tight resource. Take the case of food security. Two out of five people are below poverty line, and if pension is to be paid to them, the government cannot say I have no money.

Now this is what I mean by revisiting welfare rights. And that is where if enforceability is there the rule of law will prevail.” (Emphasis supplied) 13

The insensitive and negative approach of various state governments and the Central government to the plight of five crore people in the unorganized sector in the construction industry would show the government’s anti-poor face, especially in the way they have dealt with the report of the Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer Committee given decades back.

One of the key recommendation and which on paper has even been accepted by the Government of India but it has persistently refused to enforce in the manner in which the scheme of contribution by the employer along with a contribution by employee is to operate.

Now as construction industry worker is a migrant and has necessarily to be on the move for finding employment, it was accepted by the government that the contribution of the employer and the employee will be deposited in a computerized bank account with a specific identity number for each individual workman. This was so decided because construction labour being migratory, with the result that if a new account was to be opened every time with separate employers, his past accumulation was in danger of becoming irrecoverable. So, the way suggested was that each employer will deposit his contribution in a fixed numbered identity account given to the employee, and which will be honoured by all banks anywhere in the country. But this not having been done, the result is that at least Rs 5000 crore of the Employees Provident Fund is lying in banks but has not been disbursed to the workers because the government has not yet allotted them their identity account numbers. The result is that lakhs of workers are continuing to be near starvation line.

Another callous indifference of the government is shown by the fact that though all government contracts provide for the contractor to make temporary but proper accommodation for the construction labour at the site, it is common knowledge that contractors mixed up with dishonest inspectors do nothing of the kind — forcing female workers to use open toilets and

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leaving children to the vagaries of weather with no shelters built. A simple solution is for the government itself to provide these facilities and adjust funds at present being given to the contractors. In spite of protests by workers, nothing has moved — probably, the contractor-inspection nexus is all powerful.

The Central government has unapologetically announced many concessions for the corporate sector and the rich with the shameful claim that prosperity so generated will move down and improve the condition of the poor. This is a false claim as given in a warning by Noble Laureate Joseph Stiglitz — “The theory of trickle-down economics is a lie”.

According to the ILO’s 2010-11 World Social Security Report, the ILO’s new recommendation

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on social protection sets nationally defined guarantees aimed at universal access to minimum income security, especially during old age, and that such guarantees are a human right and an ethical imperative of governments. How can the Central government remain silent?

Governments cannot negate the claim for pensions for the old by pleading that development has to take precedence over poverty reduction. This is a specious argument that shows that poverty is a long-term problem and that current deficits represent a short-term emergency, that poverty can wait but deficits cannot. This is muddle-headed thinking. To reduce and eliminate massive absolute poverty lies at the very core of development itself.

It is critical to the survival of any democratic and decent society.

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Mastram Kapoor

[Mr. Mastram Kapoor is a freelance writer and journalist in Hindi. He has written, edited and translated more than 100 books and pamphlets on literature, social and political thought, education and children’s literature including 11 volumes of documents on freedom movement and 17 volumes of collected works of Dr. Lohia. He has had a long association with the socialist movement. His special interests of study are Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, Jaiprakash Narayan, Acharya Narendra Deva, Madhu Limaye and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.79-B, Pocket-II, Mayur Vihar Phase-I, Delhi-91, Phone22710479 mr_kapoor22@ymail.com.]

An Apology to a Gentleman – Justice B. Sudarshan Reddy Dear Sir, I owe you an apology for dragging your name in the President’s election which I hoped could be an occasion for bringing about a healthy change in the dull political atmosphere of this country. I am sorry, the occasion turned out to be duller and more sickening in view of the total surrender of the opposition to the will and manipulations of the ruling party.

What I conclude from this sordid drama is that there is an all round crisis, which is not limited to the state management (meaning now facilitating corporate sector) but has extended to the minds of the politicians, academicians and various kinds of 15

intellectuals. No one questioned why in a democracy, there should be a President selected by consensus of party-bosses rather than a President, elected in a democratic way. No one raised the point that in no democratic country, the opposition gives smooth walk-over to ruling party’s candidate.

It seems that the Congress is behaving as if it has a divine mandate to rule even though it has lost the capacity to steer and has given up to mere drifting.

The opposition has lost the will to power (in Lohia’s words) and their leaders seem to be enjoying their present status as regional satraps or caste leaders or as shadow prime minister, ministers and governors.

Surprisingly, Lord Meghnath Desai, a London-based Indian intellectual and member of House of Lords, in his column in The Indian Express (July 8, 2012) gave a small hint that the tendency to select the President by consensus, is due to love for dynastic rule, which the Congress never tried to cast-off. According to Shri Desai, the only time when this effort was made when after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, President R. Venkatraman suggested to his Vice-President Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma that he should accept the post of President of the Congress Party, so that he could become the Prime Minister. He says it was Congress Party’s own device to change the tradition. What really happened on that occasion could not be imagined by Shri Desai due to long distant. This scene has been aptly described by (Late) Shri Madhu Limaye in one of his articles.

According to him, it was a clever move on the part of the President, R. Venkatraman, who wanted to secure for himself a second term of President-ship, after forming a national government with Shankar Dayal Sharma as Prime Minister, Shankar Dayal Sharma cleverly refused because he eyed on permanent promotion as President rather than a purely temporary promotion as Prime Minister.

This was a repetition of the trick played by Gyani Zail Singh on his Vice-President, R. Venkatraman.

When Zail Singh’s term was about to end, he wanted to dismiss Rajiv Gandhi and form a national

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government with R. Venkatraman as Prime Minister, with an eye on second term for himself.

But the offer was refused because Venkatraman too, wanted to be a full time President rather than a temporary Prime Minister. Lord Desai was not in a position to see this internal struggle of the noble minds.

I can’t exactly say what transpired in my mind when I thought of your name as an ideal President.

May be, I was moved by your two judgments regarding black money and Salva Judum which you delivered together with your colleague Justice S.S. Nijhar, before your retirement or may be, it was due to your lecture on Dr. Lohia, in the Law Institute of India. The main consideration in my mind was that the President should not belong to the ruling party and it would be best if he didn’t belong to any party.

In the present situation I thought that a man with deep understanding of and commitment to the Constitution would be best as President, since our whole political set-up is being taken over by some unconstitutional elements and there must be someone worthy to keep an eye on them. I also thought that if a person like you will enter the Rashtrapati Bhavan, it may respond to some of the calls of Mahatma Gandhi, say of austerity and openness.

I also had in mind some other things which I used to discuss with my sagacious friend Ravela Somaiya whose proximity to you suggested to me that I should request you to agree to stand for election without expecting a win, according to Lohia’s prescription of ‘Nirasha Ke Kartavya’ (to act without hope). Your first reaction was to laugh out the suggestion but after thinking over seriously you agreed to become sacrificial goat. I was deeply moved by your generosity.

But in working for all this, I was not merely thinking of the present political conditions. There were also some other questions in my mind which I thought could be solved with your little help from Rashtrapati Bhavan. It has pained me after the experience of 72 years of my political awareness

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that the whole structure of the State___ Executive, Legislature and Judiciary___ had so far doggedly opposed the highest goal of the Constitution, to ensure equality and fraternity to all. To eliminate inequality, abolition of caste was necessary for which the scheme of reservations or special opportunities to the classes, who have suffered from the caste-system, was laid down in the Constitution. It was confirmed by Supreme Court in Indira Sahani Judgement (1992) that the aim of reservation is abolition of caste. But the governments never tried seriously to enforce Article 16(4) (which provided reservations), nor the Supreme Court directed the government to do so. Neither the government nor the Supreme Court defined the words ‘adequate representation’, nor did they order the caste-wise census along with general census to obtain the figures of ‘social and educational backwardness of the classes of citizens’ on the basis of which adequate or inadequate representation could be ascertained and classes having got adequate representation, could be removed from the reserved category to the general category thus ensuring approximate equality among all sections of population and ultimate elimination of caste system. All governments, right from Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru’s to Dr. Manmohan Singh’s, with the exception of that of H.D. Devegowda, firmly opposed the caste-wise census, which used to be carried out by the British government from 1872 to 1932. When Devegowda’s government sanctioned it, the Congress withdrew its support to that government resulting in its fall and the subsequent government headed by Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, after taking oath, performed the first act to cancel the order issued by Devegowda’s government. Compelled by people’s agitation and clamour in Parliament, Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, gave an assurance in the Parliament that this government will soon order caste-wise census, but he soon forgot his promise and instead sanctioned about Rs 45000 crore scheme of Unique Identification Cards to facilitate corporate sector and enforce mass

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surveillance over people in the style of a fascist state. Even the Supreme Court didn’t extend a helping hand to this problem and it refused to even entertain the special petitions requesting for caste-census, one moved by Madhu Limaye, in 1992 and other by this writer and several others in 2010 and 2011. How could the reservation scheme of the Constitution be implemented when even the first step of obtaining reliable and scientific data regarding castes was so resolutely resisted? I am sure, all this is not merely “measurable underachievement” (in Amartya Sen’s words) it is willful non-achievement. It is open defiance by the upper castes in order to protect their centuries old privileges bestowed upon them by the caste-system.

The other question in my mind was that of language of administration and instruction. The Nehru government imposed a permanent slavery of a foreign language on Indian people. A language spoken and understood by not more than two and a half or three percent population made the whole business of state mystic utterances of the sorcerers for the 97 percent of population. This gave full freedom for corruption, nepotism and inefficiency to all concerned with the business of the state. Not only this, the slavery of the foreign language, stifled the growth of our languages (which have history older than of English) resulting in dumbness of masses and all round backwardness of our vast population.

The two big road-blocks described above (leaving aside some others) have been simply ignored by English-educated classes and some of their select individuals have even threatened a civil war over the demand to remove them. But the injury they have caused to the nation is beyond the imagination of these people. The first road-block has snatched from 90 percent population of this country what they had earned through centuries of sufferings___ the hope of freedom from caste-slavery. The other road-block has hit even harder by erasing the memory of the nation which is unpardonable crime in History. With a foreign language as medium of instruction, all hopes of providing education to all of our children are lost forever since we could provide education to only 10 percent of our child population in last 65 years.

I hoped that these two logjams of reservations and language could be broken or at least considered seriously by the central government and the Supreme Court, if a President sympathetic to these causes was in Rashtrapati Bhavan. His reference to the Supreme Court or advice to the Prime Minister could make a definite dent on the stone wall.

I am sad, for we failed and caused you embarrassment but I assure you that we will not give up our determination to find out a new path to come out of thick jungle for which we may again seek your cooperation.

With regards, Mastram Kapoor

Letter to the Editor: Dear Editor, For the first time a brief history of Radical Humanist Movement in Andhra Pradesh (1940-2012) is brought out in Telugu and English with pictures and blog addresses.

Http://paradarsi.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/humanist-history-in-a-p/ Kindly circulate this news to all the RH friends.

— Innaiah Narisetti, (innaiahn@yahoo.com)

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[Sri N.K. Acharya is an advocate, columnist and author of several books on law. He was formerly Secretary of Indian Rationalist Association and had edited the Indian Rationalist, then published from Hyderabad on behalf of the Association prior to its transfer to Madras.]

N.K. Acharya

Minister’s Costs the Courts are issuing summons Recently, to the Ministers in corruption cases and the Ministers are defending themselves by appointing the Government Counsel and spending Government money towards expenses required in that connection. The question raised is whether a Minister is entitled to utilise Government funds for defending himself in such cases? The further question is that if he is found or required to pay compensation, should the Government bear such monetary burden on behalf of the Minister? There have been instances of Government servants involved in suits filed against the Government, being summoned and required to file their defences. In all such cases, when the Government servant is held to be personally responsible, the Courts have directed no part of the financial burden shall be borne by the Government and the Government servant shall make arrangements of his own for his defence. The Courts further held that such Government servant is not entitled to the

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services of the Government Pleader. In the case, where Army men are held responsible for the excesses committed by them the Supreme Court held that the compensation payable by the Government to the victims of Army excesses, shall be recovered from the salary and pension due to the Army men. Hence, it is just and proper when the Minister is made a party and he is summoned by the Court, he shall make his own arrangements for his defence and he shall not be entitled to utilise any state or funds for his defence. Before issuing summons/however, the court must decide whether the summon issued or so issued to the Minister in the capacity as Minister or in his personal capacity, The allegations in the proceedings must clearly state that the act complained of is the act for which the Minister is made answerable or as a person acting in abuse of his powers. It is only in such cases, the Minister is not entitled to the services of Government Pleader and not in cases of routine nature where the Minister is made as a party as part of Government machinery. In case, where a Minister is made a party to explain certain matters to the Court or make available the relevant, record and not as a person liable to the complaint, he is entitled to use the Government machinery.

Therefore, it is advised that the parties who file suits or complaints against the Government shall in the first instance add the appropriate Government as a party and add the concerned Minister also as a party, in his individual capacity.

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IRHA/IRI Members’ Section:

Innaiah Narisetti

[Dr. N. Innaiah, former Director, Centre for

Inquiry (CFI), India, did his Ph.D on Philosophy of Modern Science. He is a veteran Radical Humanist who has translated maximum books written by M.N Roy as well as other books on Humanism in Telugu. He has recently completed his Autobiography. Excerpts from the same are being published here.He is now based in the U.S.A. innaiahn@yahoo.com]

Excerpts from Narisetti Innaiah’s Autobiography Humanist movement: I stepped up my activities like writing articles for The Radical Humanist and translating Humanist literature into Telugu on moving into the New MLA Quarters in 1968 organizing an all-India Humanist conference apart from seminars and workshops at the New MLA Quarters itself. Many Humanist leaders like Premanath Bajaj, V.B. Karnik, and V.M. Tarkunde took part in the all-India conference. We got Bazaj’s sensational work on the Bhagavadgita reviewed in newspapers. Narla Venkateswara Rao, to whom I introduced Bajaj, was highly impressed with the work. Whenever Humanist leaders like C.T. Daru (from Ahmedabad) and A.B. Shah visited Hyderabad, I took them to Andhra. I once took V.B. Karnik to Guntur. V.B. Karnik often took part in seminars at the Administrative College of India in Hyderabad, where G.R. Dalvi worked.

Komala interviewed Nissim Ez’ekiel for a radio program when he attended a seminar in Hyderabad.

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I took part in the seminar along with him.

Lakshman Sastri Joshi, J.B.H. Wadia and Indumati Parekh were among those who visited Hyderabad and shared their experiences with us. We organized Humanist meetings relentlessly for over a decade and helped spread the movement. Later, I met Indumati Parekh in Washington in 1994. I took part in various all-India Humanist conferences at Bombay, Delhi, Dehradun, Shanti Niketan, Calcutta, and Nagpur.

Rationalist movement: Only after I settled down in life after marriage in 1964, I could pursue education and take part in movements simultaneously. The rationalist movement had been limping in the State and the country by then.

Crippled by old age, Editor S. Ramanathan had halted publication of Indian Rationalist, the magazine in English. Even in Bombay and Maharashtra, the movement was on the wane.

Rationalists met at Avula Sambasiva Rao’s residence and discussed ways and means of reviving the movement. The participants included N.K. Acharya, Narra Kotaiah, Y. Raghavaiah (Professor of Public Administration in Osmania University), A.L. Narasimha Rao (journalist), Jasti Jawaharlal (an employee in the Auditor General’s office), and Polu Satyanarayana. Jayagopal Suryanarayana from Madras extended his support.

We revived the monthly magazine with Avula Sambasiva Rao as Editor, and N.K. Acharya’s home as its office. A.L. Narasimha Rao took care of printing. I wrote every month on rationalism and related subjects. N.K. Acharya strove to bring out the magazine to the best of his ability, because he too had had no experience in running a magazine.

Sambasiva Rao soon became a judge. At that point, Jayagopal Suryanarayana volunteered to run the magazine from Madras. The rationalist movement had its origin in Bombay in the 1930s with stalwarts like Abraham Solomon, Lokhandawala, and R.P. Paranjape leading it. In Andhra, Avula Gopalakrishna Murthy and M.V. Rama Murthy shouldered the responsibility of spreading it.

Leaders like M.N. Roy and Annadurai took part in

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its all-India conferences. Robert G. Ingersol’s critiques of the Bible appealed to the public. The writings of Charles Bradlaw, and Haliac were inspiring. Later on, rationalist societies sprang up in places like Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Tenali, Chirala and Mangalagiri and spread the movement. I took part in some study camps and conferences. Charvaka magazine, founded by Thotakura Babu, attracted the youth. The summer classes conducted by us had drawn Babu into the rationalist fold. Abraham Kovur gave a big boost to the rationalist movement with his tour of Andhra.

Magic and hypnotism shows formed part of the Kovur tour. I joined Kovur in his public meetings.

Komala, Naveena attended the program at Gandhi Bhavan. Sanal Edamrukku from Kerala with his magic shows exposed the so-called spiritual gurus who claimed miraculous powers. Later on Ravipudi Venkatradri, Katti Padma Rao, Ramakrishna (of Charvaka School), Jayagopal (Visakhapatnam) and M. V. Rama Murthy played an active role in running the movement. I contributed by writing articles and bringing out books. Although rationalist societies existed, they were not strong. Their magazines had limited circulation. Some societies conducted summer classes.

Secular movement: I entered into correspondence with A.B. Shah within a few days of my marriage.

Amritlal Bhikku Shah of Poona was running the secular movement from Bombay. He was a great intellectual who incisively studied and followed M.N. Roy’s humanist movement right from 1948.

He sought my help in spreading the secular movement in Andhra Pradesh. I readily agreed since the assignment was dear to my heart. By 1964, A.B. Shah had founded Nachiketa Publications, brought out literature, started Secular Society and ran the magazine Secularist. Although I agreed to assist A.B. Shah, I did not have the resources to travel and undertake the task entrusted to me. Understanding my plight, A.B. Shah offered to pay me Rs.120 a month towards travel expenses, besides 50 percent of the sale proceeds of

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Nachiketa books as commission. I requisitioned Nachiketa books and sold as many as could be sold in Hyderabad, Tenali, Guntur and Vijayawada.

Gurajala Seetaramaiah in Tenali and Koneru Kutumbarao in Vijaywada helped me in the sales drive. In Hyderabad, I myself sold the books to my friends. I conducted many seminars and discussions with A.B. Shah himself as the chief guest organizing discussions with religious groups like the Tamir-e-Millat, Jamat-e-Islam, Muslim League, and the Jana Sangh. Osmania University’s Institute of Asian Studies provided me the forum for conducting the debates at the YMCA Hall.

Among the participants in the discussions were A.B. Shah, V.K. Sinha, Rashiduddin Khan, Alam Khundmiri, Anwar Mozam, Moginitha Bassum, Mohitsen and Lakshminarayana. We organized discussions with people like K. Seshadri and B.A.V. Sarma and brought out the contents in a book form. All such activities helped to spread the secular movement. We organized debates on Puri Sankaracharya’s views and on cow slaughter ban.

We organized A.B. Shah meetings at Guntur, Vijayawada, Tenali, and Avanigadda. A.B. Shah’s lecture at A.C. College in Guntur impressed many students. He also addressed the Bar Association.

A.B. Shah took part in the study classes we organized at Avanigadda for five days during 1965-66. Many prominent humanists, rationalists, and atheists took Gopalakrishna Murthy, M.V. Rama Murthy, Ravipudi Venkatadri, N.V. Brahmam, G.V. Krishna Rao, and Tripuraneni Venkateswara Rao. Koneru Kutumba Rao, Mandava Srirama Murthy, and I organized the Avanigadda classes. The press coverage was good.

A.B. Shah held discussions with a number of people during his Avanigadda stay. A. B. Shah called on the bed-ridden Avula Gopalakrishna Murthy at Tenali in 1967 and persuaded him to undergo treatment in Madras for his heart ailment.

However, he passed away before leaving for Madras. A.B. Shah succeeded in spreading the secular movement in Andhra Pradesh with assistance from people like Polu Satyanarayana

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and B.V. Sarma, besides me. The movement suffered a setback with Shah’s demise in 1982.

M.N. Roy spelt out clearly and scientifically what secularism means and he followed his interpretation meticulously. Secularism implies that State and religion are separate. Religious beliefs should remain personal and not be injected into governance. There should be one common civil law for all communities. I translated his articles into Telugu. Anupama Publications compiled them and brought out a book in 1968.

Prof. Kotha Satchidananda Murthy wrote the foreword and addressed a meeting held to mark its release. Suryadevara Hanumantha Rao of Tenali published the book, Secularism, written by Polu Satyanarayana, on my request. I invited Hamid Dalwai, who assisted A.B. Shah in Bomaby, to Hyderabad. I translated his work Muslim Politics and serialised it in Prasaritha, a quarterly magazine. Shah cast his influence on Telugu-speaking people from 1964 to 1982. I introduced him to Chief Minister Bhavanm Venkatram, Alapati Ravindranath, and Narla Venkateswara Rao in Hyderabad. He impressed all of them. At his instance, I inquired into the background of the family of Osmania University Vice Chancellor Nookala Narotham Reddy when Shah’s daughter wanted to marry Narotham Reddy’s son. The marriage took place but ended up in divorce later.

Shah helped me with my Ph.D. thesis by sending me the manuscript of ‘Philosophical Consequences of Modern Science, which M.N. Roy authored in jail. I took down notes and returned the manuscript.

He relished his pipe. Both of us enjoyed drinking in moderation. He suffered a heart attack during a visit to Hyderabad to take part in a seminar but revealed it to me only after his return to Poona.

Shocked and surprised, I conveyed my indignation.

Occasionally, I took part in all-India seminars along with him in Bombay. His influence on me is deep. I translated his Scientific Method into Telugu and got it included in the curriculum for M.A. Philosophy in Osmania University. He was known for his clarity in thinking and perfection in articulation. His demise in 1982 at the age of 62 came as a setback to the secular movement in general and me in particular. He was next only to Avula Goapalakrishna Murthy among intellectuals who captivated me.

A.B. Shah had suggested to the U.S. publishers of the ‘Encyclopedia of Unbelief’ that they include an article on India and entrust the job of writing it to me. In response to an invitation from Editor Gordon Stein, I did the piece. That he made the suggestion to the publishers without informing me beforehand testifies the immense confidence he had in me. It was only through him that I learnt of Minerva, the magazine of Edward Shills, and Intellectuals, the work by a Chicago University Sociology Professor.

A.B. Shah brought out eight issues of Humanist quarterly systematically. He was the first to study the 22 doctrines propounded by M.N. Roy scientifically and publish them. Although he was born into a Digambar Jain family in Gujarat, he grew into a humanist, settled in Poona and taught in Bombay. He was a knowledgeable critic.

Request to the Contributers: Dear Friends, Please do not send articles beyond 1500-2000 words. Also, please inform whether they have been published elsewhere. And, do try to email them at rheditor@gmail.com instead of sending them by post. You may post them (only if email is not possible) at: C-8 Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India. Do also email your passport size photographs as separate attachments (in JPG format) as well as your introduction details, if you are contributing for the first time. Please feel free to contact me at 91-9719333011 for any other querry.

—Rekha Saraswat 21

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Why FDI? —By Jawaharlal Jasthi [Mr. Jawahar Lal Jasti was introduced to Radical Humanism and writings of MN Roy by his uncle, the late Mr. Jagannatham while he was a student in the AC College at Guntur. He was deeply involved in studying Roy’s writings for the new exciting way of looking at the world revealed by him. His father-law, the late Mr. K. Radhakrishnamurty contested the first general elections on the banner of Radical Democratic Party. He has been in close association with the movement ever since. He is also involved in the Rationalist Association 6-3-596/65 Naveen Nagar, Khairatabad, Hyderabad-500 004, Ph: 88974 77888, jjasthi@yahoo.com] e are seeing so much of controversy about Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail shops of India. It is being proposed so passionately by the government as an executive decision. Unfortunately it was announced while the parliament was in session and all the parties took objection to it by stalling the proceedings in the House. Those who objected are being branded as reactionary with vested interests.

It is no doubt too courageous to question the proposal made by the economist Prime Minister and supported by luminaries like Deepak Parekh who also advises the India Inc. to come out in support of government. As merits of the proposal it is stated that it gets better price for farmers. The Chief Economic Advisor to government declares that the ‘poorest will have to pay higher prices if FDI fails’, as if the present inflation is only because there is no foreign investment in India. There are so many advantages by opening the retail field. But we, the ordinary people, fail to understand why the benefits accrue only if it is opened to foreign investment. Will the FDI in retail increase agricultural production to avoid inflation? The retailer may construct godowns and streamline procurement chain. Is it not possible if FDI is not allowed?

You find fault with aam bania (the common businessman) for raising objections. If it is a vested

W

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interest group, ignore it. Nobody has the right to object to opening of more stores. But the question is why foreign investment is needed for it. Extend the retail field to any extent. But why foreign investment? It is pointed out that in other countries, traditional traders are thriving side by side with foreign controlled retail chains. Is it a proof that foreign investment is ‘needed’? There must be a valid justification for inviting foreigners in any field. Why did we hate the East India Company?

What is it that the FDI could bring now? Is there any rocket science involved in managing the retail chains?

What is the reason to claim that FDI will supply foods at lesser price? Do they come here for charity or business? It is claimed that 40% of agricultural produce is spoiled due to lack of ‘adequate roads, infrastructure and refrigeration’ facilities. The roads and infrastructure are already open to foreign investment. Is refrigeration such a great technology that needs foreign investment? What efforts are made by the government to meet the deficiency? Is it to escape the responsibility to do something that we invite FDI? It is strange that the corporate leaders also form a line to invite FDI in retail instead of offering to do by themselves what the FDI is expected to do.

Don’t they have the means to do it? Naturally such a step involves responsibility to manage the retail line by themselves. If it is managed by the foreigner having 51%, we can easily enjoy the profit of 49% without responsibility to manage the unit. Perhaps that is the plan of the industrialist in India in inviting foreign investment. It would have been more honourable and legitimate for them to object to induction of FDI in retail and demand to allow them do the job. All the benefits claimed by the Prime Minister like employment opportunities, transportation and storage and the reasonable prices claimed by the advisors can also occur even if the investment is from Indian entrepreneurs. Why are they not allowed? Or why they do not come forward?

The most demeaning aspect of Indian politics is when the opposition points to some corrupt practices of government, the immediate retort is that the opposition also did it when they were in

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power. It is the curse of democracy that the party in power continues to change with elections. By that the need to answer the allegation is escaped.

Similarly in this case it is being pointed out that NDA asked for 100% FDI when they were ruling.

That does not make the proposal sacred. We have to decide it on its merits whoever moots it. Our governments have no such habit.

What we want to know is why it is only the FDI that could prevent inflation? Why is it that all benefits of retail trade will accrue only if the investment is from foreign countries?

If that is the only way to save Indian economy, why not open all the areas of economy to foreign investment without limit? That is what the ‘aam aadmi’ fails to understand.

The other point we need to understand is what is the criterion to leave decisions to the executive and to the legislature. What are the matters that are left to executive decision? How do we decide whether it is a policy matter or executive matter? When the issue involves basic policy of economy affecting so many people, does it not make it a policy matter?

How is the executive allowed to decide on it at the back of legislature? How can the government argue that the legislature has no say in the matter?

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The Anticorruption Movement: is not a long time since the “India against Itcorruption” movement was launched under the leadership of Anna Hazare. Support from the public was overwhelming. The government was able to spill cold water on the enthusiasm by making some insincere promises to draft a bill for LokPal, which was managed to fail. The official party naturally felt it an insult that a private person could drive them to draft a bill and present it to the Parliament. Arguments were made that it is the prerogative of the government to draft bills and of Parliament to pass them. The fact that private bills can be considered by the Parliament when they are submitted by members was ignored.

Having failed on that argument, the party spokesmen started a tirade against Hazare that he 23

was a member of RSS; but he was not asking for any communal benefit. He was fighting for a cause in which every citizen was interested. But even the PMO went to the extent of calling the supporters ‘antinational’! Is it so? But when the agitators pointed out that the honorable Prime Minister is being used like a shield by the government, it was twisted as name-calling of the untouchable Prime Minister.

It was but natural that the public support for such causes would cool down over time and the government wisely counted on it. The sponsors of the agitation feel frustrated and are trying to intensify their public relations campaign. They are of the opinion that the bill could have been passed in the Parliament if only the party in power sincerely wanted it. They turned their ire on to the party in power. It is interpreted as a sign of frustration and blamed them for targeting one particular political party. It is a very unsympathetic allegation as the cause is very clear but deliberately ignored only to undermine the cause. Even the so-called intellectuals castigated them saying “instead of transforming this mass movement into people’s agitation, it degenerated into a protest against one single party.” Did it? Is it wrong to point out that the one political party that could and should have done what is required to be done failed to do it? Did the movement fail to be a mass movement just because of it? Is it not necessary to point out the drama played by the party in power?

How can it be a defect in the movement?

One of the unfair criticisms made against the movement was that it has created a feeling among the people that by the passing of the Jan LokPal bill alone “corruption will be rooted out for ever”. The people in India are not so naïve as to think like that.

It is an argument made to undermine the movement. The critics started to high light the fact that corruption will not be rooted out by passing the bill at all. Can it be rooted out by not passing the bill? If at all we want to root out corruption, is the bill not a step in the right direction? Does it not

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deserve the support of all who have ‘faith in the constitution and who support democracy’?

It is alleged that “out of frustration or distress” the members of Anna Team started loose talk and they misused the freedom of speech. It is true that they feel frustrated. Are they not human?They have their own defects and drawbacks. But what is the role of the so-called intellectuals in this? Did they ever care to issue a call of support to the demand when the entire country rose like one man? Now they try to find excuses and point out the frustration as a defect which will only undermine the movement.

The mass support is described as ‘mobocracy’.

What consists of the mob? Who are the people in this country? How many cases are there where the government moved without the mass coming on the roads? How many cases are there where constitutionally accepted ways of representations gave results? It is because of the governments becoming insensitive that the people started their agitations on the roads. What are the leaders ‘having full faith in the constitution and supporters of democracy’ doing when the legislatures have

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become ruled by hoodlums? If a sensitive man cries foul of the situation, it is called lose talk. That is what the intellectuals are doing from easy chairs.

The frustration now is mostly because of the failure of the intellectuals to support a popular cause at the nick of the moment, when it has acquired an overwhelming support from all quarters. They try to justify their inaction by pointing out some imperfections and defects in the behavior of the sponsors of the anticorruption movement. It is not the responsibility of Anna Team alone to fight against corruption. The country must be thankful to them for taking the initiative in that direction and making it a mass movement. Intellectuals think that mass movements are not honorable. They know how to think but not how to act. They can only find imperfections and defects in any movement and convince themselves that they need not support the movement. By pointing out such human drawbacks at this moment will only undermine the movement.

If the intellectuals at least tie their tongues and avoid sabotaging a sacred movement, even that can be considered as a great help.

Announcements:

I A single copy (in English) of the following book is available with Gautam Thaker, General Secretary, IRHA (Gujarat unit): M.N. Roy – The Man Who Looked Ahead It is written by Tayab Sheikh (A.K. Hindi) and published by Dashrathlal Thaker in 1938 (pp 242).

He has offered to post its zerox (spiral bound) copy on payment of its zerox charges which will come to around Rs. 150/-. Those of you who are interested in having it may contact him at his following address: Gautam Thaker, 4, Sanmitra Society, Jivraj Park Area, Opposite Malav Talav, Ahmedabad, 380051, Gujarat, (M) 9825382556 II Agehananda Bharati’s Great tradition and Little traditions is now available in Telugu version.

It is translated by Innaiah Narisetti. It may be checked on the following link: ebook link:http://paradarsi.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/great_tradition_and_little_traditions/ III Author Rani Drew talks at Open Studios about her new book ‘The Dog’s tale’ on Cambridge 105 Community Radio in Your City: The talk is available for two weeks on the folowing URL: https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=36d9479b21&view= att&th=138b4fb7106862d4&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-hsHHujkV YaajHp0q3sb7E&sadet=1343146137092&sads=N18qSuHTxHos6SIJFC_CR6qZezY

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Students’ and Research Scholars’ Section:

Manzoor Ali

Communal Violence Bill – Is It Enough?

Introduction: “Communalism”, wrote Thompson and Garratt, “is an old Indian problem that time does little to solve.”

It is a myth that during Nehru’s period India had not seen communal riots and there was lull in the right-wing politics. Analyses of Home Ministry data on communal riots since 1954 to 1964 (the year Nehru died) reveals that as many as 1,690 incidents took place in which 2,310 were dead and 7,318 hurt. However, post-Nehru era differs only in terms of frequency of riots.

Similarly, communal violence does not end with the defeat of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2004. The Table below shows the number of communal violence or incidents taken place until 2011 during the Congress led UPA government.

The current year 2012 has seen number of communal violence across the country. The latest one is in Koshi Kalan, Mathura in Uttar Pradesh where three out of four dead are from minorities’ community. So, right-wing political mobilisation, anti-minority campaign and physical violence have been parts of Indian politics. Hence, anything like Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 is

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long overdue to prevent violence against the minorities and the weaker sections of the society.

Communal Violence/Incidents (Year-wise): in 2011 (till Dec.)- 580; In 2010 – 701; In 2009 -719; In 2008 - 656 (Hindu-Muslim incidents); In 2007 681 In 2006 – 698; In 2005 – 779; In 2004 – 640.

Number of Dead/injured (Year-wise): in 2011 (till Dec.) - 91/1,899; In 2010 116/2,138; In 2009 117/2,298; In 2008 - 123/2,272; In 2007 - 96/2,117; In 2006 - 133/2,170; In 2005 - 124/2,066; - In 2004 - 129/2,022.

(Source: Home Ministry Annual Report 2004-05 – 2011-12) Communal Violence Bill: The United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-I, supported by Left parties, under its Common Minimum Program (CMP), which promised a comprehensive legislature against sectarian/communal violence, circulated the first draft of Communal Violence (Suppression) Bill in the parliament on 5th December 2005. However, the bill turned out to be ‘a remedy worse than disease’. Later, it was sent to the Standing Committee on Home Affairs for reviews and recommendation. With few minor changes the Standing Committee on Home Affairs submitted its 122nd Report on The Communal Violence (Prevention, Control, and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005 on 13th December 2006.

While bill was in Rajya Sabha many civil society organizations, activists and left parties opposed the bill in its current form. The friction pressurized the UPA government to re-think about the bill. UPA-II gave the task of drafting the bill to National Advisory Committee (NAC). NAC convened the Advisory Group with social activists to prepare a draft. After intense efforts for over a period of one and a half years the draft came to its final stage in May 2011. The bill sets out to protect religious and linguistic minorities in any State in India, as well as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, from targeted violence, including organised violence.

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Despite long route the bill covers, concerned actors/agents (government, pro-minorities groups and right-wing) have mixed opinion with the way the draft has taken shape and are at loggerheads about the same.

Critical Analysis of Communal Violence Bill: The bill seeks to empower the government to prevent and control communal violence, provide for speedy investigation and trial of offences and rehabilitate victims. The Bill defines communal violence as any act that is a scheduled offence and punishable under section 19 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP). The Committee recommends the definition be amended to include any act of ‘omission or commission which threatens the secular fabric, integrity, unity, or internal security of the Nation.’ The Bill allows an area to be notified as communally disturbed when communal forces cause death. The Committee observes that this does not include other heinous crimes. They recommend including areas where violence results in grievous harm or property damage. Under the Bill, an area may be notified as communally disturbed for no more than thirty days the first time. The government may issue new notifications if public peace and tranquility are still disturbed. The committee recommends that a notification shall not extend beyond six months unless warranted. When an area has been notified as communally disturbed, the competent authority may direct persons to deposit all arsenals regardless if the person has a license. The Committee recommends deleting this provision. States may request the Central Government to send armed forces to control communally disturbed areas. The Committee recommends that if violence is not controlled within seven days, states are required to request the central government to deploy armed forces.

On the positive side of this bill it has clear and broader provisions against the sexual assault on women. Its implementation will really deter communalists at the ground level. Compensation

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and resettlement too are merits of the bill. “Hostile Environment against a Group” in chapter one and “Hate Propaganda” in the following chapter gives ample scope to quell communalism prior to physical violence.

However, the proposed bill, apart from number of minor problems, has two main problems. Firstly, the government’s proposal to declare certain areas as “communally disturbed” may create them into permanent situations like in north-east in minorities dominated areas. We already know the fact that most of those Muslims areas which are today pointed out by banks and administration as sensitive areas, are deprived of many facilities, which a normal citizen needs to get. Hitherto almost all the riots have taken place nearby minorities’ dwellings and so it is very natural that every time when communal riots will flare up their ghettos will be declared as communally disturbed.

And if considering the frequency of communal riots in the country, each day one minorities’ area or the other will be declared as ‘communally disturbed’. It would be a frightening situation for the minority. Each time in the name of protection the minority areas will be under curfew like situation. With the right-wing at the helm of affairs, both at the Central and State, the law will be manipulated to suit the communal elements.

Secondly, this bill gives District Magistrate (DM) the powers to take preventive measures when there is an apprehension of breach of peace or creation of discord between members of different religious groups, it is provided that he may, by order in writing, prohibit any act which in his opinion is likely to cause apprehension in the minds of another community or caste or group that it is directed to intimidate, threaten or otherwise promote ill will against that community or caste or group. This provision is generating a fear in the minds of the minorities, especially Muslims. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Assistant Secretary-General and spokesman Maulana Abdur Rahim Qureshi said either the Communal Violence Bill should be withdrawn or

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redrafted, as the proposed legislation in its present form created apprehensions in the minds of the Muslims. He said the apprehensions stemmed from the fact that arbitrary powers are proposed to be given to the police and the magistracy in the Bill.

The various commissions of inquiry, he said, have pointed to the biased and prejudiced role of the police towards the minority community in their findings on communal riots.

From 1961 to 2002, commission after commission has indicted the police. For instances, Justice Shrivastava Commission of Inquiry Report of 1961 on the riots in Jabalpur, Justice Dayal Commission (1967), Justice Reddy Commission (1969), Justice Madon Commission (1970), Justice Vithyatlul Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tellichery (1971), Justice Narain, Gliosh and Rizvi Commission of Inquiry into the Jamshedpur riots in 1979, N C Saxena inquiry into the Meerut riots of 1982, have indicted police and administration parting with communalists. Justice B N Srikrishna’s report found specific police officers to be “utterly trigger happy”, “guilty of unnecessary and excessive firing resulting in the deaths of innocent Muslims”, “extremely communal” and “guilty of inhuman and brutal behaviour”.

Furthermore, talking of the police attitude, the report observes, “Police officers and men, particularly at the junior level, appeared to have an in-built bias against Muslims which was evident in their treatment of the suspected Muslims and Muslim victims of riots…The bias of policemen was seen in the active connivance of police constables with the rioting Hindu mobs on some occasions with their adopting the role of passive onlookers on other occasions, and finally, in their lack of enthusiasm in registering offences against Hindus even when the accused were clearly identified...”

Thus, to stop police acting in alliance with rioters reform in the department is a must. It may include sensitisation about the issue and changing of police characteristic by diversifying the recruitment.

According to Gopal Singh Committee Report 27

(1983) from 1971 to 1979 only 2 per cent Muslims were recruited in Indian Police Service. After 23 years Sachar Committee Report shows that the share of Muslims in these activities at the Central government level was only about 6 per cent, while that of the Hindu-UCs was 42 percent and both Hindu-SCs/STs and Hindu-OBCs had a share of 23 per cent each. At the state level, the share of Muslims was a little higher at 7 per cent while the other categories had shares of 37, 21 and 26 per cent respectively. The share of Muslims in the defense services was found to be only 4 per cent while that of Hindu-SCs/STs (12 per cent), Hindu-OBCs (23 per cent) and Hindu-UC (52 per cent) was much higher. Additional data made available to the Committee also showed that the participation of Muslims in security related activities (e.g. Police) is much lower than their share in population.

Hence, if government is serious about this bill it has to accommodate the demands formulated by left parties, academicians, reputed members of civil society and NAC and ensure the passing of this bill, despite right-wing opposition in and outside Parliament.

Conclusion: Continuous eruption of pre-planned communal riots has jolted the base of secularism in India.

Religion has proved to be potent communal mobilisation and lethal when mixed with politics to gain political purpose. In recent times religion came handy to capture the political power. Kalyan Singh’s government in Uttar Pradesh, Narendra Modi’s rule in Gujarat, Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra, and 1998-2004 NDA (led by BJP) rule are epitome of politicization of religion.

Today, right-wing forces are crippled with factionalism and loss of face due to non-fulfillment of communal agenda they promised before coming to power. But, even then one cannot rule out their comeback. It is not necessary that right-wing will always capture state power by the use of religion. It also comes through the promise of corruption free

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administration, better development alternatives and security of nation from external and internal threats. Once they come to power the hidden agenda of segregation takes place.

Hence, Communal Violence Bill is necessary to protect minorities from communal riots, but not sufficient. The bill has its own weakness as argued above. Further, this Bill is tilted more in favour of

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post-violence scenario and less on preventing communalism to originate. May be the Bill has limited purpose to serve. Thus, to protect minority secularism needs more than a law. It needs a democratic and secular politics in praxis and consistence opposition to communalism in society.

[Mr.Manzoor Ali, a research scholar at JNU is a

Research Officer at CBGA, New Delhi.]

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Book Review Section:

Michael Shermer [eSkeptic says: Rapidly advancing technologies may have the potential not only to spread information but to solve some of humanity’s most vexing problems. Here below, Michael Shermer (Founder, Publisher, e Skeptic) reviews a just-released book called Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler (Free Press, ISBN: 978-14516-1421-3). Together they have produced a manifesto for the future that is grounded in practical day-to-day solutions addressing the world’s most pressing problems: overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, healthcare, and freedom. A slightly different version of this review was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, February 22.]

[BOOK- Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler]

It’s Getting Better All the Time you read a major newspaper such as the IfNew York Times or Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day for a week you will have consumed more digital information than a citizen in the 17th century Western world would have encountered in a lifetime. That’s a lot of digital

data, but it’s nothing compared to what is on the immediate horizon. By comparison, from the earliest stirrings of civilization thousands of years ago to the year 2003, all of humankind created a grand total of five exabytes of digital information.

An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes. That’s a one followed by 18 zeros, and from 2003 through 2010 we created five exabytes of digital information every two days. By 2013 we will be producing five exabytes every ten minutes.

How much information is this? The 2010 total of 912 exabytes is the equivalent of 18 times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written. This means that the world is not just changing, and the change is not just accelerating, but the rate of the acceleration of change is itself accelerating.

This and many other examples of accelerating returns are documented in Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation and the founder of more than a dozen high tech companies. Kotler is a journalist who writes for the New York Times magazine, Wired, Discover, GQ, and National Geographic. Together they have produced a manifesto for the future that is grounded in practical day-to-day solutions addressing the world’s most pressing problems: overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, healthcare, and freedom. They suggest that “humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation where technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standard of living for every man, woman and child on the planet. Within a generation, we will be able to provide goods and services that were once reserved for the wealthy few to any and all who need them.” Accelerating change is happening in many areas: Information: A Masai warrior with a smartphone on Google has access to more information than the President of the United States did just 15 years ago.

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Technology: Today more people have access to a cell phone than a toilet.

Computing: In 15 years, the average $1000 laptop should be computing at the rate of the human brain.

Education: The Khan Academy?s YouTube tutorial videos on over 2200 topics from Algebra to Zoology draw over two million viewings a month.

Medicine: The field of personalized medicine?an industry that didn?t exist before 2003?is now growing at 15 percent a year and will reach $452 billion by 2015.

Aging: The centenarian population is doubling every decade, from 455,000 in 2009 to over 4.1 million by 2050.

Poverty: The number of people living in absolute poverty has fallen since the 1950s and has dropped by more than half. At the current rate of decline it will reach zero by around 2035.

Expenses: Groceries today cost 13 times less than 150 years ago in inflation adjusted dollars.

Business: Billion dollar companies are being created faster than ever?YouTube grew from startup to $1.6 billion in 18 months; Groupon went from startup to $6 billion in two years.

Standard of living: 95 percent of Americans now living below the poverty line have electricity, Internet, water, flushing toilets, a refrigerator and a television. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, among the richest people on the planet, enjoyed few of these luxuries.

The timing of this book is propitious. Between the 2011 Christian end-times soothsayers, the 2012 Mayan Calendar doomsayers, gloomy environmentalists, and the announcement in January by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that their Doomsday clock had been advanced to five minutes to midnight (and now includes environmental degradation and biological weapons alongside nuclear weapons as the likeliest candidates for our demise), how can anyone be so optimistic? With seven billion people now pressing up against the Earth’s carrying capacity there are

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seemingly intractable problems to be solved. Isn’t pessimism the appropriate response? Who’s right, the optimists or the pessimists?

The problem turns on cognitive biases that slant our interpretation of the data. Optimism is good for overcoming obstacles that are part of daily life, but over-optimism can blind one to adversities that should be heeded. In a Canadian study of inventors, for example, of those who participated in the Inventor’s Assistance Program in which they paid for objective evaluations of their invention on 37 different criteria, 47 percent continued working on their projects even after they were told that it was hopeless, and as a consequence they incurred losses double that of their more realistic colleagues.

Optimism helps entrepreneurs override normal “loss aversion,” in which losses hurt twice as much as gains feel good, an emotion we evolved in our evolutionary environment of scarcity and uncertainty. Loss aversion leads most of us to be short term in our thinking. We discount the future in ways so predictable that economists have formulas to describe it. We focus on immediate events and bad news, and are blind to long-term trends and good news. Diamandis and Kolter not only acknowledge these cognitive biases, they address them head on as one more obstacle to abundance to be overcome.

I have long been skeptical of both doomsayers who project the end of the world in our generation, as well as futurists who proclaim that the Next Big Thing to revolutionize humanity and save the planet will happen in our lifetime. To date, the end-of-the world doomsters have been spectacularly and often embarrassingly wrong.

And the futurists who craft a utopian narrative about how one day we will live forever, colonize the galaxy in starships, and materialize food and drink in replicators are indistinguishable from producers of science fiction and fantasy. Skeptics are from Missouri: Show Me. Diamandis and Kolter do just that, describing in specific detail how the revolution has already begun and that such abundance can be realized in our lifetime through

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three current forces: Do-It-Yourself (DIY) backyard tinkerers such as the aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, who won the X-Prize for achieving privatized space flight, and the geneticist J. Craig Venter, who beat the U.S. government in the race to sequence the human genome. Thousands of such DIYers are working away in garages and warehouses innovating solutions in neuroscience, biology, genetics, medicine, agriculture, robotics, and numerous other areas.

Techno-philanthropists such as Bill Gates (malaria), Mark Zuckerberg (education), Pierre and Pam Omidyar (electricity in the developing world), and many more are dedicating significant portions of their vast fortunes to solving specific problems.

The bottom billion, the poorest of the poor who have nowhere to go but up, as they become plugged into the global economy through micro-financing and the Internet will lift all boats with them as they work toward having clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier medical care, and ubiquitous energy. Don’t think of seven billion people as too many mouths to feed; think of them as seven billion brains who can think about solving heretofore insoluble problems.

The principles behind this process of abundance creation include: bottom-up v. top-down; non-linear v. linear; horizontal v. hierarchical; private entrepreneurship v. public works; small group v. large corporation; competition for prizes v. make-work for paycheck; risk disposed v. risk averse; Nonzero win-win v. zero-sum win-lose.

The trend lines outlined by the authors are real enough, and if these principles were applied worldwide such abundance should indeed be realizable, in the long run if not in the short. The biggest hurdles, however, are not scientific or technological, but political. There are still too many corrupt dictators, third-world thugs, dear leaders, and backwards looking governments that would prefer corralling their people into medieval theocracies in order to enrich themselves. Still, as Matt Ridley demonstrated in The Rational Optimist and Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, even the political trend lines are moving in the right direction. In any case, as Diamandis likes to say: “The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.”

Book Review Source URL: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-02-29/

The following books of M.N. Roy may now read and downloaded from the RH Web portal: www.theradicalhumanist.com 'Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China'; 'Science and Philosophy'; 'Memoirs'; 'India's Message: Fragments of a Prisoner's Diary'; 'Materialism'; 'M.N. Roy: Philosopher Revolutionary'; 'Reason, Romanticism and Revolution' Volume I & II; 'New Orientation'; 'New Humanism'; The Russian Revolution and the Tragedy of Communism'; 'Politics, Power & Parties'; 'Men I Met'; 'Historical Role of Islam' and 'From the Communist Manifesto to Radical Humanism'.

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Dipavali Sen [Ms. Dipavali Sen has been a student of Delhi School of Economics and Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (Pune). She has taught at Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, and various colleges of Delhi University. She is, at present, teaching at Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, Delhi University. She is a prolific writer and has written creative pieces and articles for children as well as adults, both in English and Bengali. Dipavali@gmail.com]

Book Review [BOOK: Dr BD Sharma, Glimpses of Treachery with Village India, by Sahyog Pustak Kuteer, New Delhi, with Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, 2nd edition March 2012, contribution /price: Rs 50(institutions), Rs 30(individuals), paperback, pp 116.]

Traitors to Ourselves may look more like a pamphlet than a Ittreatise but this book is as informative as it is interesting. Independent India started off with a lot of promises made to its rural component (which as we all know is the larger component). But hardly any promise has been fulfilled. The story is of betrayal and treachery. This is what this book (let) drives in.

Dr. BD Sharma is a doctorate in Mathematics as well as a retired IAS officer (1956-81) and former

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Vice-Chancellor of NEHU (1981-86). During 1986-91, he was Commissioner, for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Ever since 1991, he is an activist taking part in the struggle of the tribals.

His many writings in Hindi on the issue of progress are available in English translation. He is a much-respected authority on tribal affairs in India.

The Preface says that the book Glimpses of Treachery With Village India is “addressed to the common man” (p 4).The common man needs to be told how the agricultural population as well as the tribal population are being betrayed by the Imperialist Capitalist Global Gang.

In the 19-point Abstract, it is proposed that the “rural-urban balance” and “Development with Equity” must be realized (p 10).

The rest of the text is in three parts.

Part I (The Farmers’ Hanka) discusses how farmers are being subjected to hunting, shikar or hanka, just like wild animals. Liberalization has unleashed corporate hunters who are shooting down the farmers’ aspirations. Tribal resources are being captured and tribal people displaced.

Part II (Hanke Ka Hanka) provides an outline of the people’s democratic assertion. ‘Hunting the Hunters’ may be tough but the people must put together a frame of action and follow it up forcefully. There has to be struggle to achieve Development with Equity, and if the struggle fails in these times of ‘money and market’, there has to be People’s Revolt.

Part III (Development with Equity) offers a tentative outline of the goals people should strive for. Economic equality must be restored to the centre-stage of the economy and inequality must not be accepted as an essential condition of development as the pro-Liberalizations are arguing. People’s assertion must have immediate as well as long-term goals. Among immediate goals the book mentions greater public accountability, better health and education facilities, and improved wages-and-incomes policy. Among long-term goals, it mentions reduction of consumerism,

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increase of dialogue and participatory democracy.

In the (very) short Epilogue the book reminds us of what Tolstoy had said long ago. Well-wishers of the poor should, instead of giving them advice, just get off their shoulders – upon whom they are perched.

There is an Annexure: Gram Sabha Declaration about Offences against Democracy. This is followed by a subject index which may be very useful for people given to taking action rather than reading on.

The book is factual. It substantiates its points with figures, e.g. “...According to a survey by Duleep Swamy the expropriation through questionable valuation of a few crops was about Rs 40,000

crores during 1970-80” (p 65). Or, “The ruling wage in agriculture is about Rs 50-100 per day. If family-wage principle is accepted revised wages cannot be less than Rs 300” (p 65 again).

It also has a firm historical basis, and refers often to Acts passed during the British Raj and early years of Independence, e.g., the Bihar Money Lender’s Act, 1938 (p 19), or the Madhya Pradesh Land Revenue Code, 1959 (p 33).

The language is rather effusive. But then with the spectre of treachery haunting Village India, that is in the best traditions of any manifesto.

I picked this book up while attending a thought (and action)-provoking seminar on Citizens For Democracy (14-15 July, 2012, at Gandhi Peace Foundation). I read it and was fascinated. If you pick it up, you too will be.

37thDeath Anniversary of GORA (1902-1975) Seminar on “March towards the Post-Religious Society” & Unveiling of the statues (busts) of Gora, Saraswathi Gora & Chennupati Seshagiri Rao ATHEIST CENTRE Cordially invites you to 37th Death Anniversary of GORA (well known atheist, social revolutionary, freedom fighter and an ardent champion of Castelessness and eradication of Untouchability).

Seminar on March towards the Post-Religious Society at Atheist Centre, Benz Circle, Vijayawada 10 at 10.15 am on Thursday the 26th July 2012.

Mr. Even Gran Norwegian Humanist leader, Oslo, Norway inaugurates.

Mr. Umesh Choube National Executive President, All India Andh Shradhha Nirmulan Samiti (Nagpur) Chief Guest “Padmashree” Turlapati Kutumba Rao (Veteran Journalist & Chairman, AP Granthalaya Parishad, Govt. of AP) presides.

Dr. Samaram, Dr. Vijayam, Mr. Lavanam,Ch. Vidya (ex-MP), J. Mythri and others participate. All are welcome.

—Invitation sent by Dr. Vijayam, positiveatheist@gmail.com, www.atheistcentre.in

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Humanist News Section: I

Indian Renaissance Institute Meeting Meeting of Delhi Trustees (IRI) and Invitees: A meeting of the Delhi based Trustees of IRI was held at Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi on 20th July 2012 in which the following participated: B.D. Sharma, N.D. Pancholi, Vinod Jain, Narottam Vyas, Mahipal Singh, Rahul Jain, Vidyasagar, Ghanshyam Singh and S.C.Verma Following decisions were taken:A meeting will be held between 10 Am to 1.30 PM on Saturday, the 18th August 2012, to discuss the philosophy of the Radical Humanism. Following members have agreed to speak as below: B.D. Sharma on “Communism & New Humanism”. Vinod Jain on “Animinism, Polytheism, monotheism, humanism”. Mahipal Singh on “Relevance of Radical Humanism in today’s context”. N.D. Pancholi on “Gandhism & Radical Humanism”. National Seminar on “Marxism, Socialism & Radical Humanism”.

It was decided that a National Seminar should be held on “Marxism, socialism and Radical Humanism” as part of the 125th Birth Anniversary Year Celebration of M.N. Roy sometime in Sept/October 2012.

A preparatory meeting of the Delhi based trustees will be held on 3rd of August 2012 to discuss the above programme.

Report on Kashmir by Interlocutors It was further decided to obtain the report of interlocutors appointed by the Central Govt. who have made recommendations for solution of the Kashmir problem and organize a discussion over the same.

The Vth Volume of Selected Work of M.N. Roy The IRI members and trustees shall also meet on 27th July 2012 at G.P.F. to assess the progress

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made towards finalization of the Vth Volume of the Selected Works of M.N. Roy. 13 Mohini Road, Dehradun It was decided to request our advocate at Nainital to take steps for early hearing of our case pending at Nainital High Court.

—News sent by N.D. Pancholi, Secretary, IRI II

Citizens For Democracy (CFD) All India Conference: Call for People’s Campaign to defend Democratic Rights in India: All India Conference of Citizens For Democracy (CFD) was held at Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi on 14th & 15th July 2012. CFD was established in April 1974 by Lok Nayak Jayprakash Narayn during those tumultuous days when democratic institutions were under severe strain.

The main objective of CFD was stipulated to preserve, defend and strengthen democracy in the country without being involved in power politics or party politics. It did commendable work in various fields like electoral reform, land reforms, campaigns against corruption, communalism and casteism, campaign for autonomy for Radio & T.V., jail reform for anti defection law, campaign for promoting people to people friendship between India and Pakistan and investigations into violations of human rights in various parts of the country. However, since 1997 CFD was not functioning for certain reasons. Keeping in view the prevailing growing frustration and dissatisfaction of the people at large with the present deterioration of the political, social and economic conditions in the country, there was a strong demand from the old members to revive and reorganize CFD. In response to that the aforesaid conference was held.

A large number of representatives from various

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parts of the country, notably from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Punjab, in addition to Delhi, had participated in the conference. Shri Kuldip Nayar inaugurated the conference on 14th July and Shri Ashis Nandy presided over it.

In the beginning Shamsul Islam and Neelima Sharma from Nishant Natya Manch along with their team welcomed the delegates by chanting revolutionary songs. N.D. Pancholi briefly stated the context in which the conference was being held.

Shri Kuldip Nayar in his inaugural address said that organizations like Citizens For Democracy were the need of the hour for strengthening democracy and civil liberties in the country. It was unfortunate that CFD remained inactive for about 14 years. He said that all citizens and organizations who were concerned with the present appalling political, social and economic situation, should come together to save democracy.

Chairing the inaugural session, eminent sociologist Ashis Nandy said that the Indian state has become too powerful and centralized and there is a need to strengthen the fight for democratic rights. He said that those who want to safeguard democratic values and democratic rights in the country should take specific issues and fight for people’s rights for specific purpose. Referring to Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption, he said that people have started thinking that Lokpal, once established, would be the most costly bureaucrat to buy and would be a terrible source of corruption. He said that Jayprakash Narayan formed Citizens For Democracy in an attempt to build a more humane society. The organization needs to start its activity again. However, he raised doubts over the Presidential form of government and said that in a country like India, Presidential form of government is not likely to succeed. On the other hand it will worsen the situation.

Justice (Rtd.) Rajinder Sachar welcomed the move to re-activate CFD and advocated the repeal of

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sedition and other draconian laws. He said that first Prime Minister of the country Jawahar Lal Nehru had said that a law like sedition would have no place in independent India. “Unfortunately in independent India we have made such laws harsher,” He said.

Dr. Ramji Singh said that party system was the source of all corruption. He said that electoral reforms were the need of the hour to enable the people to have meaningful control over their representatives.

Noted environmental activist SR Hiremath emphasized upon a movement to restore people’s rights over natural resources to strengthen democracy. Many other speakers participated.

However all were of the opinion that people’s struggles should be organized and strengthened to defend democratic rights and promote democratic values in the country.

Representatives from various parts of the country expressed their anguish over the present regressing situation in the country and were of the opinion that money power is controlling and spoiling democratic institutions leading to failures of people’s struggles and campaigns for protecting their rights to forest, water and land and there is gross violation of civil liberties and human rights.

Another ill-effect of money power is that right kinds of people are not able to be elected as representatives in Parliament and State Legislatures. Media is also being misused by the vested interests. Judicial system is also not functioning to the satisfaction of the people. In such a situation it is necessary to re-organize and re-activate ‘Citizens For Democracy.’

On 15th July 2012, the next day, Shri S.Y. Qureshi, Former Chief Election Commissioner delivered his main speech on ‘Electoral Reforms’. He spoke of his experiences and started with a positive note. He stated that it was not appropriate to condemn politicians, bureaucracy and judiciary in matters relating to holding of elections. He said that Election Commission in India is an independent

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body and its independence has been respected by all other institutions. So far there has been no allegation against the Election Commission of favoritism or partisanship. He said that politicians and political parties have strengthened Election commission. Similarly bureaucracy and judiciary have also rendered valuable help to it in maintaining its integrity and independence. The role of bureaucracy is commendable as it has helped in holding, by and large, free and fair elections from time to time, especially in remote and difficult areas of the country. The commission has also received commendable help from media and civil society. The vigilant civil society groups and citizens as well as certain section of media give timely help in exposing the unfair means adopted by certain politicians and parties to enable the commission to take immediate steps to check the evil. He said that democracy is a growing system and it is for the people to strengthen and preserve it.

Thereafter Shri Qureshi delved on the negative aspects. He said that our election system is threatened by a few challenges. The first challenge is the entry of tainted politicians. Previously some politicians were getting support from criminals, but now criminal elements have themselves started contesting elections. Another challenge was the use of money power in the elections. He said that it was a matter of great concern that moneyed people are contesting elections to preserve their vested interests and this was leading to large scale corruption in the country. Another challenge was “Paid News”. The most important challenge to the election system is “Voters Apathy”.

Shri Qureshi suggested that in order to clean politics, it was necessary to debar those candidates who are accused of serious criminal offences and against whom charges were framed six months before the declaration of election. To the argument that an accused is deemed to be innocent till proved guilty, he said that large number of accused facing trial are lodged in various jails in India and notwithstanding that they are deemed to be innocent, their rights to liberty, occupation,

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movement and dignity is restrained, and therefore why the right of such accused facing serious charges be not curbed by debarring them from contesting elections. He further suggested that there should be transparency in functioning of political parties, misuse of religion in politics should be checked, “Paid News” should be declared as electoral offence. He strongly opposed “Opinion Polls” and expressed his apprehension that vested interests are capable of getting any kind of Opinion Poll in the way they desire.

In order to further strengthen the Election Commission he said that same protection be given to the tenure of other two Election commissioners as is provided to the Chief Election Commissioner, its secretariat should be independent and budget of Election Commission should get direct funds from the central funds as is the case with judiciary. Most important suggestion was that voters must be educated to understand the importance of voting and participating in the elections. However, he did not favour the demands for “right to reject” and “right to recall”.

A lively discussion followed and some representatives stressed the need for “right to reject” and “right to recall”.

In the next session some important decisions were taken towards future activities of CFD and a few resolutions were passed, It was decided to prepare a Demand Draft for Electoral Reforms and send the same to the Chief Election Commissioner and the Prime Minister, discussions should be organized in various states and thereafter a National Conference should be organized in Delhi in Nov/Dec 2012 on Electoral Reforms.

A seminar / discussion should be organized in Delhi on the issue of Judicial Accountability Bill pending in Parliament, if possible in August, 2012.

It was resolved that an appeal should be made to the Naxal groups as well as governments to stop violence against each other and come to negotiating table.

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The conference expressed its shock and concern that even after 25 years of horrendous incident which took place in July 1887 in village Oinam and surrounding areas in Senapati district in Manipur, mostly habituated by Naga people, where large number of innocent residents were killed, injured, their women raped, properties looted and burnt by the soldiers of Assam Rifles, no compensation has been paid to the victims and that even the judgment in the criminal case filed against the guilty officials of the Assam Rifles has not been announced though the arguments were heard by the Court in 1991 and judgment reserved. The judgment which was expected to redress the grievances of the tortured and victimized people of that area and punish the guilty officials never came though more than twenty years have passed since it was reserved for announcement after conclusion of arguments. The conference resolved that memorandum should be presented on behalf of CFD to the Central Government as well as the government of Manipur that victims of Oinam carnage should be immediately adequately compensated, guilty should be punished and Arms Forces (Special Powers) Act should be repealed.

Annual membership of the CFD was decided to be Rs.100/- and it was also decided that members of the political parties should not be eligible to be members of CFD while efforts should be made to enroll non-party social, dalit & cultural activists, intellectuals, youth and women. State conferences should be held.

A national council was constituted. Kuldip Nayar was elected as the President, Dr. Ramji Singh and S.R. Hiremath as Vice Presidents, N.D. Pancholi as General Secretary, and Satyendra Ranjan and Anil Sinha as Secretaries. Names of national council members would be announced soon as consent of some of the persons whose names have been proposed is awaited.

Conference ended with vote of thanks. The participants included, amongst others, Dr. Ramji Singh, Ramsharan, Raman Kumar, Priyadarshi,

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Surender Kumar & Sheodayal from Bihar; Ghanshyam and Manthan from Jharkhand; S.R. Hiremath from Karnataka, Gautam Thaker & Mahadev Vidrohi from Gujrat; Amitabh from MP; TRN Prabhu from Kerala; Bhawani Shanker, Hanuman Sahay Sharma & Ramender Kumar from Rajasthan; Sheik Hussian, Kishan Gordia from Maharashtra; Prof. M.K. Das from UP; Nafisa Ali, K. Zimik, Father T.K. John, Sanjeev Shaswat, Massoma Ali, Syed Akhlaq Ahmad, Abu Bakr Sabhag, Surendra Kumar, B.D. Sharma, Dipavali Sen, Bhawna Sharma, Shivakant, Premchand, Dr. D.K. Giri, Satyendra Ranjan, Gopa Joshi, Bhabani Dixit, Meetpal Singh, Kuldeep Singh Arora, A.S. Saini, Ajay, PT Gopal, Mohd. Bilal Shabga, Azharuddin Khan, Chaturbhuj, A.K. Arun, Prasun Latant, Rajendra Rajan, Mahipal Singh and Mani Mala from Delhi.

—Report sent by:

N. D Pancholi, General Secretary (CFD) III

In ‘e-Gujarat’, just 3% of households have Internet connectivity: In a state that has about 40 e-governance projects and has won several awards for them, the Internet penetration among households is just over 3%. The state has fewer homes with Internet connections as compared to states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal.Of the 1.21 crore homes in Gujarat covered in Census 2011, only 3.8 lakh homes have computers and laptops having Internet connectivity. In comparison, states similar in size have better Internet connectivity — Maharashtra has Internet connectivity in 13.7 lakh homes, Andhra Pradesh in 5.4 lakh homes, Karnataka (6.3 lakh) and Tamil Nadu (7.7 lakh).Even smaller states like Kerala (4.8 lakh homes with Internet connections) and West Bengal (4.4 lakh) have far

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greater Internet penetration.Urban-rural e-divide.

Most of the Internet connectivity in Gujarat is in urban centres.In ‘e-Gujarat’, just 3% of households have Internet connectivityOf the 67 lakh homes in rural Gujarat, just 0.6% of the households have Internet. Urban areas are a shade better, with 6% of the total 54 lakh homes having Internet connections.The unimpressive Internet connectivity in Gujarat puts a question mark on the impact of 40-odd “citizen centric” e-governance projects launched by the state government in the last one decade.Most of these e-governance projects are meant to assist people from rural areas.

For instance, e-Gram project, which won Skoch Challenger Award and the CSI-Nihilent Award in 2008 for being an outstanding project, is primarily meant for the rural people for accessing services like e-ticketing of railways, airlines, utility bill payments, licences, permits, insurance selling and market linkages for agriculture commodities.However, the state government says e-governance projects have been very effective because Gujarat has “created its own Internet footprint through projects like e-Gram”.“Last year, e-transactions worth over Rs 10.5 crore happened in the state,” said Ravi Saxena, additional chief secretary in charge of state’s science and technology department.“In 2010-11, electricity bills of 55 lakh rural households, worth Rs 29.1 crore, were paid through e-gram outlets,” he said, adding that people could easily access these centres (located in panchayat offices) that have broadband Internet connectivity.According to Saxena, projects like e-Dhara (complete computerisation of all land records and citizen-centric delivery of services), Mahitishakti (online forms for citizens for ration cards and old-age pension scheme), Gujarat Ration Card Computerisation and Form Book (an online book containing various forms required by the citizens), have made an impact in the state. However, most of this Internet connectivity seems to restricted to the government and panchayat offices/centres.As per the Census 2011, the districts of Dang (137 homes with

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Internet connections) and Narmada (576 homes) have the lowest Internet connectivity while Ahmedabad (1.2 lakh homes with Internet connections), Surat (55,000) and Vadodara (53,000 homes) have the highest Internet penetration.Interestingly, the rural areas of even the most progressive districts of the state have poor Internet penetration. While rural areas in Vadodara and Surat have just 1,500 and 3,200 homes with Internet connections, respectively, rural Ahmedabad has just 1,002 homes with Net. —News Source:

Avinash Nair Dalits Media Watch Dalits Media Watch <PMARC@dgroups.org> IV

Police in Sanal’s house to arrest him: 4 July 2012. This morning, officers of the Delhi Police reached Sanal Edamaruku’s house to arrest him. They came upon directions of a Delhi court to execute an arrest warrant issued by a Mumbai Metropolitan Magistrate Court (second highest Criminal Court). If Sanal had been at home, he would be in jail now....

The officers were informed that Sanal is presently out of Delhi and traveling. They insisted on details of his whereabouts, addresses and contact numbers.

Some hours later, they came again to press for information, to no avail.

What will happen next?

With this dramatic turn of events, Sanal Edamaruku’s persecution has reached a dangerous new level. Exposing the “miracle” of the water-dripping crucifix at the Velankanni church in Mumbai as a plumber’s problem, he incurred Catholic fury beyond all trademark forgiveness.

Highly alarming is the fact that the Catholic side has managed to secure considerable support from Indian government agencies. The Catholic Church is representing only a small minority of believers in

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India. But it is backed by a powerful worldwide apparatus, driven by great ambitions to conquer India and make up for its losses in the western world. I don’t want the Dark Ages to come to India!

Sanal says in the controversial TV program, drawing the battle lines.

In the ongoing conflict, Sanal has the evidence-based factual truth on his side - regarding capillary action as well as regarding church history.

Moreover, he enjoys the full support of the Indian Constitution that explicitly obliges all citizens to develop “scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”. And then, of course, there is the right to Freedom of Expression (Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) on his side of the balance tray..

The revengeful local Catholic leaders, on the other side, have the tacit support of another heavy weight: the powerful Catholic Church. The Pope is keeping mum, ignoring thousands of contemporaries from various parts of the world

who are calling upon the Vatican via an Online Petition of the Rationalist Association (UK) to take a stand in this case. But his Mumbai representative, Bishop Agnelo Gracias (whom Sanal encountered in the TV-9 program), does all the talking.

Unstinting in his public praise for Sanal’s prosecutors, Gracias “rejoices” about their courage!

It is obvious that the Catholic Church is trying to pull the strings to silence its most vocal and courageous opponent in India. If there is one person who could cross their ambitious plans, it is Sanal Edamaruku. So there is much at stake, for both sides. How far will they be able to go? That cannot be foreseen. We have to be prepared for the worst.

—News Source: Rationalist International Bullletin www.rationalistinternational.net rationalistinternational@gmail.com

Letter to the Editor: Madam, I am a reader of The Radical Humanist. I am a person who has interest in the non-political writings of M.N. Roy. I have translated M.N. Roy’s book India’s Message in Malyalam. It has been published in book form titled Divyanmarude Manasasthram (meaning Psychology Of The Seer) by Insight Publica, Kozhikode, Kerala, February 2012, Rs. 80/-. It is an abridged edition of India’s Message.

M.V. Haridasan Sivaramnilayam C.T. Palayam Kollengode, 678506 Kerala Note: Mr. Haridasan had sent this information in March 2012. The unavoidable delay in publishing it in the RH is regretted.

—Rekha Saraswat 39

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THE RADICAL HUMANIST

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