Vol. 76 No 8
Rs. 20/month
NOVEMBER 2012
THE RADICAL HUMANIST (Since April 1949) Founder Editor: M. N. Roy Formerly : Independent India (April 1937- March 1949)
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Secular Humanist Paul Kurtz passes away (December 21, 1925 - October 20, 2012)
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The Radical Humanist
www.theradicalhumanist.com
Vol. 76 Number 8 November 2012
Contents
Monthly journal of the Indian Renaissance Institute
1. From the Editor’s Desk: Secular Humanism in India:A Remote Possibility —Rekha Saraswat 1 2. Paul Kurtz: Obituaries 2 Remembering Paul Kurtz —Sanal Edamaruku 5 Paul Kurtz: Father of Secular Humanism, —Nathan Bupp 7 Paul Kurtz & the Virtue of Skepticism: —Michael Shermer 11 12 Reminiscing about Paul Kurtz —Center For Inquiry 15 3. Guests’ Section: Protecting Biodiversity and Soil Fertility —J. Sharath Chandra Rao 20 Scattered Ruminations on M. N. Roy’s Ideas —B.P. Rath 22 Reservation in Promotions —Mastram Kapoor 24 4. Current Affairs’ Section: Is it Economics versus Politics? —K.S. Chalam 27 FDI; UPA; Water disputes; Rahul’s Initiative —N.K. Acharya 29 5. IRI / IRHA Members’ Section: Turmoil in North-East: A Lesson From Sikkim —Subhankar Ray 31 6. Teacher’s & Research Scholar’s Section: The 'Maid of Honor': Humanity hidden in slums! —Namita S. Kalla 33 7. Book Review Section: The Magic in the Trees —Dipavali Sen 34 8. Humanist News Section: 36
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— Secular Humanism in India: A Remote Possibility he idea of a secular kind of humanism is still alien to the vast majority of us Indians. I do not know what the percentage of secular humanists in the West vis-à-vis the religious society is; but leaving aside a few conglomerations in the name of the heritage of path-setters, like Gora and Periyar, who have named themselves as the Rationalist and Atheist groups, humanism in India is completely immersed in religion. Our personal conduct, our social behaviour and our political choices, all have religious connotations. M.N. Roy was a rationalist humanist, who had dreamt of a scientific renaissance in India in his final years. But he had a history of a political activist also and many in the fold are still undecided about the hue and purpose of our radical humanist movement. Whether it should be a rationalist movement, a socialist movement, a political activist movement or a combination of all the three with special emphasis upon a cause which would be the need of the hour is still a matter of personal sensibility in the assemblage. We are such experts in converting a logical thought into a myth that even Gautam Buddha and Mahavir, who were themselves averse to the concept of any super human power, are now revered in our society as deities. Their ideologies are taught as two distinct varieties of Buddhist and Jain religions. Swami Dayanand Saraswati, a religious reformer, who was strictly against any kind of idol-worshipping, is himself adulated in every Arya Samaj Temple with his picture or sculpture garlanded by his followers all over the world. To be secular in views and to be secular in action are two very different things in our culture or maybe in other societies too. We may vouch for rational philosophical interpretations of life’s happenings but we adopt a complete irrational behaviour in practice; sometimes in the name of
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social pressure, sometimes in the name of habit and many times in the name of family expectations. The exact reason behind this quasi-rationalism may probably be the quasi-conviction in one’s own rational perceptions! Slight provocation by unexpected happenings or developments in our lives or surroundings shakes our rationale, making us so insecure that we tend to revert to faith-healing and a spiritual-reprieve. It is usually said that skepticism needs a background of sound logic. Sound logic needs a backdrop of strong alternatives. Strong alternatives need a history of profound wisdom of the phenomena around us. If we examine our legacy on that scale, there has been no dearth of wisdom in our past. We have almost the longest heritage of sages and sears, Sufis and saints who spent long years in caves and islands, beside the rivers and on mountain-tops and travelling from one corner of the nation to the other, studying nature’s phenomena and preaching their derived perspectives to their disciples. But all our truth-seekers succumbed to the pressures of faith and the aura of the unknown. Finally, they used their scepticism in relegating and depredating Chârvak’s reasoning to the ulterior motive of acquisitive-materialistic salvation. The farthest that we could go in the name of secular humanism was to suggest a kind of co-existence to all the religious cults in our political system. We are still correlating culture and decency, sincerity and authenticity with our level of devotion and faithfulness to our religions, consciously and subconsciously. Like the medieval political implications we still seem to agree with the idea that one’s faith-abiding instincts naturally lead to the law-abiding habit. A civic society where the need to co-exist leads to the moral sensibilities of controlled, cooperative behaviour and not the fear of a reprimanding rod of the supernatural is a long way to go. We need another Paul Kurtz for us, here, in India, and soon!! — Rekha S.
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sands of time. The coming generations of newer scientific era are sure going to look back on his achievements with awe and inspiration and determine in their minds that ‘well if he could go on amidst so much of opposition from the believing world why can’t we’!! Dear Friends, We are deeply grieved to learn about the sad demise In solidarity with Paul Kurtz’s mission and vision! —Rekha S. of Prof. Paul Kurtz. This November 2012 issue of Editor, The Radical Humanist The Radical Humanist is carrying obituaries from rheditor@gmail.com radical humanists and rationalists. I am also publishing the illustrious panorama of his Indian Renaissance Institute life from the Statement issued by Stuart Jordan, grieved over the sad demise of President, Institute for Science and Human Values; from the website of Center For Inquiry as well as Prof. Paul Kurtz the complete article of the Founding Publisher of ndian Renaissance Institute, India, is Skeptic magazine and Executive Director of the deeply grieved over the sad demise of Prof. Skeptics Society, Michael Shermeron, taken from Paul Kurtz who breathed his last on 20th October, eskeptic.com 2012. He worked and lived as an ideal humanist, As we all know, The Radical Humanist journal rationalist and secularist. His life and writings have goes to a wide variety of readership but most of our inspired large number of individuals throughout the veteran readers are still not computer-savvy. world, especially in India, to adopt scientific and Therefore, I am publishing the above statement and humanist outlook. He toured many times in India articles about Prof. Kurtz for their benefit (giving and participated in humanist conferences in order full details of the source names of the e-journals to promote humanist movements. He helped in and their respective URLs, if anyone of you wants developing and promoting many humanist to read them directly at the sites). institutions in India like ‘Centre for Inquiry’ and This will help us all to know in greater details about ‘Centre For the Study of Social Change’. He was a the tireless efforts put by Paul Kurtz and by the great friend of leading Indian humanists and people working for the organisations founded by rationalists, some of the names are, V.M. Tarkunde, him in giving secularism and humanism new Prof. Sibnarian Ray, Innaiah Narisetti, Sanal meanings and in evolving a completely Edamaruku, Dr. Indumati Parikh and Sri. B.D. unambiguous secular humanist ideology guided Sharma, (to name a few). Many of his books have only by reason, science and human values without been translated in several Indian Languages. borrowing the heavily loaded religious or spiritual Indian Renaissance Institute, India, at this moment dicta. of great loss, resolves to re-dedicate its work and No one can replace Prof. Paul Kurtz and his efforts to promote humanist, secular and rationalist enigmatic ways of managing collective human values for which Prof. Paul Kurtz strived efforts towards his set goals but all who knew and throughout his life - a resolution and a fitting tribute agreed with his principles of life and philosophy to his memory. will undauntedly carry forward his mission —N.D. Pancholi, Secretary, according to their own vision and imagination. Indian Renaissance Institute, India Such efforts as his never go a waste and they Azadpancholi@yahoo.com definitely leave their indelible imprints on the
Paul Kurtz: The Tireless Crusader of Secular Humanist Values
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sorry to know about this. We Extremely had translated into Hindi and published
A Secular Humanist Philosopher he sudden death of Dr. Paul Kurtz on 20th October in USA at the age of 86 is a great loss to the world Humanist Movement. He was a renowned philosopher and founder editor of “Free Inquiry” magazine. He was the founder of a publishing house Prometheus Books which was intended to propagate the values of Humanism, Secularism and free Inquiry. He was also the founder of Institute for Science and Humanism. He was the author of 40 books. He was the founder of Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Council for Secular Humanism and Center for Inquiry. He was the co–editor of Humanist Manifesto an updated version 1933 Original. I became an admirer by reading his articles in the “Radical Humanist” magazine since two decades. I met him in 1997 at Buffalo, NY state USA along with two other Indian friends, and discussed about Humanist and Socialist Movements. This interview was fixed by my friend Dr. N. Innaiah. Just as renowned social psychologist Dr. Erich Fromm introduced socialist component into the Humanist Movement, Dr. Paul Kurtz Introduced secular component into the Humanist Movement. Dr. Paul Kurtz was not nearly an academic philosopher but was also a great activist. He travelled all over the world propagating secular humanist values. He attended a world Humanist Conference in Mumbai. We should study the ideas and ideals of Dr. Erich Fromm and Dr. Paul Kurtz of the West, Humanist thinker M.N. Roy and socialist thinker Dr. Rammanohar Lohia of the East, in order to build a New Human Civilization and for the development of a New Human Culture.
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as a booklet the Secular Humanist Manifesto drafted by him. As you must have noticed, we have been translating and serializing his Neo-Humanist statement in the Buddhiwadi. We have also been associated with Institute for Science and Human Values (ISHV). I didn't get and opportunity to meet him, though I corresponded with him. Kawaljeet and my daughter, Priya, had an opportunity to meet him at the World Humanist Congress in Mumbai. We all are grieved by this. —Ramendra Nath Veteran Radical Humanist (ramendra@sancharnet.in) is great loss to the humanist, rationalist, Itsecularist movement throughout world . Prof Paul Kurtz died on 20 oct at the age of 86. I had the privilege to work with him since two decades. I associated with him in Center for Inquiry and Institute of Human values. He encouraged my writings: Forced into faith, writings of M N Roy, and The truth about Gita. We toured together in India and associated with several international seminars in USA. —Innaiah Narisetti Veteran Radical Humanist (Innaiahn@yahoo.com) a great loss. He was a scholar, a Ittrueis indeed humanist who lived his life teaching
others and working for human values and dignity. I had the opportunity to meet and discuss issues with him several times thanks to my father's affiliation with him and his work. He will be missed! — Naveena Narisetti —Ravela Somayya Physicist, U.S.A Veteran Radical Humanist & Socialist (Psynaveena@yahoo.com) ravela.somayya@gmail.com 3
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is indeed a great loss to the radicals. My Itheartfelt condolences to the family members, and also to the radical humanist and rationalist friends —Mahi Pal Singh Secretary, PUCL National (mahipalsinghrh@gmail.com)
Passing Away of a Secular Humanist “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.” —P.Kurtz n international giant of Secular Humanist Movement, Paul Kurtz (1925-2012) passed away on Saturday 20th of October at the age of 86. This news was confirmed by the American Humanist Association. He was one of the greatest contributors to the development of our non-theistic philosophy. He wrote that “to-day the campaign for equal rights and for a better life for everyone knows no boundaries. This is the common ground for the people of the world: worthy of highest aspirations.” When receiving a lifetime award for his work in 2007, he declared: “I am a secular humanist because I am not religious. I draw my inspiration not from religion or spirituality but from science, ethics, philosophy and the arts.” In recent years, the U.S.-based Prometheus has brushed aside threats to
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publish studies on the origins of Islam that question the traditional history of the faith, and on the situation of atheists and agnostics in Muslim countries. “He was one of the most influential figures in the humanist and skeptical movements from the late 1960s through the first decade of the 21st century,” said an obituary issued by Centre for Inquiry which was founded by him in 1991. He coined the word “Eupraxsophy” and inspiring people with the “courage to become” whatever we want, including a good humanist, with the basic spirit of the human being, living the good life and enjoying the exuberance of life. The word is based on the Greek words for “good”, “practice”, and “wisdom”. Eupraxsophies, like religions, are cosmic in their outlook, but eschew the supernatural component of religion, avoiding the “transcendental temptation,” as Kurtz puts it. Although critical of supernatural religion, he has attempted to develop affirmative ethical values of naturalistic humanism. He said that “our planetary community is facing serious problems that can only be solved by cooperative global action.” We the Indian Radical Humanists pay sincere tribute to Paul Kurt for his life long passionate and committed fight for upholding human values. —Bipin Shroff Veteran Radical Humanist Shroffbipin@gmail.com deeply appreciate the gesture of bringing Ithis sad news to all of us. I was one of those who used to read his articles in the Radical Humanist journal that was subscribed by AU library. He was an original thinker. we have lost a great philosopher and defender of humanist ethics. I join you in conveying our grief to the humanist community. —K.S. Chalam Secular-Rational Activist Chalamks@hotmail.com
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Paranormal, CSICOP), the Council for Secular Humanism, the Center for Inquiry, the Academy of Humanism and finally the Institute for Science and Human Values. Kurtz’ creations gained momentum as he animated, nurtured, shaped and groomed them with utmost dedication and a professionalism you would not expect from a philosopher. Paul was a great organizer and a talented and passionate networker. We maintained regular contact ever since then – during the pre-email times over letters and later intensely over the Internet. We met at several cities Remembering Paul Kurtz across the globe – in Europe, USA, Australia and India. —Sanal Edamaruku In September 2008, I met Paul for the last time. He stopped over in India to receive an honorary [Sanal Edamaruku is President, Rationalist doctorate of the new Periyar-Maniammai International and President, Indian Rationalist University at Tamil Nadu and to speak at the Association edamaruku@gmail.com] Rationalist Centre in Delhi on occasion of the second death anniversary of Joseph Edamaruku, or many years, Paul Kurtz has been an my father. important figure in my life as well as in the history of Rationalist International. He was both a travelling companion and a friend. My special relation with him started with a post card. I had never met him, when he wrote to me that he was personally very happy that the Indian Rationalist Association has applied for membership of the IHEU, of which he was a co-president then. Later when we met at Amsterdam, he congratulated for what I was doing in India, and expressed interest in working close with me. His vivid little eyes were twinkling. He seemed to know his own mind so damn clearly. Always! That is how he was able to move His speech is deeply engraved in my memory. So mountains. was the last evening that we spent together, And mountains he moved in his life. Paul Kurtz speaking heart to heart about past and future. He was a creator of precedents. Single-handedly, he was on a mission, creating new Centres for Inquiry. called institutions into being and made them focal Along with Innaiah Narisetti, the previous day we points and catalysers of a new intellectual and visited Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College, socio-cultural movement: the Committee for where a new Centre for Inquiry was in the Skeptical Inquiry (formerly Committee for the formation. The future never ceased to fascinate Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paul. He was travelling alone then, 80 years old and
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not in best health, but in indefatigable spirits and inception in 1995 - received the first International Rationalist Award. Our co-operation intensified in many fields, we worked on common publishing ventures between Indian Atheist Publishers and Prometheus Books. I introduced some of his most important writings, among them Transcendental Temptation and Forbidden Fruit, in translation to Indian audiences. In September 2002, Paul invited me to speak in the fourth World Skeptic Conference at Burbank hosted by the CFI. It was a great conference, but the most important events took place in the late evenings, when Paul called me to his hotel room to discuss with me confidentially and for hours over bursting with ideas and energy. He remained a tuna salad and wine about his insights and plans. pioneer and a visionary till his end. We stayed in close contact and discussed many In my eyes, Paul’s greatest contribution was the aspects and developments in the world movement, secularization of humanism. As M.N. Roy took many common decisions and initiatives, re-casted humanism as Radical Humanism, Paul sometimes of far reaching consequences. Paul transformed it into “Secular Humanism", stripping would sometimes call me at night from a cottage in the movement that had once been widely perceived the French countryside where he used to spend as a new religion without god from all its much time or from a hotel swimming pool pseudo-religious aspects and leanings. His Secular somewhere in the world to discuss a strategy. He Humanism was closely linked to Skepticism and called me also in May 2010, when he was toying Philosophy – a combination that so far did not exist with the idea of resigning all his positions. We anywhere but in the Indian Rationalist Association. talked long and exchanged numerous emails. I was That was the deep root of attraction between us. convinced his resignation was a mistake and Paul firmly aligned with me and with the evolving warned him. But once more he seemed to know so Rationalist International. His landmark speech “In clearly what he had to do. He resigned. Praise of Rationalism”, held in the second A series of emails over how he felt about the International Rationalist Conference in January resignation followed. Since then we did not have 2000, was the beginning of a close cooperation. much personal contact. He went into a kind of inner Rationalism and Secular Humanism became a immigration. I wished I had visited him some day strong tandem moving towards new horizons. In to discuss once more the future, over tuna salad and this conference, Paul Kurtz – an Honorary wine…................ Associate of Rationalist International since its
Dear Friends, We are planning to organise an International Conference in Delhi in the first week of February 2013 to commemorate the 125th Birth Year of M.N. Roy. A detailed programme will follow in the December 2012 issue of RH and will be declared on the RH Web portal in the 3rd week of November 2012. Please begin making your plans to attend it from where ever you are. Looking forward to your suggestions also regarding the same. —Rekha S.
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Paul Kurtz, Publisher, Public Intellectual, And "Father Of Secular Humanism, Dies At 86 (1925 - 2012)
—By Nathan Bupp Institute for Science and Human Values, Amherst, New York Kurtz, philosopher, prolific author, Paul publisher, and founder of several secular humanist institutions as well as the for-profit independent press Prometheus Books, died on Saturday, October 20, 2012 at his home in Amherst, New York. He was 86. Professor Kurtz was widely heralded as the "father of secular humanism." With his fifty plus books (many translated into foreign languages around the world), multitudinous media appearances and public lectures, and other vast and seminal accomplishments in the organized skeptic and humanist movements, he was certainly the most 7
important secular voice of the second part of the 20th century. He was an ardent advocate for the secular and scientific worldview and a caring, ethical humanism as a key to the good life. Kurtz was a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1965 to his retirement in 1991 as professor emeritus. He founded the publishing company Prometheus Books in 1969, Skeptical Inquirer magazine and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) in 1976, Free Inquiry magazine and the Council for Secular Humanism in 1980, and the Center for Inquiry in 1991. Later projects included the launching of a scholarly journal, The Human Prospect, and a new nonprofit think tank, the Institute for Science and Human Values (both in 2010) where he served as chairman until his death. Paul Kurtz was born on December 21, 1925 in Newark, New Jersey. After graduating from high school he enrolled into Washington Square College at New York University, where he was elected freshman class president and became head of a student group called American Youth for Democracy. This was the beginning of his long romance with the power of ideas, but soon he would feel the call to serve his country. Six months before his eighteenth birthday he enlisted in the army. In 1944 he and his unit found themselves smack in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge. Kurtz would later recall, “I was on the front lines for the rest of the war, in units liberating France, Belgium, Holland, and Czechoslovakia.” He entered both the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps shortly after they were liberated and met the survivors of Nazi brutality and their SS captors. It was an experience that would be seared in his memory for the rest of his life. Kurtz traveled with a copy of Plato’s Republic throughout the war, referring to it frequently during down times. His love of philosophy was becoming solidified during the most trying of times.
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Upon the end of the war, Kurtz returned to the United States where he resumed his studies at New York University. It was there that he came face-to-face with the pragmatic naturalist Sidney Hook, the staunch anticommunist, humanist, and public philosopher who had studied himself under the leading American philosopher of the first part of the 20th century, John Dewey. Kurtz would later call this encounter “his most important intellectual experience.” As “Dewey’s Bulldog,” Hook’s fierce commitment to democracy, humanism, secularism, and human rights exerted a powerful influence on the young student. Kurtz completed his undergraduate studies at NYU in 1948 and decided to continue his studies at Columbia University—where Dewey’s influence was even more palpable—but Hook and Kurtz would remain lifelong colleagues and friends. When Hook’s famous autobiography, Out of Step, was published in 1987, Hook sent a personal copy of the book to his former student with an inscription inside that read “Student, colleague, friend and co-worker in the vineyards in the struggle for a free society, who will carry the torch for the next generation.” Kurtz went on to earn his MA and, in 1952, his PhD in philosophy at Columbia, where he studied under a group of distinguished professors—many of them former students of Dewey—and all scholars with sterling reputations of their own. The title of his dissertation was “The Problems of Value Theory.” His years at Columbia gave shape and definition to his life; he emerged from his rich educational experience as a philosopher firmly under the sway of pragmatic, naturalistic humanism. The upshot of this orientation was the abiding conviction that it was incumbent upon philosophers to descend from the isolation of the ivory tower and enter into the public arena where scientific and philosophical wisdom can be applied to the concrete moral and political problems of society at large and individual men and women engaged in the heat of life. This is the philosophical perspective that he would carry with him for the rest of his professional life. 8
Before settling at SUNY-Buffalo, Kurtz held academic positions at Trinity College in Connecticut (1952-59), Vassar College (1959-60), and Union College in Schenectady, New York 1960-65) during which time he also was a visiting lecturer at the New School for Social Research. Kurtz was the editor of The Humanist magazine from 1967 to 1978 and was responsible for drafting Humanist Manifesto II, which was greeted with immediate enthusiasm upon its release in 1973. Endorsements rolled in from Sidney Hook, Isaac Asimov, Betty Friedan, Albert Ellis, B.F. Skinner, Maxine Greene, and James Farmer from the United States, and Nobel Prize–winner Francis Crick, Sir Julian Huxley, and A.J. Ayer from Great Britain. Altogether there were 275 signers. Humanist Manifesto II also became instant news, with a front-page story appearing in the New York Times, and articles in Le Monde in France and the London Times in Britain. An enduring phrase from that document stood as a clarion call to all clear thinking people that democratic, engaged, and responsible citizenship was needed like never before: “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.” The international skeptics movement got a lift in 1976 when Kurtz founded Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Concerned during the mid-1970s with the rampant growth of antiscience and pseudoscientific attitudes among the public at large, along with popular beliefs in astrology, faith healing, and claims of UFO and bigfoot sightings, Kurtz, along with fellow colleagues Martin Gardner and Joe Nickell, became a persistent foe of claptrap everywhere. As a critic of supernaturalism and the paranormal, he was consistently on the side of reason, always demanding evidence for extraordinary claims. It was during this period that Kurtz emerged in the public square as a stalwart proponent of the need for critical thinking in all areas of human life. As a champion of many liberal causes during his lifetime, Kurtz became, during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, an ardent supporter of
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women's reproductive rights, voluntary euthanasia, the right to privacy, and the teaching of evolution in the public schools. And he was adamantly opposed to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or skin color. Yet Kurtz often found himself the target of both the extreme left and the extreme right, as his own critical and moderating intelligence often led him to embrace centrist positions on a variety of issues. He was a strong critic of supernaturalism and religious fundamentalism, but decidedly against the tone of the militant atheists. During the student riots of the Vietnam era, Kurtz and his colleague Hook organized a moderate liberal-conservative coalition of faculty from across the New York state university system to oppose the often violent disruptions occurring on campus, as rebellious students set fires, blocked entrances to classrooms, and staged sit-ins. Kurtz found himself thrust into the middle of the drama and the spotlight, as SUNY-Buffalo became known as the “Berkeley of the East.” Kurtz’s battle against the mayhem made him a target of the student and faculty radicals. Soon he was being bitterly castigated as a “right-wing fascist” and “lackey of Kissinger, Nixon, and Rockefeller.” But it was Kurtz’s deep involvement with the international humanist movement where his indelible mark will be felt for many years to come. Of all his contributions, it was his role as the leading intellectual and organizational figure in humanist and free-thought circles that he relished the most. It was the animating force of his prolific career. Bill Cooke, an intellectual historian, wrote in 2011: “Like Hook, Paul Kurtz has always been keen to distance humanism from dogmatic allies of whatever stripe. And like Dewey, Kurtz has wanted to emphasize the positive elements of humanism; its program for living rather than its record of accusations against religion. But it was Kurtz’s fate to be prominent at a time of resurgent fundamentalism.”
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“Free Inquiry (magazine) was founded in 1980 at a time when secular humanism was under heavy attack in the United States from the so-called Moral Majority,” wrote Kurtz in 2000. His aims were twofold: by reaching out to the leaders of thought and opinion and the educated layperson, he sought to bring intellectual cachet and respectability to the philosophy of secular humanism while also forthrightly defending the scientific and secular viewpoint at a time when it was being demonized. The magazine grew to become a highly respected journal of secular humanist thought and opinion. Kurtz was responsible for drafting four highly influential documents (“manifestos”) that served as guideposts for the secular movement from 1973 to 2010. These statements attracted the endorsement and support of many of the world’s most esteemed scientists and authors, including E.O. Wilson, Steve Allen, Rebecca Goldstein, Steven Pinker, Arthur Caplan, Richard Dawkins, Brand Blanshard, Ann Druyan, Walter Kaufmann, Daniel Dennett, Terry O' Neill, Paul Boyer, Lawrence Krauss, James Randi, Patricia Schroeder, Carol Tavris, Jean-Claude Pecker, and many more. His last and most recent excursus was the Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular of Principles and Values (2010) a forward-thinking blueprint for bringing humanism far into the 21st century and beyond, emphasizing the need for a planetary consciousness and a shared, secular ethic that can cut across ideological and cultural divisions. A genuine pioneer, Kurtz was always blazing new trails. He was the first humanist leader to call for and help implement a concerted worldwide effort to attract people of African descent to organized humanism. He helped establish African Americans for Humanism (AAH) in 1989. He was instrumental in helping to create and support, with Jim Christopher, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), a nonreligious support group for those struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. Especially proud of his cosmopolitanism, Kurtz’s impact was truly global in scope. In 2001, he helped
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finance the first major humanist conference in sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria). He helped establish humanist groups in thirty African nations, Egypt, Romania, and the Netherlands. He was so highly admired in India that he became virtually a household name. Settling into his role as the elder statesman of a movement he saw take on wings around the world, he wrote, “Embracing humanism intellectually and emotionally can liberate you from the regnant spiritual theologies, mythologies that bind you and put you out of cognitive touch with the real world. By embracing the power of humanism, I submit, you can lead an enriched life that is filled with joyful exuberance, intrinsically meaningful and developed within shared moral communities.” Kurtz’s joyful philosophy of life is presented in The Fullness of Life (1974) and Exuberance: A Philosophy of Happiness (1977). Of his many published works, the two he was perhaps most proud of are The Transcendental Temptation (1986) and The Courage to Become (1997). His core books on the importance of critical intelligence and the ethics of humanism include The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992); Living without Religion:
Eupraxsophy (1994); and Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Secularism (2008). His primer What Is Secular Humanism? (2006) is about as cogent and clear an introduction to the topic as one can find. Meaning and Value in a Secular Age—a collection of his seminal writings about eupraxsophy—was published this year. Kurtz is survived by his wife, Claudine Kurtz; son, Jonathan Kurtz, and daughter-in-law Gretchen Kurtz; daughters Valerie Fehrenback and Patricia Kurtz; daughter Anne Kurtz and son-in-law Jesse Showers; and five grandchildren, Jonathan, Taylor, and Cameron Kurtz, and Jonathan and Jacqueline Fehrenback. The family has requested that gifts or donations in honor of Dr. Kurtz be given to the Institute for Science and Human Values. A public celebration of his life will be held at a future date. [This Statement is taken from the online journal of Institute for Science and Human Values authored by Nathan Bupp Statement URL: http://www.instituteforscienceandhumanvalues .net/index.htm]
Indian Renaissance Institute Condolence Meeting in memory of Prof. Paul Kurtz and Shri Prithvis Chakravarti Prof. Paul Kurtz, well known humanist and rationalist, and Shri Prithvis Chakravarti, eminent journalist’ breathed their last during the last few days of October, 2012. Prof. Paul Kurtz died, (as noted in above pages) at the age of 86 on 20th October, 2012 in USA and Shri Prithvis Chakravarti at the age of 95 on 31st October, 2012 at New Delhi. Both were deeply attached to the objectives and activities of the Indian Renaissance Institute (IRI) and Indian Radical Humanist Association (IRHA). Sri. Prithvis Chakravarti, an associate of M.N. Roy was a life member of the IRI and IRHA. He was also the founder member and past President of the National Union of Journalists. IRI and IRHA have organized a condolence meeting on Monday the 12th Nov. 2012 to pay tributes to both of them at Gandhi Peace Foundation, 223, Deen Dayal Upadyyay Marg, New Delhi-110002 (Ph: 011-23237491, 23237493) Yours sincerely, N.D.Pancholi, Secretary azadpancholi@yahoo.com Ph: 0120-2648691, (M) 09811099532 10
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Paul Kurtz & the Virtue of Skepticism: How a thoughtful, inquiring, watchman provided a mark to aim at — By Michael Shermer [Dr. Michael Shermer is Founding Publisher of
Skeptic magazine, Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, and columnist for Scientific American.] dates back to the ancient Skepticism Greeks, well captured in Socrates’ famous quip that all he knows is that he knows nothing. Skepticism as nihilism, however, gets us nowhere and, thankfully, almost no one embraces it. The word “skeptic,” in fact, comes from the Greek skeptikos, for “thoughtful”—far from modern misconceptions of the word as meaning “cynical” or “nihilistic.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “skeptical” has also been used to mean “inquiring,” “reflective,” and, with variations in the ancient Greek, “watchman” or “mark to aim at.” What a glorious meaning for what we do! We are thoughtful, inquiring, and reflective, and in a way we are the watchmen who guard against bad ideas, consumer advocates of good thinking who, through the guidelines of science, establish a mark at which to aim. Paul Kurtz, who died this week at the age of 86, was one of the
founders of the modern skeptical movement, and he embodied the principle of skepticism as thoughtful inquiry. He truly was a watchman that provided a mark at which we skeptics may all aim. Since the time of the Greeks, skepticism (in its various incarnations) has evolved along with other epistemologies and their accompanying social activists. The Enlightenment, on one level, was a century-long skeptical movement, for there were no beliefs or institutions that did not come under the critical scrutiny of such thinkers as Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson, and many others. Immanuel Kant in Germany and David Hume in Scotland were skeptics’ skeptics in an age of skepticism, and their influence continues unabated to this day (at least in academic philosophy and skepticism). Closer to our time, Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley were skeptics par excellence, not only for the revolution they launched and carried on (respectively) against the dogma of creationism, but also for their stand against the burgeoning spiritualism movement that was sweeping across America, England, and the continent. Although Darwin was quiet about his spiritual skepticism and worked behind the scenes, Huxley railed publicly against the movement, bemoaning in one of the great one-liners in the history of skepticism: “Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ‘medium’ hired at a guinea a séance.” In the twentieth century Bertrand Russell and Harry Houdini stand out as representatives of skeptical thinkers and doers (respectively) of the first half, and skepticism in the second half of the century was marked by Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, launching what we think of today as “the skeptics movement,” which Kurtz so courageously organized and led. There has been some debate (and much quibbling) about who gets what amount of credit for the founding of the modern skeptical movement through the organization Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and its journal Skeptical
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Inquirer (much of this history has been outlined in the pages of my own magazine, Skeptic, in interviews with the leading lights of the skeptical movement). This is not the place to present a definitive history of the movement, but from what I have gleaned from first- and second-hand sources is that science writer Martin Gardner, magician James Randi, psychologist Ray Hyman, and philosopher Paul Kurtz played primary roles in the foundation and planning of the organization and the subsequent movement. There is little to no chance that we can convince True Believers of the errors of their thinking. Our purpose is to reach that vast middle ground between hard-core skeptics and dogmatic believers—people like me who thought that there might be something to these claims but had simply never heard a good counter explanation. Regardless of who might be considered the “father” of the modern skeptical movement, everyone I have spoken to (including the other founders) agrees that it was Paul Kurtz more than anyone else who actually made it happen. All successful social movements have someone who has the organizational skills and social intelligence to get things done. Paul Kurtz is that man. When he founded the organization that launched the modern skeptical movement, I was a graduate student in experimental psychology. About this time (the mid 1970s) Uri Geller entered my radar screen. I recall Psychology Today and other popular magazines published glowing stories about him, and reports were afloat that experimental psychologists had tested the Israeli psychic and determined that he was genuine. My advisor—a strictly reductionistic Skinnerian behavioral psychologist named Doug Navarick—didn’t believe a word of it, but I figured there might be something to it, especially in light of all the other interesting research being conducted on altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, dreams, sensory deprivation, dolphin communication, and the like. I took a course in anthropology from Marlene Dobkin de Rios, whose research was on shamans of South America and
their use of mind-altering plants. It all seemed entirely plausible to me and, being personally interested in the subject (the Ouija board consistently blew my mind), I figured that this was rapidly becoming a legitimate subfield of psychological research. After all, Thelma Moss had a research laboratory devoted to studying the paranormal, and it was at UCLA no less, one of the most highly regarded psychology programs in the country. With the support and encouragement of Kurtz, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, and especially James “the Amazing” Randi entered the public sphere through popular and technical publications debunking such nonsense, and Randi went on television to reveal how the psychics actually do their tricks. It was, in fact, on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show that Randi demonstrated how to levitate tables, bend spoons, and perform psychic surgeries. Randi didn’t convince me to become a full-fledged skeptic overnight, but it got me thinking that if some of these psychics were fakes, perhaps they all were (and if not fakes, at least self-deceived). Herein lies an important lesson. There is little to no chance that we can convince True Believers of the errors of their thinking. Our purpose is to reach that vast middle ground between hard-core skeptics and dogmatic believers—people like me who thought that there might be something to these claims but had simply never heard a good counter explanation. There are many reasons why people believe weird things, but certainly one of the most pervasive is simply that most people have never heard a good explanation for the weird things they hear and read about. Short of a good explanation, they accept the bad explanation that is typically proffered. This alone justifies all the hard work performed by skeptics toward the cause of science and critical thinking. It does make a difference. For 20 years now I have been at the head of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, and as such as much as I admire Randi, Gardner, and the other
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public faces of skepticism, I have come to respect more than ever before what Paul Kurtz has done for our movement. He may not be as prolific and famous a writer as Martin Gardner, or as public and visible an activist as James Randi, but in terms of the day-to-day grind of keeping a movement afloat through the constant battering and assaults that come from variegated sources, there are few that can be compared with Paul Kurtz. So I close this brief remembrance with several excerpts from what I still consider to be his finest work, The Transcendental Temptation that should be mandatory reading for all graduates of a Skepticism 101 course. The temptation, says Kurtz, “lurks deep within the human breast. It is ever-present, tempting humans by the lure of transcendental realities, subverting the power of their critical intelligence, enabling them to accept unproven and unfounded myth systems.” Specifically, Kurtz argues that myths, religions, and claims of the paranormal are lures tempting us beyond rational, critical, and scientific thinking, for the very reason that they touch something in us that is sacred and important—life and immortality: “This impulse is so strong that it has inspired the great religions and paranormal movements of the past and the present and goaded otherwise sensible men and women to swallow patently false myths and to repeat them constantly as articles of faith.” What drives this temptation? The answer Kurtz provides is both insightful and elegant: Let us reflect on the human situation: all of our plans will fail in the long run, if not in the short. The homes we have built and lovingly furnished, the loves we have enjoyed, the careers we have dedicated ourselves to will all disappear in time. The monuments we have erected to memorialize our aspirations and achievements, if we are fortunate, may last a few hundred years, perhaps a millennium or two or three—like the stark and splendid ruins of Rome and Greece, Egypt and Judea, which have been recovered and treasured by later civilizations. But all the works of human 13
beings disappear and are forgotten in short order. In the immediate future the beautiful clothing that we adorn ourselves with, eventually even our cherished children and grandchildren, and all of our possessions will be dissipated. Many of our poems and books, our paintings and statues will be forgotten, buried on some library shelf or in a museum, read or seen by some future scholars curious about the past, and eventually eaten by worms and molds, or perhaps consumed by fire. Even the things that we prize the most, human intelligence and love, democratic values, the quest for truth, will in time be replaced by unknown values and institutions—if the human species survives, and even that is uncertain. Were we to compile a pessimist’s handbook, we could easily fill it to overflowing with notations of false hopes and lost dreams, a catalogue of human suffering and pain, of ignominious conflict, betrayal, and defeat throughout the ages. Although Kurtz sounds like a pessimist, he’s actually a realist, occasionally even an optimist: Were I to take an inventory of the sum of goods in human life, they would far outweigh the banalities of evil. I would outdo the pessimist by cataloguing laughter and joy, devotion and sympathy, discovery and creativity, excellence and grandeur. The mark made upon the world by every person and by the race in general would be impressive. How wonderful it has all been. The pessimist points to Caligula, Attila, Cesare Borgia, Beria, or Himmler with horror and disgust; but I would counter with Aristotle, Pericles, da Vinci, Einstein, Beethoven, Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, and Madame Curie. The pessimist points to duplicity and cruelty in the world; I am impressed by the sympathy, honesty, and kindness that are manifested. The pessimist reminds us of ignorance and stupidity; I, of the continued growth of human knowledge and understanding. The pessimist emphasizes the failures and defeats; I, the successes and victories in all their glory.
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The most important point Kurtz makes in The Transcendental Temptation comes toward the end in his discussion of the meaning and goals of skepticism. It is an admonition we should all bare in mind, a passage to be read once a year: The skeptic is not passionately intent on converting mankind to his or her point of view and surely is not interested in imposing it on others, though he may be deeply concerned with raising the level of education and critical inquiry in society. Still, if there are any lessons to be learned from history, it is that we should be skeptical of all points of view, including those of the skeptics. No one is infallible, and no one can claim a monopoly on truth or virtue. It would be contradictory for skepticism to seek to translate itself into a new faith. One must view with caution the promises of any new secular priest who might emerge promising a brave new world—if only his path to clarity and truth is followed.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is to temper the intemperate and to tame the perverse temptation that lurks within. R.I.P. Paul Kurtz. We all owe you a great debt of gratitude for making the world a better place. You will be missed.
[This write up is taken from eSkeptic.com] It begins with—In this week’s eSkeptic, Michael Shermer remembers Paul Kurtz, who died October 20, 2012 at the age of 86. Kurtz was one of the founders of the modern skeptical movement, and he embodied the principle of skepticism as thoughtful inquiry. Article Link: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-10-24/#feat ure
Do come forward to become a part of the
Encyclopedia of Radical Humanists To be loaded on the RH Website (http://www.theradicalhumanist.com) Dear Friends, This is to request you to send in your personal details, contact numbers etc. (along with your passport size photographs) as well as brief accounts of how you got associated with M.N. Roy/Radical Democratic Party/Radical Humanist Movement directly or indirectly through the philosophy of New Humanism. This is also a request to all those friends, whose deceased parent/parents were involved in or were sympathetic with Radical Humanism and its Movement, to send in accounts of their parent’s/parents’ association (as much as they can recollect and recount). This will be a loving and emotional tribute to their memories from your side. All this effort is being made to form an encyclopedia of the Radical Humanists right from the days of the beginning of M.N. Roy’s social and political activities in India and abroad. All this information will be uploaded and permanently stored on the RH Website in the Profile section for everyone to read and come in contact with one another. This will be a historical check-list to connect with all the crusaders who worked or are still working for the human cause on the humanist lines. —Rekha S.
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Reminiscing about Paul Kurtz (Center For Inquiry) (http://centerforinquiry.net/paul_kurtz_obituary)
and longtime chair of Founder Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,
the the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Center for Inquiry, Paul Kurtz has died at the age of 86. He was one of the most influential figures in the humanist and skeptical movements from the late 1960s through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Among his best-known creations are the skeptics’ magazine Skeptical Inquirer, the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry, and the independent publisher Prometheus Books. Early Life: Paul Kurtz was born on December 21, 1925, to Martin and Sarah Kurtz of Newark, New Jersey. He enrolled briefly at Washington Square College of New York University before enlisting in the U. S. Army at age 19, at the height of World War II. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and served in a unit that liberated the Dachau concentration camp. He was demobilized eighteen months after the war’s end and resumed his studies at New York University (NYU). At NYU Kurtz studied philosophy under Sidney Hook, who had himself been a protégé of the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey. The philosophy of Dewey and Hook, arguably the greatest American thinkers in the humanist tradition, would deeply influence Kurtz’s thought and activism. Kurtz graduated from NYU in 1948 and earned his Ph. D. in philosophy at Columbia University in 1952. Academic Career: Kurtz taught philosophy at Trinity College from 1952 to 1959. He joined the faculty at Union College from 1961 to 1965; during this period he was also a visiting lecturer at the New School for Social Research. In 1965 he was recruited by the new State University of New York at Buffalo. The former University of Buffalo had recently been absorbed into the state university system; under Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the
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institution launched an aggressive program to recruit top young academics to its faculty. Kurtz became professor of philosophy at SUNY-Buffalo, a post he held until his retirement from teaching in 1991. At this stage of his career, Kurtz focused principally on methods of objective inquiry and the history of American philosophy. He contributed the significant entry “American Philosophy” to the influential first edition of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), edited by Paul Edwards. He edited two large anthologies of American philosophy and published his best-known scholarly work, Decision and the Condition of Man (1968). The Humanist Movement: It was in the late 1960s that Kurtz embarked on the pursuit whose prominence would exceed even that of his career as a philosopher, when he began his involvement with the humanist movement. In 1967 he was named editor of The Humanist, published by the American Humanist Association (AHA), then the nation’s only significant humanist organization. He took the magazine in new directions, both by making its content more sharply critical of religion and by using aggressive techniques to expand its circulation. Arguably, The Humanist never enjoyed greater cultural prominence or higher circulation than during Kurtz’s editorship, but his forceful style led to friction with others within AHA, including some members of its board of directors. Kurtz gave up editorship of The Humanist and parted ways with AHA in 1978. Ironically, that was the very year in which, owing to Kurtz’s influence, AHA moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Amherst, New York, the location of SUNY-Buffalo’s suburban campus. (AHA would remain headquartered off Harlem Road in Amherst until it moved to Washington, D. C., in 2000.) Kurtz was for more than a quarter-century an influential figure in the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), a worldwide network of national humanist organizations founded in Amsterdam in 1952. He joined IHEU’s board of directors in 1969 and served as the organization’s co-chairman from 1986 to 1994. During this
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period, Kurtz hosted IHEU’s Tenth World Congress, held at SUNY-Buffalo during the summer of 1988. The Kurtz-founded Organizations: Kurtz would be better known for his work through organizations he founded and shaped from their inception. In 1969 he founded Prometheus Books, a for-profit publishing company that quickly emerged as the dominant imprint in skepticism, humanism, and atheism. It would become the most prolific publisher of atheist and humanist titles in history. Since its founding it has published more than 2500 titles in what has become a broad range of genres. Significant milestones included the 1998 acquisition of most of the assets of the scholarly publisher Humanities Press International, giving rise to Prometheus’s imprint Humanity Books, and the formation in 2005 of its Pyr division, which has emerged as a prestige imprint for science fiction and fantasy fiction. Now led by Paul Kurtz’s son Jonathan, the most impressive achievement of Prometheus Books may be that it has retained its independence during five decades in which an enormous number of independent publishers closed down or were absorbed. Paul Kurtz was perhaps best known for the three mutually supportive not-for-profit organizations he founded in Buffalo and later Amherst, New York, now known as the ‘Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’, the ‘Council for Secular Humanism’, and the ‘Center for Inquiry’. Kurtz and others founded the world’s first organization devoted solely to scientific criticism of paranormal claims at an April 1976 conference at SUNY-Buffalo whose participants included author Isaac Asimov, author-mathematician Martin Gardner, and magician James Randi. The organization was originally known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and became widely known by its acronym, CSICOP. Several months after its formation CSICOP launched a journal, The Zetetic, which later achieved great prominence as
the Skeptical Inquirer, which continues to be published bimonthly. During its early years CSICOP encouraged the formation of local skeptics groups across the United States, and of independent national skeptics organizations across the world. These groups would form the kernel of today’s international skeptical movement. In 2006, the organization shortened its name to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, partly to show that its concerns now extended beyond its original focus on paranormal claims to include the public understanding of science and issues in medicine and mental health. In 1980, two years after his departure from the American Humanist Association, Kurtz launched a new, more explicitly nonreligious humanist organization, the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (CODESH). The word “Democratic” was added to demonstrate the group’s opposition to Communist totalitarianism, an important consideration since non-theism was then strongly associated with Communism in the public mind. The new organization’s first act was to release A Secular Humanist Declaration, a position document originally signed by 57 distinguished activists and academics. Its release was covered in a front-page story in the New York Times. The Council simultaneously launched a journal, Free Inquiry, with Kurtz as its publisher and founding editor. Free Inquiry quickly became the best-respected and highest-circulation humanist magazine in the U.S. It continues to be published bimonthly. In 1996, in response to the collapse of European Communism, the organization shortened its name to the Council for Secular Humanism. It maintains a network of independent local groups, operates North America’s only freethought museum, and engages in a variety of educational and advocacy activities. Since 2007 the Council has been lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenges contracts between the state of Florida and explicitly religious social service providers.
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In 1991, Kurtz’s skeptical and secular-humanist organizations relocated from Buffalo to Amherst, New York. In the same year Kurtz founded a third major non-profit organization, the Center for Inquiry. Originally conceived as a platform for consolidating activities that CSICOP and CODESH conducted in parallel, from magazine production to payroll, the Center grew into an advocacy organization in its own right. Its agenda encompassed both CSICOP’s skepticism and CODESH’s secular humanism, placing both in a broader cultural and intellectual context. In addition to the Center for Inquiry headquarters campus in Amherst, which Kurtz expanded to some 35,000 square feet, there at various times more than fifty branch Centers for Inquiry operated in other American cities and across the world, employing a variety of operating models. From its transnational headquarters at Amherst, the Center conducted a wide range of educational programs, including an online master’s degree program in conjunction with the University at Buffalo. Its research libraries hold the world’s largest collections of humanist, skeptical, and related literature. Awards and Recognitions: Paul Kurtz received numerous awards and other encomia. In 1992 he was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1996 the main-belt asteroid Kurtz 6629 was named in his honor. In 2000 he received the International Rationalist Award at the Second International Rationalist Conference at Trivandrum, India. In 2001 he received the Charles P. Norton Medal, the highest award bestowed by the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 2009 he received the Eupraxsopher Award, a special lifetime achievement award, from the Center for Inquiry, as well as the Philip J. Klass Award from the National Capital Area Skeptics. In 2010 he received a lifetime achievement award at The Amazing Meeting (TAM) sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. Publications: Paul Kurtz wrote or edited more than fifty books for scholarly or general audiences. 17
Among the better-known are Exuberance: A Philosophy of Happiness (1977); Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism (1988); Eupraxophy: Living without Religion (1989); The Transcendental Temptation. A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal (1991); The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge (1992); and What Is Secular Humanism? (2006). His works have been translated into multiple languages. He composed a great number of essays, including editorials that appeared in every issue of Free Inquiry magazine from its founding in 1980 until 2009. Kurtz was also organized humanism’s most prolific composer of position documents. When he joined the humanist movement, it was still strongly influenced by the Humanist Manifesto of 1933. Drafted and signed by Unitarian ministers (with the conspicuous exception of signer John Dewey), the original Manifesto explicitly envisioned humanism as a new religion. On Kurtz’s view, a more secular formulation was needed. As editor of The Humanist he led a campaign for a new and more relevant Manifesto. Humanist Manifesto II was published in 1973, having been co-drafted by Kurtz and fellow humanist leader Edwin H. Wilson. Where its predecessor was religious, Manifesto II explicitly abjured religiosity. In a passage reflecting Kurtz’s writing style, it declared: “Some humanists believe we should reinterpret traditional religions and reinvest them with meanings appropriate to the current situation. Such redefinitions … perpetuate old dependencies and escapisms; they easily become obscurantist, impeding the free use of the intellect. We need, instead, radically new human purposes and goals.” Manifesto II was signed by 114 activists and thought leaders at first publication, and would eventually attract 261 distinguished signers. Its release garnered worldwide media attention including a front-page story in The New York Times.
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The previously mentioned A Secular Humanist Declaration (1980) was drafted solely by Kurtz. It offered a secular humanist interpretation of many of the ideas developed in Manifesto II, but steeped in the recognition that an unquestionably nonreligious humanist institution needed to be created, close to but slightly outside of a larger humanist movement that included both religious and nonreligious humanists. In the late 1990s Kurtz began to compose a new successor document. Originally he planned to title it Humanist Manifesto III, asserting the right to do so as the sole living co-author of Manifesto II. After the American Humanist Association asserted ownership of the Manifesto title and threatened legal action, Kurtz retitled his document Humanist Manifesto 2000. Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism was issued in 1999 with about 200 signatures. It was book-length, far lengthier than the previous Manifestos, and represented the fullest statement of Kurtz’s vision for humanism as a planetary commitment transcending national and ethnic identities. Besides challenging religion and championing the scientific outlook and freedom of thought, Kurtz called for a popularly elected global parliament, a World Court, a global environmental monitoring institution, and a new international tax to aid the developing world. These internationalist contentions engendered substantial controversy within the humanist movement. Principal Contentions: Kurtz consistently asserted that morality should be rooted in human flourishing and happiness, not on supernatural revelation. He attached high priority to individual liberty in a robustly democratic culture. His ethics were primarily utilitarian, but he tempered his utilitarianism with a strong commitment to basic liberties. As early as 1969 he had written that “there are two basic and minimal principles which especially seem to characterize humanism. First, there is a rejection of any supernatural conception of the universe and a denial that man has any
privileged place within nature. Second, there is an affirmation that ethical values are human and have no meaning independent of human experience.” Repeatedly he characterized secular humanism less as a set of moral or philosophical prescriptions than as a process, a template for the conduct of ethical inquiry. Two further contentions strongly influenced Kurtz’s thought and writing beginning in the mid-1980s. The first was his growing sense of humanism as necessarily planetary. He argued that since the principal problems confronting humankind were global in scope, they required transnational solutions. This view was accompanied by an assertive cosmopolitanism that viewed traditional religious, ethnic, and national identities as archaisms to be jettisoned whenever possible. In addition, he sought an authoritative answer to the question “If secular humanism is not a religion, what is it?” His solution was to coin a new word, eupraxophy (in later years spelled eupraxsophy). Formed from Greek roots meaning roughly “good wisdom and practice in conduct,” the word was meant to label a novel category of intellectual and moral systems that met some of the social needs served by religions without the supernaturalism or authoritarianism of traditional faiths. Kurtz made his most extended argument for the coinage in his 1989 book Eupraxophy: Living without Religion. A subsequent edition was titled Living without Religion: Eupraxsophy. The neologism’s move from title to subtitle reflected the coinage’s fate. Kurtz’s arguments for eupraxsophy were received respectfully, and some activists eagerly restyled themselves “eupraxsophers.” Ultimately, however, the term failed to maintain traction and it is infrequently used in the movement today. Later Life: While Kurtz’s son Jonathan had succeeded him as president of Prometheus Books, Kurtz continued to exercise day-to-day control of the non-profit organizations he had founded well past his eightieth birthday. After 2005 there was
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heightened concern on the part of the organizations’ directors to implement a specific succession process. In June 2008, attorney and philosopher Ronald A. Lindsay succeeded Kurtz as president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Lindsay was Kurtz’s personal selection for the position. Kurtz continued to serve as board chair until June 2009, when Buffalo investment advisor Richard Schroeder was elected Chair and Kurtz assumed the new position of Chair Emeritus. Kurtz faced this process with increasing reluctance, and on May 18, 2010, he announced his resignation from all of his remaining positions at the three nonprofit organizations. His office continued to be reserved for his use whenever the Center for Inquiry – Transnational in Amherst was open. Late in 2010, Kurtz announced the founding of a new organization, the Institute for Science and Human Values. It released a manifesto-style
document titled Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values with more than 150 signers and announced a new quarterly journal, The Human Prospect. Conclusion. Ultimately, Paul Kurtz did much to shape the American and world humanist movements during the final third of the twentieth century. He was a prodigious organizer, responsible for much of the social landscape through which nonreligious Americans moved before the emergence of the so-called New Atheist movement in the middle 2000s. At the same time, a vibrant and varied skeptics’ community now served by dozens of local and national organizations might not exist at all – and surely would not have its current form – if not for Kurtz’s founding of the first modern skeptical organization, CSICOP. His most enduring legacy may be the Center for Inquiry, which continues to stand as the larger movement’s largest, most active, and highest-budgeted organization.
Please register yourself on the RH Website http://www.theradicalhumanist.com ¨Please log in to it to give your comments on the articles and humanist news which are uploaded from the world over on the Website almost daily. ¨You may also send in news and write-ups from your part of the land for uploading on the Website. ¨Please send in your views and participate on the topics of debate given in the debate section. You yourself may also begin a debate on any topic of your choice in this section. ¨Please suggest themes for the coming issues of The Radical Humanist, discuss them in the Themes Section of the Website; the content of which may be later published in the RH journal. ¨It is your own inter-active portal formed with a purpose of social interaction amongst all Radical Humanists as well as Rationalists and Humanists from different forums also. ¨Do make it a practice to click on the RH Website http://www.theradicalhumanist.com URL daily, ceremoniously. ¨Please utilise the RH Website to come closer for the common cause of ushering in a renaissance in our country. —Rekha S., Editor & Administrator RH Website
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Guests’ Section:
J. S. Chandra Rao
[J. Sharath Chandra Rao has been contributing articles to Newspaper like ‘Vaartha’ and ‘Andhra Jyothi’ and other periodicals on environment, economics and other social issues. He may be contacted at 1-2-593/40, Gagan Mahal Colony, Hyderabad, Phone: 27638039]
Protecting Biodiversity and Soil Fertility will Benefit Farmers
Reviving manner
agriculture in a sustainable preserving bio-diversity and empowering the masses should be our top priority. This will lead to a true economic growth of progress and happiness. Such a policy will effectively ensure household food security minimizing widespread hunger and calorie deficiency. The web of agricultural production becoming a monopoly in the hands of few multinationals will not lead to the well being of all those who are being engaged in cultivation. Neither does it help the consumer both from the nutritional point of view and price. MNCs’ patents on seeds and life forms had led to the destruction of biodiversity so essential for farming, in the process affecting the very livelihood of the farmers by increasing the cost of production. Indian agriculture being trapped in the capitalist process of inputs and farm outputs now being practiced in many parts of the world had largely benefitted a few agri-business corporates and agro-industrial businesses making farming less and less viable for
the farmers. Corporate monopolies from agri-business to seed and giant retailers have affected farmer’s livelihood. Rising input costs and un-remunerative prices for farm produce and also 100% FDI in sectors like seed led to more indebtedness of the peasantry driving more farmers to suicides. Farm suicides have crossed quarter of a million in India revealing the sad state of the farmers’ conditions in our country. Further nearly 7½ million farmers abandoned agriculture in just a decade. Many driven by the so-called proclaimed policies of benefitting the farmers. Food production activities destroyed biodiversity damaging ecological systems so essential for food security. Policy makers in agriculture of the present day have been more committed to an agenda of reforms in favour of big corporates enriching their commercial interests more than the genuine needs of the farmers. Such a policy the world over led to a handful of corporates becoming the top 10 economies of the world. The fallacy of corporatization in agriculture from seed to domestic production to food processing to corporate retailers did not benefit the farmers. Several states in India backing corporates have pushed farmers out of farming. Also food grain availability sharply declined because of loss of soil fertility due to chemicalization of agriculture. Lesser yields and diversion of food grains to poultry, livestock and policies focusing on export products and cash crops, conversion of farmlands into SEZs will lead to a severe food crisis. Before the entry of industrial farming there were well functioning markets and cash crops driving growth, employment and economic prosperity in the rural areas. The uncertainty on several fronts like improper production price and credit, drastic climatic changes and industrial corporates controlling agriculture making more and more farmers being dependant on them for their needs have pushed farmers into deep distress due to incurring huge debts because of high input costs. A study revealed that 40% of farmers have expressed their desire to
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quit farming. It is time we change our policy making our farmers self reliant enabling them to maintain decent living standards helping them in overcoming risks and uncertainties. There should be a mechanism wherein the farmers receive 50% of what the consumer is paying on his purchased products. Unless Government structures the mechanisms of calculating the MSP for all crops, there is little hope for reducing the present agrarian crisis in India. It is the bounden duty of every Government to give reasonable price to the farmers who have relentlessly toiled to produce food inspite of adverse conditions which include climatic upheavals of storms and droughts, always catering to the citizen’s needs and also helping the middlemen. Transforming agriculture by restoring the pride in farming can certainly revitalize our rural economy. Further many useful pollinating species of spiders, beetle and useful earthworms whose contribution to the farm produce have always been invaluable have now mostly disappeared along with other useful species succumbing to the spraying of insecticides. Protecting animals, birds, insects and various plants maintaining biodiversity along with preserving precious resources like water, air and land will always be an invaluable asset. All have a tremendous positive value in boosting farmer’s income. Lack of understanding of the invaluable role of interdependence of species and its functional role for the smooth functioning of the
ecosystems and the benefits being derived have not been taken into account properly by the policy makers. The prevalent market mechanism always sulks to pay a fair price to the farmer. The theory that low food prices enhances our global competitiveness in several sectors and also benefitting our urban people has always been at the expense of the farmer and the rural sector. Every single produce of the farmer is being taxed by way of service tax being collected whenever the consumer buys various food products and the food prepared in restaurants for the consumers have generated huge resources for the Government. Sadly, such collected tax of every commodity produced by the farmers does not go to the farmer, more particularly when they are struggling to meet both ends. What is needed in the present day is a farmer centered indigenous agriculture, growing crops suitable to different climatic regions and not based on the western model which is largely motivated by monetary consideration of corporate rather than the well being of the farmers and the citizens. Modern agriculture based on modern technologies like GM crops with no proper testing and regulating mechanisms in place having no accountability for their failures has caused immense harm to the farmers effecting environment and biodiversity. Steps like soil conservation, improving soil fertility and restoring dilapidated tanks should be our utmost priority than any other policy.
Dear Friends, Please email your articles at rheditor@gmail.com Send them by post (if you are not able to email them) at: C-8 Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India. Please try to keep them within the limit of 1500-2000 words. You should also inform me whether they have been published elsewhere. Do email or post your passport size photographs as separate attachments (in JPG format) along with your brief introductions, if you are contributing in the RH for the first time. Please feel free to contact me at 91-9719333011 for any other querry. —Rekha S.
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theory and non-linear dynamics illumined the theories of the rise of the universe, life, mind and consciousness. Systemic views of life and the world got confirmed through the emergent process of autopoiesis as devised by scientists, Prof. Francisco Varela and Prof. Humberto D. Maturana. To quote Varela, “I’ve had only one question all my life. Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop B.P. Rath up all over the place creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level, the cellular level, or the transorganism level? This phenomenon [Mr. Bhagwat Prashad Rath, who calls himself a (autopoiesis) is something so productive that it heretic, is a Gandhian socialist. He built doesn’t cease creating entirely new realms: life, educational institutions, got elected as a mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are chairman of a Panchayet Samiti, resigned and based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that worked as a lecturer in English. A believer in we have an apparent paradox between the solidity Lokayata philosophy, he is an editor of of what appears to show up and its groundlessness’. journals—Vigil-English, Sarvodaya-Oriya. He is Today there is no need of calling matter ‘Physical also a writer of several novels, poems (in Oriya) Realism’. Water emerges from Hydrogen and and essays (in Oriya and English). He has often Oxygen. Water is also subjected to solid, liquid and been subjected to police harassment, false cases vapour phase transitions. Matter is made of and threats from anti-socials due to his Protons, electrons, neutrons and at a deeper level association with people’s movements and quarks and ultimately from Higgs Boson, the connection with human rights organizations. ultimate particle (the god particle). Matter is Presently, he is researching upon the works and produced through emergence. Every emergent literature on ancient Indian culture.] entity has its independent existence. Scientific laws applicable to the simplest constituents are different [I will try to comment upon Mr. Rath’s following article through another editorial. This from the laws applicable to the emergent entity. time Prof. Paul Kurtz is in my mind. The essence Laws of indeterminacy (Heisenberg) are only of a phrase keeps changing, growing and applicable to the micro-level incarnations of matter transforming with the passage of time although which for all practical purposes are different its literal meaning may remian the same. It is for entities. Roy’s first thesis has in its background the us to decide whether to explore the essence or to two world wars manned by robot-like obeying get caught up in the words. Meanwhile, the soldiers and the political ideologies docilely readers may pick up a debate to everyone’s followed by robot-like party men. Evolution tells us that man developed bipedalism and language benefit. —Rekha S.] only in big collectives. Both the man-mechanizing Scattered Ruminations collective and the narcissistic individual are anomalies that are incongruities in a sane society. on M. N. Roy’s Ideas We need fully-independent individuals nourished fter Roy’s death, science took giant by collectives and compassionate individuals strides. The synthetic path gained equal heeding the sufferings of others. To quote Roy’s importance with the reductionist path. Complexity second thesis, “Increasing knowledge of nature enables man to be progressively free from the
A
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existence is only instrumental to the satisfaction of human needs”. ‘Non-violence’ of the Buddhist middle path variety is the only answer to the ecological peril. ‘Rationality’ is necessary for the healthy growth of society but it cannot bring well-being to mankind unless it is free from vested- interest. Both greed and violence make a mockery of rationality like the devil quoting the Bible. Russell made a paradoxical statement, “man is rational, but I don’t find much evidence.” (V.M. Tarkunde Radical Humanism: An outline) In matters of human concern, truth and rationality are blind without universal love (love for all living beings). Kant’s belief in absolute truth could not save him from the racial bias. He was convinced that animals are machines and had no compassion for them. Roy is a great thinker. But no thinker is free from reconsideration because science is advancing fast. Roy never wanted his thoughts to be put in a freeze. He always welcomed the open air of criticism. [Mr. Bhagwat Prasad may be contacted at 06856-235092, 08895860598, bagwat_prashad@rediffmail.com, www.samalochanal.blogspot.com, www.samalochana.blogsome.com]
tyranny of natural phenomena and the physical and social environments.” Today, science characterizes nature not as a tyrant but as a stern but loving guide. Physicist Fritjof Capra writes, “…….the design principles of our future social institutions must be consistent with the principles of organization that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life. A unified conceptual frame-work for the understanding of natural and social frame works will be essential for this task.”. In the face of the ecological disaster imperiling human existence, the economic Mantra of limitless growth is a recipe for disaster. Accepting the ancient value of Aparigraha is the only path open to mankind. Roy’s stress on ‘freedom’ cannot be over emphasized. This is a foundational value sustaining other values. To make this possible in an unequal world is next to impossible. Liberty, equality and fraternity are inter- locked values. Neither can exist without the others. Nor can they solely exist in a section of the living world. Prof. Lynn Margulis talks of the entire living world as an ecological system whose parts cannot be fragmentalized. Prof. SibNaryana Ray writes, “At the same time the new renaissance area will have to correct the most damaging erroneous view that all non-human
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THE RADICAL HUMANIST
NOVEMBER 2012
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.]
Reservation in Promotions seems to be a sinister design behind There implementation of reservation scheme of the Constitution. Although provision for special opportunities (instead of equal opportunity) to the classes who suffered for centuries due to the caste system was based on natural justice, (the weaker progeny getting special care among human beings as well as animals), the upper castes never appreciated it. Even the great man like Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru always talked of merit against reservation or special opportunity without understanding that meritocracy ultimately leads to caste. Our Varna Vyavastha was nothing but a meritocracy. This was a division of labour according to merit (Guna Karma Vibhagshah) but as the occupations became fixed and hereditary, the division into castes and sub castes according to the
division of occupations took place. This was (in Ambedkar’s words) division of labour becoming division of labourers. It may appear strange but it is the truth that meritocracy leads to caste and reservation to abolition of caste. When our Constitution was being framed, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution and Law Minister in cooperation with the Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, saw to it that the vast population of depressed classes or Other Backward Classes (OBCs) remained outside the fold of reservation. Dr. Ambedkar wanted to exclude them so that he could realize his dream of number one minority status for scheduled castes. Earlier, he had advocated separate home for Muslims with this aim. Jawaharlal Nehru had tolerated reservation for SCs/STs thinking that 22% reservation would not make much difference to the hegemony of upper castes, which he called hegemony of merit. But reservation for OBCs was a challenge not only to Nehru’s dream of ‘meritocracy’ but also to Ambedkar’s dream of special status to scheduled castes. Ambedkar was against scheduled tribes getting special rights as per his submissions to the Simon Commission and it was only due to leaders like Thakkar Bapa that the special benefits were given to them and both SCs and STs were grouped under the Poona Pact and later in the Constitution. Ambedkar and Nehru , the main driving force of making of the Constitution, did not make any provision for OBCs until a representative from Bihar pointed out that OBCs had been left out. It was then as an afterthought, that Article 340 providing for Other Backward Classes Commission was introduced in the Constitution. But when the first Backward classes Commission (Kaka Kalelkar Commission) presented its report, Nehru was so annoyed that he forced Kaka Kalelkar to write in the forwarding letter to the President, that he did not agree with the report (although he had signed it) and this should not be accepted.
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Dr. Ambedkar also kept mum. No doubt, Kalelkar report was consigned to the dustbin and later Mandal Report providing reservation for OBCs was also given the same treatment by Nehru’s successors. However Mandal Report was accepted by VP Singh government and despite ugly and violent All India agitation against it by the Congress and BJP supporters, it became law after the 9-judge bench of the Supreme Court put its stamp on it in Indira Sahani Case (1992). Scheduled Castes and Tribes had so far remained indifferent to OBCs reservation and in fact opposed them when they joined hands with upper castes in toppling Karpoori Thakur Government in 1978 who had announced reservation to OBCs according to Kalelkar Report. But the agitation over Mandal Report brought them in support of reservation for OBCs as they feared that this agitation might endanger their own reservations. This is the bitter chapter of the history of reservations. The Supeme Court bench in Indira Sahani Case allowed the reservation for OBCs but with a rider of creamy layer concept (which is exterior to Constitution) and refusal of reservation in promotions. Although SCs and STs were not affected by this judgment they feared that this might apply to them. They put pressure on the Government to safeguard their reservation in promotions and the Government in order to please their vote-bank provided this safeguard by amending Constitution to this effect in 1995. The provisions of this amendment were not extended to OBCs. It was decided in Indira Sahani case that the quota of posts which would remain unfilled, would not lapse but would be carried forward. This allowed the Government to fill the empty quota posts with general category candidates after lapse of some period on pretence of work suffering due to vacant posts. Again, the Constitution was amended to the effect that empty quota posts may be filled with only reserve category candidates. This created a situation in which accumulated quota posts could be filled only if new jobs were created.
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While this tussle between the politicians and the bureaucrats was going on, another controversy arose about the accelerated seniority. Since the candidates of the reserve category were placed above general category candidates in seniority, they were promoted earlier than general category candidates which was considered as accelerated seniority or double promotion. This not only created bad blood between the reserve category officers and general category officers but also resulted in dominance of reserve category officers in higher posts. This accelerated seniority resulting in accelerated promotion was sanctioned by another constitutional amendment (85th). Side by side, the Parliament also amended article 335 permitting the lowering of standards for evaluation of SCs and STs. Now, there was no room for general category bureaucrats to maintain their supremacy in higher posts. These rules of recruitment and promotions were also pinching the judiciary setup. Ultimately, they found a way out. They took refuge under the Article 16(4) which provides that reservation will be subject to the condition of adequate representation. The court said that unless the Government proves that the group benefitting from promotion is inadequately represented reservation in the promotion cannot be made. Now, the only way by which it could be ascertained whether or not a particular group (class of citizens) had got adequate representation, was cast-census for which no Government was willing. This meant a ban on reservation in promotions. The Government is once again trying to overcome this hurdle by constitutional amendment [may be by nullifying Article 16(4)] but it will not be an easy task since the amendment will surely hit the basic structure of the Constitution. The OBCsbased Samajwadi Party has vehemently opposed reservation in promotion, since the OBCs have been totally left out from this promotional reservation facility. The demand for inclusion of OBCs in promotional reservation will not be accepted by the general category bureaucrats and may be by the courts too. What will be the final
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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]
Is it Economics versus Politics? political crisis in Delhi due to Thewithdrawal of support to UPA by Didi has enticed commentators to make fascinating observations on economic policy and political affairs. But, the news in English press and media give an impression that the regulators in Delhi did not appear to be worried. It is only the academic pundits in their disquiet to interpret too many things in one single event that have started attacking economists and policymakers. One may keep in mind that the job of an economist is much wider than the mere business concerns of some or simply growth rates.
There is also a subtle allusion that the whole issue is between the economic policies pursued by government, or maybe a section of the government, and those who oppose it on the basis of convictions. Thus, the present disarray is basically leapfrog between those who subscribe to some kind of a political ideology and others who stand for certain economic policies. Is there such a separation between economic policy and political ideology? Is there really an economic crisis or emergency now to force the policymakers in Delhi to embark upon the stream of reforms at once or something else? If we look at the policies pursued by different governments either at the Centre or in the States for the few decades, particularly after 1991, one can find that almost all governments followed analogous policies irrespective of the ideology of the party in power. Otherwise, how could the massive economic outcomes like billions of rupees worth of wealth through mining or share market or IPL, some other superficial activities have been created? Is it possible to create so much affluence by so few individuals overnight? How many of the so-called economists or bureaucrats are benefitted for part of the deals? How many of the real policymakers and beneficiaries of such policies are brought to book? Unless we address these questions, it is difficult to pose the present crisis as a machination of economists or politicians. Some of them may be the smokescreen of bigger players who are behind these operations or crises and finally come out with simple solutions to resolve them with ease. As Hindus and Indians, we know how God appears at the end of a deep crisis and resolves it as per the requests of the disciples/pundits. It gives an impression as if God is under their control and operates as per their dictates. Though it appears to be simplistic to imagine like that, the cosmic drama of Indian politics signifies as if a supreme being has made all of us play the worldly characters to satisfy our egos. The moment we comprehend the non-duality of self and the Brahma (the Supreme
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Being) or simply realize it as maya, we would attain bliss. Therefore, do not try to physically identify him as He appears everywhere; simply follow your karma. This is the ultimate truth of universal and sublime worldview that one can reach being citizens of this country! One becomes religious and otherworldly after seeing the continuous and unabated play of events without substantial gain to the common man/voter. Therefore, he becomes worldly-wise and tries to get/squeeze as much as possible from those who approach him/her at the time of seeking his/her vote. He is doing his karma and why do you blame him? Let us keep the Vedanta aside and get into the philosophy of survival politics in India. It appears that all politicians have the same content even if we do not accept the crude adage that it is the last resort of scoundrels. We do not know much about the Bengali society from where Mamata Banerjee has emerged at the national politics and is the centre of present debate. The Bengal bhadralok are very intelligent guys and can put anyone in a quandary (there are exceptions) without directly providing answers to our immediate dilemmas. I noticed a shift in their orientation about five years ago when an old friend known for his radical postures explained to me that Mamata Didi represented Bharat Mata with her attire and gestures. That was his retort when I told him that I was impressed by her opposition to some policies of the government that affect aam aadmi. What does it indicate? It may signify that some of the forces that were behind the previous dispensation have slowly shifted to the other side and started formulating agendas of governance. This has perhaps suited well everyone in Bengal as it did not matter much since the superstructure of Trinamool has remained the same without substantial
participation of the real proletariat? It is here we may try to understand the sociology of present Bengal so as to comprehend the significance of the utterances of Didi. Bengal and its indomitable character of a mixture of Dravidian, Mongoloid, Austro-Asiatic and other indigenous groups has never been represented by the national Bengal icons that we are familiar with. There are districts in Bengal where the majority of the population is from Muslim, Dalit and Adivasi groups like Kooch Bihar, Malda, and Jalpaiguri, etc. In fact, more than half of the population of Bengal consists of scheduled castes (23per cent), Scheduled tribes (5.5 per cent) and Muslims (25.2 per cent). A recent PhD study by Dipankar Mandal has broadly concluded that caste and tribal divisions still persist in Bengal. Some individual castes among these groups have been tactically encouraged by the previous party in power and are able to challenge the hegemony of the dominant in some pockets. But, critiques say they are pieces of demonstration but never surfaced to share power and resources. This may be a formulation that can be contested. The drama in Bengal is that without giving leadership to the social proletariat, it is possible to come to power through emotional catchphrases to capture the imagination of poor and illiterate. Thus, Didi and her political party are conditioned by the sociology of Bengal which the scholars of political sociology seem to have not addressed to understand Didi. Neither the careerist economists nor policymakers do matter here, but the corporate business interests and the games they play would govern the drama in Delhi. Let us watch the moves and manipulations of the unseen spirits/deities that would ultimately decide the future of the country and not necessarily politics and economics.
“No government likes to impose burdens on the common man. Our government has been voted to office twice to protect the interests of the Aam Aadmi,” — Manmohan Singh(P.M.) “Is it not becoming clear that use of the name of Aam Aadmi, and misuse of power of chair, is to finish Aam Aadmi? Is it the game plan?” —Mamta Banerjee (West Bengal C.M.)
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[Sri N.K. Acharya is an whose presence otherwise means enhancement of
N.K. Acharya
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.]
FDI in Wholesale: One can now try to analyse the positive aspect of Foreign Direct Investment ‘in wholesale’ market as it is now permitted by the Government of India. It should have been named as Foreign Direct Investment ‘in retail’. Because, what is achieved by the Foreign Direct Investment in wholesale market is that the articles manufactured and goods produced are made available to the consumers at wholesale rates. Wholesale shops indulging in distribution of goods now direct their attention to the consumers. Under the new dispensation the whole system of middlemen such as sole distributors, distributors, commission agents and brokers etc. is eliminated. The commission claimed in the above stages would no longer be added to the price. It makes the goods available to consumers at wholesale prices. This new system means two things: 1) the manufacturers and producers get adequate and profitable prices and 2) the consumers get the goods at cheaper prices. Elimination of middlemen in trade is the principle purpose in promoting wholesalers to reach the consumers direct through departmental stores or super markets established in every urban locality. The prejudice entertained by some political parties against the traders themselves as such, is the only ground which guides the opposition to permit FDI in wholesale markets. Otherwise, promotion of wholesale market is definitely advantageous to all the persons concerned in trade. When the country adopted the Value Added Tax system which replaced multi-point sales tax it indicated its policy to eliminate as far as possible several intermediaries 29
consumer prices. Value Added Tax rendered the intermediaries in trade unnecessary. The present policy of permitting FDI in wholesale market is thus an inevitable next step. [Why the help of a Foreign Direct Invester is needed to remove the middlemen nuisance from between the producer and consumer and why the Indian Government’s legal machinery is insufficient in controlling the affairs should be the next point of explanation by Sri. Acharya.— Rekha S.]
UPA in doldrums: Coalitions are the natural phenomena when democracy is being experimented. Each political party seeks to adopt its own method to gain power. In coalitions, the minor and insignificant political parties too claim to influence the party in power by holding out threats of their disassociation with coalition. There were instances of the party which had hardly six members out of about 500 threatening to upset the balance. As a matter of fact, the Governments in Kerala changed by reason of a single vote majority. Parliamentary Democracy is best practiced when the contending parties are only two. It is so in Great Britain. But there, it took a long time to arrive at a two-party Parliamentary Democracy. It is only shear experience which helped the US to maintain two-party system viz., Democrats and Republicans. It is, therefore, time now in India that political parties may divide themselves by national issues instead of bargaining for power. The political parties must evolve also basic national issues and concentrate on them. Times were, when DMK and Anna DMK and such other regional parties were playing the role of kingmakers and the same position is being occupied now by Trinamul Congress and Bahujan Parties. The political parties hereafter formulate their strategies to work for the betterment of localities if they propose to represent regional interest and not aspire for working for national issues and vice-versa.
THE RADICAL HUMANIST
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Reduction in marriageable age: The present controversy over the reduction in marriageable age is not necessary. It has nothing to do with the occurrence of the crime of rape. The motives behind the rape have nothing to do with the marriage. Rape is a crime which occurs irrespective whether the woman concerned is married or unmarried. No offender has ever restrained himself when he found his victim as married. Nor, has the temptation for rape ever depended upon the woman being married or unmarried. The ancient view about the origin of the child-marriage before she attained eight years was rooted in the belief, among many other, that children are likely to be converted into another religion. This is a belief of bygone age. Rape is a spontaneous aberration. It occurs in circumstances of isolation and never occurs in public. It is many times not a pre-planned offence. Hence, the steps to prevent its occurrence can be achieved only by offering adequate protection to women and their privacy. The objectives of fixing a higher age for marriage are different. Controlling increase in population is one of them. The other objective is the protection of health of the youth. It is not, therefore, proper to jeopardize the said objectives by reducing the age of marriage. River water disputes: The sole purpose in setting up of a water tribunal as provided under the Constitution of India is to evolve a solution which is based on consensus, That is why, the procedure followed by the tribunal is to receive memoranda from every state and distribute the same to other states. Exchange of notes is a continuous process till the states achieve a consensus on sharing waters on some equitable principle. The commission repeats the process any number of times. Therefore, the states concerned and participating in the dispute shall try to implement a consensus. If there is any doubt about the implementation, it is better if the concerned authority to implement the projects associates the others with the implementation of the projects. That is what has happened in case of Tungabhadra Project which is located on the border between Karnataka and
Andhra Pradesh. The scheme evolved in that matter envisaged the appointment of engineers from Andhra Pradesh on the Tungabhadra Board created by Karnataka. That scheme has worked very well. There were no occasions in which either of the parties complained of any impropriety. What is troubling in the case of Kaveri Waters is stated to be the phenomenal increase of the Ayakat in Tamil Nadu. It is here the role of agricultural scientists becomes essential. Tamil Nadu has to evolve some new varieties of paddy which can be grown with less water. The initiative of Rahul Gandhi: The initiative of Rahul Gandhi to bring the top industrialists to Kashmir for meeting the students of that state is welcomed by all sections of the people. The purpose behind the move is to engage the industrialists to set up industries in that state and thereby create wide opportunities of employment for youth. Apart from their meeting with the students, it enables industrialists to discuss the role of industry in cases where there is absence of enterprises. The Federations of Industry and Commerce, no doubt, create such opportunities. Even then an independent assessment by individual industrialists by visiting concerned areas offers an inspiration to the adventurous among them. That Kashmir needs manufacturing industries is well-known. But, for the local disturbances of political nature, Kashmir would have been in the forefront in fruit processing apart from generating electricity. The people there shall recognize that the present political dispensation is the only solution which is beneficial to the people. The protection granted to Kashmir under Article 370 was successfully implemented for the benefit of that state. In spite of it, if there are still certain elements working to the contrary (just the same way as the Gurkhas of West Bengal, Bodos in Assam and groups of people of Telangana in Andhra Pradesh) is no indication that the alternatives proposed are in any manner less beneficial to the people of Kashmir. Therefore, industrialization of Kashmir is long overdue.
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IRI / IRHA Members’ Section:
Turmoil in North-East. We Might Learn From Sikkim —Subhankar Ray [Subhankar Ray is a researcher in biochemistry and long time associated with renaissance movement. He may be contacted at 13 Regent Estate, Kolkata 700 092, subhankarr@yahoo.com] after more than sixty years of Even independence almost all the states of North-East are in deep trouble driven by insurgencies and secessionist struggles. The intensification of ethnic differences poses significant security challenges for India. It is worthwhile to note that a significant number of people of these states are not only hostile to the Centre and people of the mainland but also they are equally hostile to each other; violent clashes between the states and also between different ethnic groups are rampant. It is true that Assam and Tripura have a huge number of people who migrated from Bangladesh and this migration has contributed to a large extent to the turmoil, but for other states such as Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram etc inward migration is no issue. At least there is no migration from mainland India. On the other hand it is very strange that in the last 10-15 years there is a continuous migration/influx of large number of people of different ethnic groups of the North-East to the mainland India. In every metropolis we see them in every nook and corner, which was unimagined even before a decade and a half ago. If mainland India and its people are unfriendly and hostile to these people and if there is so vast a cultural gap that the North-Easterners feel alienated from mainland then why this influx? Certainly these migrants are more comfortable here than in their home-field despite the recent bogus 31
threats to them by SMS. And it is quite likely that the number of migrants will gradually increase by leaps and bound. North-East is abundant with natural resources such as oil reserves, tropical forests, hydro-electricity potentials of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, tea, coal, timber, silk and jute. However North-East remains backward. It is often said that lack of appropriate developmental initiative is the root cause of violence and alienation. In this backdrop we might look at Sikkim. The monarchy was abolished in Sikkim and it became a part of India after a referendum in 1975 with 97.5 % voting in favour of union. Many social theorists and human rights activists thought at that time that the referendum was doctored and this would lead to very serious adverse consequences. However that did not happen. Sikkim has many similarities with other smaller states of North-East, it has borders with foreign countries (notable among those is China), multiethnic population of Nepali majority and people being ethnically different from that of mainland India. Despite all these similarities the socio-political climate in Sikkim remained quite peaceful since its inclusion in India. Moreover in contrast to other North-Eastern states there are plenty of migrant labourers from Bihar, who are engaged in construction and other related activities, as well as Bengalis who are serving in managerial and other capacities in the thriving tourism industry of Sikkim. The most important thing is that despite the state’s minimal industrial infrastructure, Sikkim’s economy has been the fastest-growing in India since 2000, with the state’s GDP expanding by over 13% in 2007 alone. When we notice underdevelopment in a particular region we often blame the authorities for their callous attitudes in neglecting the needs of the people and lack of initiative for their uplift. These factors do contribute to the underdevelopment but might be a minor issue. For proper functioning of agriculture, industry, trade, commerce, service
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sectors etc, which are the engines of growth, peace and rule of law is a must and the people have to shun violence. It is probably true that the provocation from foreign countries is a factor in the present and past turmoil of the North-East, but a question arises whether the people’s inherent nature has some role to play. Are some of the people of this region inherently hostile so they succumb easily to the provocation? This issue needs some serious consideration. In Author’s opinion underdevelopment is not the cause of
violence; it is the other way round. In this context people of North-East as well as social theorists and policymakers should learn from Sikkim. The present Author is not a professional social analyst. This small piece is based on his experience of visiting Sikkim twice and on some information, which we get easily. It is very difficult to make a final judgment and predict the course that a society will take in future. Still we might hope that Sikkim will continue to prosper with the harmony that is now present in this multiethnic state with its gentle people.
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THE RADICAL HUMANIST
NOVEMBER 2012
Teacher’s & Research Scholar’s Section:
Namita S. Kalla
The ‘Maid of Honor’Humanity hidden in Slums! a minute to think about that one Take person without whom life (at least in India) would go for a toss. No matter how rude, how ruthless, how rueful or at times, how revolting she may be, she is still the one, most of us count upon, most of the times. Yes it is the maid, our domestic helper, the Bai as she is popularly called. Right from my childhood, I have had various maids lending me a helping hand, and trust me, I have adored them all. Starting from the two maids, Laxmi and Bala, who treated me as if I were a princess; I also remember attending their wedding, to the one with whom, my brother and I went to watch a Telugu movie, (how she convinced my mother, is yet another story), to the christian maid who would bring home a Christmas cake, the very next day after the big eve; and a few more, all of them are very very close to my heart. Whenever I think of them a smile crosses my face, and I feel deeply grateful that they have been a part of my life. Well! I can actually go on and on, discussing almost every maid that has served me, but this write up is dedicated to my present maid, who is a fighter
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by all means. she fights not only for her own rights but also for the rights of others. Here goes the story. For the last one year Mamta, my maid, sets her feet on my doorstep at sharp 6.30 am, even on Sundays. She can actually put the ‘Time ’ to shame. One fine day this walking clock, (as I call her) was almost a few hrs. late than usual. So much that I dreaded she might not come. After panicking for some time I gathered courage (I need lots, for the person who cannot even clean the spam mails, cleaning the house is a big big thing) and took my weapons to hit the floor ( literally). It is then that I heard the door bell ring. And BANG there she was right in front of me. Obviously I enquired why she was late, and she narrated a heart wrenching yarn, putting me to tears. That morning on her way to work, Mamta heard a meek cry. She followed the voice, and to her shock the voice came from the nearby dustbin. She peeped into the bin, and what she saw was a ghastly act of humanity. There in the bin lay a baby, who was barely a few hours old. The little girl was wrapped in a dirty cloth which was kept in a huge plastic bag. As she said these words tears rolled down her eyes. My eyes were wet too. Without even giving a second thought Mamta took the baby to the nearby police station. She had to go through a lot of queries at the police station but this did not deter her from trying her best to help the child. After she was convinced that the baby was now in safe hands, she followed the road to her work. The baby is now safe in an orphanage. There are a few more humble acts that this bold lady has performed, which make me salute this amazing woman for the kindness and humanity that she has displayed. [Namita S. Kalla is a freelance journalist, author of Experience Jaipur in 101 Ways (BCCL), a linguist and an English language teacher. She contributes regularly for TOI, DNA, DB, Jodhpur and slogans for Radio Mirchi. namitaskalla@yahoo.co.in]
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NOVEMBER 2012
Book Review Section:
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]
The Magic in the Trees [BOOK: Just Look Up – To See The Magic In The Trees Around You by Sadhana Ramachander, BluePencil Infodesign, Hyderabad; cover artwork Kobita Das Kolli; drawings Aiman, Eshana, Malini, Poojitha, Rahel; photographs Sadhana Ramachander; 2011; paperback, pp 60; price Rs. 175.] look up and you will find the book all Just around you. It is an enchanting assortment of illustration and text on trees, interspersed with quotations and interesting bits of information. The author, Sadhana Ramchander, is a Hyderabad-based writer, editor and book designer. She has published poems for children (Autorickshaw Blues and Other Colours), but
targets this book at young as well as older readers. Encouraged by her parents, friends and associates, she feels that she must remit to a wider circle her enthusiasm and expertise on trees. As she says, we see trees all around, but we do not really “notice” them (p 2). But trees are colourful personalities with exciting things happening to them all the time. The Foreword is by Bittu Sahgal, the editor of Sanctuary Asia, who always carries a pair of binoculars on him so that he can watch birds, squirrels and monkeys on trees, not to speak of the flowers and foliage. He points out the nightmarish consequences of wantonly neglecting trees, and feels that this book will help deter them. The book opens with a spectacular close-up of the Kadamb tree, which belongs, we learn, to the coffee family (Rubiaceae). Next comes the Chenduphal or Badminton Ball tree with buds hard enough to give one a bump on the head. The Palash and Rudrapalash (with buds that squirt water) light up the next four pages. Pink-and-white puffs of the Shirish or Rain tree come next. The author points out the ‘art’ that is in nature – in striped leaves and red seeds as well as in flowers, of course. She also points out the possibilities of ‘craft’ from trees. Bead necklaces and bead earrings, for example, from the seeds of the Raktakambal. The Badam with its colourful leaves, the Gulmohar in its red and yellow variations, the Tree Jasmine or Cork, and many other specimens, are treated with exquisite attention. The mauve blossoms of the Neelkanth or Jacaranda, the yellow Sonda or Laburnam…all are beautifully illustrated and annotated. The Banyan, the Sandalwood and the Peepal have their place. The author points out how especially infuriating it is when such trees are treated with disrespect. The book is called Just Look Up but has a delightful display of strips with the heading: “Before you look up, you actually look down”. The strips show how the ground below trees are strewn with blossoms
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and leaves of many hues, and indicate a lot about the trees themselves (pp 56-57). At the end there is “a calendar of magical events” showing which month of the year a tree reaches its height of beauty (p 60). The quality of photography and printing is excellent, adding to the magic charm of trees. Children and adults alike will find this book enthralling. They will also acquire somewhat of a global perspective. For, while the book is about trees in India, trees in India are not all Indian, or, only Indian. For example, the Neelkanth (Neeli Gulmohar), says the book, grows in large numbers in Pretoria in South Africa. Pretoria is thus called
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Jacaranda City. The flowering of these trees coincides with the examinations of the University of Pretoria and students on whom their petals fall are blessed with success in the exams! The Raktarag tree (Lal Lasora) is of Cuban origin! The Bakul tree (mentioned even in Kalidasa’s works) is also called Spanish cherry! The global concern for Sustainable Growth calls for awareness and affection for the heritage of nature that human beings possess. To sustain and nurture, one must know and love. This beautiful publication will create that love and awareness in its readers, and go some way at least, in promoting Sustainable Growth and keeping the world colourful (not just green) for future generations.
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Humanist News Section: I
In India, Trained Priests From Lower Caste Are Still Awaiting Jobs
Kesavan, a member of India’s Dalit caste, is among those waiting n India’s Tamil Nadu state, a lawsuit by upper-caste Brahmins has kept lower-caste Dalits from taking up jobs as priests, the traditional domain of Brahmins. —By Mark Magnier
I
October 01, 2012, Los Angeles Times
CHENNAI, India: Kesavan’s father and grandfather were caretakers who sold candles and performed basic rituals at their local makeshift temple attended by fellow Dalits, or members of the so-called untouchable caste. In India, these structures are omnipresent around sacred trees, on sidewalks, abutting overpasses. So when the government of southern India’s Tamil Nadu state offered to train Hindus as priests regardless of their caste (a calling traditionally limited to upper-caste Brahmins) he leaped at the opportunity. Four years after completing the year-long program, however, he and 206 mostly lower-caste classmates are still waiting for jobs as a lawsuit filed by Brahmin groups wends its way through India’s
Supreme Court. While the state owns and runs most temples in Tamil Nadu, the suit says, it has no right to meddle in priest selection or administration. Angry and frustrated, the Dalit trainees say the long delay only underscores Brahmins’ entrenched power in Indian society. “We’re all doing makeshift work to survive,” said Kesavan, 26, who, like many southern Indians, uses one name. “It's a tough fight.” Frustrating their ambitions are Brahmin religious groups, politically minded Hindu nationalists and traditionalists keen to defend one of the last overt structures protecting the 4,000-year-old caste system. Traditionally, Dalits have occupied the bottom rung of this complex hierarchy. They are viewed as unclean and relegated to jobs such as collecting human waste in a country where two-thirds of households lack sewer connections. Although outright discrimination in cities has eased in recent decades, with Dalits edging into business and politics, religion has remained largely off limits. And on the social front, customs and prejudice remain entrenched, especially in rural areas. “The priests are the last vestige, the root of Brahmin power,” said S. Kirupanandasamy, a port executive and lawyer advising the trainees in their struggle for recognition. “We’re not asking them to appoint some thief to the temple. These boys are well-trained and qualified.” The wannabe priests say they are not trying to take over India’s most famous temples or push Brahmins out. In fact, India has a significant priest shortage amid changing lifestyles that has left thousands of temples of all sorts shuttered. Rather, they just want jobs in some of Tamil Nadu’s 34,000 state-run temples, they say, in keeping with a Constitution that outlaws caste and other discrimination. The real problem isn’t Dalit impurity or tradition, they argue. Rather, it’s that Brahmins don’t want to share money or power. Officially, priest salaries are modest, often $50 to
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$150 a month. But earnings from weddings, blessing-ceremonies and funerals can be substantial. Top priests also rub shoulders with elite politicians, businessmen and socialites, opening various social and economic doors. “They arrange deals with VIPs,” said Sathguru, 28, a Dalit who completed the course. “And they don't want to let others in.” Further upsetting tradition, the Dalit trainees want mantras and blessings to be said in the local Tamil language rather than ancient Sanskrit, which they believe further safeguards Brahmin power. “Even pious people can’t understand what they’re saying to the gods,” Kirupanandasamy said. “It’s a dead language.” II
Announcing XIth PUCL national PUCL convention in Jaipur on 1-2 December 2012 he XIth National Conference of the PUCL will be organised on the 1st and 2nd of December, 2012 in Jaipur. The venue of the two day conference is Swami Kumaranand Bhawan, Hathroi Gadh, Near Vidhayakpuri Police Station, Behind Church Road, Jaipur. Arrangements for stay have been made at Shri Prem Prakash Vishram Grah, Amrapura Sthan, MI Road, Opposite OM Towers, hardly a few hundred metres from the venue. Both the venue and the place of stay are within a kilometer distance from the Bus Stand and the Railway Station. All the members are requested to bring proof of their identity as it is required for staying in the Dharamshala. Registration fee of Rs. 200 has been kept for both days. Jaipur conference contacts: Prem Krishna Sharma: 0141 2206139, 9414055811, Kavita Srivastava:
T
0141-2591408, 09351562965, Harold Singh,9314871749 and 9829856789, Pappu: 9887158183, Malvika: 7742794190 Email Address: <pucl.rajasthan@gmail.com> and <kavisriv@gmail.com> As planned in the National Council meeting the larger theme for the year will remain Challenges before the Human Rights Movement and PUCL’s Response (Manav Adhikar Andolan Ki Chunautiyan Evam PUCL) in which the specific theme of the Jaipur Conference will be: “People’s Insecurity in the name of National Security: Citizen’s Rights, Democracy and State Terrorism.” The discussion will take place around the following three sub-themes: 1: Anti-Democratic laws and Sedition and Experiences of Combating it. 2: In the backdrop of Gujarat Genocide: Examining the ten-year struggle for Justice and Humanity in the entire country. 3: Politics of Resource Grabbing: Resistance and the response of the Indian State. Discussion on Re-imagining PUCL and addressing organisational issues within the PUCL will also take place. Information on the final programme with sessions and speakers will be sent soon. In case you want to join the conference then please send your names in advance to Email Address: puclnat@gmail.com, pucl.rajasthan@gmail.com, kavisriv@gmail.com or by Post to: PUCL, Rajasthan, 76 Shanti Niketan Colony, Kisan Marg, Jaipur 302015 Prabhakar Sinha, President PUCL, V Suresh, National Secretary Mahipal Singh, National Secretary Chitranjan Singh National Secretary Kavita Srivastava, National Secretary —News sent by Mahipal Singh
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III
Veteran Freedom Fighter And Socialist Leader Shri B. Satyanarayan Reddy Passed Away passed away in a private hospital in HeHyderabad on 6 October 2012 after a th
brief illness. He was 86. He was a staunch follower of Rammanohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. He was a bachelor, who dedicated his life for public service and served for long in the Janata Party, Lok Dal and Telagu Desham Party. B. Satyanarayana Reddy popularly known as Bhaiji, born on 21st August, 1927 in his native village Annaram, Shad Nagar, district Mehboobnagar, Andhra Pradesh, hailed from an agricultural family. He had his primary education in village Edulabad of Rangareddy district in then Nizam State (Now Andhra Pradesh) and thereafter in Kayastha Pathshala and Keshav Memorial School, Hyderabad. After getting his High School education in Vivekvardhini High School, Hyderabad, he had college education at Nizam College, Hyderabad. He received Law Degree from famous Osmania University, Hyderabad. He was a well known Freedom Fighter and took part in ‘Quit India’ movement in 1942 at an early of 14 years, and was arrested when he took out a
procession of students against Gandhiji’s arrest. Later on he took an active part in the Socialist movement and participated in the Hyderabad Peoples’ Movement in 1947. He took inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Narendra Deva, Dr. Rammanohar Lohia and Jayprakash Narayan and took part in the ‘Socialist Movement’ under the inspiring leadership of Dr. Rammanohar Lohia. He organized ‘Satyagraha Movement’ against the Nizam’s Rule. At the time of merger of the State in the Indian union, he was arrested in 1947 by the then Nizam’s Government and imprisoned in Central Jail, Chanchalguda, Hyderabad for six months. While in prison he started and edited the Urdu Weekly Payam-e-Nav which he used to circulate among his prisoner colleagues. Before this while he was studying in Class VI, he used to publish a Hindi Fortnightly Mukul. During the Emergency era he was arrested on 1st August, 1975 and was detained under MISA for 18 months and sent to Musheerabad jail during the Emergency period. He was arrested several times during the Congress Rule. He took part in the Bhoodan Movement of Acharya Vinobha Bhave and Sri Jayprakash Narayan. Shri Reddy had a wide experience of Indian politics. He was the Chairman of the Action Committee of the Hyderabad Students’ Union in the year 1947-48. He was the General Secretary of Bar Association, City Civil Court, Hyderabad. He was founder member of the Socialist Party. Socialist Youth Wing, National High School, Samajwadi Yuvajan Sabha and Janata Party. He was also Chairman of the Telengana Praja Samiti during 1969-71. He was General Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party, 1956-64 and was also the General Secretary of the Janata Party of Andhra Pradesh Unit 1977-79. Thereafter, he was General Secretary of Lok Dal (1979-82). He was Convenor of Jayprakash Narayan Committee, Andhra Pradesh in 1975. Sri Reddy visited Malaysia, Singapore, Rome, Libya,
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Nairobi (Kenya). London, China, Hong Kong, West Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Norway etc. He was elected to Rajya Sabha in 1978 as the nominee of the Janata Party but joined Telugu Desham Party in 1983 and was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha as Telugu Desham nominee in 1984. He was Governor of Uttar Pradesh from 12-02-1990to 25-05-1993 and later of Orissa. A Telangana protagonist, Satyanarayana Reddy served as an inspiration for those in the Telangana movement. Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy expressed their condolences. Mr. Narasimhan said Satyanarayana Reddy was a great freedom fighter and one of the most able and influential public servants of his
generation. In his demise, the country lost an outstanding administrator. Mr. Kiran Kumar Reddy visited the residence of late Satyanarayana Reddy and paid tributes to the departed leader. TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu recalled the service rendered by Satyanarayana Reddy as Rajya Sabha member and Governor and expressed his heart-felt condolences to the members of the bereaved family. BJP leaders M. Venkaiah Naidu, Bandaru Dattatreya and State BJP president G. Kishan Reddy described Satyanarayana Reddy as an ideal politician and a strong socialist and nationalist, fighting against repression of Nizams. 窶年ews sent by Qurban Ali qurban100@gmail.com
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The First Volume of M.N. Roy’s ‘Fragments of a Prisonner’s Diary Crime & Karma Cats and Women’ has been translated in Gujarati by Prof. Mahendra Chotalia And published by Sri. Bipin Shroff (Editor, Monthly journal Vaishvik Manavvaad) This is the second edition & its 2000 copies have been published. The book is well appreciated by a wide section of Gujarati speaking people. Orders for its copies may be sent to Sri. Bipin Shroff at shroffbipin@gmail.com http://bipinshroff.blogspot.com/
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