The ‘S’-word
This is regarding the article To Put Faith In Secularism (Nov 7). The western concept of secularism meant the separation of the Church (religion) from the State. In Indian culture, ‘sarva dharma samabhaava’ (all religions coexist) was the guiding principle, which stressed the equality of all religions. People from different religions migrated to India at different periods in history, settled here, and pursued their religion in their own way. Secularism, as it has been defined in post-independence India, was an unknown concept here. Our preamble to the Constitution defines India as a “sovereign democratic republic”. It is only during the Emergency that India was declared a ‘secular republic’, when the ‘S’ word was added to the preamble of the Constitution through an amendment. However, the government here neither followed the western concept, nor the traditional one. Right after the republic was born, the government enacted the Hindu Code Bill, but no such Bill was there for other communities. Today, many Hindu temples are controlled by the State while places of worship of other religions are managed by the respective communities. Also, in the public domain, an anti-Hindu stand has almost become a basic necessity of the so-called liberals in academia and the media. In the name of keeping ‘communal forces’ (read BJP) out of power, the so-called secular parties make unprincipled and opportunistic pre-poll alliances, only to grab power.
M.C. Joshi, Lucknow
India of the 21st century has to remain plural and secular in the way it has been for a long time. And the secularism we practise must be secularism in the true sense—total separation of religion and politics, as practised in the West since the French revolution. What I mean is that we must discard the Indian, Orwellian version: all religions are equal, but some religions are more equal than others.
Rakesh Agarwal, Dehradun
Apropos ‘How Not to Be India’ (Nov 7), I might say a parallel can be drawn between the persecution of Jews in Europe and that of Pandits in Kashmir. It seems that Kashmir is in fact heading towards Nizam-e-Mustafa (rule of Allah). What more proof does one need of that other than the fact that young women are now compelled to wear the hijab, which was not the case a few decades ago.
Rajiv Chopra, Jammu
The reference to a single Hindu who happened to be with the Hizbul Mujahideen doesn’t alter the fanatic, exclusionary and regressive nature of the Kashmiri movement. The fact is, there are hardly any non-Muslims supporting the movement in any significant manner. And, whichever of the two Kashmiris in conversation, Hindu or Muslim, made it, the comparison between the sharia and the citizenship versus non-citizenship debate is thoughtless.
Varun Shekhar, Toronto
This is with regard to Like Threads Suspended, a Kashmiri Pandit’s account of being a refugee (Nov 7). I sympathise with the author, but this is the story of all people living in conflict zones, from Palestine to Kashmir. The Muslims in Kashmir are going through a horrible experience day in and day out. The security forces are the agents of this misery. In a similar vein, thousands of Muslims in India have been displaced from their homes because of riots and now live in utter poverty. The author could also have glanced at these tragedies that beset all minorities across the country and expressed a modicum of solidarity.
Nasar Ahmed, Karikkudi
Gandhi is not just a name, but an ideology—adopted or rejected as per one's choice.
Rajneesh Batra, New Delhi
This is about the interview with Ashis Nandy in Outlook’s anniversary special issue (“Savarkar is the new father of the emerging India....”, Nov 7). South Korea had a very low economic growth in 1960. It was also corrupt, and many Communists were slaughtered. Then a general took over. His ‘authoritarianism’ wasn’t out-and-out capitalist or Communist. He paraded corrupt grandees with dunce caps on their heads. They were given a choice—either a full confiscation of their wealth, or a full investment of that wealth in South Korea’s export-oriented industries. The general also devalued the currency and followed sensible policies suggested by an American woman economist. Finally, he got a very good price for catering to the needs of the Americans fighting in Vietnam. The country’s growth rose from 2.2 per cent to a high of 12 per cent. As far as economic policies go, Indian ideologues like Gandhi, Savarkar, Bhave and JP and their ideas were just outright crazy. Nandy is well respected but has never had any influence. Now we know how little they mattered for our well-being.
Vivek Iyer, London
With due respect to Ashis Nandy, I think the renowned "political psychologist" needs a psychologist himself to sort out his thought process, which is just a jumble of critical thoughts. I find that many self-declared secular thinkers have some sort of complex vis-a-vis Hindus, Savarkar etc. This must be the reason for their ‘super ego’.
G. Ghai, Mumbai
I literally baulked when I came across Nandy’s words: "Yes, the Hinduism that we see around us today is not 2,000 or 4,000 years old. It is just 150 years old." When did Outlook subscribe to the Unreal Times? This is comedy platinum! The man seems to have lost his sense of history and has no clue what he is talking about.
Akash Verma, Chennai
This is with reference to the article God Is Not A Khomeini, which Outlook carried in its 21st anniversary issue (November 7). One will be struck by what the author has written in the second paragraph under the heading ‘Strange bedfellows’: “The convergence of views between the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the Islamic State (ISIS)…on what Islam is, is intriguing.” It implies that for both Hirsi and the ISIS, the definition and practice of religion is the same. To refer to Hirsi’s approach as ISIS’s ideological ‘bedfellow’ is extremely uncharitable. The reason the two appear to have a very similar understanding of Islam is because they have grown up with a literal textual understanding of the religion in their own contexts and both have been victims of the politics of religion (even the ISIS, which has victimised a large number of people). The author of the article also makes the point that often Islamic texts are read away from their contexts. But, can such reading be avoided given that the Quran is considered to be the literal word of god revealed to the Prophet? Islamic scholars are well aware of the fact that if one goes down the path of textual and historic criticism, the ‘text-context’ argument shall seem frail, thus the insistence on the ‘by the book’ approach in some way or the other.
T. Nayak, Washington
The length of the essay by Charles Taylor on secularism (To Put Faith In Secularism, Nov 7) is taxing and—blame it on age or scepticism—I did not read the piece in detail. And blame it on the same factors, I don’t have anything original to say. But, just to highlight that there are other debates taking place in Europe on this very issue, here are some quotes to reflect on:
“Charlie Hebdo is the epitome of what western culture has become: nihilistic, pseudo-pornographic, and disdainful of the idea that anything at all can be considered sacred. In much the same way, the secular media scorns the sacred.”
“How curious it is that our culture’s martyrs are men that don’t even believe in the concept of the sacred! That some of our bravest men—as the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists certainly were—will risk so much just to make the point that there isn’t any point.”
“However, it is also the utter vacuum of moral relativism that feeds radicalism. Young Muslims without strong roots in their faith encounter no healthy spiritual alternatives in western culture that reflect their need for a religiously rooted identity. What they see is moral and spiritual relativism, which they find so revolting that they rush into the arms of Islamic radical preachers, because these radicals alone offer the clear and firm framework of guidelines for their lives, which they know the need.”
“The West offers nothing to replace something. The West then stands uncomprehending and clueless when it turns out that the West has failed miserably to replace something with the utter nothing it offers. But the reality is that the powerful vacuum generated by nothing sucks in the something offered by radicals.”
Santosh John Samuel, Kochi
While waiting for my turn at a dentist’s clinic a few days ago, I was tempted to pick up a copy of Outlook dated October 24 because of the thought-provoking line on the cover: ‘Doctored Colleges’. When I read it, I realised it was a comprehensive story on the subject and Anoo Bhuyan deserves kudos for doing it.
My interest in the subject is natural as I have been a teacher of medicine all my professional life (1951-84), working for various government medical colleges. I have also been an examiner in Medicine for MBBS and MD programmes in many universities in northern India, and an examiner as well as inspector for the MAMS conducted by the National Academy of Medical Sciences. When I started medical education in 1946 at King Edward Medical College and Mayo Hospital, Lahore, and moved to Government Medical College, Amritsar (after Partition), there was not a single private medical college in the country. In India’s medical education sector today, there are more private colleges than colleges run by state governments, universities and autonomous bodies such as AIIMS. That means more doctors are passing out from private institutions than from government ones. In Teaching Shops of Medicine, Bhuyan presents a good bird’s eye view of the entire sector, buttressed by worm’s eye views of specific institutions that are taking students for a ride. However, she does not propose any solution.
I, too, am greatly concerned about the very poor quality of a majority of doctors graduating from the majority of private colleges. A related matter is the abominable doctor-population ratio of the country.
One way out is to start many more medical colleges in the state sector so as to decrease the pressure or competition for admissions to private colleges. This will gradually reverse the existing ratio between the government and private colleges. However, this is easier said than done as there are many hurdles: (1) selection of a city in a given state, which is usually a political tug-of-war; (2) allocation of funds; (3) land acquisition, planning and building a medical campus, with hostels for boys and girls, besides staff residences, which can take years; (4) procurement of equipment, mostly of a specialised nature and quite expensive; (5) recruitment of non-technical and technical staff, including experienced teaching staff, which is likely to prove the most difficult task; and (6) a long gestation period.
To overcome these hurdles, I suggest starting a second shift in government medical colleges itself. This would (a) add another (about) 15,000 to 20,000 qualified medical graduates per year (after five years); (b) provide admissions to many candidates on the waiting lists; and (c) lower the pressure for admissions in private colleges, thereby bringing down capitation fees.
As far as the abysmal doctor-population ration is concerned, no amount of incentives from the government can help qualified medical professionals overcome their reluctance to serve in rural areas. One possible solution is to raise a separate cadre of ‘rural medical service’ from pass-outs of pharmacy and nursing courses.
Dr S.P. Gupta, Rohtak
(Dr Gupta is former dean of medicine, M.D. University, Rohtak.)
There are controversies associated with Shashi Tharoor, and at least one of them—the IPL controversy—does not reflect well on him at all. But that does not diminish what he writes about the Raj (Chronicles of the Colonial Loot, Oct 31) and how the British got away with the plunder of India. Let alone apologise for it, they haven’t even acknowledged it. Some of the horrific famines that struck India, such as the Bengal famine of 1943, could be blamed on our British rulers. And it was not just in India. India achieved independence in 1947, but the British continued to hold on to—and, of course, exploit—Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Malaysia and other countries well into the 1970s. It was shameless and disgusting. The behaviour and policies were not quite Nazi-like, but it was definately a progenitor: the underlying sense of racial superiority as an organising principle, was the same. If Tharoor is the one to chronicle the story, well and good!
VS, On E-Mail
This refers to The Coming Caste Wars (October 31) by Suhas Palshikar. The liberalisation process, which began a quarter of a century ago, created an agrarian crisis even as it reduced the percentage of organised blue- and white-collar jobs in the total workforce, leading to jobless growth. This forced the middle-ranking and largely landowning castes to seek reservation in government jobs. Alas, they are only desperate for a piece in the ever-shrinking job pie even as the government continues to withdraw from many fields, passing the buck to the private sector that is more interested in making profits than generating employment. Sadly, in this war, the real subalterns—Dalits and adivasis—are getting crushed.
Rakesh Agrawal, Dehradun
