KARNATIQUE

Hindi: First Among Equals

2011-12-24T10:53:00.000+05:30

Nehru with Pamela Mountbatten as she was about to leave India in June 1948. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In August 1956, Jawaharlal Nehru, the then prime minister of India, spoke in the Lok Sabha about the language issue, detailing out what was to become the strategy for imposing Hindi all over India - i.e., quietly, with sufficient deception and nice-talk, and with enough portrayal of a great concern and appreciation for all Indian languages. Said Nehru:

I do think that all the fourteen languages mentioned in our Constitution are our national languages - not Hindi only, but all the fourteen languages. Hindi, not because of any linguistic superiority, but because it is spread over a larger area and for various reasons and facility and the rest, we have said, should be an all-India language; it should become an all-India language gradually and, after a certain period, for official purposes. But, all are national languages. We want to encourage them. And I am convinced that the encouragement of one language in India leads to the encouragement of others. The outlook that we can encourage one language by crushing others is completely wrong from any point of view - literary, or linguistic point of view. In this matter, for instance, I feel that any kind of application, letter or petition of any kind can be presented to courts: it can be done in any of the fourteen languages of India and no court will reject it. It may be, of course, that the court may be unable to deal with it if it is totally unaware of it because no court can keep fourteen translators. That does not matter. It is a matter of convenience. But, a court in Delhi has to accept an application put in Malayalam or Tamil or Telugu or Kannada. Let them get it translated. Maybe, it will delay matters. But it is none of your business to say that you cannot get it. It is one of our national languages.

Now let us roll out the hypocrisy a bit here.

The first thing to notice is the way Nehru basically tries to startle his political opponents - burst their bubble, so to say - by granting the same appellation to "all the fourteen languages". He is basically saying "Hey, who said Hindi is different? Every one of the fourteen languages mentioned in the Constitution is a national language". Given how naive and outnumbered his political opponents must have been in the lok sabha, it would have come as a great relief to many that even their language has been given the same appellation as Hindi, although the Constitution itself does not mention Nehru's verbal largesse. If Nehru had raised his voice even a little while saying "all the fourteen languages", it would by itself have sent the grey cells of his political opponents to a standby mode. I don't know that he did raise his voice, but he could have, just like his daughter did later, and his daughter's sons did later, and his daughter's son's wife did later, and his daughter's son's son is doing today.

Next, there's this admission that Hindi does not have linguistic superiority over the thirteen other Indian languages. First of all, the term linguistic superiority is meaningless, and one can talk only of literary superiority. The former term would imply the attaching of superiority or inferiority to linguistic features - such as Hindi's attribution of gender to inanimate objects - which is indifferentiable from racism. We don't know what Nehru had in mind, but we will give him the benefit of doubt, given his own admission in his autobiography that he doesn't have a clue about language or grammar.

In any case, his talk of Hindi not having linguistic superiority is a double-edged sword. The first edge seeks to praise the languages of his political opponents - raise them to an illusory high status right there in the lok sabha and make Hindi look like any other language so that the dominator appears no different from the dominated. The second edge seeks to snub any superiority that his political opponents can claim for their languages - such as literary superiority which can at least somewhat be measured (by, for e.g., the number of books published per language per year). By snubbing any superiority that his opponents can claim about their languages, Nehru is simply seeking to avoid the danger of the debate going in the direction of choosing a language with a provable superiority of some kind to replace Hindi. Now I don't write this to say that such a language should be made India's national language, because I don't think there's any need for one language to be given any special status in India. I write this to say that Nehru was only trying to avoid debate and discussion and push his agenda.

Then, Nehru says that because of its larger spread and "various reasons and facility and the rest," he would like Hindi to be an all-India language, and after a certain period the official language. Let's understand this. First, look at the mere verbiage in "various reasons" and "and the rest" - meaningless words which are used to simply prolong the discourse for those who consider prolonged discourses as scholarly and meaningful. The "facility" reason is also equally dubious. Facility for what? Facility to achieve what? Nobody knows or cares, nor is there anything solid behind that word.

The only thing coming close to qualifying as a reason given is Hindi's larger spread. What he is saying is that because Hindi has a larger spread, it must spread more and become an all-India language. So we see here a clear agenda to make Hindi become the language used for daily life all over India, although Indians weren't orangutans with undeveloped tongues in August 1956. See how glibly he pushes his agenda. Sitting in a room full of politicians where official things are of concern, he makes official status secondary to an all-India status, thereby again warding off any debate about what politicians really care about. Also, notice the adverb "gradually" used to slow down heartbeats. So here again Nehru is appearing like a man in a loincloth begging consideration, and in the process conquering an entire assemblage of nations represented by the unsuspecting and the naive. Of course, we know that the official language status was the one usurped by Hindi, and the threat of Hindi becoming an all-India language postdates that usurpation.

"But all are national languages. We want to encourage them", he says again, adjusting his loincloth and extending a hand pretending to tremble and make a humble plea. "Want" to encourage, Mr. Nehru? What about actually encouraging, and for example, by first not trampling them under your noble Hindi feet? Nobody seems to have asked this question.

And then there's this big farce about how he's only talking about encouraging one language and not crushing others. This is such an oft-repeated argument even today by Hindiwallahs that we need to look at this closely. Look at what he's saying. He's basically saying that he wants to encourage one language, Hindi. Right off the bat, that is undemocratic, imperial. It is none of the business of the central government to encourage any one language. Encouraging one is indifferentiable - get it straight - indifferentiable from discouraging others.

Why? Simply because of the "encouragement" given to one language, all others start losing their place. First, they "encourage" the constitution to be written in Hindi "without discouraging" Kannada, Tamil, Punjabi, or whatever. But hey, you just ensured that every language other than Hindi lost its chance of being there, Mr. Nehru! You can make a stick shorter without breaking it: you just place a longer stick next to it. Didn't Nehru know this? Of course he knew this, and he even talked of his great love for the shorter stick all the time. "The outlook that we can encourage one language by crushing others" is "completely wrong", sure, and that is certainly not what Nehru proposed to do. He didn't encourage Hindi by crushing other languages. He just encouraged Hindi, and the encouragement itself crushed other languages. It's different, right?

And then he ends his nonsensical paragraph, in an entire speech intended to deceive, by admitting something really, really, really inimical to the interests of the speakers of non-Hindi languages. What is that? Read his nonsense carefully, and you'll see that he's making a big virtue out of delaying justice to those who don't speak Hindi. If you're a Malayalam or Tamil or Telugu or Kannada speaker begging for justice in a Delhi court, he's making a big virtue of the fact that you'll have to wait, perhaps until you're dead, for justice. It is "none of the business" of the courts to say that they can't get appeals translated to Hindi or English, he says, so that they can understand pleas in languages other than Hindi, and "Maybe, it will delay matters", but you'll finally get your justice. After you're dead, "maybe", but "That does not matter. It is a matter of convenience". Hindi speakers, in Nehru's scheme of things, avail justice much faster because India is engineered to accept Hindi all over. Thus, Hindi is equal to every other language, but it only gets to be first. "That does not matter. It is a matter of convenience".

For further reading

"Language Issue", p. 204, Nehru's India, edited by Mushirul Hasan, Oxford University Press, 2010.

***
I'm going to return to my hibernation after this post. It's been a year since I logged of the blog, and it seemed like the right time to say Hi to my friends here on Karnatique, with a post after one year. I'm still working on the book, and I hit upon Nehru's speech referred to above as part of the research for the book. It will take another 3-4 months to complete the first draft. Keep in touch! - Kiran.

Taking a break. Matte sigona.

2010-12-25T08:27:00.001+05:30

Dear friends,

I would like to inform you that I have decided to take a break from blogging and online social networking in order to focus on a book that I have begun to write.

The first draft of the book, written in English, is expected to take anywhere from 9 to 12 months to complete. The book is about the need for and ways of reforming the increasingly popular Idea of India and putting India back on track in its career as an ethical nation. This, of course, is very much a Karnatique theme.

Karnatique and Hostilu are the only blogs on which I'm active right now, and I will be taking a break from both. I will also be taking a break from the Facebook accounts Kiran Batni, Karnatique Balaga, the Facebook community page Roman Lipiyalli Kannada, and the Twitter accounts @kiranbr and @karnatique.

Too many tools and objects, although they are blameless by themselves, crowd out the human mind. Even the most beautiful flowers and fragrances, however beautiful they are, hold the mind captive and deprive it of leisure and silence. I need both leisure and silence to listen to that Inner Voice of Truth which whispers the same whispers in all of us, if only we listen to it. It is these whispers that I wish to present to the world as a book.

Let's keep in touch. I will be available on kiran at banavasibalaga dot org. I will also be more than happy to meet any of you personally if you wish, and if you are in or around Maisuru (Mysore), where I now live (yes, Bengaluru is around Maisuru). We could then discuss things in more detail instead of exchanging quick and dirty messages online, and build a network of hearts instead of a network of TCP/IP.

Matte sigona (let's meet again),
Kiran Batni

PS: I've dropped the middle 'Rao' in my name, for simplicity.

SHUT UP! Leave the onions and mind your business.

2010-12-23T23:09:00.006+05:30

Both share a flawed economic philosophy which is the root cause of the problem, and both have actually faced the problem. One had to pay for it by making itself non-existent, and another is in a similar situation today. But both fail to realize that executing a flawed philosophy flawlessly does not solve the problem created by it.

I'm referring to the BJP and the Congress, and onions. Both parties share a flawed economic philosophy that government can fix commodity prices magically and arbitrarily. In reality, government cannot do anything like that. Altering the demand/supply curve is none of the government's job, and whenever it does that, it only makes matters worse, as we're seeing today.

To anyone following the nonsense closely, every solution that is being proposed now involves asking the government to undo something it had done earlier. But nobody seems to even for a second question the flawed economic philosophy which attaches an undue importance to government, and due to which government did those things in the first place. Why create taps and give them to wrong hands to control?

One blame being placed on the central government is that it allowed export licenses even when internal prices were rising. But nobody seems to realize that the first problem is that there is even a concept of export licenses. The second problem is that if traders want to export in any case, it's none of the government's business to stop that export. If that export is unethical in some sense, the society should rise to the occasion and stop it. Not government - a set of fools at best, and a set of corrupt fools at worst.

Another blame being placed on the central government is that it is treating Congress and BJP ruled states differently in executing the flawed economic philosophy. But those who point that out forget that when executing the flawed philosophy flawlessly itself is a problem, executing it in the presence of vested interests does not lead to a smaller problem. It leads to a bigger problem.

I'm wondering if there are any economists left in this country any more, who can advise to political parties, the public, and the media alike, what Ronald Reagan once advised:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

The best thing any political party can do now is to show the intellectual courage to question the philosophy that government should poke its nose in the onion/tomato/garlic market, or any domestic market for that matter. It's high time voters also realize that there are things which government cannot solve, but can certainly screw up. I'd like to see at least one of the two parties grow up to adolescence and question the shared economic philosophy.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the reason why neither the BJP nor the Congress is able to get over the crucial stage of adolescence when it comes to economic philosophy is simply that both have in them a trace of the colonial mindset. After all, the very concept of a Government of India is British, and our brown Indian masters copy-pasted crucial documents from the white British masters and just changed a few names here and there anyway.

Colonial governments must control the demand/supply curve in order to loot profits from the people and ship them to Her Majesty The Queen or His Majesty the King back home. Perhaps someone should remind both parties that they're already home, and that there's no Her Majesty or His Majesty to send anything to. Perhaps someone should rise to the occasion and ask government - whether it's this party or that forming it - to just shut up and leave the market to the market.

The fate of the lingua franca

2010-12-18T12:39:00.002+05:30

A new book titled The Last Lingua Franca by Nicholas Ostler is raising waves across the world. Here's a Penguin review of the book, a must for those who assume a larger-than-life importance for English in the world, and Hindi in India:

'A lingua franca is a language of convenience. When it ceases to be convenient – however widespread it has been – it will be dropped, without ceremony, and with little emotion.' - NICHOLAS OSTLER

The Last Lingua Franca is a fascinating and provocative examination of the rise and coming fall of English as the world's language.

English is the world's lingua franca – the most widely spoken language in human history. But its dominance has so far lasted two centuries at most – far less than the spans of other major languages such as Greek, Latin, Arabic, or Sanskrit. And now, as historian and linguist Nicholas Ostler persuasively argues in his provocative new book, English stands not only to be displaced as the world's language in the not-too distant future, but also to be the last lingua franca, not replaced by another.

The primary causes for the spread of lingua francas over time have been empire (to bind peoples together politically), commerce (to facilitate trade), and religion (reinforcing the power of faith), and Ostler explores each inspiration through the lens of civilizations spanning the globe, from China and India to Russia and Europe. Three trends emerge that suggest the ultimate decline of English, and lingua francas themselves. Throughout the world movements towards democratization in politics or equality in society will downgrade the status of elites-since elites are the prime users of non-native English, the language will gradually retreat to its native-speaking territories. Moreover, the rising wealth of states like Brazil, Russia, India and China will challenge and ultimately overtake the dominance of native-English-speaking nations-thereby shrinking the international preference for English. Simultaneously, new technologies are allowing instant translation among major languages, enhancing the status of mother tongues and lessening the necessity for any future lingua francas.

Ostler predicts a soft landing for English: it will still be widely spoken, if no longer worldwide, sustained by America's continued power on the world stage. But its decline will be symbolic and significant, evidence of grand shifts in the cultural effects of empire.

The Last Lingua Franca is both an insightful examination of the trajectory of our own mother tongue and a fascinating lens through which to view the sweep of history.

As far as the reviews I have read go, the book does not seem to focus on the inherent utility of the world's diverse languages in the education and economic growth of their speakers. That, more than anything political or historical, will be the reason for the decline of the Englishes and Hindis of the world as lingua francas.

Bharatiya Javali Paksha*

2010-12-11T08:13:00.003+05:30

With chief minister B S Yeddyurappa leaving his chief-ministerial duties aside to campaign for the upcoming Zilla Panchayat and Taluk Panchayat elections, advertising himself (this time with numbers) behind every bus in Karnataka using public funds, the state is running into huge debts (this time with numbers). Writes the Times of India:

Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa paints a rosy picture of the state's finances. But the numbers tell a dismal story. In the past two years, the government has borrowed over Rs 13,000 crore in the open market by selling securities. And over the years, the debt from external borrowings is approximately Rs 70,000 crore.

To such attacks, Mr. Yeddyurappa's ultimate weapon is "this is what everybody does". Admittedly, anybody who knows the workings of state politics sees the truth in that stock response.

But the question is, if Mr. Yeddyurappa's party cannot do better than the others where it matters, such as in improving education in the Kannada medium (no, that does not merely mean distributing food or bicycles), ensuring jobs for Kannadigas (no, that does not merely mean getting investment), or in stopping the butchering of unborn Kannadiga lives, what right does it have to squander people's money?

Every new state government has the opportunity to redefine state politics and make it less nauseating, and more worthy of existence. However, every state government till now has thrown that opportunity into the dustbin, and so has Mr. Yeddyurappa's. Just like every other government till now, this government has done nothing more than trying to perpetuate itself using trinklets thrown to people who don't understand that they're being treated as beggars. This time, they're getting Javali. That's the difference.

* Javali (Kannada: ಜವಳಿ): loosely translated as 'cloth'.

Passing off collective selfishness as moral duty

2010-12-10T09:08:00.009+05:30

With so much talk of booking people for sedition and curtailing their freedom of speech, here's a passage from an essay of Rabindranath Tagore, titled The Nation:

In former ages, when some particular people became turbulent and tried to rob others of their human rights, they sometimes achieved success and sometimes failed. And it amounted to nothing more than that. But when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral law that the people have held sacred.

For the full essay, click here.

Reference to 'the States' in Sec. 124-A IPC

2010-12-09T17:00:00.083+05:30

Being used to good documentation, I'm realizing that it's a herculean task to browse through law. Many different versions of each document exist, and it's difficult to date them. The only consolation I have is that I won't catch a dust allergy by browsing these books on the internet!

I tried to find at least one version of Section 124-A somewhere which refers to "Government established by law in the States". It turns out that such a thing exists, and thereby lends support to my analysis in the previous post that the original sedition law was perhaps more decentralized than it is now.

Find below a snapshot of the section from Chapter VI of the IPC from the Bombay High Court's website (for the full document, click here). Going by the foot notes, the text seems to date back to 1950.

As shown in the previous post, "Government established by law in the States" was changed to "Government established by law in India" in 1951, in line with the idea of a strong central polity.

Why is this information interesting? Because it can help trace the slow centralization of the Indian polity from its federal roots under the British. I'm realizing that the sedition law is as faithful a fossil record of that process as any. I'm not trying to argue that sedition laws must be enacted in each state. The very concept is against free speech, and deserves to be eliminated from democracies at all levels of government.

More Majesty than Her Majesty

2010-12-08T15:18:00.001+05:30

A few days ago, I had argued that India's sedition law is "clearly a colonial hangover, designed to force public submission to an absolute and 'mathematically supreme' monarch". It turns out that the British themselves probably considered Her Majesty the Queen of England as less 'mathematically supreme' than what the Government of India considers itself.

Section 124-A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code has a long history which is partially documented in the change log of the IPC document (download here). Below, I've tried to use the change log to reconstruct the text of the section at different points in history. Note that I haven't found these texts as they appear below anywhere.

Look carefully, since the changes are not very easily visible. In a way, that's part of the problem.

1870: Section 124-A first inserted into IPC.

[Text unknown]

1898: "Her Majesty or the Government established by law in the States"

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards Her Majesty or the Government established by law in the States, shall be punished with transportation for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

1937: "Her Majesty or the Crown Representative or the Government established by law in the States or British Burma"

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards Her Majesty or the Crown Representative or the Government established by law in the States or British Burma, shall be punished with transportation for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

1948: "Her Majesty or the Government established by law in the States"

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards Her Majesty or the Government established by law in the States, shall be punished with transportation for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

1950: "the Government established by law in the States"

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in the States, shall be punished with transportation for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

1951: "the Government established by law in India"

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with transportation for life or any shorter term, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

1955: "imprisonment for life"

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

Readers will note that disaffection against "the Government established by law in the States" was likely a culpable offence under the colonial British rule (during which we think the British could have bulldozed the very idea out), was retained in 1950, but dropped in 1951. Therefore, this could be evidence that British India, run by a colonial power which looted this part of the world, was more decentralized (from as early as 1898) than the Government of India is today.

The dropping of the line in 1951 was probably after, but certainly in line with, the adoption of the Constitution of India which turned the hitherto Federation of States under Her Majesty into a strong central polity under the sovereign Government of India.

Now, I'm not trying to justify the curtailment of free speech by asking for a sedition law at the state level. Everywhere in the world, and at every level of government, free speech is a fundamental human right, and must be respected as such.

I'm only trying to show that the idea of federalism which really existed under the British, was wiped out by independent India, thereby making it more 'mathematically supreme' than Her Majesty the Queen of England was when she ruled over this part of the world. And that seems to show in the career of the sedition law.

Yet another argument for federalism in India.

Oh! She's very, very wrong

2010-12-07T10:16:00.005+05:30

Okay, then. Having already argued that it is her right to say what she wants, and that the sedition law should be removed from the IPC since it violates the fundamental human right to free speech, and that any violence should be covered under other applicable laws, I now get to analyzing what Arundhati Roy said in her so-called seditious speech.

Actually, I don't have a long essay to write here, since a little bit of googling showed that she was very, very wrong when she claimed that Kashmir has never been an integral part of India.

What did I hit upon? The Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir (yes, there is one, and it was adopted on 17/11/1956), which clearly states:

3. Relationship of the State with the Union of India:-The State of Jammu and Kashmir is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India.

Quod erat demonstrandum. Arundhati Roy, may I ask you to please get your facts right?

Book all Telangana supporters under 124-A

2010-12-07T06:44:00.005+05:30

Can someone tell me why Mr. K. Chandrashekhar Rao and his friends, who are trying everything possible to break up Andhra Pradesh and form a new Telangana state, are not booked for sedition against the Andhra Pradesh state? Aren't they showing disaffection towards the state?

Shouldn't the entire BJP, then headed by Mr. L.K. Advani, and the Congress under Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, all be put behind bars for the same crime, since all of them have openly supported the breaking up of Andhra Pradesh?

Sure, section 124-A applies only to 'offences against' the Government of India, not state governments, so that's not the question. The question is, why?

If 'exciting disaffection' against the state is a crime punishable with life-imprisonment, why don't the same standards apply at the State level? On what basis has the central government legally assumed the power to alter state boundaries at will, and legally commit sedition, as it were?

Is it simply because the Government of India is a military power whereas the states are not? Or is it because state governments are simply hanging around with no real purpose?

Or, all of a sudden, are we talking about the right to not just free speech, but also free action of politicians, irrespective of whether it means 'disaffection towards' or 'war against' the people of the state?

Of course, this line of questioning opens up a pandora box full of people in the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti trying to annex parts of Karnataka to Maharashtra, supporters of the Kodava state, those asking for a separate North Karnataka state, those who helped form the new states of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, etc.

In reality, all of them have shown 'disaffection to the state'. If the sedition law is retained in the IPC, it must be expanded in scope to cover all the above, in order for the law to remain consistent. But yes, it would continue to be against free speech, and that's a different story.

'Merely because we find it disagreeable'

2010-12-06T17:18:00.000+05:30

Defending free speech, an Oct 26 editorial in the Hindu calls IPC Section 124-A (sedition) an 'archaic section' of law, and urges the Government of India to explicitly deny that it is considering pressing sedition charges against Arundhati Roy and others:

Do we lock up or threaten to silence our writers and thinkers with an archaic section of the law that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, merely because they speak their minds?

Also, here's some learning material from the same editorial, especially for those who are not prepared to apply their minds in these matters:

In his classic defence of free speech, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill laid down what is known as the ‘harm principle.' It postulates that the only justification for silencing a person against his will is to prevent him from causing harm to others. It is to this powerful libertarian mid-19th century principle that we owe the idea that free speech cannot be proscribed merely because we find it disagreeable, and that curbs may be imposed only if such expression constitutes a direct, explicit, and unequivocal incitement to violence.

One half of my heart despairs that there are so many in India who don't understand the basics of democracy, but the other jumps with joy that India is not devoid of those who do.

Show affection to me, or else.

2010-12-03T10:03:00.006+05:30

Whether Arundhati Roy is right or wrong on the issue of Kashmir, it is a mockery of democracy that her freedom of speech is not being respected. Many are baying for her blood, and many want her behind bars for sedition. But how right is it to punish someone, just because you don't agree with him or her?

When matters can't be settled using the laws of mathematics, it is natural for people to have different viewpoints. It is their fundamental human right to say what they think, under no compulsion or fear. The beauty of democracy is that it allows things to be settled by dialogue. Anything which prevents dialogue is undemocratic.

As a corollary, if it can be proved that Roy intended to cause violence, or that she uses violence herself, there is no doubt that she should be tried for the crime of inciting violence and disrupting the democratic process (which is, as stated above, one of dialogue). But that is is something completely different, and that is not what she is being accused of.

The Telegraph, from Calcutta, writes the following on this basic problem ailing India:

The right to dissent is one of the prized rights of a democracy. But India has for a time been sliding ludicrously from its chosen path, that of a democratic republic, and confusing dissent with incitement to violence and divisiveness.

Yes, it is very important to distinguish between dissent and violence. The paper goes on to argue that people have the right to have their own interpretation of the word 'patriotism'. Very true, at least here in India if not in China or Burma today.

This whole incident is reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi's 1922 trial in Ahmedabad, where he was charged with sedition, under section 124-A IPC, by the British Government. Readers will note that this is eerily the same section number even today. Another evidence to show that not much changed in 1947, save the skin-colour of those sitting in New Delhi.

Gandhi pleaded guilty in 1922, in line with his concept of non-violent non-cooperation with evil, and made the entire British Empire look small in front of his strong ethical stance:

Section 124-A under which I am happily charged is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection connot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or thing, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence.

Gandhi mocked at the sedition law which required him to show affection to the government, irrespective of what his heart feels about it.

The law, as found in Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code today, states:

Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.

Explanation 1.- The expression" disaffection" includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.

Explanation 2.- Comments expressing disapprobation of the measures of the Government with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means, without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under this section.

Explanation 3.- Comments expressing disapprobation of the administrative or other action of the Government without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence under this section.

It is a pity that the above law hasn't been updated in spirit after Gandhi's critique, and that the concept of coercing people to unconditionally shower affection on the Government continues.

If it is a crime to "excite disaffection" towards the Government, aren't all opposition parties in a democracy guilty of sedition? Isn't H.D. Kumaraswamy guilty of trying to "excite disaffection" towards B.S. Yeddyurappa's government? Isn't everyone in the media establishment guilty of sedition whenever they point out the wrongdoings of the government and "excite disaffection"?

The sedition law is clearly a colonial hangover, designed to force public submission to an absolute and 'mathematically supreme' monarch. It simply doesn't apply to a democracy in which the people are supposed to be the real rulers. It is the fundamental right of man to speak his mind, even if it "excites disaffection" towards the Government, as long as it is done in a non-violent way.

It is only man who can rectify mistakes which creep into insentient machines such as governments. Man is above machine. It's time India scraps the sedition law and covers any violence under other applicable laws.

Ethical Compromises in India’s Burma Policy

2010-11-29T21:24:00.000+05:30

The release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s non-violent supporter of democracy and human rights and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has brought India’s policy on Burma under the scanner once again. India, which was once a vocal supporter of The Lady, did a volte-face in pledging support for Gen. Than Shwe, Burma’s military leader. This policy greatly diminishes our image as an ethical nation. We must immediately reform the policy and the unethical mindset which drives it, since it has not just external but internal implications as well.

With the whole world waiting for India’s reaction, external affairs minister S.M. Krishna sent out a message which necessarily implied that it’s a non-event for India. Former ambassador to Burma, G. Parthasarathy, argued that it is in India’s national interest to maintain trade relations with Burma irrespective of the type of government there.

The basic claim to sanctity of a free-market transaction is the supposed absence of coercion; that is, the claim that that the two parties exchange their wares voluntarily, leading to a win-win result. Since the military government of Burma does not truly represent the Burmese people, the people of Burma cannot be said to be voluntarily engaging in business with the Indian nation. Therefore, the acclaimed sanctity of the voluntary free-market transaction simply doesn’t apply here.

As a matter of fact, the degree of voluntariness with which Indian people take part in such a transaction is itself limited to the degree to which the government of India truly represents them. However, it's at least theoretically better than the case of the Burmese people, because India is a democracy at least theoretically.

In doing business with totalitarian Burma, India is necessarily taking undue advantage of the lack of freedom of the Burmese people. We are basically using the sorry condition of the Burmese people to unfairly relieve them of their natural resources without their explicit and voluntary consent. What India gives in the market exchange is guaranteed to be not what the Burmese people would voluntarily settle for.

Would anybody voluntarily settle for weapons that kill them? India has actually sold weapons to the Burmese military Junta, knowing fully well that they are intended for use on native Burmese people. India has transferred BN-2 defender islander maritime surveillance aircraft, 105-mm light artillery guns and T-55 tanks to Burma, as part of the sacraments of business with that country. It should be amply clear to even the most casual observer that India is party to the murder of innocent Burmese people. The more Burmese get killed, the less the demand for Burma’s natural resources inside Burma, and the more we can get of it per rupee.

Those who quote India's 'national interest' as a two-word justification for India’s Burma policy, believe that simply taking the name of that abstract entity—the nation—can compensate for all the sins its citizens, and more so its governments, commit. Some believe we’re doing the right thing because India needs to achieve "double-digit growth". Some think it is a sacred duty of the Indian government to relieve Burma of its natural resources (basically oil and gas) irrespective of the ethical footprint on the people of Burma, especially since China is also in the resource-race.

Unfortunately, all the above arguments are ethically hollow, and unnecessary for India’s progress. What is stated as 'national interest' is basically glorified greed and lack of respect for others’ life and liberty. This is exactly what Albert Einstein called as an “infantile disease”, a “measles of mankind”. This is exactly what Rabindranath Tagore described as the “organized greed of material wealth of a whole people”.

India's target of economic growth cannot, must not, and need not be met by way of exploiting the life, liberty and happiness of the Burmese people. To maintain that we will do business with the Burmese government irrespective of whether it's democratic or totalitarian, is to simply say that we don’t care whether the Burmese go to hell as long as we can reap material benefits from them. Is this the creed of India? Is this the example that India, that great beacon of spiritual knowledge for the world, ought to set for other nations?

There is another grave and internal danger of encouraging the Indian State to engage in such unethical behaviour. It is, in short, that once it becomes intoxicated with the material gains from such behaviour, the Indian State will find it absolutely justified to prey on its own people. It will continue to justify compromising the life and liberty of those Indians who are in similar sorry states as the Burmese people today. This, of course, is a basic problem ailing India already, whether it’s the case of disadvantaged indigenous tribes or of subordinated linguistic peoples, where the presence of a so-called democracy makes it all the more difficult to recognize the State’s ethical compromises.

Why pretend to serve those you cannot relate to?

2010-11-23T09:34:00.001+05:30

M. K. Gandhi writes in the Hind Swaraj:

"I am so constructed that I can only serve my immediate neighbours, but in my conceit I pretend to have discovered that I must with my body serve every individual in the Universe. In thus attempting the impossible, man comes in contact with different natures, different religions, and is utterly confounded."

Keeping the spirit of Gandhi's discourse, the same is true of different languages (which are probably covered under "different natures"). The upwardly mobile Indian today comes in contact with Indians of different languages, and is utterly confounded. Yet, having left his own homeland, he seems not to drop his pretension that he must serve with his body Indians whose tongue he knows not.

I pity the plight of those who run the many charities in Bengaluru's corporate houses, so full of well-meaning people who wish to serve that abstract entity called India, but have no way of truly connecting with flesh-and-blood embodiments of India around them -- Kanandigas -- simply because they cannot speak Kannada or connect with their hearts.

In reality, those non-Kannadigas who throng these charity houses have come too far, too far for it to be any more practical for them to serve anybody other than their own selves. But they realize it not. Some argue that the tax they pay, or other NGOs they work with, do the job. But can all these constructs do the job ever better than a priest who is asked to pray in proxy?

'The value systems of those with access to power...'

2010-11-14T09:38:00.000+05:30

Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: telegraph.co.uk

Let these words of freed Burmese leader and upholder of democracy and human rights, Aung San Suu Kyi, ring in our minds, the minds of Kannadigas privileged with English education and English employment in a sea of underprivileged people with Kannada as the only tool for upliftment, and in the minds of Hindi speaking Indians who are constitutionally privileged over most of India:

The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.

And let these words of The Lady ring in our minds, the minds of those who consider politics as an unnecessary evil:

You can never separate the political system of a country from the way you conduct your daily life.

And let these words ring in our minds, as well as the minds of Karnataka's politicians doing nothing more than handing out gifts to the underprivileged:

The provision of basic material needs is not sufficient to make minority groups and indigenous peoples feel they are truly part of the greater national entity. For that they have to be confident that they too have an active role to play in shaping the destiny of the state that demands their allegiance.

And let these words of the leader ring in the minds of those who wish to bring about a change here in Karnataka:

The democracy process provides for political and social change without violence.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed, apparently unconditionally, within a week of Barack Obama speaking about the situation in Burma standing in the Indian parliament, and softly accusing India of doing nothing about it.

A confession

2010-11-13T17:56:00.000+05:30

I have a confession to make today--a confession about the manner in which I have conducted myself in my writings till now, here on Karnatique, as well as elsewhere in Kannada as well as English.

Unknowingly, I have been harsh to people with opposing viewpoints, whether they're living or dead. In my writings till now, I have not even come close to what I've learnt is the ideal way of contradicting opposing viewpoints. You will notice an improvement moving from my earlier articles to newer ones, but that does not remove the necessity for this confession.

Fact is, I have learnt some of the greatest lessons in my life from the people whom I have opposed philosophically (over one subject or another). In my mind, I have always held them in high esteem for what they've taught me through their lives and works. But what pains me today, as I review my own writings, is that my language has not necessarily shown that gratitude, except, perhaps, in the recent case of Rabindranath Tagore.

I've tired to find the origin of this harshness in me, but I don't completely understand it yet. It could be my childhood, it could be my surroundings. It could be that my busy life makes me so impatient that I don't see any option but to make the most fierceful statements against philosophical opponents in the shortest period of time. That could have easily drifted to harsh language. Behaviors of peer bloggers and colleagues could have catalyzed my fall. It could also be that plain ignorance speaks in such language. My mind could have settled on harsh language as a means of support for my arguments! Whatever the reason, the fact remains that I have erred.

But this is where the role of the teacher comes in. Over the years, I have learnt extensively from great people, living and dead, and from all over the world. And this list includes each and every person I've had to oppose in my writings. I have been humbled by the unmistakable grace with which all of them have opposed contradicting viewpoints in their writings and speeches. Honest people about to be hanged by colonial governments have displayed better grace than I have. They have all collectively taught me how to reform myself. It is a difficult transformation that I'm going through, but I will not rest until that transformation happens.

If you happen to read my earlier writings where I'm opposed to someone's views on a particular topic, please keep in mind that I might have been unknowingly too harsh to that person, and also that I'm not 100% opposed to everything they have ever said. Let not that harshness influence your judgment about the topic at hand, or enter you.

And yes, none of this means that I am withdrawing any of my philosophical positions about topics where I have opposed one or the other person. Nor do I mean to say that I will not withdraw them if need be.

Let's put technology where it belongs

2010-11-10T10:05:00.007+05:30

Photo courtesy: hindu.com

If you watched Barack Obama's so-called e-date with villagers in Ajmer on TV, you probably have the feeling that it was a lacklustre event, and a rather funnily mismanaged one at that. But if you dig a bit, it becomes clear that the show exposes how little India understands democracy and how to implement it. Also, the messages given out by the show have the danger of further retarding the process of true democratization of India.

Confusion between tools and intentions

The whole show exposes how confused India is between tools and intentions. A democracy which is not present in the hearts of people cannot be implemented using computers. The crumbling pillars of ethical governance cannot be patched up using computers. Yes, e-governance can slow down corruption, but the corrupt can always beat the system (one idea is to simply not turn on the darned computers).

Did the founding fathers of the United States of America need computers to write a good constitution? Did computers come up with the idea of federalism in that country? Did wireless communication technology come up with a nearly flawless implementation of a system of governance which fosters life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans? Wasn't the United States of America a vibrant democracy before video-conferencing existed?

Democracy should not become rocket-science

Projecting all that technology as necessary for having a working democracy, makes democracy seem like something inherently implementable outside human hearts, and only within computers. It turns a simple concept into an "over the head" monstrosity. That's probably good for those who sell computers and technology (and even for US-India trade), but bad for implementing a true democracy. Implementing a true democracy should be made to seem very easy, not very difficult.

Technology cannot run India

There is another grave danger of using too much technology to implement a decent democracy in India. And that is, many could simply "rest assured" that there's no need for them to do anything because something (in fact, a computer) is taking care of it. It can become a solid reason for the crème de la crème of India to further divorce itself from grass-roots Indian democracy. This danger has to be avoided.

Putting technology in perspective

We need to put technology where it belongs. Technology cannot fill the voids created by lacunae in human hearts, especially in the hearts of the powers that be. Technology cannot substitute a federal polity which is the only legitimate implementation of a democracy in a large and diverse country such as India. Technology cannot substitute sincere public workers. Technology cannot substitute education for the masses. Technology cannot substitute your and my concern and action aimed at the development of the have-nots.

Note that I'm not saying that technology is un-necessary. It's necessary, and can only supplement human hands. It cannot supplement human hearts. Today, what we need is a transformation of hearts in India.

Why help the unhealthy bulge further bulge?

2010-11-09T09:19:00.000+05:30

Barack Obama talking to students in Mumbai. Photo: outlookindia.com

Barack Obama in reply to a question in the townhall meeting at St. Xavier's college, Mumbai, on 7th November (italics mine):

"...I don't want any person here to be dismissive of a healthy materialism because in a country like India, there's still a lot of people trapped in poverty. And you should be working to try to lift folks out of poverty, and companies and businesses have a huge role in making that happen."

Absolutely correct. There couldn't have been a more correct message about how India should view materialism. But let's examine American materialism for a change: is it healthy? Is America setting the right example for the world to follow?

First of all, what is the definition of healthy? How many dollars of consumption per head is healthy? We intuitively know Indian materialism is too short of the optimum, but is American materialism healthy today?

Having seen the United States from up close, and having lived there for a while, and having read and understood how that country works in general, I don't think so.

It is only religion which provides a definition of "healthy" which remains acceptable in the ultimate analysis. At one place, Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita:

Yajńaṣiśṭāṣinaḥ santō mucyantē sarva kilbiśaiḥ |
Bhunjatē tē tvaghaṃ pāpā yē pacantyātmakāraṇāt ||

That is, those who eat the leftovers of sacrifice are freed of all their defects, whereas those who cook only for their own consumption verily consume sin itself. Note that Krishna is not asking the performer of the sacrifice to go hungry; he's asking him to eat what's left after the sacrifice. What if nothing is left after the sacrifice? That situation need not arise, since one can keep what's absolutely required for oneself and simultaneously offer it to the Infinite Being himself in sacrifice.

Unless a healthy definition of "healthy", such as Krishna's, is adopted, it becomes easy to justify the reckless massacre of innocent lives in wars which America fights for material gain. Not knowing what healthy materialism is, one can justify the slapping of things like population control and carbon emission restrictions on the third world. Not understanding the difference between healthy and unhealthy materialism, America can relieve billions of people across the globe of their natural resources - be it oil, minerals, or whatever.

Whichever way I look at it, American materialism is a classic case of "cooking only for one's own consumption". Must this not be reformed? Isn't it time America realized that its materialism is way, way, unhealthy?

Barack Obama seems to be tending atleast a little towards answering this question with a 'yes', for he said as part of the same reply:

Now, having said that, if all you're thinking about is material wealth, then I think that shows a poverty of ambition.

The problem is, it's not just a poverty of ambition. It's a poverty of ambition which has a very negative impact on the lives of people all over the world since it is supported by the American State. Sure, as Obama himself pointed out,

it's hard to preach to an empty stomach.

But why is it so hard to preach to a full stomach, a stomach with an ugly and unhealthy bulge filled with material wealth from all over the world, acquired by hook, crook, and war, and which is looking for further expansion? Why doesn't the American State refuse to aid those diseased stomachs? Why, instead, does the American State accelerate further expansion of that bulge by devising every conceivable method of world domination?

Is there any answer to this question, other than insatiable greed, Mr. Obama? If there isn't, how do you propose to fix this?

Yes, there is!

2010-11-07T20:37:00.001+05:30

US president Barack Obama. Photo courtesy: telegraph.co.uk.

Speaking to top Indian businessmen in Mumbai yesterday, visiting US president Barack Obama commented on the potential for increased trade with India, using these words:

"Our trade with India is still less than our trade with the Netherlands. I have no doubt we can do much better -- there is no reason why this nation can't be one of our top trading partners."

It all looks sufficiently motivating in a boardroom, but fact is, there is a reason why this nation can't be one of the top trading partners of the US. Read on to know what that reason is.

First of all, over and above a comparison of numbers, there is a qualitative difference between US trade with the Netherlands, and US trade with India: the Netherlands sells mind and India sells matter. And that is so, because the Netherlands has no matter to sell and India has no mind to sell.

Just to clarify, by mind I mean knowledge, and by matter I mean natural resources. By knowledge, I don't mean the knowledge of the Infinite Being, which is what India has indulged itself in from time immemorial. I simply mean that knowledge which helps one lead a better material life, a hedonistic life, if you will.

So, when Barack Obama gives a call for increasing trade with India, that can only be fulfilled today by selling more and more of our natural resources to the US. Why? Simply because India is shamefully short of any knowledge capital. We don't have a working education system, simply because we ignore the languages which Indians speak. There is not a single university in India today, which offers any materially significant university education in any Indian language.

Whenever a relatively knowledgeable nation trades with a relatively ignorant nation, the latter ends up buying trinkets which amuse the senses for a relatively short period of time, and pays the former with precious natural resources. Thus, it is inevitable in such a trade for hard material - such as minerals, metals, oil, etc to be moved away from the ignorant nation to the knowledgeable nation.

When such trade progresses, the ignorant nation increasingly depletes itself of precious natural resources, and those ignorant people who depend solely on such resources are choked to death. Some are displaced by dams, some sell their lands to malls, some sell their lands to airports, and some take to guns and get beautiful and charismatic women to advocate their cause in front of absent juries.

There is one argument against all this, which never stops boring me. And that is, that I'm ignoring the great tide of the Rising and Shining India with its burgeoning cash-rich English-educated middle-class. I don't deny that such a class exists, or that that class can actually trade enough mind to surpass the Netherlands in its exports to the US.

But, is that class all of India? What about the other billion Indians who don't speak English? Should India increase its trade with the US when the only thing those Indians can sell is natural resources, which can be equated to their lives themselves? The answer is clearly a no. No, we must wait until those other billion Indians also obtain some knowledge which they can sell.

And that can never happen as long as we neglect the languages of India in our education system. It is high time we take our languages seriously and reform the education system of each linguistic State.

Thus, there is most certainly a reason why India cannot be one of the top trading nations for the US right away: the reason that we need to uphold ethics. The reason that we need to safeguard the lives of a billion people and not sell their sole means of life - i.e., natural resources. It makes no difference that it can be made to seem as if those billion people are ready to sell their lives voluntarily. Voluntariness in a market transaction, after all, does not guarantee that ethics is upheld.

And, as far as I know, I think we should uphold ethics.

Using today's 'science' to justify yesterday's racism and greed

2010-10-23T08:34:00.004+05:30

Some people, especially those who don't know about the history of population control, quote the recent Energy and Environment concerns to justify population control measures which have been undertaken worldwide, and of course, here in Karnataka and India at large.

They forget that the pioneers of birth control could simply not have used Energy and Environment concerns in their discourse. The concerns did not exist then. What they did use was the food-shortage and racist arguments. The first one is disqualified by statistics, and the second one can never be qualified by ethics.

Therefore, using Energy and Environment concerns to justify the population control program which has been put in place already is a logical fallacy.

It's like killing someone today and justifying it next year with the claim that the dead person would have died because of tuberculosis anyway.

Nothing above should give the reader the impression that I'm accepting the Energy and Environment reasons as justification for population control now. I'll get to it in a separate post. It's a different topic.

New Kannada Blog - 'Hostilu'

2010-10-20T15:35:00.000+05:30

I'm starting a new Kannada blog called HOSTILU (ಹೊಸ್ತಿಲು, 'the threshold').

It's a blog which is going to experment with writing Kannada using a slightly modified Roman script, which I'm simply calling as "Hosa lipi". I've been experimenting with the script from a few months, but have shied away from fanning out to a wider audience until now. But now, I can't contain it any longer.

I don't recall who said 'Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come', but it couldn't be truer.

No, I don't mean to pretend that the 'time' of the idea of writing Kannada using the Roman script has 'come', as in 'coming to the larger world'. I only mean, in all humility, that I, personally, have been unable to stop that idea from taking me over. I have many reasons for doing this experiment, but I've decided to keep my calm about them, at least until there's a significant amount of content in that script.

I want the experiment to succeed, in the same spirit as that of any scientist who does any experiment, and I'm willing to accept any judgment from that Great Dispenser of Truth.

The theme of articles on HOSTILU is going to be exactly the same as Karnatique's (how could it be different?). Expect the frequency of articles here on Karnatique to go down a bit during the experiment. Of course, if someone can help me with translating HOSTILU posts to English, that will maintain the frequency at whatever it is today. Let me know if you're interested.

So check it out. It's online now: http://hostilu.blogspot.com.

Inefficiency, corruption and coercion are offshoots of being non-federal

2010-10-19T11:22:00.010+05:30

Two excerpts from an editorial in the DNA today:

i.
There is a basic flaw in the Centre-state relationship in India’s ostensibly federal system — constitutional experts choose to describe it as quasi-federal — which leans towards the Centre rather than the states.

ii.
There are two other points of contention. One is when states seek Central assistance to deal with natural calamities like drought and flood, it gives the Central government and the party in power the option of playing benefactor when, in reality, it is little more than a constitutional mechanism. The other point has to do with foodgrain procurement and storage. The state governments are supposed to draw whatever is due to them from the centrally-managed storage system. Again, it is made to appear that the Central government is doling it out to supplicant states. This distorts the federal balance. A dispassionate debate on the functioning federalism is much needed now.

It is heartening to see mainstream media talk about federalism, something which is inevitable in a linguistically diverse country such as India.

Excerpt (i) is something we've discussed repeatedly on this blog. Excerpt (ii) is largely accurate, but there is one subtle point which I don't completely agree with, and I'd like to discuss it here. The point I'm going to point out further enhances the message of the DNA editorial that federalism is the right way ahead; it does not diminish the message.

To get to it, then, it is true that the Central government is not really a benefactor to states which contribute heavily to Central revenue (such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra). In fact, there is sufficient evidence that the Centre is actually a malefactor (for want of a better word) which depletes the earnings of affluent states, returning only a trivial fraction of their actual earnings.

But can we make the same statement in the case of economically backward states (such as the classical BIMARU ones)? No. In the case of these states, the Centre is indeed in a position to be a true "benefactor of supplicants", and that is how it indeed behaves. And that, my friends, is a big problem.

Why is it a big problem, you ask? Because, even if it be granted that the affluent states must "dole out" the backward states, the anti-federal nature of our constitution makes it very difficult for that doling out to be done with any chances of success.

Why? Simple: Where do all those Central funds come from? The economically developed states, where else? The Centre is basically spending someone else's (X's, say Karnataka's) money on someone else (Y, say Bihar). As explained beautifully by Nobel economist Milton Friedman, this is the worst possible and most wasteful way of spending money. Here's why, in his own words:

There are four ways in which you can spend money.

You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.

Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!

Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.

Clearly, the Constitution of India, by virtue of its quasi-federal nature, encourages the Centre to spend money in the fourth way; and the bigger the Central government is, the more money it spends in the third way. By design, the Central government cannot be concerned about how much money it draws from the affluent states, nor be concerned about maximizing the returns from that spending; at the same time, it uses a lot of the People's money to pay for its own operating costs.

Hence, if (and only if) the people of Karnataka decide to dole out financial grants to Bihar, they must dole it out directly. Having to pass through the Central government triggers inefficiency in the doling out, and encourages corruption by elevating a nobody to the status of benefactor (then, the Centre is deep in the third way).

Besides, coercing Karnataka to dole out financial grants to Bihar is out of question and clearly undemocratic. This coercion is what happens when the Centre spends money in the fourth way, which is what it is designed to be in.

Behead chicken, head government

2010-10-15T19:44:00.003+05:30

We were talking about our politicians having arbitrary convictions, but this arbitrary? Check this out:

Witchcraft and Vaastu are said to be the key reasons for closing the different gates of Vidhana Soudha and even the doors of the Assembly Hall, except the Kengal Hanumanthaiah gate and the west door in the Assembly Hall, during Monday's trust vote.

Perhaps we're wrong in thinking those convictions are arbitrary. Maybe they're really not arbitrary convictions, because our political strategists were goddamn serious, and their strategy seems to have worked:

A beheaded chicken, blood, a lemon pierced with nails, turmeric, vermilion and other things topped with an egg were found near the east main gate in front of the High Court. The east main gate too was closed on the day of the 'tainted' confidence motion in the Assembly.

For the full story, check out the Indian Express: Vaastu behind closing all Soudha gates but one?

I'd say it takes an enormous amount of political will to behead a chicken, etc., and place it all near the east main gate of the Vidhana Soudha. Bah! What valour! What political strategists we have around!

Any ideas what saved B. S. Yeddyurappa's government on the day of the second trust vote, when all doors were apparently opened up? Did the beheaded chicken hold its conviction to save the government for three full days?

'History of sorts'?

2010-10-15T07:46:00.004+05:30

After winning the trust-vote in a house filled with MLAs who acted more like human beings and less like street-dogs yesterday (14 Oct 2010), chief minister B. S. Yeddyurappa exclaimed:

I have created history of sorts by winning the trust vote, the second in three days...

One wonders why it is a history of sorts. Is it because the governor asked him to prove majority twice in three days, like a schoolmaster asking a student to re-write his homework? Or is it because it is a himalayan task to get the MLAs to maintain their conviction in anything for more than three days?

It's likely the latter reason, and that is a matter of concern. If our politicians were driven by principles, it wouldn't be so easy to dislodge them from their positions. Unfortunately, our politicians are driven by a corrupt society divided on caste lines which are at best only arbitrary, and are therefore arbitrary in their convictions.

On a related note, TV anchor Deepak Thimaya, worried that open ridicule of politicians may make make children stop appreciating the importance of democracy, on Tuesday, triggered a good discussion on his facebook page by asking:

Most people who ridicule our politicians do not know what it is to live in a totalitarian or dictatorial regime. I suppose, there is limit to lampooning our elected representatives. They too have their reasons like we have ours. What job security does a politician have and what options do we give a politician to lead an honest life?

Deepak's concern is, of course, very valid. My reply was:

There is no doubt that a corrupt society is the root cause for corrupt politicians. If we reform society, politicians will automatically be reformed.

However, there are many reasons why politicians who misbehave (please note: not all politicians) rightly attract more ridicule than society. Some are:

Firstly, once they reach their high offices, they become entities which independently discourage (if not stop) social reform.

Secondly, they institutionalize, formalize, organize, and strengthen the corruption in the society, because their careers thrive on it.

Thirdly, they symbolize the worst that can happen to people if they capitalize on corruption. Therefore they easily attract ridicule.

Fourthly, their corruption is more visible in the society, and it is natural for people to ridicule visible corruption more than invisible corruption.

Fifthly, not ridiculing the 'sweetest fruit of corruption' can be interpreted as condoning it.

Sixthly, ridiculing them is a way of making people move away from using politics as the sole source of economic gratification, when better alternatives exist.

In short, it's true that social reform is what it takes to reform our politics, but it's right to ridicule the ridicule-worthy.

In any case, is it true that our children will simply start loving the idea of democracy if we all keep mum when our politicians defile the high offices of politics in a democracy?

I believe it is better for us to point out the mistakes made by our politicians, and thereby ask children to be active participants in democracy. Ridiculing those who undermine democracy is an active way of participating in democracy. Children must learn to do it. And they learn it from adults. If adults keep mum about the wrongs of politicians, children will learn exactly that: to keep mum.

What do they know of India who only Hindi know?*

2010-10-14T11:05:00.002+05:30

At a Hindi Day function on Tuesday, 14 September 2010, Union home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram apparently gave the following as the reason why (central) government departments must increase use of Hindi in their day-to-day work:

“For effective implementation of developmental schemes, it is necessary to reach out to people in their own language.”

I’m dying to ask Mr Chidambaram one very simple question: Who are the “people” you’re referring to, and what is their language? Are you referring to the people of the Hindi-speaking States only? Is your definition of India limited to those States? Have you grown blind to the rest of India which speaks ever so many tongues?

Have you forgotten that your own tongue speaks Tamil at home? How can anybody sane use the singular noun “language” when refering to the different tongues that Indians speak, the different tongues in which they need to be “reached out” to?

What do you know about that India which you call home, minister?

* This article was originally posted on Churumuri on 15 Sep 2010. See the post on Churumuri for a pretty long discussion. I owe the catchy title to Mr. Krishna Prasad of Churumuri.

Vest them with powers apt for men, not street-dogs

2010-10-12T09:43:00.006+05:30

Karnataka's legislative assembly with empty seats (file photo). Source: http://kla.kar.nic.in/vds.htm

As if we didn't already know this, our politicians (on both sides of the cesspool) have shown it again: that they're a bunch of worthless, ignorant, corrupt, in-fighting, inefficient and mindless stone-throwing street-urchins. But I have wailed enough about it this week, so I won't do it any more.

To cut a long story short, the Central Government will now decide whether or not to invoke Article 356 and ask the President of India to rule Karnataka. That is, a set of worthless, ignorant, corrupt, in-fighting, inefficient and mindless stone-throwing street-urchins, mostly from states other than Karnataka, who sit in New Delhi, are going to take a decision on the politics of Karnataka.

Everybody almost implicitly assumes that justice will be done if only the affair is escalated to the Centre. It appears, that all a set of people have to do to settle their disputes is to go to a third party. But is justice guaranteed if the authority administering the justice is simply someone from outside?

If it's true, what about injustice (as claimed by one of the affected parties) meted out by the Centre itself, which is the sovereign power in India which by definition cannot allow any external intervention? If the Centre were to abide by this logic, it would need to bring up the issue at the United Nations, and the United Nations would probably need to wait for life to be discovered on another planet before escalating it.

Note that the same question could be raised about the Ram Janmabhumi - Babri Masjid issue. Notice how the Sunni Wakf Board has agreed to abide by the verdict of the Supreme Court, even if that verdict is against them, simply because it is the "highest court of the land", and not because it's justice! Is injustice okay if it's meted out by the highest authority? Obviously, not!

Thus, it is clear that the very concept of escalating issues to assumed higher and higher authorities has the logical bottleneck that the highest authority itself does not abide by the logic, and therefore has arbitrary powers. Escalation does not guarantee justice.

Returning to the issue of Karnataka's politics, then, what is right and what is wrong in Karnataka cannot be decided by any external authority. Of course, the fact that our politicians act like street-dogs makes it easy for people to prefer reverting to an external authority, but such reverting does not guarantee justice.

On the other hand, because we've built up a flawed political system where the Centre is really the sovereign power in the States, our politicians are really never vested with any true power or responsibility. Responsibility is not even expected out of them. It appears that they're expected to be street-dogs so that the Centre can remain the sovereign power in the States. The Centre and media will always have the opportunity to point out how irresponsible State administrations are, and put up shows such as "India First", while all it really amounts to is the admission of the logical fallacy that escalation guarantees justice.

All this means that there shall never be true justice in State politics, until India becomes a true federation of states and state-politics is vested with true powers and responsibilities which are apt for men and women, not street-dogs.

Changes to Karnatique

2010-10-12T07:59:00.001+05:30

With immediate effect, the following changes have been made to Karnatique:

Commenting on the blog is back. Please help have good discussions by commenting responsibly. One intended consequence of the 'no-commenting-on-the-blog phase' which the blog went through, was that irresponsible comments simply stopped, while responsible comments (whether they agree or disagree with the post) continued to flow in over email. I'm hoping that won't change with re-enabled commenting on the blog.
Views are not necessarily those of Banavasi Balaga. It was decided in last Saturday's Banavasi Balaga meeting that it is better to clarify that the views expressed by me on Karnatique are my own, and not necessarily those of the Balaga. It is important for us at the Balaga to take this step, since (a) individuals such as me make mistakes which should not get falsely attributed to the Balaga even temporarily, (b) the members of the Balaga need to think and express their views freely, since such freedom is essential for intellectual growth, and (c) it is becoming increasingly difficult for every post to be reviewed by my colleagues at the Balaga, mainly because of time constraints.

You're still welcome to write for Karnatique by sending me your article(s) over email.

Let's get back to work, then. Have a great day!

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Conclusion

2010-10-11T16:59:00.004+05:30

In summary, the problem starts when the government enters the bedroom

There is much left to be unearthed, and much left to be understood about what in man makes him come up with such ideas as population control (by artificial means), but we have come to a point where I'd like to conclude this 'uninterrupted' series of articles.

The story of birth control or population control in India, after the adoption of the same by the National Planning Committee of the Indian National Congress, is actually fairly straightforward implementation of the flawed concept.

There are details such as the Maharaja of Mysuru setting up the first birth control clinic started by any government anywhere in the world (in Bengaluru), the Madras Neo Malthusian League's functioning, etc., but those are simply the workings of a machine which was set running by the thought process which I've tried to outline in this series of articles.

I would like to bring your attention to a note which I had placed in the first article itself, one which already stated what I believe is the right way, in politics, to approach the whole issue:

I believe that it is the right of couples to decide the number of children they wish to have, and adopt whatever methods of contraception they deem fit (although I do have a preference: the time-tested method of abstinence). When I say "Population Control is not necessary", what I mean is that the government has no justifiable reason to poke its nose inside bedrooms and human reproductive organs. Governments worldwide must stop creating a mass hysteria about a ticking "population bomb", stop spreading the nonsense that a high population is the cause for poverty and disease, decline foreign aid aimed at population control, and withdraw all their population control or family planning programmes. It's all total nonsense, and creates huge social problems which could have been avoided (such as the North-South fertility skew in India which will end up increasing internal tensions). Governments should do real work instead: improve education, provide real healthcare, etc.

The problem, in short, starts when the government enters the scene. It should simply stay out of bedrooms and human reproductive organs. It's none of the government's business.

Political parties would do good to take up the cause of abolishing all population control measures being undertaken all over India.

And what about all the thinking on chastity and abstinence and Gandhi's ideals? That's a separate discussion, something which the government should have nothing to do about. That's an issue which must be decided by the society outside of the government. Just like the government has no right to decide who your spouse should be, it can have no right to decide how many children you produce together.

Some argue, rightly so, that the population control programme in India is one of "incentive" and "education", not "coercion". But, as I have argued earlier, making someone voluntarily submit to sin is not ethical behavior. So, the method used by the government does not matter. In any method, there's lots of money involved, and there's an encouragement of sin involved.

Remember that it is "incentive" and "education" which wiped out the native red Indians of America.

India has made a mistake here, and those who include population control in the Idea of India continue to make that mistake, too. In these articles, I have tried to show the magnitude of that mistake, hoping that it can help us steer India away from a sin which is being committed even as we speak.

End of series.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 8

2010-10-10T08:34:00.008+05:30

Nationalism and birth control, acting together, are inhuman

Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker

Two warnings from two of the greatest leaders of India got buried in the dust of the march to India's independence, and the cacophony of Indian politics after independence. One was Mahatma Gandhi's warning about the evils of artificial birth-control. The other was Rabindranath Tagore's warning about the evils of nationalism.

As independent India moved towards an uncertain future, it threw both warnings into the dustbin of time, and adopted an overly centralist and non-federal national polity, and artificial birth-control as an assumed enabler of economic uplift.

Both concepts negate the basic principles of democracy, human liberty, and the idea of unity in diversity. When they combine, the two concepts work like the two halves of a machine designed to exterminate those whom the State considers as 'less-preferred', 'weak', or 'unfit' -- a consideration which is really none the State's business. Whether they're considered 'fit' or 'unfit', people have been indoctrinated to think it's their 'duty to the nation' to cut down on their fertility. In reality, they do irrepairable harm to humanity itself.

It is very likely that both Gandhi and Tagore, subconsciously, appreciated the fact that nationalism and birth control, when they coexist, are inhuman. That could have been the reason why one (Gandhi) steered away from birth control, and the other (Tagore) steered away from nationalism.

But independent India adopted both concepts simultaneously.

Independent India fell prey to both concepts

The merging of the two concepts is perhaps best illustrated in a seminal document of the Indian National Congress, the Report of the National Planning Committee's Sub-Committee on Woman’s Role in Planned Economy. This document, which continues to inform India's policy on health and reproduction even to this date, says the following about the need to implement a programme of eugenics in India (NPC, 1948):

The health programme of the state shall aim at the eradication of serious diseases, more especially such as are communicable or transmissible by marriage. The state should follow a eugenic programme to make the race physically and mentally healthy. This would discourage marriages of unfit persons and provide for the sterilization of persons suffering from transmissible diseases of a serious nature, such as insanity or epilepsy.

Readers will recall what eugenics is, and what its dark history is. Either knowingly or unknowingly, India adopted that very programme in an attempt to 'improve the race of Indians', simply echoing the racial nonsense pouring in from people like Margaret Sanger, under the belief that they were being 'rational' and 'scientific'.

Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker fell prey to both concepts

The father of the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu, that great proponent of rationalism and self-respect, Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (see photo), fell prey to both the concepts: he was an active proponent of both nationalism (Tamil nationalism, not Indian nationalism), and artificial birth-control.

Surprisingly for a man who is almost worshiped in Tamil Nadu, Periyar did not seem to foresee the effect of artificial birth control on the demographics of Tamil Nadu. One questions whether Periyar really wanted Tamils to be around on this planet, or even whether he wanted the world to be populated with anybody at all (Periyar, 1928):

Some preach that if women stop begetting children, the world and humanity will cease to reproduce...What would be women's loss if the world does not reproduce? What danger would women face if humanity does not reproduce? Or what would be the loss even for those who moralise? [None]...

The problem with the above position, of course, is that when Tamil women stop begetting children, there will be no Tamils any more. Or, to take the concern which Periyar had when he wrote the above, the danger which women face if humanity does not reproduce, the loss to women, is that there will be no women any more (or men, but that wasn't Periyar's concern)!

And that is the situation to which the Tamils and other South Indians are slowly moving today, because of their below-replacement fertility and ageing population and, if may I say so, foolishness.

References

Periyar, 1928: Kudi Arasu, 12 Aug 1928 in Ve. Aanaimuthu, Periyar Chindanaigal, Vol. I, p. 107.

NPC, 1948: National Planning Committee, Report of the Sub-Committee on Woman’s Role in Planned Economy (Bombay: Vora & Co, 1948), p. 115. See also, NPC, Population, p. 6.

To be continued.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 7

2010-10-03T07:16:00.008+05:30

Mahatma Gandhi vehemently opposed artificial birth control

Yesterday was Gandhi Jayanti, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. While one may not agree with everything the man stood for and believed, his views on the subject of over-population and birth control are worth remembering.

Gandhi never fell for the nonsense of Malthusian population arithmetic which is the basis of all the fear of over-population. In a most scientific argument, he wrote the following in 1925 (around the same time Rabindranath Tagore wrote a letter of approval to Margaret Sanger):

If it is contended that birth–control is necessary for the nation because of over-population, I dispute the proposition. It has never been proved. In my opinion, by a proper land system, better agriculture and a supplementary industry, this country is capable of supporting twice as many people as there are in it today. (YI, 2-4-1925, p. 118)

Since it was the contention of birth-controllers that "surplus children" are given birth to because couples fear that some may be lost due to the "three-fold curse" of pestilence, wars and famines, Gandhi's proposal was to stop those three in order to stop surplus children. He argued that self-control (i.e., abstinence) is the "sovereign remedy" which does not bring greater evils in its train (the evil of South India's falling fertility is just one of them), but rather further ennobles people:

The bogey of increasing birth-rate is not a new thing. It has been often trotted out. Increase in population is not and ought not to be regarded as a calamity to be avoided. Its regulation or restriction by artificial methods is a calamity of the first grade, whether we know it or not. It is bound to degrade the race if it becomes universal, which, thank God, it is never likely to be. Pestilence, wars and famines are cursed antidotes against cursed just which is responsible for unwanted children. If we would avoid this three-fold curse, we would avoid too the curse of unwanted children by the sovereign remedy of self–control. The evil consequences of artificial methods are being seen by discerning men even now. Without, however, encroaching upon the moral domain, let me say that propagation of the race rabbit-wise must undoubtedly be stopped; but not so as to bring greater evils in its train. It should be stopped by methods which in themselves ennoble the race. In other words, it is all a matter of proper education which would embrace every department of life; and dealing with one curse will take in its orbit all the others. A way is not to be avoided because it is upward and therefore uphill. Man’s upward progress means ever-increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed. (H, 31-3-1946, p. 66)

Gandhi called artificial methods of birth control as "sin presented in the garb of virtue". Note that Marie Stopes, someone I haven't paid much attention to in this series, was the UK-version of Margaret Sanger. Wrote Gandhi in 1935:

Man must choose either of the two courses, the upward or the downward; but as he has the brute in him he will more easily choose the down ward course than the upward , especially when the down ward course is presented to him in a beautiful garb. Man easily capitulates when sin is presented in the garb of virtue, and that is what Marie Stopes and others are doing. (H, 1-2-1935, p. 410)

Gandhi very correctly foretold the effects of contraception and other artificial methods of birth control on society, pointing out that they insulted womanhood, dissolved the bond of marriage, and enable free love (that is, extramarital sex):

I am afraid that advocates of birth-control take it for granted that indulgence in animal passion is a necessity of life and in itself a desirable thing. the solicitude shown for the fair sex is most pathetic. In my opinion, it is an insult to the fair sex to put up her case in support of birth–control by artificial methods. As it is, man has sufficiently degraded her for his lust, and artificial methods, no matter how well-meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her.

I urge the advocates of artificial methods to consider the consequences. Any large use of the methods is likely to result in the dissolution of the marriage bond and in free love. If man may indulge in animal passion for the sake of it, what is he to do whilst he is, say, away from his home for any length of time, or when he is engaged as a soldier in a protracted war, or when he is widowed, or when his wife is too ill to permit him the indulgence without injury to her health, notwithstanding the use of artificial methods. (YI, 2-4-1925, p. 118)

And by the way, Sanger met Gandhi in 1936, before meeting Tagore. Needless to say, she didn't get any support from him.

More quotes from Gandhi on this subject on mkgandhi.org.

To be continued.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 6

2010-10-01T12:45:00.008+05:30

The power of propaganda gets unlikely recruits in India

In the previous post, I showed how Margaret Sanger, the American birth control pioneer and worldwide propagandist, was driven by the principles of the racist pseudo-science called eugenics. I have also shown how Malthus's flawed science was at the root of all the concern about human population.

However, strange are the ways in which un-science spreads, especially when its spread is driven and funded by racist people and institutions! So strange, that perhaps one of the most level headed leaders of India in recent times, a person from whom I draw great inspiration, that great bard of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore, got convinced that Sanger was doing something good for humanity.

In 1923, when Tagore wrote the following (Tagore 1923), I am certain that he had no clue about Sanger's close involvement with the eugenicists (which involvement Sanger disclosed only in 1921):

[M]en in the West are apt to borrow the sanction of science under false pretenses to give expression to their passions and prejudices. To many thinkers there has appeared a clear connection between Darwin's theories and the 'imperialism', Teutonic and other, which was so marked a feature during the 'sixties. We have also read western authors who, admirably mimicking scientific mannerism, assert that only the so-called Nordic race has the proper quality and therefore the right to rule the world, extolling its characteristic ruthlessness as giving it the claim to universal dominance.

Had Tagore known about the true force behind Sanger's birth control agenda, which was nothing but the racist force professing Nordic superiority and vying for Nordic world dominance, I am sure he would have despised her entire programme, just like he started hating the very idea of a Nation after Japan's bid to invade China (he was a votary of Nationalism before that).

But yes, Tagore did not know of the dark designs behind Sanger's birth control propaganda, and got recruited by her. And yes, Tagore was also uninformed about the nonsense of Malthusian population arithmetic. The above two reasons, plus the effect of the zeitgeist of the times seem to have made Tagore write the following to Sanger in 1926 (Tagore, 1926):

I am of opinion that the birth control movement is a great movement not only because it will save women from enforced and undesirable maternity, but because it will help the cause of peace by lessening the number of surplus population of a country, scrambling for food and space outside its own rightful limits.

Note that Tagore's approval of population control stemmed more from flawed Malthusian concerns, than women's health.

Tagore also believed, unlike Mahatma Gandhi, that India must not wait for "the moral sense of man to become a great deal powerful than it is now" to achieve population control. Gandhi, on the other hand, was completely against Sanger's proposal for birth control by any means other than abstention (about which more later).

In this article, I have taken the risk to point out that Tagore, a source of great inspiration for me personally, was for population control in a series of articles against the very concept, assuming that the reader is mature enough to not believe in this or that because it was said by a well-known personality. Such a blind belief in the words of individuals is dangerous but widespread.

In short, Tagore probably exemplifies some of the greatest and well-meaning thinkers of India who were recruited by the birth control propagandists, and thereby set in motion that decimating machine which hurts Indians, especially South Indians, today.

The greatest of minds can be swayed by unreason towards actions and words which actually contradict their deepest feelings. It happened to Tagore. And it is perhaps for this very reason that the Taittiriyopanishad places the following disclaimer on what in a Guru is not worth following:

That is, "Take from us only those works which are beyond blemish. Follow our actions only as long as they are good deeds". I have every reason to believe that the very concept of population control, whoever professed it, however close he or she might be to my heart, is neither beyond blemish nor a good deed.

It is with this conviction that I dare to oppose your view here, O Poet of poets, for, again, as you wrote, one must not let one's "clear stream of reason" lose its way into the "dreary desert sand of dead habit" (Tagore, 1912).

And yes, so also is not beyond blemish that fatal feeling in Kannadigas that Kannada is derived from Sanskrit, and that Kannada by itself is incapable of anything without help from Sanskrit. But I digress.

References

Tagore, 1912: Gitanjali, p. 22, in The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Vol 1., p. 618., Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi.

Tagore, 1923: "The way to unity", in The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Vol 6., p. 618., Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi.

Tagore, 1926: Letter to Margaret Sanger, in The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Vol 8., p. 1044., Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi.

To be continued.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 5

2010-09-27T10:37:00.006+05:30

Birth control as the most efficient implementation of the eugenics agenda

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) started out as a proponent of freedom from excessive childbearing for women, from the concern that too many childbirths affect the physical and mental health of women. Under this agenda, she became a hyperactive propagandist of birth control by all possible means: abortion, contraception, segregation, sterilization, etc.

Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 which decided, for reasons to become obvious, to change its name in 1949 to the more moderate Planned Parenthood, and further established the International Planned Parenthood Foundation with tentacles all over the globe, including India.

While Sanger did not express her eugenicist feelings openly in her early birth control career, she started doing so as time progressed. As eugenics gained popularity in America and Europe and became something okay to discuss in public, she herself argued (Sanger, 1921) that there is no essential difference in the final aims of eugenics and birth control:

In the limited space of the present paper, I have time only to touch upon some of the fundamental convictions that form the basis of our Birth Control propaganda, and which, as I think you must agree, indicate that the campaign for Birth Control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics.

Eugenicists hooked on to Margaret Sanger's birth control programme as the easiest way to implement their agenda, and poured in tons of money. This enabled Sanger to establish the Planned Parenthood birth control clinics all over America, and basically garner financial support for implementing the eugenics agenda. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation pledged their support for Planned Parenthood both within the US and worldwide. Recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has taken up this cause.

To get back to my philosophical argument, I urge readers to note that there is most certainly a crucial difference between a concern for women's health, and the eugenic concern for racial purity.

From purely a standpoint of women's health, one cannot make the assumption that races, communities and classes in which women bear more children are necessarily those which are "unfit" to exist and must therefore be wiped out. Which people are fit to exist, and which are unfit to exist cannot be the call of any truly ethical form of government. A government concerned only with women's health cannot seek to reduce or destroy the fertility of one particular race or community or class, for e.g., the jews in Germany, or the blacks in America. Nor can it invent ways of proving that the target people are inferior in one or the other way.

However, starting from the standpoint of racism, one can easily feign concern for the health of women in that race or community or class which a eugenicist wants to exterminate for reasons such as colour of skin and length of nose. By feigning such concern, and sugarcoating it sufficiently well, governments can translate them into a program of birth control, and help achieve the eugenic objective of "racial purity".

Birth controllers can claim that their single-minded concern for women's health actually drives them to find the most unhealthy women, wherever they are, and cut down their fertility in order to improve health. They can claim that there is nothing racist about that. However, as in most cases, it's not the intent which matters but the consequence. In many cases, birth controllers are committing a crime against humanity, albeit unknowingly. But a crime, whether committed knowingly or unknowingly, is a crime and must be stopped.

Birth control enthusiasts must answer some very difficult questions, which can arise only when love for all humanity awakens one's empathy for the oppressed:

Who gave birth controllers the right to decide what is health and what is not health for women from all races, communities, and classes?
What if the most "unhealthy women" happen to be in one particular race or community or class, and wielding the weapon of birth control on them actually leaves them with an irrepairable demographic loss?
How ethical is it for birth control enthusiasts to wipe out entire races, communities or classes using contraceptives and abortion clinics?
Who authorized birth controllers to use women's health as a criterion to determine whether a people may exist or perish?
Who authorized birth controllers to increase women's health and thereby wipe away the race, community or class to which those women belong?
In the ultimate analysis, who can affirm that an exterminated race, community or class is better than "unhealthy" women, even if the claim of unhealthiness were taken to be true?

History abounds with the use of seemingly innocent tools for eugenic purposes. One more example, similar to birth control, is the use of IQ tests to achieve eugenic goals. Writes Ajitha Reddy, Deputy Executive Director, International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul University College of Law (Reddy, 2008):

Throughout the early 1900s, eugenicists labored to devise objective methods of measuring and quantifying valued traits, including intelligence, in order to substantiate their hypothesis of Nordic genetic advantage. Some of their more preposterous experiments involved measuring the crania of school children, analyzing the facial asymmetry of criminals, and sketching the toes of prostitutes.

Eugenicists struggled for years to produce compelling results, until the advent of Alfred Binet’s intelligence scale in 1909 gave rise to standardized intelligence testing, colloquially known as IQ testing.

Armed with this so-called objective methodology, American eugenicists advanced a straw-man rationale for large-scale testing. They reasoned that society needed to identify, segregate, and sterilize the “feeble-minded,” initially defined as those with mental disabilities but later extended to include any “unfit” person of low intelligence, character, or ethnicity. In both Germany and the United States, persecution of the “feebleminded” hastened a broader eugenic campaign against immigration, miscegenation, and other professed threats to Nordic ascendancy.

In America, therefore, the determination of "health" came to include having to pass an IQ test. This enabled US governments to declare the uneducated as "unfit" and therefore targets of birth control. If governments, instead of investing in the education of the uneducated, become butchers of the uneducated, are they really good governments?

In summary, racism is such that it can find very subtle ways of expressing itself without making its voice too loud. And Margaret Sanger's birth control program provided the most subtle, and the most efficient way for eugenicists to implement their racist agenda, especially after eugenics became a bad word in America due to Hitler's use of the "science" to exterminate jews.

Why did birth control become the most efficient implementation of the eugenic agenda? Simple: it was easy to get people hooked on to (Sanger, 1922)

unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children.

Just like it became easy to make native Red Indians "fall to their women" and thereby relieve them of their land by way of pleasure, not pain.

References

Reddy, 2008: "The eugenic origins of IQ testing: Implications for post-Atkins litigation", Ajitha Reddy, DePaul Law Review, 13 May 2008, URL.

Sanger, 1921: "The eugenic value of birth control", Margaret Sanger, Birth Control Review, Oct 1921, URL.

Sanger, 1922: The Woman Rebel, Margaret Sanger, reprinted in Woman and the New Race (1922).

To be continued.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 4

2010-09-12T16:58:00.012+05:30

Eugenics meets the nation-state

What began as positive eugenics, that is, the "science" of getting the "fit" to breed faster than the "unfit", did not take long to turn into negative eugenics, which is the "science" of getting the "unfit" to cut down their fertility. And, what began as a programme which affected all races in general, did not take long to turn into an instrument of racial hegemony.

The line between the two types of eugenics is so thin, that Francis Galton, who is widely known to be a positive eugenicist, wrote the following in his autobiographical work, Memories of My Life (Galton, 1908), clearly prescribing a negative eugenicist implementation of the eugenics agenda before (and not after) prescribing a positive eugenicist implementation:

This is precisely the object of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for; and those only of the best stock. (italics mine)

One thing to be noted about the population control agenda of early eugenicists such as Francis Galton, is that it was confined within the boundaries of whichever state or kingdom they belonged to. Thus, Galton was mostly concerned about checking the birth rate of the "unfit" in England only. In that sense, Galton is a classical Malthusian.

Eugenics became an important method for imperial nations to build populations which helped them further their colonial and racist agendas with maximum force. Eugenics was looked at as a way of ensuring that the population of a nation was kept "fresh, energetic, efficient and productive" (Rao, 2004). Thus, England, Germany and the USA openly practised eugenics.

Adolf Hitler described Madison Grant's Passing of the great race (Grant, 1922), a book on what's now called as "scientific racism", as his bible. In the book, Grant very clearly extended the theory of elimination of the "unfit" in any community (not that that's ethical to begin with!) to "worthless race types". Readers will note that the smooth operation of removing the unwanted by way of pleasure (instead of pain) is the exact same as what was practised by invading Europeans in America (the concept of Indian Removal, on which more here). Here's a passage from Grant's book summarising his prescription for removing unwanted classes and by extension, races:

A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words, Social failures would solve the whole question in a century, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of victims of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful and inevitable solution of the whole problem and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types. (italics mine)

Hitler, heavily influenced by the eugenics programme in America, and a big fan of Madison Grant, wrote in Mein Kampf (Hitler, 1926):

Because the inferior are always numerically superior to the better, the former would multiply so much faster---if they have the same possibility to survive and reproduce---that the better necessarily would be placed in the background. Therefore a correction has to be made to the advantage of the better.

Germany passed a Eugenic Sterilization Law in 1933, which made sterilization compulsory for all those who suffered from allegedly hereditary disabilities. While this was not targeted at a specific community, religion, or race in the beginning, that is what it became as time rolled on. With his hatred for the jews unable to contain itself, Hitler's Nazi regime simply couldn't help target jews as victims of population control. In less than two years after passing the eugenic sterilization law, the Nuremberg laws of 1935 were passed, placing strict bans on the fertility of jews. And, of course, this was followed by the infamous Nazi euthanasia programme.

In the US, eugenic principles informed immigration policies as well as sterilization and abortion of the "unfit". Leon F Whitney, an American Eugenicist, wrote (quoted in Rao, 2004):

We cannot but admire the foresight of the (German) plan (of sterilizing 4,00,000 people) and realise [that] by this action Germany is going to make herself a stronger nation.

Whitney also observed that:

the Negroes furnished six times as many sub-normals as did the native-born whites.

If you put two and two together, it is clear who the victims of eugenic principles were, and continue to be, in the USA: the blacks. Thus, national eugenics and racial hatred slowly merged into one worldwide. England, Germany and the USA were the pioneers of both the component concepts as well as the merged concept. Not only that, these countries basically worked with each other to improve this science of hatred.

In the next essay, I wish to touch upon another twist in the tale, wherein the rather innocent-looking concept - of women's rights - became the torchbearer of the racist eugenicist agenda which had earned a lot of disrepute among the intelligentsia mainly because of Hitler's open and violent adoption of the idea.

References

Galton, 1908: Memories of my life, Francis Galton, Methuen, 1908. Available on galton.org at this link.

Grant, 1922: The passing of the great race: or, The racial basis of European history, Madison Grant, 1922. Google books link.

Hitler, 1926: Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Wikipedia link.

Rao, 2004: From population control to reproductive health - Malthusian airthmetic, Mohan Rao, Sage publications, New Delhi.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 3

2010-08-27T14:04:00.006+05:30

Racism meets population control in Eugenics

Closely following the publication of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man in 1871, a new racist movement (called a "science" by its proponents) was born. It was popularly called Eugenics, and its prophet was Francis Galton, an English Victorian polymath and a cousin of Darwin's.

The objective of Eugenics was racial purity and racial improvement, purity and improvement as defined by a handful men and women. The word "Eugenics" was coined by Galton. After Thomas Malthus, it is appropriate to position Francis Galton as the second towering figure in the dark history of population control.

The objective of Galton's Eugenics, which later came to be known as Positive Eugenics, was stated by him in his Essays in Eugenics (Galton, 1909), thus:

The aim of Eugenics is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably employed, to cause the useful classes in the community to contribute more than their proportion to the next generation.

Thus, Galton's idea was to make the "useful classes", by which term he meant those classes who were racially superior according to him, to reproduce more and faster than the "useless classes". Galton had no hesitation in concluding that inferior races must be "elbowed out" by the superior races. In his Enquiries into Human Faculty and its Development (Galton, 1907), Galton stated quite unequivocally that it is reasonable to remove "inferior races" from the planet:

There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. It rests on some confusion between the race and the individual, as if the destruction of a race was equivalent to the destruction of a large number of men. It is nothing of the kind when the process of extinction works silently and slowly through the earlier marriage of members of the superior race, through their greater vitality under equal stress, through their better chances of getting a livelihood, or through their prepotency in mixed marriages. That the members of an inferior class should dislike being elbowed out of the way is another matter; but it may be somewhat brutally argued that whenever two individuals struggle for a single place, one must yield, and that there will be no more unhappiness on the whole, if the inferior yield to the superior than conversely, whereas the world will be permanently enriched by the success of the superior.

It can be said that Galton laid the foundation of the science of silently extinguishing "inferior races" by simply increasing the fertility of the "superior race". According to Galton, therefore, everything is in order if Europeans, whom Galton considered as a superior race, came in to America and silently out-bred and elbowed-out native Indians. As per Galton, that would be the best thing to happen to America, since it will finally have a superior race inhabiting it.

Galton also openly expressed a desire for European colonization of the world, Europeans being a superior race in his mind. He argued that the subject of over-population must be taken up with serious consideration owing to the filling up of spare places of the earth with non-Europeans (Galton, 1907):

Over-population and its attendant miseries may not improbably become a more serious subject of consideration than it ever yet has been, owing to improved sanatation and consequent diminution of the mortality of children, and to the filling up of the spare places of the earth which are still void and able to receive the overflow of Europe.

Thus, we see in Francis Galton's deliberations, the seed of global population control, which is aimed at "reducing misery" all over the world by slowly extinguishing "unwanted people" and replacing them with "superior races". Galton even went to the extent of saying that if the inferior race spoke the same language, it's even more easier to extinguish it (Galton, 1907):

I think it could be easily shown that when the differences between the races is not so great as to divide them into obviously different classes, and where their language, education, and general interests are the same, the substitution may take place gradually without any unhappiness.

Now, I welcome the reader to ask himself/herself how easy it could be for a unitary state, such as India, to replace what it considers as an inferior race with a superior race, even if the word race is never mentioned. How easy could it be if both the inferior and the superior races were made to feel so united that their elite representatives looked at racial, linguistic, cultural and historical differences with shame?

While there is no proof that India's population control programme was racist in intent, it has certainly turned racist in consequence: the Dravidians are being slowly depopulated while the Aryans are being kept relatively intact and even funded and assisted by the state to migrate southwards. What other picture can the paintbrush of greed and hatred paint?

References

Galton, 1907: Enquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, Project Gutenberg eBook.
Galton, 1909: Essays in Eugenics, London, The Eugenics Education Society

To be continued.

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 2

2010-08-09T01:42:00.004+05:30

Thomas Malthus, his flawed science and his flawed economics

It was Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), an influential British scholar, who first expressed the concern that food production could never cope up with human population. He assumed rather arbitrarily that population, when unchecked, grows in a geometric ratio, while food can increase only in an arithmetic ratio.

To him, it was therefore a "natural law" that it is impossible to have a society, all the members of which live a life of "ease, happiness, and comparative leisure; and feel no anxiety about providing the means of subsistence" (Malthus, 1798). Some sections of the society, called the poor, were bound by this "natural law" to suffer without food. The important point to note here is the reason Malthus quoted for the sorry state of the poor: it was not their inability to produce food, it was not the inability of others to provide food or the education to produce food to them, but their existence and fertility.

The two basic assumptions of Malthus, that population grows in a geometric ratio, and that food increases only in an arithmetic ratio, have both been proven false. If Malthus were right, the world would never have had sufficient food to feed everyone. Yet, the fact is that there is sufficient food in the world to feed everyone even today when the population of the world is nearly seven times what it was during Malthus's time, as has been attested by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The problem is not one of production but of access and distribution, and has mainly social and political causes.

Philosophically, Malthus's first major mistake was to assume that population depends only on the sexual attraction between man and woman, with no place for societal norms, chance, kinship patterns, culture, or economics (artificial contraception was not invented in his time, yet). His second major mistake was to assume no rule for technology in accelerating food production or increasing food yield per hectare. His third major mistake was to assume that every added human being is a mere consumer, not a producer; a liability, not an asset. His fourth major mistake was to assume that the haves would or should never give food, or the ability to produce food, to the have-nots and thereby provide for the means of their subsistence.

Because of these major mistakes, Malthus could deduce that population must always be kept in check. The problem which Malthus created in the world was to trigger the feeling that government officials and others at the helm of power must take upon themselves the task of ensuring, by whatever means which work, that the population is kept under check. Malthus himself opposed the so-called Poor Laws of England, arguing that depopulating the poor is a better tactic of reducing overall poverty and disease in England, than funding them.

Unfortunately, this quickly took a racial turn amongst those who hooked on to his message: it became very easy for politicians to target entire groups of people, entire races indeed, which they considered as "unwanted", for depopulation. Thus, Adolf Hitler could target Jews for depopulation in Germany, and American governments could target native Red Indians and Blacks for depopulation. It became easy for politicians to target communities which they hated or considered unfit to exist or reproduce, for depopulation by hook or crook. And sure enough, methods of both hook (intra-uterine contraceptive devices) and crook (mass abortion and sterilization) developed in the aftermath of Thomas Malthus.

Malthus's followers have come to adopt an even more ridiculous argument: that wherever there is poverty, the root cause is population. They now argue, and are adept at spreading the propaganda message that reducing population is a necessary (and sometimes sufficient) step for economic growth. Of course, ignorant and corrupt politicians simply repeat the words of others like parrots, but there is no dearth of civilian believers in this unscientific thesis. Because of these Neo-Malthusians, the disease of population control has spread to Africa and Asia, and it has become the pet project of Western developed countries to fund and orchestrate depopulation in these areas, in a veiled attempt to appropriate their natural resources.

Fact is, the root cause of poverty is not the existence or fertility of the poor, but their lack of education, coupled with other social and political problems. Those who take upon themselves the task of improving society, of reducing poverty, of removing social ills and reforming politics, cannot adopt the escapist technique of encouraging or coercing the poor to cut down their fertility in one way or the other. Their existence or fertility is not the problem; their poverty is the problem.

My humble request, to those who do not wish to take such responsibilities upon themselves, is to either support those who do wish to take such responsibilities, or simply not do any harm by encouraging governments and policies which are trying to recklessly depopulate our own brethren.

Reference

Malthus, 1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population, London, Printed for J. Johnson in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1798.

Tailpiece

I will leave you with the following video:

To be continued.

In this series

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 1

The Dark Designs Behind Population Control - Part 1

2010-08-03T07:50:00.007+05:30

After I learnt about the skewed nature of fertility rates in India, with South India undergoing a rapid fertility decline and North India not undergoing such a rapid decline, I set out to investigate the reasons for this skew, and to understand what really is behind the very concept of Population Control as applied to the world, India, South India, and in particular, Karnataka.

The issue of population is very serious: there is no future for Kannadigas if there are no Kannadigas in future. Or Tamils, or Malayalis, or Telugus or Marathis.

Since the whole of South India is being prepared for large numbers of migrants from North India by Population Policy (or as a byproduct of it), since India is a far cry from being a true Federal country, since diversity is paid only lip service, and since Hindi speakers have been openly granted a constitutional upper-hand in India, the fertility map of India provides reason for much worry. And the worry is, simply, that if we don't take the correct steps, South Indians may become both outnumbered and sidelined in their own land, and gradually vanish due to very low fertility and increased migration. Steep fertility declines are accompanied by deep-routed social, familial and behavioral changes in a population, and there is no guarantee that these changes can be reversed.

Actually, migration from the North is okay as long as it does not disturb the social cohesion in the linguistic peoples of the South. The problem is, there is nothing which can provide the consolation that social cohesion is going to be maintained in South India. Everything we know points towards the loss of social cohesion due to migration.

Why are we being made to suppress our fertility and implicitly asked to welcome migrants from North India? What factors led to such a situation? Is it by design or accident? If by design, how ethical is a political system which designs South India to undergo fertility decline below replacement level and North India to remain considerably above it in the endgame where India as a whole would have achieved a replacement level fertility? Were all Indians considered like wild grass devoid of any diversity in crafting the population policy, so that one could cut out more grass where it's easy to cut and leave uncut where it's difficult to cut, and finally pick grass from the high-density area and plant it in the low-density area? Were the aspirations of the different linguistic peoples taken into account in forming this policy, or was it just handed down from the top?

I have not come anywhere close to answering all these questions, but in seeking those answers I have come to question whether Population Control itself is a valid project to undertake anywhere in the world. Is population really a problem in say India (and we know it's North India), China and Africa? Is population the reason for underdevelopment in these places? Should people be considered as weeds and cut down by hook or crook?

The answer I have found is an emphatic NO.

In this series of articles, I wish to elaborate on what led to the very concept of Population Control, touching only on the main points. It is impossible to explain the entire story in a blog, or even to hyperlink all the relevant material. I encourage readers to follow up with their own investigation. There is a plethora of material on the internet, as well as a myriad books, about the topic.

At this point of time, what I do understand very clearly, and have solid proof for, is this: that Population Control (by artificial means, i.e.,) is a Western concept rooted in false science, false economics, greed, and racial hatred.

I caution readers to not jump to the conclusion that policy makers in India have been greedy and have exhibited racial hatred towards South Indians and tried to "design us out" by policy. I have not found any proof of that, and I sincerely hope that there is no such proof.

The position I have formed about the Indian programme, after the little research I have been able to do, is that Indians might have blindly hooked on to the false science and false economics, thinking it to be absolute truth, especially since it came to them from their colonial masters, the British. I believe the pioneers of the Population Control programme in India did not realize that they were pawns of the West steeped in racial hatred and greed for natural resources. I believe Indians welcomed the deadly virus of Population Control without understanding its implications, and that South India simply executed the plan better, and was somehow in a position to execute the plan better, than North India. Of course, this position begs proof, which I continue to seek.

In what follows, I will try to document the dark history of Population Control in the West and how it spawned the Indian programme. If these articles even do so much as to trigger readers to re-think whether population control is necessary, I would consider my efforts not wasted.

I am convinced that Population Control is not necessary, and that it is actually a subtle weapon of destruction wielded against those who are considered "unwanted" by the weapon-wielders. Focusing attention on population takes attention away from the real problems facing any population. Indeed, such a defocus is one of the items on the agenda of those who wish to depopulate the entire world and subsequently secure its natural resources for their own use and plunder.

Note: I believe that it is the right of couples to decide the number of children they wish to have, and adopt whatever methods of contraception they deem fit (although I do have a preference: the time-tested method of abstinence). When I say "Population Control is not necessary", what I mean is that the government has no justifiable reason to poke its nose inside bedrooms and human reproductive organs. Governments worldwide must stop creating a mass hysteria about a ticking "population bomb", stop spreading the nonsense that a high population is the cause for poverty and disease, decline foreign aid aimed at population control, and withdraw all their population control or family planning programmes. It's all total nonsense, and creates huge social problems which could have been avoided (such as the North-South fertility skew in India which will end up increasing internal tensions). Governments should do real work instead: improve education, provide real healthcare, etc.

To be continued.

The Impending South Indian Population Implosion

2010-07-18T11:06:00.009+05:30

By plan, South India is being prepared to make way for people from the North

The population of India is very high, and exploding. Correct? Correct. But is it exploding everywhere in India? Do steps need to be taken to curb population growth all over India? India is too big for anything to be true all over it, so think again.

As this startling graphic from the fertility report of the National Family Health Survey - 3 (2005-6) shows, all of South India is accelerating towards a population implosion, not a population explosion. That is, South Indians are being made to voluntarily reduce their fertility so much, that they are already unable to maintain the population of South India, which is already very low compared to North India.

Fertility basics

TFR stands for Total Fertility Rate, which is the number of children borne by a woman on average. For any population to remain constant, that is, neither increase nor decrease, a woman should bear 2 children on average, both of which must survive long enough to be counted.

So, a TFR of 2 is called replacement TFR, since 2 children simply replace their parents when the parents die. If the TFR is more than 2, it could lead to population explosion since the children not only replace their parents, but also top up. And finally, if TFR is less than 2, it could lead to population implosion, since there aren't sufficient children to even replace the parent generation.

I'm neglecting infant and maternal mortality rates, since they are so low (not from a worldwide perspective, but from the perspective of number of births) that they don't impact the analysis. Including these parameters sets replacement TFR at approximately 2.1.

The North is exploding, and the South is about to implode

The discussion about TFR above should convince the reader that the North is exploding, while the South is bracing itself for a big implosion.

Demographer of world renown, P N Mari Bhat, opines that the growing demographic imbalance due to the exploding north and the imploding south may trigger a serious regional conflict due to large migration from the north to the south. In India Vision 2020, a book published by the Planning Commission of India, he writes (italics mine):

[B]y the year 2020, population of north India would still be growing at a rate of 1.7 per cent per annum while the growth rate in South India would have fallen to 0.6 per cent. The advantages, the south would derive from its early demographic transition are thus obvious. But the regional demographic imbalances may induce large population movements from the north to the south. It remains to be seen whether this would develop into a serious regional conflict.

It's clear that Kannadigas, Tamils, Telugus, Malayalis and Marathis are already at a point where with every passing year, they're becoming less and less able to maintain their own populations. And there seems to be nothing to stop this.

It's not by accident, it's by plan

How can there be anything to stop this, when the Govt. of India, with the "force of a Nation" (to quote Rabindranath Tagore), is planning to bring the fertility rates of all the south below replacement levels, as this table from the 11th five-year plan (2007-2012) shows?

As per plan, in the path to bringing the whole of India to the replacement level of 2.1 by the year 2012, South India would have been brought well below replacement levels: Karnataka 1.8, Tamil Nadu 1.7, Kerala 1.7, Andhra Pradesh 1.8.

Sure, the plan to bring states below replacement level TFR is not limited to the south in the strict sense, because Haryana, J&K, Maharashtra, Punjab, WB (Delhi too, but it's population itself is to low to be counted in this list) are also planned to go below a TFR of 2.1. Note that these are all states which are home to languages other than Hindi.

But who shall prevail in India when India receives a pat on the back from the rest of the world for achieving a TFR of 2.1? It is the high-TFR states: Bihar at 3.0, Chhattisgarh at 2.4, Gujarat at 2.2, Jharkhand at 2.5, MP at 2.6, Rajasthan at 2.6, UP at 3.0. People in the Hindi-speaking states in this list (the Gujaratis at 2.2 are close to the replacement level of 2.1), who are multiplying at above-replacement TFR levels, shall prevail, while the low-TFR states (and therefore the whole of South India), would be accelerating towards a population implosion.

It will be worth mentioning that by plan (as quoted in the table on p.150 of the Karnataka Human Development Report 2005), Karnataka's TFR target for 2020 is way below replacement level, at 1.6.

Remember that none of this is happening naturally. It's all by government plan.

Difficult questions

Now, what kind of a sane political system would plan for pulling South India's fertility to below replacement levels? What kind of an ethical political system would plan to reduce the fertility of all South Indians below replacement level just because North Indians are unable to get to replacement levels, and because India as a whole must achieve replacement level fertility a.s.a.p.?

Given that India needs to come down to replacement level fertility, why was it not planned to stop population control in South India once it reaches replacement level fertility? What is the guarantee that the north will ever go to replacement level fertility? As per plan, Bihar, UP, MP, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat will be happily above replacement levels even when India as a whole reaches replacement level TFR anyway. And at that time, South India would be way below replacement levels.

Note, also, that TFR is not the entire story. If all the states were of the same population, it would be less of a demographic imbalance. But the fact is, that most of the population of India is also concentrated in the north, especially in the high-TFR states in the table above.

On the whole, the entire game of population control in India seems to have no logical endgame but more and more migration from the north to the south, together with a south unable to retain its already low population by reproduction.

What does all this mean for South India, and how must it protect itself against being unable to retain its population due to curbed reproduction and increasing migration from the north, in the wake of a Constitution which attaches a clear preference to Hindi, and one which is far from being federal? What must politicians in the south do? What must civilians in the south do?

These are difficult questions. And the clock is ticking. We must not only answer these questions, but start executing on the answers we get.

What Does the Rupee Symbol Symbolize?

2010-07-16T05:06:00.001+05:30

Let it go into the annals of history that the Govt. of India had included the following exclusionist rule in the Rupee Symbol Design Contest Rules, blatantly, openly, discriminatorily, and in open defiance of the Constitution of India, while we were not looking:

The symbol has to be in the Indian National Language Script or a visual representation.

The problem in that rule, you ask? There is no Indian National Language Script. There is no Indian National Language. The Govt. of India has a sort of selective amnesia when it comes to the issue of a National Langauge. It comes and goes. When they wrote the rules of the game, it prevailed, and an Indian National Language and its script came to be (which one, you ask? Hindi, of course, and the script: Devanagari). Damn!

So, that's what the Rupee Symbolizes. You might as well read this forewarning, for what it's worth. Forewarn was all we could, sorry.

Lord Bhardwaj's Doctrine of Lapse, AD 2010

2010-07-15T12:47:00.003+05:30

In colonial India, under the so-called Doctrine of Lapse, the British Government assumed for itself the power to annex princely states whose kings were perceived to be "manifestly incompetent" or "died without a direct heir".

Is anything different happening in free India?

The whole issue of illegal mining by the Government of Karnataka, Governor Hansraj Bhardwaj's extra-constitutional moves, and his eagerness to dissolve Karnataka's state government illustrates the flawed political system we have in place, its flaw being maintained by ignorant and scam-tainted politicians.

In summary, the situation in Karnataka is, firstly, that a corrupt state government is depleting precious natural resources of Karnataka in order to fill its coffers, and presumably to buy votes in future elections and more crowns for idols in neighboring states. Secondly, a representative from New Delhi, neither born in Karnataka, nor speaking its language, nor elected here, called the Governor of Karnataka, is going outside the already non-federal constitution and trying to transfer power from Bengaluru to New Delhi, on the grounds that the state government is corrupt.

While a corrupt state government is not a good thing to have, rule by others is not better; it's slavery. Why shouldn't the Consul General of the United States of America quote similar reasons and ask that power be transferred from New Delhi to Washington D.C.? There is no dearth of Reddy Brother Clones in New Delhi, is there? Clearly, transferring powers to others is not a solution to our problem of corrupt politicians in Karnataka.

The Governor should not assume the role of representative of a colonial government, always looking for reasons to dissolve our administration. In reality, the fact that the central government may take away power from the states at any time, without giving any explanation to anybody, makes the state government itself a highly subordinated entity, thereby attracting only mediocre politicians, and the central government equivalent to the Imperial Crown. And I'm not saying that to cover up our corrupt politicians.

What is the solution to the problem, then? This being a democracy, the solution is for the people of Karnataka to wake up and realize who the right people to sit in the Vidhana Soudha are. It is for the people of Karnataka to wake up and understand what they want out of Vidhana Soudha, and what they want out of the Parliament House in New Delhi.

Otherwise, the Parliament House in New Delhi will continue to decide what it wants out of Vidhana Soudha (or whether it's needed at all), and the Vidhana Soudha (if and when it is allowed to exist) to decide what it wants out of the people and land. And we know what they want out of the people and the land: they want our money (if their policies don't make us non-existent, that is), and the natural resources of our land: our minerals, our metals, our water, our air, our everything.

It's high time we Kannadigas stand up and tell Mr. Bhardwaj: "Yeah, our government is corrupt, and we will set it right, Mr. Hansraj Bhardwaj! Thanks for your interest in de-corrupting the administration in Karnataka, but we can do it ourselves; the problem is, when you try to poke your nose in these matters, we experience the pain of slavery!".

And turning to Mr. Yeddyurappa, we must say: "Mr. Yeddyurappa, it's high time you de-corrupt your government and start listening to us. Else, you will go".

Who let these gentlemen in?

2010-07-12T15:01:00.008+05:30

Nearabouts the year 2000, the Baha Men stunned the world by asking a very simple and direct question:"Who let the dogs out?":

About ten years later, on July 9th, 2010, there was a big ruckus in the seat of power in Karnataka, the magnificent Vidhana Soudha, Bengaluru, about which the Deccan Herald reported the following:

Dontcha wanna ask a simple and direct question, something on the lines of "Who let these gentlemen in"?

Kannadigas must produce more children, not less.

2010-07-12T07:51:00.005+05:30

Imagine ten men living in a house: the fat seven and the thin three.

Let's say the fat seven are very obese but still putting on weight: their fat and ugly bodies extend so much into the space of the thin three that the latter are being suffocated to death.

Now, imagine a doctor who prescribes that the thin three need to reduce their fat because the house, as a whole, is getting obese:

Now, go figure if the doctor's prescription is ethical, or even if it solves the problem at all.

In the end, if this doctor's prescription is followed, the thin three will be dead and the fat seven will continue to grow fat until it's no longer possible.

What will happen when it's no longer possible? They'll naturally cut down on their fat and realize the mistake. Eventually the house will realize its obesity problem and take steps to cure it.

But in the aftermath, the thin three would have been wiped out, removed from the face of the planet, their lands taken, their food taken, their everything taken by the fat seven.

***

Karnataka does NOT have a population problem. There are NOT too many Kannadigas on the face of this planet. Karnataka is NOT a densely populated state. See the statistics from censusindia.net below, and ask yourself what logic can prompt anyone to reduce the height of the first bar in each year --- the little light blue one, the one which belongs to Karnataka. What logic, other than the logic of suicide?

Also, Karnataka's population density is not high even from international standards - as the following graph shows (2006 data from Wikipedia). None of the other countries in this graph are asking their people to reduce their populations! In fact, some of them have tax incentives for producing more children!

***

This being the fact, dear Kannadigas, go forth and produce more and more and more and more children: not one, not two, not three, but at least four! The Govt. of Karnataka is utterly wrong! It is not concerned about your well being! It is concerned about only the well being of India as a whole, and is ignorant of who is creating the population problem in India!

If you are fooled by the Govt's propaganda, you will be wiped out from the face of this planet by the ugly and fat states of India which have a constitutional and political upper-hand, and which are sending their people to Karnataka in hordes because of being unable to contain them within themselves.

This is war by propaganda against Kannadigas. We must not commit suicide because of ignorant and unconcerned governments. Let us take a vow to produce more children, not less.

Further reading:

What not to learn from the Chinese
Leadership by elimination by disinformation

Who voted you to power, Mr. Yeddyurappa?

2010-07-08T06:46:00.005+05:30

Chief Minister B. S. Yeddyurappa is quoted to have made the following remark at the recently held Global Investors Meet at Bengaluru:

I have a big dream for Karnataka, a Karnataka, that is peaceful, progressive and prosperous; Karnataka, that is free from illiteracy, illness and inequality; Karnataka, where every farmer or worker leads a life of dignity and respect; Karnataka, where every entrepreneur will have many ventures to start small, but grow big; and Karnataka, that is full of opportunities for every person to dream and realize that dream.

Read carefully. Does Mr. Yeddyurappa's dream display any special concern for Kannadigas, the native people of Karnataka? For all you know, a "peaceful, progressive and prosperous" Karnataka can be created with all Kannadigas removed from the face of the planet, just like native Indians were removed from America. Sure enough, Karnataka can be freed from illiteracy by removing illiterate Kannadigas; Karnataka can be freed from illness by removing ill Kannadigas; Karnataka can be freed from inequality by removing unequal Kannadigas.

How then can all that be achieved if Kannadigas are removed? Simple: by inflowing immigrants. After all, the popular conception of an Indian refuses to see any difference between Kannadiga and (say) Hindi. So Karnataka, seen as real estate, can be made peaceful, progressive, prosperous, literate, healthy and equal by sheer immigration of Hindis from the North. After all, farmers, workers and entrepreneurs can be photographed or filmed to be happy in Karnataka even if they're not Kannadigas--they could well be Hindis!

Okay, my point is not that Mr. Yeddyurappa's objective is to remove Kannadigas from Karnataka. His effort to bring investment to Karnataka is certainly praiseworthy. I wish merely to point out that there is nothing in his stated dream which protects the interests of Kannadigas in the pursuit of peace, progress, prosperity, etc., in the real-estate called Karnataka. My concern is, of course, that when stated dreams and objectives miss the Kannadiga angle, it is often the case that the consequences are detrimental to Kannadigas, especially when Mr. Yeddyurappa's political party refuses to see any difference between Kannadigas and other Indians.

I would request Mr. Yeddyurappa to question himself whether it was Karnataka--the real estate--which voted his government to power, or whether Kannadigas--the people--voted it to power. If it should turn out to be the latter, it is the latter who should figure in his dream and not the former. People at the helm of affairs, more than anybody else, must be careful what they wish for; those wishes can actually come true.

You might argue that I'm making a mountain of a molehill; the point is, all mountains start as molehills, even mountains which consume entire an entire linguistic people.

Tamil, Kannada and the middle path

2010-06-29T11:57:00.001+05:30

The politics of linguistic identity has its merits, especially in a country where linguistic oppression in the form of Hindi imposition, cultural oppression in the form of over-Sanskritization (and its related vice: the caste-system), and political oppression in the form of anti-federalism go un-noticed otherwise.

Yet, politics does not provide the complete solution.

In the recently concluded World Classical Tamil Conference, Tamil Nadu might have just proven its leadership in the politics of linguistic identity. While irresponsible media reports claim that such conferences are a display of "linguistic chauvinism" and "parochialsim", the fact is that these are natural reactions of a People subjected to thousands of years of immigrant high-handedness. The Government of Tamil Nadu must be congratulated for pulling off a good Conference highlighting Dravidian identity.

Disappointingly, however, both the Government and Tamil society at large woefully lag behind in taking Tamil to the next level--above linguistic identity. In becoming the chosen language for serious education and research, Tamil is no better than any other Indian language. This fact is also illustrated by the academic programme of the Conference which glaringly misses out anything significant about the the future course of Tamil, as if history alone suffices.

Tamil must look up to the Japanese, Germans and Israelis of the world who aren't wasting time tom-toming about antiquity, beauty or originality, but are instead investing their time, money and energy in using their languages for almost all known purposes.

Pride in the absence of serious attempts to make the language functional and futuristic will not last long. Although this conference makes it seem otherwise, one already sees Tamil pride in a by-and-large dysfunctional Tamil receding, and giving way to the acceptance of English and even Hindi in pockets. This is the death of Tamil Nadu, a death into whose mouth Kannadigas have decided to enter, a death which must die.

Thus, it is high time Tamil rises beyond offering the Tamils an identity, and becomes the chosen language for progressive purposes such as serious education and research.

Who will take Tamil to that level? None other than Tamil youths. Governmental force alone will not take it there. Tamil youths must wake up and realize that Tamil alone can help build a great Tamil Nadu, one devoid of poverty, ignorance and social ills.

Unfortunately, though, most upwardly mobile Tamil youths have resigned to the feeling that nothing much can be achieved in their mother tongue, just as their Kannadiga counterparts have. Those who offer the highest praise for Tamil have themselves resigned to the feeling that Tamil is at best a vehicle for leisure-writing, not for any serious purpose. This feeling must go, and together with it the suicidal belief that English will solve the problem of Tamils.

Kannadigas and Tamils have much to share and cooperate in taking their languages to the next level. Best practices from both traditions and cultures must be used for mutual benefit. While Kannadigas have over-done themselves in making way for Sanskrit and immigrants, Tamils have turned hostile to both and even rejected the wisdom of the Infinite which is encoded in Sanskrit. While Kannadigas have blindly submitted themselves to immigrant high-handedness in full, the Tamils have turned xenophobic and thrown away pure gold which some of the immigrants brought them at their door.

Clearly, extremes have to be avoided and a middle path discovered.

This middle path is not to be discovered by planting statues of old poets here and there in the hope of petty political gains. It is to be discovered by Tamils and Kannadigas sitting together and discussing ways of getting the two languages out of the clutches of history, antiquity and dysfunctionality. It is not to be discovered by politicians acting alone; it is to be discovered by us the people working in harmony with each other, and with our respective governments, and with unceasing love and caring for our own people.

I have failed

2010-06-07T22:38:00.011+05:30

I write this with tears in my eyes, my Lord,
   for I realized I have erred,
Not today, but many births ago, when I saw Thee
   first as a farmer in the Forest,
And I, in my greed, fooled Thee and pushed Thee
   beyond World's Edge with a sword,
So that this wretched body of mine
   may pleasure itself.

I write this with tears in my eyes, my Lord,
   for I realized I have erred,
Not today, but many births ago, when I saw Thee
   again as a scavenger in the City,
And I, with the arrogance that my Tribe alone
   held Thee in the Heart,
   slowly humiliated and broke Thee
   into pieces with my thought alone,
   and denied Thee to Thy own Self,
So that this polluted body of mine
   can have Thee all for its own self.

I write this with tears in my eyes, my Lord,
   for I realize that I err
Even in this birth, where from my home in the skies
   I see Thee as a Kannadiga
   groping for breath underneath,
And, much like earlier, ignore Thy very existence,
   knowing not that I step on Thy head
   to rise to the skies,
So that I may not be reminded of my Duty to Thee,
   while pleasuring this wretched body of mine.

I do not want to live today, my Lord,
   come, take my life today, take my pleasures away,
Push me beyond World's Edge with Thy sword,
   break me into pieces with Thy thought,
   crush this wretched head of mine with Thy feet,
For I have failed to recognize
   Thee in Thy Self.

- Kiran

If 'improvement of the native population is the object of the government'

2010-06-04T13:02:00.006+05:30

While the BJP government of Karnataka is continuing unchecked with its pet project of erecting a parasitic and useless Sanskrit University, I'd like to draw the attention of readers to what Raja Ram Mohan Roy had to say, in a letter to Lord Amherst, Governor General in Council, about the Government's decision to establish a similar Sanskrit School in Calcutta, on 11 December 1823. I was happy to discover, today, that Roy held similar views on the topic:

We find that the government are establishing a Sanskrit school under Hindu pandits to impart such knowledge as is already current in India. This seminary (similar in character to those which existed in Europe before the time of Lord Bacon) can only be expected to load the minds of youth with grammatical niceties and meta physical distinctions of little or no practical use to the possessors or to society. The pupils will there acquire what was known two thousand years ago with the addition of vain and empty subtleties since then produced by speculative men such as is already commonly taught in all parts of India.

Roy argued that the Government must, instead of perpetuating ignorance, establish a school which provides education in the European sciences:

If it had been intended to keep the British nation in ignorance of real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the schoolmen which was the best calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences, which may be accomplished with the sums proposed by employing a few gentlemen of talent and learning educated in Europe and providing a college furnished with necessary books, instruments, and other apparatus.

Now of course, I can already hear critics either launch ad hominem attacks on Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and/or frantically google for what M. S. Golwalkar or his tribe had to say about the man, and/or point out that we already have the kind of schools which Roy wanted the British Government to establish.

While I will have to let the ad hominem attackers and googlers go ahead and waste their time, the answer to the third critique is that we don't have the "few gentlemen of talent and learning" who understand how to impart that knowledge in Kannada without resorting to over-sanskritizing the terminology and thereby making the mother tongue of the people itself seem alien. The native population, whose improvement must ideally be the object of the government, is so deeply misunderstood by it that it thinks of Kannada, a Dravidian language, as some sort of a corrupt form of Sanskrit, with its ideologues still possessing the stupidity of calling linguistics as a pseudo-science.

Irrespective of what the BJP Government is doing today, and irrespective of the fact that it is incorrigible, I must point out that the best application of Kannadiga taxpayer money is in improving the Kannada medium education system. We can't afford to waste our money on useless parasites; there is a lot of innovation in Kannada which is in dire need of intellectual attention and monetary funding.

Federalism is in the air

2010-06-02T06:45:00.004+05:30

New Delhi's attempt to completely centralize the regulation of higher education in all the states seems to have met its match, with many states actually calling the attempt as non-federal. Writes Aditi Tandon in the Tribune on May 29, 2010:

The proposed overarching regulator for higher education in India will not be “all-powerful” and “centralised.”

Following stiff opposition from the state governments, some of which (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Gujarat) rejected the old draft of the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill 2010 as anti-federal, the Centre-appointed taskforce working on the draft law today finalised its “federal” version, allaying the concerns of states.

Note that, of the major south Indian states, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are glaringly absent from the list of opposing states. While Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Gujarat at least the ability to decode Kapil Sibal's dictatorial moves, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have some ground to cover here. They have apparently failed to realize that the states' right to rule themselves is basically being usurped by New Delhi.

Although the issue of higher education is not completely resolved and the new "solution" not completely satisfactory, the move towards federalization of the Indian polity, in general, is clear. It is high time Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh wake up and join the league of states leading India towards true federalism.

The other question needs a revolution

2010-05-30T06:25:00.006+05:30

The black box of the Air India plane which crashed in Mangaluru has been found now, but on 25 May, Aditya Anand of the Mid Day wrote:

Language proved to be a barrier during operations to cut open the mangled remains of the aircraft to locate the black box yesterday.

On their way to the crash site, M Jose (32) and three others, who were to work under him, were held up at a check-point as they were unable to explain to policemen why they were carrying the equipment.

The men, who could not converse in Kannada -- the local language -- were held up for a couple of hours as they could also not explain why they did not have documents for the vehicle in which they were driving.

The team was to cut open the aircraft's fuselage to recover the black box of the plane that crashed at Mangalore Airport on Saturday.

The English media does not let go of a single opportunity to call India's languages as barriers for this or barriers for that. We should not be misled by the media, of course.

Even here, we should make sure we also ask the other question, because it is that question which is of extreme importance to the future of Karnataka: Why was there no Kannadiga officer who could open the black box? Why did an officer from Kerala have to come in to do that? Why are we set up in such a way? Why aren't Kannadigas in complete charge of airports in Karnataka? Why are Kanndigas, as it were, begging for others to do what is rightfully their own job?

I have begun to feel that it needs a revolution for Kannadigas to ask this question. Are you willing to be part of it?

'We don't have what it takes, so let's ask New Delhi to do it'

2010-05-26T22:25:00.005+05:30

Picture this. You run a state government which allocates Rs. 88,30,00,00,000 (that's 8,830 crore rupees) for primary and secondary education based on the Karnataka State Education Board. You get good reviews in the papers for doing so. And then, within 3 months of allocating that amount, you tell the entire state that all that money is basically going down the drain, or into the right pockets, or whatever.

That's the way in which Yeddyurappa's BJP government is running Karnataka today, as is evident from his minister for law and urban development, S Suresh Kumar, declaring openly yesterday that the state-run education system based on the Karnataka State Education Board (popularly called as the state syllabus) lacks quality, and that it's not good enough for the weaker sections of the society.

That admission itself is actually laudable, because there are definite problems with the state-run education system. What is deplorable is that Suresh Kumar, instead of trying to get the government to fix the syllabus of the education system run by his own government which is prevalent all over the state, simply wants to take up the CBSE syllabus (popularly called the central syllabus) in schools run by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, and shirk away from actual work.

This is basically nothing but the Governement of Karnataka giving up power to New Delhi, throwing up its hands and praying to New Delhi to come and save us. And the last time I checked, these CBSE schools do not run in the Kannada medium. Now, what happened to the commitment of the government to education in the mother tongue? We have seen CBSE schools which don't even teach Kannada as a language, let alone in that medium. Is the government taking public money and doing everything it can against the public's interest?

Of course the Kapil Sibals out there in Delhi can now be pictured with a twinkle on their teeth, but all this only confirms that the BJP government of Karnataka is basically least interested in governing Karnataka and fixing its problems. Why care, when you can just give up all responsibility to New Delhi? Why care, even if New Delhi doesn't understand the basics of education in Kannada, or even its importance?

There is an answer to why it should care, of course. And that is, that the BJP government was elected to govern Karnataka and solve its problems. Kannadigas (assuming they were sobre and their votes were not bought, which is a questionable assumption) elected this government thinking that the persons who wanted their votes are vertebrates who can stand up for the state's cause. But here we see the people's mandate being openly destroyed amidst claims of progress!

It is because of spineless creatures crawling around in the Vidhana Soudha that the very institution of politics at the state level repels good talent. But there is no option but for the institution of politics to be cleaned up. There is no option but for good talent to walk up the steps of Vidhana Soudha and establish a true government -- a government which governs, which owns up the problems of its own education system, a government which puts its act together to solve it internally instead of replacing the system with a foreign one.

Their Kites Are Here To Wage War On Us

2010-05-24T12:25:00.010+05:30

Just a few days ago, after being triggered by what I learnt about the way in which native Indians were "removed" from America, I wrote the following in an article about the rather involved question of ethics in the marketplace:

The question of ethics cannot be settled by examining the voluntariness of market transactions, but only by examining the intentions behind the transactions, which, fortunately for the analyst, manifest themselves in their effects on the exploited party

The issue surrounding the screening of the Hindi movie 'Kites' in Karnataka had not unrolled when I wrote that, but its unrolling now has provided me with the opportunity to illustrate the point using a real-time issue which is bothering Kannadigas.

If you're unaware of the 'Kites' issue, it is that that Hindi movie was illegally planned to be released in more theaters than the limit set for non-Kannada movies, and the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce cracked down the racket.

If you are one of those who believes that Kannadiga movie-goers and/or Hindi movie-makers have been denied their free-market rights by the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce, you need to understand, very carefully, this point: destroying the respect Kannadigas have (and need to have) for their own language by packing more sex-per-rupee into Hindi movies than Kannadiga loins can handle in movie theaters, is no different from the Europeans using objects of sense pleasure "which we have to spare and they want", in order to entice Native American Indians to "fall to women" and give up their only means of life, agriculture.

The comparison is striking: the Europeans sold what they called the "necessaries of life" to the Native Indians, and the Hindis are now selling us what the papers describe as a necessary of life: sex; the Europeans made the Native Indians fall to women, and so are the Hindis now; the Native Indians lacked the information that their race was being "removed", and here Kannadigas lack the information that these Hindi movies are slowly "removing" them; Europeans made the Native Indians give up their only means of life which was agriculture, and the Hindis are now making us give up the only means of our upliftment which is our language - Kannada.

The Hindi movie is a drug which can give Kannadigas a high when it is being consumed, but a drug which will consume the entire Kannadiga People once the addiction is difficult to get rid of. Even here, the comparison between the Native Indians of America and the Kannadigas of India is very striking: even the Native Indians were made to get addicted to sense objects, and the addiction consumed their entire race.

Hindi movies are packing more and more sex per rupee in order to enslave non-Hindi audiences. They are murdering the Kannadiga spirit and making them lose their respect for Kannada. They are making Kannadigas languish in ignorance because Kannada, our mother, is the only source of our knowledge, and knowledge is the only means of our survival.

Even if Kannadigas want to drug themselves voluntarily and die, the act of the drugger-cum-killer is unethical. Even if the Hindi movie-makers don't want to drug and murder, the act is unethical as long as the effect exists, and the the intentions behind the transactions are manifest in their effect on the exploited party--in this case, the Kannadiga people as a whole.

It is a fundamental law that men can be enslaved by using sex and other sense pleasures. Ignorance of this law cannot be an excuse for the crimes committed using them: ignorantia juris non excusat. At the same time, application of this law beyond limits, to grow rich, is essentially the crime which rogue nations do against humanity by waging war on them with greed of material prosperity.

What else is the Hindi movie industry trying to achieve, if not to satisfy its greed for more and more money? Why should one not look at this as the Hindi Nation waging war on the Kannadiga Society, a war fought using sex on celluloid, which some even describe as love?

Schools or concentration camps?

2010-05-12T09:14:00.009+05:30

Today's Bengaluru edition of the Times of India proudly bears a story on the front page which must offer sufficient reason to mourn the death of reason and fear the coming of doomsday in the education sector as applicable to parents who care for the future of their children: "Now, a pre-school for 8-month-olds".

This whole scam illustrates, in my mind, two things: one, that misguided businesses can stoop to any level to break up society into individual units and consume those units in furtherance of their self-interest; and two, that the craze for stuffing English into Indian infants is eating away their childhood, natural familial and societal bonding, and playfulness, and turning them into automatons at the mercy of the misguided businessman who can at best create dubious educational results.

Individualize and reap (a.k.a. divide and rule)
The first fact is well understood by economists: the more the number of unconnected individuals, the larger the market for the devices of businessmen. And here, these so-called schools are illustrating how low they can stoop to create those individuals at any cost: they now want to turn infants who were umblically connected to their mothers a few months back, into those unconnected individuals fit for business consumption.

I have no doubt that, if these businessmen were to have their say, they'd snatch away newborn infants suckling milk from their mother's breasts, promising that they'll take care of the entire development and education of the child for a few lakh rupees.

Urban children have already been separated from their grand-parents who do not speak English, and now it's the turn of snatching them away from their parents themselves! I won't be surprised if in a few years I see a news item in the Times of India which talks about a "scientific study" which "proves" that Indian children who have been taken away by education-businesses at childbirth read and write English better than those who haven't had "that advantage". It's the next logical thing.

Craze of English consumes childhood
The second fact is not very well known, and I'd like to present it to concerned parents. While it is true that the first six years of a child are very important in its life, and that the child must have learnt reading and writing by that time, it is not true that that reading and writing must be in English.

In fact, it is a crime against children to stuff a foreign language into their heads, as many educationists and psychologists have pointed out. I don't think anybody harbors a doubt about the importance of mother-tongue education, but from the craze for English prevalent in our cities, it's clear that not many realize the harmful effects of foreign languages at young ages.

Now, you have English-crazy parents in cities on the one hand, and on the other hand the target of having children achieve proficiency in reading and writing by six years of age. If you put the two together, and add the fact that these parents have mostly Kannada for their mother-tongue, both the parents and these businesses have no option but to take away the first six years of children and offer them as sacrificial lambs at the feet of the demon of ignorance.

Kapil Sibal (not that he holds a justifiable portfolio), unless he realizes this fact, will have to see his genuine concern for the physical and mental health of young children go down the drain. His campaign for abolishing pre-schooling before 4 years of age makes no sense if you have to stuff reading and writing in a foreign language into children.

Parents will have to throng these concentration camps with not just 8-month-olds, but perhaps even newborn infants in order to stuff English into their innocent brains.

And that too will not suffice, since the womb would have been polluted by Kannada. It may help for the parents to just migrate to London or Manchester or New York or San Francisco before their first kiss. But that too would not solve the problem completely, because their lips would have been polluted by Kannada. What is to be done now?

While children are apt to learn crucial communication skills from the natural familial and societal interactions in the language of the family and society, the craze for English basically necessitates the creation of a family and a society which speaks English: and that's what these businesses try to artificially synthesize and fail miserably because of the sheer artificiality.

All this, at what cost? At the cost of completely removing those children from the family and society and placing them in totally artificial environments designed to mimic the environment of a London or a Manchester, and at the cost of sacrificing their natural freedoms, their childhood, and their physical and psychological health.

What a great future we're giving our urban children!

America is proof that voluntariness is no proof of ethics

2010-05-05T00:26:00.001+05:30

Against the backdrop of earlier articles on natives and migrants, what I recently learnt about the way native Indians were 'removed' from the United States of America prompted me to write this essay with a sentiment of horror mixed with disappointment.

The third president of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a secret letter to William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana territory, in 1803, explaining his plan for 'removing' the native American Indians. The full text of the letter is fortunately available, and is as follows (I have retained what look like spelling mistakes, but regrouped the text into more readable paragraphs):

You will receive from the Secretary of War … from time to time information and instructions as to our Indian affairs. These communications being for the public records, are restrained always to particular objects and occasions; but this letter being unofficial and private, I may with safety give you a more extensive view of our policy respecting the Indians, that you may the better comprehend the parts dealt out to you in detail through the official channel, and observing the system of which they make a part, conduct yourself in unison with it in cases where you are obliged to act without instruction.

Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment from them, by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason, and by giving them effectual protection against wrongs from our own people.

The decrease of game rendering their subsistence by hunting insufficient, we wish to draw them to agriculture, to spinning and weaving. The latter branches they take up with great readiness, because they fall to the women, who gain by quitting the labors of the field for, those which are exercised within doors.

When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands. At our trading houses, too, we mean to sell so low as merely to repay us cost and charges, so as neither to lessen or enlarge our capital.

This is what private traders cannot do, for they must gain; they will consequently retire from the competition, and we shall thus get clear of this pest without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians.

In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us a citizens or the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi.

The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only.

Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.

I'll let you analyze the hypocrisy of the letter in detail, but hasten myself to say what I'm most moved to say about the claimed voluntariness of Indian actions such as land cession and adoption of sedentary and hedonistic lives, and about the American justification for Indian Removal.

Anyone can feed a child with poison by sugarcoating it. The child will fall prey voluntarily. Is this ethical? Absolutely not. Therefore, the voluntariness of market transactions is no proof of ethical behaviour of the parties involved. On the other hand, voluntary market transactions which cause damages or losses unexpected by one of the parties and intended by the other is complete proof of unethical behavior on the part of the latter.

No more proof is required that the Europeans were very far from being ethical in exterminating the native Indians. It is the height of European barbarism and unethical behavior to pounce upon relative children and commit genocide so that they may spread, multiply and pleasure themselves. That it was done with the air of saints and holy men lends no fig leaf to the barbarians.

Let me take another example. Let's say my job is to cook rice. To simplify things, let's say that the uncooked rice is provided by my customer himself, so the only cost to the customer is that of my labor. Now, on what basis must I fix the price of my labour? There is no doubt that it should increase as my labour increases, but what should be the basic price itself? Everything from zero to infinity is a valid answer to that question. However, a transaction will happen only at a mutually agreeable price. So far so good, and both parties agree to forget about slight valuation errors.

However, what if my customer is blind and I make him sign on a cheque of Rs. 100 while I would have been happy with Re. 1 if the customer weren't blind? The voluntariness of my customer's payment doesn't make the entire transaction ethical, because I intended damage while he did not have sufficient information to see through my intention.

Thus, market transactions in which one party knowingly exploits the lack of information in the other for his own benefit are unethical. The question of ethics cannot be settled by examining the voluntariness of market transactions, but only by examining the intentions behind the transactions, which, fortunately for the analyst, manifest themselves in their effects on the exploited party. That is not to say that the exploitation does not affect the expoiter in any way; only that the effect on the exploited party is easier to observe and faster-acting than the effect on the exploiter. The exploiter will pay dearly for his crimes, but that day comes but late.

What hypocrisy that the 'founding fathers' of The United States of America basically did not have the disposition to grant native Indians the right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' while assuming it for themsleves! They basically proved that the cunning can make the innocent surrender their 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' voluntarily. And that, for the hundredth time, is unethical to the core.

Ronald Reagan: "Can't we plan our lives better ourselves?"

2010-04-30T19:22:00.004+05:30

I'm not a fan of former US president Ronald Reagan or his policies in general or his party or anything, but something he said in an election speech in 1964 struck me as very relevant:

"This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."

If this statement is true for the USA which is a country which pales in comparison with India in linguistic and cultural diversity, is it not more true for India? If it's true for the USA where both the "little intellectual elite in a far distant capital" and "ourselves" are basically English speakers from more or less the same culture, how true must it be for India where that "intellectual elite in a far distant capital" and "ourselves" share neither a common language nor culture?

Why should any Kannadiga (or any Tamil or Telugu or Malayali or Marathi or....any Indian) believe that a little intellectual elite (made up mainly of actually well-meaning Hindi folks like Kapil Sibal) sitting in a far distant capital called New Delhi can plan our lives better than we can plan them ourselves? Are Kannadigas incapable of planning their lives themselves? Must we abandon the Indian Revolution which culminated in freedom in 1947?

And then, if Ronald Reagan could ask this question and get voted to power in the USA, why is it that anybody who asks this question in India is often regarded as parochial and unpatriotic?

Innovation in mother-tongue education is the need of the hour

2010-04-17T09:29:00.005+05:30

Talking about the need for India to look at new and low-cost development models in education and health, Sam Pitroda posed a rather simple but profound question earlier this week:

“If Bangalore can become back-office of America, why can’t our rural areas become back-office of urban areas?”

Note that Sam's question is of employing rural men and women where they are, without needing them to physically relocate from rural areas to urban areas. Hence, the fact that migant ruralites get manual jobs due to urban development is besides the point.

So, why have urban areas been unable to employ rural men and women without requiring them to physically move to urban areas (as drivers, construction workers, maid-servants, etc)?

The answer is, of course, fairly simple. Minds can perform their function where they are, but bodies have to move physically. And urbanites consider ruralites as bodies, not minds. Ruralites themselves do, too.

And this is, of course, a problem of education in rural areas. The problem is not so much that there isn't a sufficient number of schools in rural areas; there's a good number of them. The problem, really, is of quality.

Good quality education can never, never ever be given in English in the rural areas. It has to be given in the language of the people. It has to be given in Kannada in Karnataka, in Tamil in Tamil Nadu, etc.

Isn't it already being given in Indian languages? Yes, of course. Here again, the question is not about the existence of education in Indian languages, but the quality of that education.

Currently, it is only the government - the least capable and most corrupt set of human beings ever in any time or clime - which is doing anything that's being done on education in Indian languages.

And that is at the root of the whole problem. It's time for private parties - you and me - to realize the inalienable link between good education and mother-tongue. It's time for you and me to innovate in mother-tongue education.

There's a lot of cleaning up to be done, a lot of re-branding to be done. Our languages have to be re-girded as vehicles fit for carrying secular knowledge, not just leisurature (yeah, leisure-literature) and folk songs and folk dances and spiritual texts.

I believe the time has come for private philanthropists to take this seriously. The Murthys, the Nilekani's, the Mallyas, the Gopinaths, the who's who - it's time to focus on innovation in mother-tongue education, sirs.

'Right to Education' from a centre-state relations perspective

2010-04-11T12:38:00.013+05:30

As promised, here's a follow-up post on the details of the Right to Education Bill, which is based on the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

My focus in this post is on federalism and centre-state relations. I've ended up making statements about linguistics and pedagogy, but they're limited to the main ones which affect centre-state relations in this whole issue.

I do not mean that everything in the Act is bad. There are good things in the Act, but the negative impact on centre-state relations and the proposed slow dismantling of democracy and federalism in India are unpardonable. In the wake of that disaster, the good things in the Act are nothing to be happy about.

I've structured this post as a set of questions and answers since that seemed the most logical way of going about it. Please refer to the full text of the Act to get to the actual wordings of the Articles referred to here.

Question 1: Who decides how much money is required for implementing the Act?
Answer: The central government. See Article 7(2).

Question 2: Is it right for the central government to decide it?
Answer: No. It is outright undemocratic, since mostly people from outside each state will decide the money required for education within that state. The people of Karnataka, for example, have lost the right to decide for themselves how much money should be invested in elementary education in Karnataka. Even disregarding the fact that Karnataka speaks a language unique to it, this is undemocratic. Bringing in that fact to the equation, it is all the more easy to see that it's undemocratic: only the states themselves have the ability to decide how much money is required to make their languages "fit carriers of knowledge", and only the states themselves have the ability to decide how much money is required to implement their own languages in schools. As a simple example, languages which have more non-phonetic characters in their alphabet will need more money and effort and innovation in order to achieve good education; but New Delhi is unfit by definition to even be aware of these crucial subtleties which characterize the diverse languages of India. Even if New Delhi were aware, or if Washington D.C. were aware, there is no reason to ask state governments to give up their power over education to either of them unless we're in the process of dismantling democracy in India.

Question 3: Who is responsible for coughing up that money?
Answer: The state governments. See Article 7(5). Although Article 7(1) makes it seem as if both the state and central governments have this responsibility, the final responsibility rests with the states, since the centre may decide not to provide any grant-in-aid. It is left to it to determine how much that grant is; it could well be zero rupees. The centre can simply decide that particular states have the money required (in complete ignorance of state and language-specific requirements as explained in the answer to Question 2 above) and refuse any money from its own funds. Given the corrupt equations of power at the centre, there is no guarantee that distribution of funds to the states will be based on actual requirements; it will in most cases be based on the need to appease coalition partners in order for the central government to stay in power. Even if it were to be miraculously based on actual requirements following a sudden de-corruption of the central government due to a meteor storm, it does not have any source of funds other than taxpayer money from the more affluent states, and can at best retard further progress in education in the affluent states by draining their money towards the less-affluent states. The decision to set aside any money for less-affluent sister-states must be optional and dharmic for the affluent states, not mandatory and governmental. Also, free funds flowing into less-affluent states is apt to be mis-used; free money is always misused (I am even against taking any grants from the IMF or other international bodies for improving education in India; we don't need it, and we must strive to improve without it; what would we have done if we didn't have that source of money?).

Question 4: Isn't it all okay if the Act only prescribes what is good for the people of the states?
Answer: First of all, it is none of the central government's business to make decisions about education in the states. I'm not talking about constitutional provisions; the constitution needs to be amended according to what is right; what is right cannot be derived from the constitution. What the central government decides as good is not necessarily good. State-governments are more apt to take the right decisions, since they are closer to ground realities (which include the language factor). Washington D.C. may be more capable than New Delhi of prescribing what is good for the states simply because it can respect India's internal diversity more than Hindi-heavy New Delhi. But that doesn't mean the states should give up decision-making authority to Washington D.C. That power must lie with the states from the first principles of democracy and federalism (which is but an extension of democracy). Of course, the central government is welcome to put in selfless effort to provide financial guidelines which may or may not be adopted by the states. Such prescriptions are also made by organizations such as UNESCO and NGOs such as Pratham, but they rightly don't possess any decision-making authority. The central government, similarly, cannot and must not assume any decision-making powers here. That would be undemocratic.

Question 5: Is it fair, moral or ethical for the central government to decide what is right and ask states to cough up money?
Answer: No, it is not fair or moral or ethical. The Act basically betrays the imperial air with which state governments are being treated by the central government. In the days of the British, the British Government of India decided how much money is to be paid by the states for its projects, and the states had no option but to cough up that money out of fear of military defeat. But today, state governments are democratically elected governments of different linguistic peoples who are free citizens, and have the right to a roadmap for becoming more responsible and more efficient if at all India is considered as a democracy. Today, the Government of India is a democratically elected government and must behave like one; it cannot make unilateral decisions about education (or anything else, for that matter,) and impose a mandatory payment on the states. The fundamentals of democracy dictate that power should not be moved away from the people, but this Act does exactly that by moving power from the states to the central government. Pardon the simile, but state governments are being regarded as dispatch clerks and asked to lick the boots of the central government, British imperial style. The states too, must discontinue behavioural traits developed under the British and get out of the assumption that military action will follow any non-payment of money ordered by the central government. No, we're a free country today, and no state needs to lick the boots of the central government to remain in power.

Question 6: Who decides the curriculum for schools under this Act?
Answer: Article 7(6) states that the central government shall "develop a framework of national curriculum". Although it seeks help from academic authority specified by the appropriate government (which is the state government in the case of schools run by it), the final decision-making authority is the central government. Remember that all help is optional, and that the central government can do what it thinks is right whether that help is available or not. While the Act is carefully crafted to not explicitly give the central government the authority to force that curriculum framework in any state, it is anybody's guess as to what will happen to the grant-in-aid to states which don't follow the framework or dare to innovate themselves. Thus, the power granted by Article 29(1) to the appropriate government to "lay down the curriculum" is actually all set to be usurped by the central government itself, with the carrot of the grant-in-aid hung in front of state-governments. The "laying down" must be understood as the dry job of dispatching diktat flowing in from New Delhi, like clerks.

Question 7: Isn't a common national curriculum good for all the states?
Answer: Educationists are divided on this point, and there is no consensus. Even assuming that only science and mathematics are covered under such a curriculum (adding others would be a disaster), there are pedagogical considerations which can make such a curriculum bad for the country as a whole. For instance, such a curriculum would subject children with very different abilities to the same system - something which is regarded as a criminal offense by many educators. Besides, such a national curriculum would be a sure way of stifling linguistic and pedagogical innovation in the states. While the central government is simply incapable of driving the former variety of innovation, there is no proof that it has any better abilities than the states themselves when it comes to the latter. Who said New Delhi has more intelligent people than in Bengaluru, for example? Some do not understand what lingusitic innovation is required in science and maths education. First of all, such people need to understand that science and maths have to be taught in Kannada in Karnataka, and in Assamese in Assam, and that these languages still need to develop the right kind of linguistic registers to be able to fitly carry such education (this is true of Hindi also, by the way -- it, perhaps, needs it more badly than any other Indian language). There is a whole lot of innovation and hard work required to get Indian languages in shape, and a national curriculum can do nothing to help. Sure, the technical support and resources that the central government is slated to provide to state governments as per Article 7(6)(c) are good, but technical support and resources for innovation, research and planning are not what, for example Karnataka, lacks. What state-governments lack today is the feeling of being fully responsible for elementary education, and the Act as a whole only harms the prospects of any such feeling emerging.

Question 8: Who decides and enforces standards for teacher-training?
Answer: The central government. See Article 7(6)(b). This is a major diaster waiting to happen, since there is an infinite disconnect between the central government and teachers in the states. Besides, the central government neither speaks the language of those teachers, nor has it ever worked in those languages. Thus teacher-training is best handled by the states, but the central government has usurped this power by the provisions of the Act. The states are expected to only provide the "facility" for the training (See Article 8(e)): real-estate, timely coffee and lunch, and working fans in summer. Everything else - the content and delivery of the training is retained by the central government which has not the slightest ability to decide what they should be. This also stinks of British imperialism with the all-knowing white babus arriving by train on one hot summer day to decide local matters in the states which are assumed to be filled with brown fools. Today it's not white babus and brown fools, but Hindi babus and Kannadiga fools (in Karnataka); that's all.

Question 9: There seems to be an underlying assumption that the central government is more capable of handling education for the whole of India. Is it correct? What are its implications?
Answer: There is no doubt that this assumption informs the Act in letter and spirit. This too, is nothing but a continuation of British imperialism wherein the British assumed that they were better suited to decide what is good for India (including in education). Now, it's the central government which is making that assumption. If this assumption weren't there, there would be no reason for the Act to give the power over curriculum and teacher-training to the centre; the states would have had it. In politics, assumptions spawn reality. Hence, the assumption that the state-governments are less capable actually creates less capable state-governments. Why governments, the very existence of a higher body which has implicit decision-making powers with respect to the curriculum will attract mediocre talent in the "academic authority specified by the appropriate government" to "lay down the curriculum", and that mediocre talent will simply copy-paste the framework, however inapplicable and inappropriate it may be to the respective state. Slowly, this Act will make the states wash their hands off educating their own populations -- which is disastrous, because New Delhi cannot do as effective a job as the states (nor is it capable of doing so, as argued above). Even if New Delhi could do an effective job, it is not good at all that power is moving away and away from the people due to the Act. That is a deadly blow to democracy, and is only ensuring that India is slowly becoming a dictatorship run from New Delhi.

Question 10: There seems to be an underlying assumption that Indian languages should soon be replaced by English as the medium of instruction in schools all over India. Is this right? What are the implications of such an assumption?
Answer: Yes, that assumption informs the Act, and a preview of that assumption is seen in Article 29(2)(f) which declares that medium of instruction shall be in the mother-tongue "as far as practicable". As far as practicable to whom? Kapil Sibal? His team of yawning Hindi speakers in New Delhi who don't have a clue of what it takes to make education in Kannada practicable in Karnataka? How can New Delhi decide how far the mother-tongue is practicable when it has never spoken that tongue? Of course, Article 29 is written for the appropriate government (which includes state governments), not just the central government, but I've argued above how it is only on paper and not reality because of the grant-in-aid carrot, and because of the overpowering statement in Article 7(6)(a). Besides, the central government does not have what it takes to ensure mother-tongue education all over India, just like the British did not have. This neglect of Indian languages will end up legitimizing the creamy English-speaking layer created by Macaulay and bolster it with governmental force, at the cost of most of India struggling to keep up with that layer forever.

Question 11: Will this Act legitimize Hindi imposition all over India?
Answer: Yes. There is nothing in the Act which prevents it from happening. Kapil Sibal has already made statements to the effect that Hindi should be taught all over India. This, again, is a disaster because it legitimizes the crime and takes away the right of the states to resist it simply because the central government is all set to make all decisions about the curriculum.

New Delhi Assumes Right to Education, Moves Closer to Dictatorship

2010-04-02T08:15:00.002+05:30

The Right to Education bill spells death for federalism and democracy in India

It's the talk of the town these days: "right to education". From television channels to newspapers, websites to blogs, everyone is busy contemplating the consequences of the Right to Education bill.

The contemplation - be it about the intent of the bill or its implementation or its implications - is primarily centered around the poor versus rich question and the effective implementation question which manifest themselves in questions such as: "Will the poor be really benefited by this?", "Will the rich object to the poor flooding their children's schools?", "Can private schools which provide premium education at premium prices just remain out of this whole thing?", "Can this bill actually improve the quality of education in India?", etc.

However, much to the disappointment of anybody who upholds democracy and federalism, all the discussions about the bill have missed the single most important facet of this whole thing: the complete usurping of power by the central government and the complete neglect of state governments in the matter of education. I haven't seen a single voice raised against this decadence of India, and must do my part.

While the people of India are busy discussing trivial details of the bill, they've forgotten that it is none of the central government's business to assume the exclusive 'right to education' (as in the right to the portfolio of education) in the first place. Even in the center-heavy constitution of India, education is a concurrent-list subject, but this bill makes it clear that the central government would rather have it all for itself - be it however anti-federal, be it however anti-democracy.

While India discusses the bill in letter, it misses the spirit of the bill which is simply designed to help the central government at New Delhi move one stealthy step closer to becoming a total dictatorship, with state-governments being moved one stealthy step towards becoming dispatch clerks.

The bill delivers a deadly blow to the future of India as a truly federal polity. State governments, which actually run most of the schools in India, are now being told to act as dry implementers of dubious (nay, outright fatal) diktat flowing in from New Delhi. The power to decide the constitution of the education system, all research, and indeed everything related to the quality of education is now unilaterally assumed by the central government. The states now have no say in what constitutes a good education of their people. They're just being asked to be clerks who shell out money for programs decided by Kapil Sibals sitting in New Delhi. Who is Kapil Sibal, and what does he know about what constitutes a good education for Kannadigas, for Tamils, for Marathis, for Odiyas, for Malayalis, for Telugus? Can he even enumerate all these languages?

Any move which takes power away from the people is a move away from democracy. By moving the site of power from the states to the center, India has demonstrated its preference of dictatorship over democracy, of government over people, of centralism over federalism. The people of India have lost the power to have any say in the education of children around them. The real educationists and social reformers of India have suddenly become objects of neglect, and now have an infinite disincentive to advise the governmental machinery on matters of education - simply because they now have to travel to New Delhi to even look at that machinery. Earlier, it was atleast to the state-capital.

I urge India to look at this bill from this perspective - the perspective that India is slowly moving towards a dictatorial form of government. And that is not good. Period.

Note: I will follow up with a closer analysis of important clauses in the bill. Stay tuned.

A Kannadiga with a Dutch wife is a pathological specimen

2010-03-29T08:44:00.002+05:30

Anand Soondas makes some usual English-media remarks about language in India in an article called "Are we losing mother tongue" which appeared in the Times of India Crest Edition of March 27th.

Soondas's article can be nominated for the prize of the crest jewel of minority aggrandizement: the aggrandizement of English, the aggrandizement of migrants, the aggrandizement of the market of English speakers, the aggrandizement of mixed marriages (Delhi-based Kannadigas with Dutch wives!).

The first question the article begs is: "Hello, who are we? Readers of the Times of India Crest Edition?" If that is the case, perhaps the article should have been called "Are the readers of the Times of India Crest Edition losing their mother tongue?". Then the answer would probably default to a "yes", and Soondas would probably be covered. But Soondas has no such cover, and many are those who will read Soondas's article online (not caring to buy the Times of India Crest Edition) and wrongly conclude that their mother tongues are dying.

To them is this essay addressed.

The three Ms stink of minority aggrandizement

The central assumption of Soondas's thesis is that...

[i]n an increasingly urbanised India, mother tongues are under siege and facing a sustained attack from the three Ms of migration, market and mixed marriages.

The first problem with the above claim is, we know how much migration there is to begin with: it's not more than 4% on average in India (of course, we're talking about inter-state migration, because that's the one which crosses a language border, if at all). So even if the mother tongues of all those 4% are getting destroyed, it's not as huge a loss as the article makes it seem. Smells of minority aggrandizement?

The second problem is that the article shies away from truth by making the baseless claim that English is the "only window to the outside world, a potent weapon that allows one to compete in a market driven environment". We know that global multinational corporations (anyone heard of Google?) are increasingly internationalizing their product and service offerings by supporting more and more of the world's languages, not fewer and fewer. Stinks of minority aggrandizement?

And then, the third problem is of taking one Delhi-based Kannadiga called Shubhendra married to a Dutch wife called Saskia, or the children of one Kashmiri married to a Tamil with a job in Kolkata - and using them as mascots of a flawed thesis. Make no mistake: these pathological cases do not represent India. They probably represent the readership of the ToI Crest Edition, or even where that readership is headed, but that's it. Rots with minority aggrandizement?

Those who are "fortunately pushing-back" do not represent India

Whatever be the reason why the article seems to lack a central message, it is actually not without one. And that theme lies buried in the final section:

It is this realisation - that a modern India galloping on the strength of English is tearing children away from their languages and roots - that’s triggering a modest push-back.

Again, English may be tearing away the children of those who buy the Times of India Crest Edition, and may be they're pushing back modestly. But all this is besides the point. All this is besides the true India. All this is inapplicable to 96% of Indians who are not nomads to begin with, whose children are not being torn away from their languages and roots, and who therefore don't need to push back.

English is not necessary for knowledge and career advancement

Finally, I'd like to end this post with a message for "22-year-old Krinna Dobhal, an IT professional who’s guilty of abandoning the language of her ancestors":

English is not necessary for knowledge and career advancement. You have been indoctrinated into making that assumption by the education system which you've been in. That system needs to be reformed, and you can help in that reform. Don't be convinced that your mother-tongue cannot give you knowledge and career advancement of the best kind. The Japanese, the Israelis, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Greek, the anybody-and-everybody aren't convinced. Get up, stand up, and do what it takes to steer India back on the right track. On the other hand, if you're completely convinced, don't feel guilty of abandoning the language of your ancestors. Throw it away and stop shedding a fool's tears. Culture, folk dances and folk music are secondary. If you love them so much and don't realize the flaw in your assumption, your daily dose of culture and folk dances and folk music will vanish, too.

Foreign universities: the forgotten question of language

2010-03-21T23:49:00.001+05:30

The question of language is neither being raised nor answered; a fatal assumption is being made.

Kapil Sibal's latest antic move to allow setting up of foreign universities in India has attracted both support and opposition. But it is extremely disappointing that both supporters and opponents have forgotten the most important angle from which to view this whole development: that of the language(s) in which these universities, if and when setup, are going to operate.

Kapil Sibal himself, his supporters as well as opponents have forgotten to ask themselves as to how the whole of India, in which 93% of the population is not proficient in English, is going to benefit from universities from abroad which can offer education in no language other than English. How can one be certain that they're going to offer education only in English? Simple: our own universities are fallen in this respect.

The question of language is neither being raised, nor being answered. Instead, a deathly silence surrounds both supporters and opponents. And therein lies a fatal problem which threatens to destroy the whole of India.

If you're following what Kapil Sibal is doing, you'll realize that he's got his attention fixed on the insignificant other: the rest 7% which is proficient in English. That's his focus segment, that's the people for whom he's toiling day in and day out, and that's the poorest and weakest man from Gandhi's Talisman for whom he's contemplating his step. But what about the 93%, minister?

It's high time the Government of India disinvests from minority aggrandizement. It's high time we set up and strengthen universities which work in the modern Indian languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, etc.

Kapil Sibal may not even have the ability to enumerate these languages; but that does not grant him a license to eliminate them. This is yet another example of how un-federal India is, and how un-caring of diversity a strong center can be for India. This is also an example of how a strong center can act to amplify the errors of a few a billion times over.

Whether it's private or public, Indian or foreign, a university which operates in a language which continues to alienate and exclude 93% of the people around it on average is not acting in the best interest of India.

Hence, existing universities must first be fixed, must be made to understand their social responsibilities in post-Macaulay India. They must first be made to understand that it is their responsibility to elevate Indian languages to the status which English enjoys today, and not to complain that they aren't already developed. They must be made to understand that they are supposed to be societal change-agents, not spineless creatures which feed on the filth which thrives in stagnant water.

If, and only if foreign universities can help elevate the status of Indian languages in education, are they of any help to India. Then, and only then, do they pass Gandhi's litmus test.

The truth about English speakers in India (again)

2010-03-16T00:23:00.014+05:30

Yesterday, the Times of India claimed that

[m]ore Indians speak English than any other language, with the sole exception of Hindi. What's more, English speakers in India outnumber those in all of western Europe, not counting the United Kingdom. And Indian English-speakers are more than twice the UK's population.

and further, that..

English was the primary language for barely 2.3 lakh Indians at the time of the census, more than 86 million listed it as their second language and another 39 million as their third language. This puts the number of English speakers in India at the time to more than 125 million.

The Times has picked data from the right source no doubt (pdf, xls.zip), and I've double checked that the numbers are alright. But it's funny how the Times makes you believe that a whole lot of Indians "speak" English.

Even the data taken at face value means that nearly no Indian called English as his/her first language. Further, a whopping 92 out of 100 Indians did not list English as their first or second language. And finally, 88 out of 100 Indians did not list English as their first, second or third language.

But the data should not be taken at face value either (I'm sure you noticed the double quotes around "speak" above). Why? Because nobody told you what it means to "speak", and what a "second language" or "third language" means. In fact, the terms first-, second- and third language imply that proficiency actually drops significantly going from the first to the third. Otherwise, all could be considered as first and the terminology discarded as erroneous.

In fact, upon digging a little deeper, I hit upon the question which was asked by the census (Page 221 of the Manual on Vital Statistics, June 2009) under "General and Socio-cultural Characteristics", which shows how much the actual question is up to the interpretation of the questioner and the answerer, and how much the results could vary if the sun rises in the east tomorrow (yes, I mean east). See the circled question below:

So, while the census casually asked people to list down the two other languages known in the order of proficiency, it did not define any yardsticks for measuring proficiency. What proficiency means is anybody's guess in the census proforma above. For one, it could be saying "A for Apple", and for another, it could be a university degree in English. For many more, it could well have been just "interest in English" based on all the media hype, such as that indulged in by English newspapers like the Times of India. And for many others, to "know" something might just be to "have heard of", as in "do you know Bhopal?", or even "do you know Dr. Rajkumar?".

I had pointed out earlier that Google India's R&D chief, Prasad Ram, claims that no more than 7% Indians are proficient in English. Google looks at the Indian language market as a huge opportunity. As you can see, this 7% number is close to the 8% (which is what 86 million is in India as per the 2001 census) who rated their proficiency in English as second-rank. And I'd certainly attach a greater sanctity to Google's data than the Times of India's, simply because the former is not in the business of make-believe; they are driven by hard market realities.

So I'd say don't take the Times' article at face value, and not even the data at face-value. The 7% or 8% number who rated English as second in their order of proficiency is probably closer to being the correct indicator of the number of English "speakers" in India, not the 12% claimed by the Times. Clubbing second and third language data under "speakers" is dubious, and is nothing but a method of minority aggrandizement.

Unfortunately, this fuels the false feeling that Indian languages are becoming increasingly insignificant, which further increases the vertical disintegration of India - something which has what it takes to sap all the life-blood out of India and render it dead.

The defeated can "lead India" to only one thing: defeat

2010-03-12T07:25:00.004+05:30

A-ha. So we now have a Times of India "Lead India" winner (whatever that means), Sanjiv Kaura, get centre-space on yesterday's edition of Times of India to further the nonsense that Indian languages are fit only as vehicles of "our richest cultural expressions".

First, Kaura openly begs for education about what kind of English-medium schools have been banned in Karnataka. The "2,100 educational institutions" that were banned were not banned because they were English-medium schools, but because they indulged in a breach of trust with the Govt. of Karnataka by going back on what they signed on bond-paper: that they would run Kannada-medium schools. Those institutions committed a criminal offense by signing one thing on bond-paper and doing another. Perhaps Kaura should just refrain from talking about things he has no clue about - such as schools in Karnataka, and education in general.

And then, in the rest of the article, Kaura goes about blathering about how Indians cannot eat or learn or live without English, and even suggests that everybody be converted into an English speaking elite (somebody teach him the meaning of the word "elite"):

The idea that English education fosters elitism has been an influential one. But the way to deal with this is not by restricting the number of English-speakers even more. It is by widening its reach and democratising it.

The whole problem is - and Kaura should get this straight - nobody is restricting the number of English-speakers more than Mother Nature. Indians do not speak English naturally. It is a foreign language. Macaulay erected an elite class by investing heavily to go against this nature. Even to this day, it is impossible to "democratize" the learning of English. Mr. Kaura should go get some grass-roots experience and see for himself before blurting out nonsense from the center pages of English newspapers. He needs to see for himself that teachers are unable to teach Kannada well in Karnataka - let alone English.

And yeah, Macaulay wasn't as foolish as Kaura is being in thinking that English can be "democratized". In fact, he urged people like Kaura not to go down the path they're going down, but to get to some real work and...

refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

Perhaps Kaura hasn't ever heard of the above being said by Macaulay. But yes, he did, and Kaura's ilk didn't hear about it because it was busy thinking of him as an alien with 3 eyes and reversed feet. But whether it was Macaulay who said it or someone else, the point remains that it is unscientific, nay, outright stupid for anyone to think of replacing Indian languages with English - which stupidity Kaura just displayed for the whole world to view.

And finally, in the last paragraph of a 1000-word article, Kaura dedicates a dismal-but-not-surprising 100 words to talk about what he calls as "local languages", and that too in the sense that they can also co-exist with English and serve as the item-numbers for English the hero:

None of this is to suggest that local languages should be ignored. Our richest cultural expressions can continue to be in these languages, and our educational institutions should do all they can to facilitate this. But there’s no reason why multiple languages can’t coexist. Indeed, they have done so since time immemorial in this country. English is just a practical skill, a tool of empowerment which will help everyone access the world of commerce and opportunity.

There's only one question that I'd like to ask Mr. Kaura now: Where is the reason why Indian languages cannot replace English as carriers of secular knowledge and secular sciences, especially when the need for them to do so is screaming itself out?

And yeah, Mr. Kaura, cut the nonsense about multiple languages co-existing from "time immemorial in this country" - this country itself didn't exist from time immemorial, and there was even less co-existence then than now. That's why different languages developed, stupid.

Isn't it time we realized that the defeated cannot lead India to victory?

Help make Karnatique better!

2010-03-11T08:41:00.001+05:30

It's been a couple of years since Banavasi Balaga embarked on this ambitious project - Karnatique. From day one, authorship for Karnatique has been open to the entire world, and we still have the "Want to write for/to Karnatique? Send us a note" on the sidebar on the extreme right. However, I am still waiting for writers to show up.

How can we fix that? Ideas?

One of the things where I've probably fallen short is in clarifying the theme of the blog. But there really wasn't much clarity till now (!). I guess Karnatique is now becoming a blog focused mainly on Federalism and Mother-tongue education. These are obviously not themes relating to Kannadigas alone; in fact, these are universal themes. I'm open to changing the sub-title from "A critique of the world in which Kannadigas live and let live" to something which reflects the developing clarity of focus.

Hey, come on, write for Karnatique! Help it grow! Help make it better!

Of course, all articles will be edited for conformance to the theme and clarity of presentation. Writers will need to commit to at-least 2 articles per month. Okay, you know what? Each article will be paid for. One rupee per article, and payments will be made in units of hundred rupees.

Now please come forward to write! Email me to get started.

An interactive map is worth a thousand words

2010-03-10T11:09:00.012+05:30

Here's an interactive map of India which color codes states according to the percentage of migrants living in the state. The map is created using Google Geomap Visualization using data from Census 2001. UTs and Delhi have a very large density of migrants (mostly because they were formed by taking areas from neighbouring states and of course because of higher central presence) and have been excluded from this map in order to show the more meaningful differences - the differences between states.

Remember that the definition of a migrant here is a person born in "states beyond the state of enumeration". If you consider the fact that Uttaranchal has 10.13% migrants, it might just be that most of them were born in Uttar Pradesh before the state split into the new Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. Or it could well be migrants from nearby states such as Himachal Pradesh, Haryana or Punjab. The Census website does not have data on where the migrants came from (atleast, I couldn't find it); it just says how many came from other states.

At an all India level, Goa (16.98%) has the highest percentage of migrants, and Manipur (0.64%) has the least. Of the big South Indian states, Karnataka (3.93%) has the highest percentage of migrants and Tamil Nadu (1.17%) has the least percentage of migrants. Of all states with populations greater than 50 million, Maharashtra at 7.55% has the highest percentage of migrants. However, I cannot find an answer to the question as to how many migrants in which state came from where.

[Note: Google Gadget created using Google Geomaps by Kiran Rao Batni. The author has no control on the way the map is drawn by Google; address any feedback about the shape of J&K and India's international borders to Google, not to the author or Banavasi Balaga.]

India is not a country of nomads

2010-03-07T10:55:00.011+05:30

There is a popular misconception among some big-city people - especially among those who work for multinational companies and the English media in cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and New Delhi - that India is basically a country of nomads, i.e., people who have no other business in life but to migrate from place to place, even from one linguistic state to another.

This misconception drives them to an Idea of India in which languages like Kannada, Tamil, Marathi and Bengali are of near-zero importance, since people are anyway assumed to be nomads who go from one linguistic state to another (that Hindi is assumed to be some sort of universal language in India is something I won't dwell on here, but it's a disease in some Indians which works together with this misconception to corrupt the real, beautiful, vibrant and diverse India).

In addition, systems of education, governance and employment at the India level are basically built for migrants (that too, Hindi speakers); natives are simply regarded as "less Indian". I have argued elsewhere that this is the exact opposite of what ought to be.

So let's look at the facts of migration in India. The hard facts. The hard-to-digest facts.

I took Census 2001 migration data and did some basic arithmetic to arrive at how many Indians stay put in the village or town of birth, in the district of birth, and finally in the state of birth. Normalized to every 1000 Indians, the data looks like this (note that an error of 1 here is an error of 1 Million, but the graphs do their job of illustrating the main point I'd like to make):

That is, for every 1000 Indians questioned by the census, 953 were born in the same state. That is, they are not migrants from another state. Simlarly, 878 out of 1000 were born in the same district in which they were questioned. And finally, 701 out of 1000 were born in the same village or town in which they were questioned - these are folks who haven't migrated even within their own district!

The foregoing should offer sufficient evidence that India is not a country of nomads - we don't migrate like nomads do. It should also offer sufficient reason to not build systems of education, governance and employment for migrants at the cost of natives. It should also offer sufficient discouragement to those people (including in the Government of India) who believe that Indian languages other than Hindi don't characterize India.

But to drive home the point a bit more, here's another graph which plots the actual number of inter-state "migrants" in India in comparison with "natives". Note that a migrant here is a migrant crossing a state border, which is most often a border between two states which speak different languages; similarly, a native is a person born in the state of enumeration:

From what I know, children in kindergarten can recognize which bar is higher. It is not rocket science to decide which one should form the center of policy attention at New Delhi. But, to put it somewhat humbly, New Delhi seems to have other plans. Isn't it time the folks who sit in New Delhi and run India, as well as some of our big-city friends, went back to kindergarten?

Leadership by elimination by disinformation

2010-03-03T21:52:00.005+05:30

On Sept 11, 2009, I had blogged about the deeply irrational and also suicidal statement by chief minister B S Yeddyurappa that Karnataka should "take the lead in India" on measures to cut down population a la China. We at Banavasi Balaga have sufficient evidence that Karnataka simply does not have a high population, and that it's suicidal to believe that Kannadigas should cut down their rate of reproduction.

This was bolstered today by a Times of India article about an International Institute of Population Sciences study which shows that the populations of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are ageing. Yes, Kannadigas are just too damn old compared to people in UP, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal. So we're not just too few Kannadigas, but just too damn old also! And it is to these people that our chief minister wants to convey the message of reproductive restraint! Way to go! What would the management gurus call this? Leadership by elimination?

And to add fuel to the fire, there's the Government of India spreading the nonsense that Indians should cut down on reproduction using its propaganda machinery. Sure UP wallahs should, but why Kannadigas? Why Tamils? Why Malayalis? In the Information age, disinformation about population is no worse than a biological weapon of mass destruction. And it's being hurled at the prosperous, innocent, few and ageing. What would the management gurus call this? Leadership by elimination by disinformation?

It's high time that the ultra-centralist, anti-federal parties of India take note of a simple fact: India is too big, and solutions to the problems of the poor, belligerent, populous and young are poison to the prosperous, innocent, few and ageing. A one-size fits all population policy is death to Kannadigas in particular and South Indians in general. Don't call their problems as our problems, and their solutions as our solutions. It's actually very simple.

Again, by George, what's going on here in India?

13th CFC takes federalism to a new low - lower than Georgie took it

2010-03-01T08:13:00.002+05:30

The 13th Central Finance Commission, a body appointed by president Pratibha Patil, is out with its recommendations. Not surprisingly, the commission delivers a further blow to India's future as a truly federal country. While the Commission claims that its recommendations are "consistent with the principles of federal finance" and "fiscal federalism", it's clear that the Commission does not have the slightest clue of what federalism is.

Why, you ask? This should suffice as an explanation: the commission has recommended that local self-government bodies be given a direct share in Union tax revenues, bypassing the state governments. Here's what Vinoj Abraham, who teaches at the Thiruvananthapuram based Centre for Development Studies, has to say about the dangerous proposal to ignore even the presence of state governments (such as the Government of Karnataka):

“It is like bypassing the state, and the Centre will be directly dealing with the local self-governments (LSGs). The LSGs will get their grants on the basis of their performance and their share from the tax revenues and states will not have much powers on them.”

Well well well - what are we getting to here? Wasn't it better in the times of the British when the Viceroy of India atleast realized the importance of paying due respect to the princely states - respect not just for history but also for good governance and democracy? When the beginnings of a politically united India were sown, a Chamber of Princes was formed by a Royal Proclamation on 8 February 1921 and inaugurated by the Duke of Connaught on behalf of the King-Emperor in the Dewan-i-am of the Red Fort in Delhi. King George V in his proclamation defined the limits of the Chamber of Princes - which was really the birth of political India - thus:

It will have no concern with the internal affairs of individual States or their Rulers or with the relations of individual States with my Government, while the existing rights of these states and their freedom of action will in no way be prejudiced or impaired.

If this is the responsibility with which a colonial government acted, and this is the concern for good governance, democracy and people's right to self-governance that it had, doesn't one expect the Government of Free India to be better? If a colonial government had the sensibility to not prejudice or impair the freedom of action of the Indian States, doesn't one expect the Government of Free India to be better? Doesn't one expect the Government of Free India to do better than (to use the words of King George V) impair the privileges, rights, and dignities of the States of India?

By George, what's going on here in India?

AKKA Short Story Competition - Write and Win Prizes!

2010-02-26T18:49:00.003+05:30

Mr. Satya from the literary committee of the 6th World AKKA Conference writes:

6th AKKA World Kannada Conference 2010 - Short Story Competition

Invitation to Young Writers

This is to call attention to a Short Story Competition in Kannada that is organized in connection with the 6th World AKKA Conference to be held in New Jersey, USA on September 3, 4 and 5, 2010. The object of the competition is to encourage creative talent among young Kannada writers of age between 20 and 30. The stories will be judged by a panel of distinguished judges and the best three stories as adjudged by the panel will be awarded handsome prizes. The top 15 stories, including the above three, will be printed in an attractive book that will be given to all the registrants attending the AKKA conference. We sincerely hope that the young Kannada writers will respond positively to our invitation and participate in this competition in large numbers. We welcome the young writers on whose shoulders rests the responsibility of making the glorious heritage of Kannada literature even more resplendent and of exploring new paths and directions. Information and guidelines for prospective authors are given below.

Information and Guidelines for Authors

The competition is open to all young Kannada writers, of age between 20 and 30, living in India or outside.

The story you submit must be in Kannada.

It should be your original creation and should not have been published before.

Translations from other languages will not be accepted.

Only one entry per contestant will be accepted.

The stories should be no more than 3000 words long. (In font size 14 this will come to about 10 pages of 8 ½ x 11 inches size.) Stories exceeding the specified length will not be accepted.

All entries should be sent by electronic means only. Hand-written or typed manuscripts will not be accepted. You may use Nudi or Baraha software.

Last date for submission is April 15, 2010. Late entries will not be entertained.

Submissions should be sent (electronically) to wkc2010.literary@gmail.com

Along with your story, please submit proof of age. This may be a scanned copy of your Birth Certificate (if it bears your name), Secondary School Leaving Certificate or any equivalent document.

While the copyright to the stories will belong to the authors, AKKA reserves the right to future publication of the stories selected for publication in the present volume.

The decision of the judges shall be final.

If you have any further questions, please contact:
Satya 1-732 763 2363 ( US )
J.A.Sitaram +91-944-803-8181 (India)

Here's mine, here's yours, and here's ours. The rest is mine.

2010-02-17T10:33:00.005+05:30

The United States which is often referred to as the inventor of the concept of federalism, enacted the following Tenth Amendment to its Constitution, which got ratified on 15 December 1791 (yes, that's 219 years ago):

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The text is fairly straightforward, but here's an explanation by way of example:

For example, nowhere in the federal Constitution is Congress given authority to regulate local matters concerning the health, safety, and morality of state residents. Known as police powers, such authority is reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment. Conversely, no state may enter into a treaty with a foreign government because such agreements are prohibited by the plain language of Article I to the Constitution.

That is how it should be, because in a true democracy, the centres of power are supposed to be the people themselves, not a layer of government machinery twice removed from them.

On the contrary, and in clear rejection of the concept of federalism, the Constitution of India has the following for Article 248:

248. Residuary powers of legislation.—(1) Parliament has exclusive power to make any law with respect to any matter not enumerated in the Concurrent List or State List. (2) Such power shall include the power of making any law imposing a tax not mentioned in either of those Lists.

In India, there's something called as the Union List which enumerates powers which belong to the Union and there's something called as the State List which enumerates powers which belong to the States. And then there's something called as the Concurrent List which enumerates powers which belong to both the Union and the States. And then there's Article 248 which basically says "if there's anything we forgot to include in any of the lists, that power belongs to the Union".

What this means is that all powers not granted to the states or the states-and-the-union actually default to the Union located at New Delhi which is too far away from the Indian People as a whole. Is this the best form of democracy known to man?

This is nothing but an artifact of the fact that the topmost priority for those who inherited British India was to ensure the unity of India which was in the hands of hundreds of kings and princes. That priority was established under the assumption that a handful Europeans could rule over hundreds of million Indians basically because the latter lacked unity (I'd say they lacked statesmanship and superiority in warfare and military strength; otherwise any one of those kings could have exterminated the Europeans in India).

But isn't it time we realized that "Here's mine, here's yours, and here's ours. The rest is mine." is actually the line of a colonial power? Isn't it time we understood what can truly strengthen India? Isn't it time we realized that it is best for India to reform itself into a true Federation of States? Isn't it time we understood the true meaning of Democracy?

Announcement: Symposium on Kannada Linguistics and Education on Feb 7th

2010-02-03T06:54:00.012+05:30

At Banavasi Balaga, we believe that education is crucial for development and that mother-tongue is the best medium of instruction. Hence, a correct study of Kannada as a language (the mother-tongue of Kannadigas), as well as the application of the learnings from that study to the Kannada-medium education system are the need of the hour.

Against this backdrop, Banavasi Balaga is organizing a Symposium on Kannada Linguistics and Education on 7/2/2010 in Bengaluru. Please note: This programme is for invitees only.

Background and objectives

In the last couple of decades, Kannada linguistics has undergone important changes. Many deep-rooted beliefs about the nature of Kannada have been subjected to scientific enquiry and a few proven as incorrect. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Kannada linguistics is now proceeding in a new direction – on a path bathed in the bright sunlight of science.

Importantly, grammarians have realized that it is unscientific to tweak the grammar of Sanskrit to try and fit it to Kannada. Instead, grammarians are now seeking to build a true grammar of Kannada. This true grammar of Kannada is not only an accurate-by-far description of Kannada, but also very easy to learn.

Similarly, linguists have now realized the unscientific nature of the now deep-rooted belief that new words can be added to Kannada only by coining them in Sanskrit. Instead, they are now understood the power of Ellarakannada (Everyone’s Kannada) as a source of new words. These words are not only easy to pronounce (for Kannadigas), but also easy to coin.

Also, research is being conducted on ways of improving the Kannada script in order to rid the language of spelling problems. Many linguists believe that a reformed Kannada script would help make teaching it to children easier.

While these scientific changes are happening in the field of Kannada linguistics, the Kannada-medium education system has almost entirely remained aloof from them. Hence, teachers and text-book writers are facing a lot of difficulty in teaching the nature of Kannada, in coining new terms of Science and Technology, as well as in teaching to write Kannada. Many linguists and educationists are of the opinion that these impediments are inhibiting the growth of the coverage and quality of education in the Kannada medium.

We believe that the need of the hour is for people from these two fields – linguistics and education – to come together and discuss ways of improving the status quo. Thus, the first and foremost objective of this Symposium is to arrange for some of the most important people in these two fields to get together under the same roof. Discussions need to happen about the output of research in linguistics and its application to education. Also, discussions need to happen about the changes which need to be made to the Kannada medium education system and the role of linguists therein. These discussions can help set priorities for future work in both fields. To make these discussions happen is the second objective of this Symposium. We have arranged four lectures from senior workers in this field.

Speakers and commentators

Speakers

Nadoja Dr. D. N. Shankar Bhat, Retd. Professor of linguistics, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, Karnataka.
Dr. N. S. Raghunath, Retd. Head of the Department of English, Regional College of Education, Mysore, Karnataka.
Dr. K. V. Narayana, Retd. Professor of Kannada, Hampi Kannada University, Hampi, Karnataka.
Dr. S. N. Sridhar, Professor of linguistics, Linguistics Department. Stony Brook University, New York, USA.

Commentators

Dr. B. P. Hemananda, Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Dravidian and Computational Linguistics, Dravidian University, Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh
Dr. Niranjan Uppoor, Research Fellow in Linguistics, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
Dr. V. B. Tarakeshwar, Professor and Head, Translations Department, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Dr. Panduranga Babu, Professor of Linguistics, Department of Kannada Language Studies, Hampi Kannada University, Hampi, Karnataka.
Smt. P. Bharati Devi, Kannada lecturer, Govt. Women’s Degree College, Mandya, Karnataka
Dr. Shivaram Padikkal, Professor, CALTS, Hyderabad University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Dr. C. S. Ramachandra, Professor of Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, and Director of Prasaranga, Mysore University, Mysore, Karnataka
Dr. P. Mahadevaiah, Reader in Linguistics, Hampi Kannada University, Hampi, Karnataka
Dr. Vikram Visaji, Kannada lecturer, Pre-University Center, Gulbarga University, Raichur, Karnataka
Sri. C. P. Nagaraj, Retd. Head of the department of Kannada, K M Doddi, Mandya, Karnataka
Dr. Mahabaleshwar Rao, Principal, TMA Pai College of Education, Kunjebettu, Udupi, Karnataka
Dr. D. Jagannatha Rao, Retd Director, DSERT, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Sri V. P. Niranjana Aradhya, Reader, National Law College, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Sri S. Sampangi, Retd. Director of Public Instruction, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Sri T. M. Kumar, Retd Director of Public Instruction, Bengaluru, Karnataka

We are happy to announce that the Dravidian University, Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh, as well as Bandara Prakashana, Maski, Karnataka are helping us organize this Symposium.

For further details, visit http://banavasibalaga.org/index_en.html

Please note: This programme is for invitees only

Okay, we got here. Now what?

2010-02-02T07:08:00.001+05:30

What Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar wrote in his article Don't Teach English to Your Children in Class 1 is something we have been advocating for here at the Banavasi Balaga from a very long time. It's just unscientific, nay criminal to throw away one's mother-tongue thinking English can replace it.

Although Mr. Aiyar doesn't talk about it, the first thing that must strike even the most superficial reader of his article is that the entire English-medium private-school system in India discards the science of education by teaching English and teaching in English from (why Class 1) even the Kindergarten stage! What's worse, many even refuse to teach the mother-tongue already in Kindergarten!

I have grown up hearing about and being in English-medium private-schools which punish children who utter a word in Kannada, and now my son continues to be tortured by such an English-medium Kindergarten (from which he will be rescued shortly and put into a private Kannada-medium school). Of course, I don't mean that the English-medium schools do it knowingly; in their heart of hearts, they think they're doing the right thing by neglecting Kannada and promoting English. That's the problem.

It takes a lot of energy and money to build up a human settlement in Antarctica, and a lot more to sustain it. It takes throwing away basic commonsense which asks you not to go there. Only a handful who can spend that much energy and money ultimately end up being able to do that. What about the rest?

It takes a lot of energy and money to educate children in English-medium land, and a lot more to sustain it. It takes throwing away basic commonsense which asks you not to go there. Only a handful who can spend that much energy and money ultimately end up being able to do that. What about the rest?

It's not even fun out there in the cold with nobody around, and everything all white and bland and colourless and lifeless. But let's admit it - we all got there thinking of it as a great human feat. Okay we've accomplished that feat. Now what?

What about all our brothers and sisters back home, that far away place where people still continue to languish in ignorance and poverty, they who together with us were born on this earth speaking that beautiful, melodious, honey-like tongue called Kannada?

Welcome to Banavasi Balaga.

Swaminathan Aiyar on Mother-Tongue Education

2010-02-01T09:12:00.003+05:30

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar writes in the Economic Times:

DON'T TEACH ENGLISH TO YOUR CHILDREN IN CLASS I

A recent news report highlighted the fact that only 48.3% of Indian children in Class 1 could read the English alphabet, even in big capital letters.

The annual education audit by the NGO Pratham showed that Gujarat had the worst record: only 25.3% of Gujarati children could read capital letters in English, and only 8% could read English sentences. To rectify this, and join the globalisation bandwagon, the Gujarat government proposes to teach English in Class 1. Other states are making similar moves.

Yet this is an error. Global research shows that children should learn reading and writing in their mother tongue first. Only after they can read fluently at a minimum of 45-60 words per minute can they absorb what they are reading. Such fluency is most easily achieved in the mother tongue. Once that is established, learning a second language becomes much easier.

Premature teaching of a second language - like English - can prevent a child from learning to read fast enough in its mother tongue. Early reading and writing is vital: children that cannot do so fluently by Class 2 will likely never catch up with classmates in higher classes.

These insights flow from research on the neurological foundations of learning. In “Efficient Learning for the Poor: Insights From the Frontier of Cognitive Neurosceience”, educationalist Helen Abadzi shows that human short-term memory works well for up to 12 seconds. So, within 12 seconds, a person should be able to read a sentence (or complete grammatical unit), process its meaning, and classify and file it within his or her mental library (what experts call “cognitive networks”).

In a separate work, Abadzi writes “people must be able to read one word per second, or per 1.5 seconds at the outside, to be functional readers. If they read more slowly than that, they find that they have forgotten the beginning of their sentence by the time they reach the end.” Children struggle to decode letters of a new language. If they cannot read fast enough, then all their mental attention is taken up in decoding the letters, and no attention is left for grasping the meaning of the text.

If a child cannot read quickly, it cannot follow what textbooks or teachers are conveying. All schooling can bypass such children. They can spend eight years in school and remain functionally illiterate. This, alas, is common in India.

This is not an argument against learning two or three languages. Indeed, children under 8 earn new languages most easily. But research shows that proficiency in one language makes it easier to master a second. Learning the first language expands the cognitive networks of a child’s mind, making it easier to grasp the same concepts in a second language.

Rich children with pre-school education enter school with a vocabulary of 3,000 words, but poor children may have a vocabulary of just 500 words. So, poor children already struggle to keep up in Class 1. Their struggles can become intolerable if they have to learn a second language.

Abadzi recounts an experiment from Zambia. Initially, children were taught both English and the local language from class1. In an experiment, some schools taught only oral reading in Class 1 and English writing from class 2. The results were astounding. Earlier, reading scores of children were on average two grades less than the standard benchmark in English, and three grades lower in the local language. But once English was introduced at a later stage, reading and writing scores shot up 575% above the benchmark in class 1, 2,417% higher in Class 2, and 3,300 % higher in class 3. Scores in the local language showed similar upward leaps. The system was then extended to all schools in Zambia.

This holds a lesson for India. English skills are undoubtedly important, and give us a big edge over China. Poor parents are keenly aware that English language skills improve earning ability, and so many have switched their children from government schools to private schools claiming to teach in the English medium.

Gujarati parents say, “My child already speaks Gujarati: why teach that again in school? Why not English?” That logic sounds impeccable, but is mistaken. Once a child has become good in Gujarati, it will more easily become proficient in English. The issue is not one of Gujarati versus English. Rather, good Gujarati is a sound foundation for good English.

Faced with half-empty classrooms in government schools, some state governments plan to introduce English from class 1 to win back students. That would be a serious error.

English is important. But even more important is reading and writing in your mother tongue.

I'm still hoping for a day on which educationists and policy makers realize this and hold it close to their hearts...

On Gandhi's Litmus Test and Kannada

2010-01-30T09:40:00.003+05:30

"Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him."
- M. K. Gandhi

Indeed, focusing on Kannada as the cornerstone of Kannadiga development (and similarly on other Indian languages as the cornerstones of the development of speakers of those respective languages) continues to pass Gandhi's litmus test above.

Also, considering (either explicitly or implicitly) any language other than Kannada as central to Kannadiga development continues to fail the test.

No wonder Gandhi himself was a very strong proponent of the development of Indian languages (specifically in education).

Today is Martyrs' Day, the day on which M. K. Gandhi was assassinated.

When calling twice as twice is not quite enough

2010-01-29T23:14:00.000+05:30

This ad caught my eye as the height of Sanskritization. Why dvigun'i'kruta instead of immad'i? I can think of no reason other than the inability to realize that Kannada is now being used for purposes other than getting a pat or two from Sanskrit poets.

It's none of your business, Minister!

2010-01-25T13:16:00.003+05:30

As if proof were required that the Karnataka government does not even possess a clear stream of reason which can be accused of losing its way into the dreary desert storm of dead habit, Karnataka's Primary and Secondary Education minister Vishweshwara Hegde Kageri has come out with fresh nonsense about setting up a Sanskrit university in Karnataka. The minister delivered the following message to Sanskrit students and promised more funds for Sanskrit:

“Fight against the injustice being done to Sanskrit and send a strong message against those opposing the university. If we do not, then we would be overlooking the language,”

Note how glibly Kannadigas are accused of doing injustice to Sanskrit, while it (a northern language) has actually been patronized a lot more in Karnataka than anywhere else in South India. After all, what's the big deal if Kannadigas overlook a language which is not local to Karnataka, one which is not spoken in Karnataka, one which exists only in scriptures?

Indeed, why would anybody overlook any language? It is only when that language is perceived to be useless to them, and when it is not their own. Thus, the overlooking of Sanskrit is not due to any concerted effort of an assumed organized opposition but is simply the by-product of Kannadigas' identity and their focus on secular pursuits. If Sanskrit had had what it takes, it would have been where the minister likes it to be.

There are a thousand other languages which Karnataka overlooks, for the reasons above. We can't go on building universities for all those languages, can we?

Truth be told, Mr. Kageri's government in its asinine focus on Sanskrit is overlooking what is a crime to overlook: Kannada, the language of Kannadigas whom his government is expected to represent!

Being the state government of Karnataka, the BJP government's first and foremost focus ought to have been Kannada and not Sanskrit. Sanskrit is merely a language which influenced religious and spiritual literature in Kannada long ago, with negligible influence on the Kannada used for any secular pursuit - such as plain day-to-day usage!

Since democratically elected governments are expected to indulge in secular works such as education, employment, law and order, one expects the government of Karnataka to invest public money in secular projects such as Kannada linguistics - a field which has suffered just too much neglect in the universities of Karnataka. Not siphon off public money to fund private, non-secular and useless pet projects such as Sanskrit universities whose graduates will at best be left dreaming of jobs for which they don't qualify, as if in punishment for having studied a language irrelevant for secular pursuits.

Also, I'd like to remind the minister that Sanskrit has nothing to do with Karnataka's Primary or Secondary education. It's none of your business, Minister! Listen very carefully: it does not take a Sanskrit university to do your job well. In fact, when you talk about a Sanskrit university, you make it public that you have no clue of what your job entails, dear Minister!

Of all things, Primary and Secondary education must be freed from the ills of over-sanskritization, because it is in the early stages of a student's development that his/her mother-tongue plays the most important role. In fact, today's Kannada medium education system is so full of Sanskrit that it has rendered the Kannada medium difficult to Kannadigas themselves (take Vasant's challenge here).

If there is anything the minister has to do, it is to first acquire a clear stream of reason unpolluted by non-secular ideologies, and then to fund research into improving the quality of the Kannada medium education system by taking it closer to the people, not away from.

That would require the courage to question and jettison established superstitions - such as the superstition that Sanskrit can help in the upliftment of Kannada or Kannadigas. It's obvious that Mr. Kageri or his government or his party or its alma-mater (RSS) have no such intentions, because by neglecting Kannada they have shown that it is Kannada which they consider as useless to them, and as not their own.

If 1,00,000 < 328, the English Media is Right

2010-01-11T10:00:00.013+05:30

It's a pity our friends in the English media have become such baavi kappegal* that they assume that the English Medium CBSE education system is equivalent to the nation's education system, as Vineeta Pandey assumes in her DNA story here. So let's have the the data speak for itself.

According to the 2008-9 CBSE Annual Report, there are only 328 CBSE schools in Karnataka (see pg. 113). Contrast this with the more than 1 lakh schools affiliated to the Karnataka State Department of Education, and it's easy to see how wrong the English media is. In Karnataka, Kannada medium schools attract 82% of the total number of schoolchildren, and 77% of all the schools in Karnataka are directly run by the Govt. of Karnataka (a further 6% run from Govt. aid). Only 8% schoolchildren go to English medium schools in Karnataka.

(click on picture for a high-res graphic)

The above makes it clear that the Central Government plays no significant role in the education system of Karnataka. Nor do English medium schools, nor does the CBSE board, nor do private schools in general. This is the story of pretty much every other state of India, too. Hence, the nation's education system is everything but what the English media tells you it is!

Can someone tell me what makes the English media believe that 1,00,000 is less than 328? How did 328 come to define the nation's education system and how did 1,00,000 come to be neglected in the nation's education system?

Is this only arithmetic dysfunction or the propaganda of an unholy nexus? Or is this just a case of what the English media prefers were the case because CBSE schools are basically English medium schools whose children would tend to read English newspapers which they sell? In any case, shall we request that data be considered holier?

*Note: baavi = well, kappegalu = frogs (I've eliminated the usual "u" from "kappegalu" so that "kappegal" and the next word "that" can form a Kannada-English sandhi, making it easier to read, as happens in Kannada speech). The term baavi kappegalu connotes frogs in the well which believe that the well is all there is to the world.

V. P. Menon on British role in political consolidation of India

2010-01-04T09:53:00.000+05:30

Perhaps the most definitive answer to those who claim that India was politically united from time immemorial comes from none other than V. P. Menon who was considered the "right hand" of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The two gentlemen were tasked with the herculean task of the political integration of India after independence from the British. Mr. Menon writes in the very first paragraph of the very first chapter of his 1956 book Integration of the Indian States:

India is one geographical entity. Yet, throughout her long and chequered history, she never achieved political homegeneity.

Mr. Menon then goes on to state how sporadic-but-ultimately-futile attempts were made in history to bring under a single ruler a large part of what the British left behind. The author surprisingly mentions only kings from North India, forgetting efforts of Kannadiga kings like Pulakeshi II and kingdoms like the Rashtrakutas whose conquests of India were no less great or geographically spread out, but that is not my point here.

Mr. Menon also points out that if it weren't for the political unification of India achieved by the British, the peaceful unification of the princely states could have hardly happened:

No greater achievement can be credited to the British than that they brought about India's enduring political consolidation. But for this accomplishment and the rise of national consciousness in its wake, the Government of Free India could hardly have taken the final step of bringing about the peaceful integration of the princely States. Today, for the first time in the country's history, the writ of a single central Government runs from Kailas to Kanyakumari, from Kathiawar to Kamarupa (the old name of Assam).

Note that Mr. Menon also points out that the very concept of "national conciousness" arose due to the political consolidation of India by the British.

Isn't it time Indians realized the fact that the diversity and true history of India cannot be wished away or hidden under the carpet for long? Truth always asserts itself. The diverse linguistic peoples of India will ultimately assert their identity and right to power and the need for less and less power at the center. We already see it happening in many states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Assam. It is in paving the way for a peaceful re-structuring of India as a true federation of states that the unity and integrity of India can be safeguarded. It is in this that the future of India as a true world-power lies.

Telangana: it's on, it's off; it's on, it's off; it's...

2009-12-24T08:46:00.000+05:30

Sure enough, the Govt. of India has put the formation of a new Telangana state on cold storage. Of course, the new move is not motivated by a sudden stroke of realization of the cost of politically bifurcating the Telugus, but because of more political nonsense. P. Chidambaram announced yesterday that the new move is motivated by new developments after the announcement to create a new state was made:

At an all-party meeting on December 7, 2009, convened by chief minister K Rosaiah consensus emerged on Telangana. A statement was made on December 9 on behalf of the government of India on receipt of the minutes of the meeting. After the meeting, the situation in Andhra Pradesh has altered. A large number of political parties are divided and there is need to hold wide-ranging consultations with all parties and groups. The government of India will take steps to involve all concerned in the process.

Now, what developments can happen in two weeks which can decide the fate of 76 million people either this way or that way, other than the vulgar noises of petty politicians working out the net impact to their pockets and high-commands working out the net impact to their political domination in the two possible scenarios? It's good that political parties are divided on the issue of Telangana. But are they divided for the right reasons? The answer is an emphatic no.

Sometimes, out of a sheer quirk of fate, the actions of the Unreasonable tend to carry a tinge of Reason. But we know that this is not the dawn of Reason; this is but an illustration of the fact that the more divided the Unreasonable are, the less the chance of Unreason prevailing. What is most frightening is that the fate of the Telugus is so precariously positioned in the hands of such Unreasonable people. It could swing either way for no Reason!

The educational cost of political bifurcation

2009-12-20T10:01:00.003+05:30

I have said much of what there is to be said about the political nonsense at play behind the call for a new Telangana state. But what continues to intrigue me is that there are some people who spread the superstition that having the northern districts of Andhra Pradesh report directly to the Indian Parliament (by way of forming a new state called Telangana) instead of the Andhra Pradesh State Assembly is a method of increasing the pace of economic development of the people therein. One wonders why they don’t take that argument to its logical next step and say that it’s even better for those districts to report directly to the United Nations by way of declaring them as a new country!

In reality, the political bifurcation of the Telugu people has a strict long-term negative impact on the economic development of Telugu people as a whole (yes, I mean not just of the people of Telangana, but of all the people of undivided Andhra Pradesh). To understand why, one needs to pay due respect to the most important ingredient of economic development of any people – that long forgotten ingredient called education, and to the long forgotten fact that education of the Telugu people is best conducted in the Telugu language. I will, perhaps, repeat this truth about the importance of education and the role of the mother-tongue therein unto my last, because truth is the only thing which is worth repeating, the only thing whose repetition does not strain the repeater.

In short, my point is that the proposed political bifurcation of the Telugus has a net negative impact on the education of the Telugu people – something which will hurt the economic progress of the Telugu people in the long run.

To appreciate the truth behind this rather convoluted-looking claim, readers must pay attention to the fact that the state is the most important actor in the education sector of Andhra Pradesh (and of every other Indian state too, including Karnataka). That is, there are no non-state actors who play any significant role in the education of the Telugu people. It’s the state which runs more than 80% of schools in Andhra Pradesh. It is the state which runs almost all the Telugu medium schools in Andhra Pradesh (the only medium of instruction which bears any promise for the future). It is the state which runs any schools in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh – areas from which private schools are repelled.

Languages being what they are, Telugu is spread out as different dialects over what is known as Andhra Pradesh today. Thus, the Telugu spoken in the northern districts of Andhra Pradesh is simultaneously similar to and different from the Telugu spoken in, say, the coastal districts. Linguists and educationists who are firmly rooted in the truth that mother-tongue education is best know that this internal diversity is a very important asset of the Telugu people as a whole. This diversity is the most important raw material for the development of each dialect as the language of science and technology, of all higher learning. It is therefore the most important raw material for the educational and consequently the economic development of the speakers of every dialect of Telugu. Thus, the northern dialects spoken in Telangana have much to learn from the southern ones in Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema, and vice versa. What do they have to learn? Each has to learn from the other words, the ways of combining them, the ways of coining new ones, the true grammar of the Telugu language, etc., etc. In Indian states, as in France and Israel, these things related to language are the responsibility of the state. Now this fact is not appreciated by “less government” freaks whose ideology emanates out of large linguistic deserts such as the United States of America. It is very harmful for Indians to forget that this great responsibility lies with the state. I will be happy to withdraw this statement on the day someone can show me a single non-state institution which takes up these tasks and is able to sustain itself. But what I can tell you is that this is not going to happen in Indian states for long, and there will be no need to withdraw this statement for a long time to come – atleast not for the next 200 years.

The foregoing being the importance of the internal diversity of the Telugu language and the responsibility of the state in the development of the language, the consequences of a political bifurcation should be easy to understand: with two different states, the prospects of the Telangana dialects learning from the Coastal and Rayalaseema dialects and vice-versa will be significantly harmed. The very idea of bifurcation is rooted in the destructive belief that the Telugu language, its diversity, the burning need for the diverse dialects to “work with each other” in the synthesis of a new-age Telugu, the development of Telugu as the language of higher learning, and very importantly, the role of the state in these matters – are all of no importance. It is rooted in the feeling that the very identity of the Telugu people is unimportant. It is rooted in the utterly false belief that a divided people are better than a united people (if this is true, why should India not disintegrate into dozens of different countries?). Political bifurcation will bring about all that; it will ensure that the Telugu language remains unimportant, that the education of the Telugus will leave much to be desired forever, that the economic situation of the Telugus remains in a sorry state forever.

The problem is, nobody is paying attention to these facts of crucial importance. Many even claim that the only support for an undivided Andhra Pradesh comes from purely political and irrational quarters. At Banavasi Balaga, we beg to differ. It is support for bifurcation which stems from purely political and irrational quarters, and to them we’d like to say “Welcome to the science of language, education and economic progress”.

BREAKING NEWS: New Delhi to divide and rule the Telugus

2009-12-10T07:14:00.012+05:30

Today is a dark day for the Telugu people, for democracy, for federalism, for India, for everything that is good.

Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram announced shortly after midnight (that is, early this morning) that "the process of formation of Telangana would be initiated by moving a resolution in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly".

While the two-tongued project this new state as a democratic aspiration of the people of Telangana, it should be clear to the sane that it is none of that crap. All this is nothing but one deplorable political drama, complete with fasting and restraint from shaving, enacted by power-hungry politicians. Okay, one saint called K. Chandrashekhar Rao who will soon return to his humble hut and resume his spiritual ascent to Nirvana coupled with sublime spiritual teachings, and whose death by any other means is a great loss for mankind as a whole.

The sane should not forget that after all, a shorter route to New Delhi is not a means to economic progress. The density of politicians in an area does not determine the economic growth of a people. Yet, this is what Telangana is going to become.

Of course, thanks to the existence of this thing called India, no artificial trade or cultural barriers will be set-up between the Telugu people in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh; only a new set of power-mongers will get to suck Telangana dry. Telugus will still be able to move freely between the two states, and engage in peacetime activities as ever before.

The real means of economic progress of the Telugus - whether they're in Telangana or in Andhra Pradesh - do not involve politicians having no means at their disposal but to beg funds from New Delhi with the agenda of filling their own coffers. New Delhi is no bottomless pit of wealth either. The real means involve things such as education. And again, this education has to be based on the Telugu language to achieve any decent success. That is something neither the earlier nor the new political structure is poised to deliver.

The creation of this new state is also a blow to the evolution of India as a true democracy - which is to become a truly federal country. The more divided the people are, the easier for the center to rule - yeah, it's the old British trick of divide and rule. To political parties at the center (especially the BJP), a divided Telugu people are easier to govern. After all, the Telangana state is being created on the basis that New Delhi shall adopt the tens of millions of Telugus in poverty, right? Beggars can't be choosers; those who have begged for a Telangana state neither have the right nor the ability to choose the right means of development of the Telugu people therein - of which foremost is the erection of the Telugu language as the single most important development tool. Instead, the Union government will be happy to intensify Hindi Imposition and do everything to retain the Telugus of Telangana as impoverished as possible in order that a strong center can continue to be. This fits in nicely with the anti-federal stance of the BJP, and the pro-strong-center stance of the Congress.

Everybody - meaning every politician - gains from Telangana. It is only tens of millions of Telugus who lose. Ah - who cares a shit?

One and only one thing can save the Telugus from being wiped off the face of this planet, amidst the devil of their own corrupt political class which has just made a copy of itself and the deep sea of a strong center at New Delhi. And that is for the Telugu people to organize themselves outside the twin political harems - one in Andhra Pradesh and one in Telangana - and work out the real means of economic progress of the Telugu people. The Telugus are one people irrespective of the political trafficking, the political dealings which corrupt, ignorant, spineless, double-tongued, power-hungry politicians work out.

May reason reign in the Telugu people! May they realize that a divided Telugu people are a weaker Telugu people! May they realize that a divided Telugu people are smaller, easier-to-eat morsels for New Delhi! May they realize that these slimy politicians cannot bring them anything but more poverty! May they realize that real education is the only way out, and that these spineless creatures cannot bring them that!

Photo courtesy: The Hindu

India's role at Copenhagen

2009-12-09T18:53:00.009+05:30

Returning to the issue of Climate Change, there are clearly two scientist camps: the first one believes human activity causes global warming, and the second one doesn't (and even accuses the first camp of data manipulation in its simulation models). There is a seemingly never-ending controversy between these two schools of thought.

On the other hand, there are two political camps, too. The first camp is led by Washington DC which has succeeded in creating a global hysteria about Climate Change based on its domestic agenda to create 5 million "green energy" US jobs "which cannot be outsourced". The second camp is led by libertarian institutes such as the CATO institute and the Reason Foundation (both US-based) which allege that Washington DC is simply fooling the world in order to walk away with 15 billion dollars of yearly taxpayer revenue and thereby violating their liberty.

It is trivial to guess which scientific camp is funded by Washington DC, and which one has libertarian friends coming over for dinner in the upcoming year-end holiday season.

So what is the right way for India to decide on the issue of Climate Change when US scientists and US political pundits are divided on the question, and there is no credible Indian scientific consensus on the issue (a consensus not funded by Washington DC either directly or indirectly)? We haven't heard of our universities doing any significant independent research on this issue and having reached a conclusion, after all.

To me, it is very clear that there is no credible data which shows either that climate change is happening due to human activity, or that it is not (although my personal bias lies in the former, due to my own simplistic understanding of the world). Thus, India's stand cannot be based on data. Nor is there a credible interpretation of existing data which can lead to the facts. Thus, both pratyaksha and anumaana are ruled out as valid sources of information.

The only thing which remains is aagama, as per Indian philosophy. And what does aagama tell you? It tells you that unquenched thirst for material possessions is inherently bad; it tells you that it is inherently a-spiritual. Whether economic progress is a zero-sum game as I assumed in my first article, or not, unquenched thirst for material possessions leads man away from spiritual achievement. Thus, there is no doubt whatsoever that the message from the greatest sages that have lived in India is for the developed world to exercise self-restraint in its mad rush to achieve greater and greater material prosperity. After all, life is not just about material.

Now, this sermon ought to be given to the developed nations led by Washington DC, and not to the poor and developing nations where the basic necessities of life are beyond the reach of billions of people. The poor and developing nations should sternly maintain the stance that it is their right to achieve economic development, even at the cost of creating global climate change as alleged by the first school of scientists alluded to above. If it is true that the developed countries have a true concern for the safety of this planet, and if it is true that economic development is a zero-sum game, there is no other option but for the developed nations to reduce their own economic activity, i.e., move towards sufficiency in economic activity and material possessions.

So, must India accept Washington-funded science and Washington-driven actions? Of course, not. India should unconditionally put its foot down on any emission cuts (either legally binding or otherwise), since there is no credible data based on which it is being asked to reduce emissions. Readers will notice that this unconditionality is a change of stance on Karnatique. I had earlier argued that developing countries

cannot and must not cut carbon emission unless they are compensated in time and money by those who have overtaken them in economic development and goad them with greed of material prosperity

But I have come to believe that it is next to impossible for any equitable compensation to be worked out between the haves and the have-nots at Copenhagen. The negotiations can only prove, once again, that "might is right". After all, nobody is even questioning whether this whole hue and cry about human activity causing climate change is true! Developing countries have already lost in the negotiations by buying the argument that the theory is true - based on what is claimed as gospel truth by scientists funded by the well-fed nations!

Further, India must, as I have argued earlier, take up the task of delivering the message of our aagamas that in sufficiency lies the good of the people of those developed nations; the developed nations will not collapse if they restrain their thirst for material possessions; happiness is not present in them, it is achievable through sciences which have been long perfected in India. India should, simultaneously, argue for the developing nations to freely excercise their right to economic development without worrying about the alleged global climate change. The onus is on those who created the mess, if any, to clean it up.

The cost of keeping Hindi alive

2009-12-06T07:54:00.001+05:30

From an article in the Times of India on Dec 5, 2009:

This year, the budget allocated [to the Department of Official Language] is nearly Rs 36 crore. In comparison, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, which does work that impacts the health of millions, gets Rs 25 crore.

To be fair, the DOL (dedicated to spreading Hindi where it won't either by natural selection or survival of the fittest) also impacts the health of millions - nay, hundreds of millions - but the problem is, it affects them negatively, while the NICD affects them positively!

Emissions Cuts Would Cost India Dearly : WSJ

2009-12-04T10:53:00.011+05:30

From the time of writing my first article on this issue of climate change to now, things have already changed. Jairam Ramesh announced yesterday that India will initiate steps to reduce CO2 emissions, "tellingly" hinting at opening up India for inspectors checking India's compliance to its own emission cut proposals. This is a clear departure from treating this as a domestic issue.

Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation writing on the Wall Street Journal argues that India is making a mistake by committing to emission cuts (bold mine):

The current policy, called Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, in some ways is a declaration of India's independence on climate change. It essentially tells the world that India will undertake mitigation efforts if and when it is in its self-interest. The proposed new policy, dubbed Nationally Accountable Mitigation Outcomes, is something completely different. It would commit India to developing a mitigation plan right away. The plan would be enforced by domestic law but Mr. Ramesh—tellingly—wants to submit the emissions reports generated for international scrutiny every two years. This could well become a prelude to India eventually joining a global emissions regime.

Even worse, the new regime would unleash Byzantine new regulations on the country, from new energy efficiency standards in building codes to new fuel economy standards for vehicles. India would have to obtain 20% of its energy from renewable sources—wind, solar and small hydroelectric power—compared to 8% now. Given that these sources are typically far more expensive than fossil fuels, this would mean putting Indians, 40% of whom don't even have access to electricity, on an even stricter energy diet. The increased expense will put homes, air conditioning and cars out of reach of more Indians—all of which will make them, especially the poor, less able to withstand floods, heat waves and other dire effects of global warming should they ever materialize.

The resulting emission cuts won't even make a dent in global temperatures. India's per capita energy consumption is 15 times less than America's and half of China's—the two biggest polluters. To be sure, President Obama is poised to pledge to cut U.S. carbon emissions 80% below 2005 by 2050 at Copenhagen. But it's an empty promise because there is little to zero chance that he will be able to get Congress to go along. China too announced plans—modest by all accounts—to curb its emissions. So India will certainly face pressure at the conference to act, despite the fact that bigger polluters won't.

But as a developing country, India can least afford to give up its right to consume as much energy as is necessary to deliver all Indians a living standard comparable to the one that rich countries take for granted. There is every reason to believe that the new License Raj will damage India's economy every bit as much as the old one in the preliberalization days, when India's growth rate remained stuck at around 2%. This would be unfortunate at any time, but especially now, when the West itself is in the middle of a huge rethinking on this issue.

Of course, as Ms. Dalmia points out, India can simply not afford to give up its right to consume as much energy as it deems necessary. Given the fact that it is India in which sufficiency is the rule (unlike the uncontrolled quest for material comfort in the west), I can declare that India will not become a threat to global climate simply based on the fact that not a few of the world's greatest spiritual thinkers have treaded on Indian soil.

I am convinced that all this is simply proving that "might is right". If only India had the guts to stand up, like Mahatma Gandhi did in the Round Table Conference at London in 1931 wearing little more than a loincloth, and deliver the message that sufficiency is the cure for the problems of this planet, not efficiency! That India which so prides itself to be the spiritual teacher of the world is today succumbing to pressure from the mighty. What a pity!

What if the theory of global warming is all false?

2009-12-02T08:32:00.057+05:30

What if, as people like Patrick J. Michaels believe, the whole theory of global warming is all false and therefore the global economy being a zero-sum game is incorrect? Simple: the conference at Copenhagen should be declared null and void. But there are no signs of the conference being declared null and void any time soon. Hence, in this article I analyze the case where the theory is untrue and unscientific, but the conference is held anyway, with no player questioning the validity of the theory itself (for reasons best known to them). The case where the theory is true and scientific and where the conference is held (the likely one in my opinion, for what my opinion is worth) was analyzed in the previous article.

In this new case, I would state the obvious that it's even more criminal to impose emission cuts on developing countries. What should developing countries such as India do in this new case? The same thing as they should in the first case: they cannot and must not cut carbon emission unless they are compensated in time and money by those who have overtaken them in economic development and goad them with greed of material prosperity, since they are not even at the level of sufficiency. After all, why should anybody not maintain that feeding the hungry today is infinitely more important than the safety of this planet? Why should developing states waste time and money on cutting down carbon emission when that time and that money is better invested in economic development? That is, why should developing countries also not continue to further their own self-interests and expect Adam Smith's invisible-hand to take care of the planet?

All this is proof that matters such as the safety of the planet cannot be decided entirely on self-interest driven invisible-hand thinking. There is such a thing called ethics, and there is such a thing called as yagna, there is such a thing called as sufficiency, and there is such a thing called as principles. It is these that anybody discussing about the safety of the planet needs to base his or her arguments on.

And by the way, if you're thinking why we're talking about climate change on KARNATIQUE, the answer is: this is the world in which Kannadigas live. This is the world in which Kannadigas need to live. This is the world in which Kannadigas need to emerge winners. We cannot and must not accept the false philosophies of errant states intoxicated with material comfort - even if our bodies are emaciated with hunger. We need to stand for the truth even if the opponent is the mightiest of them all.

O Copenhagen!

2009-11-30T20:34:00.032+05:30

I've been paying close attention to the political noises being made by heads of state in relation to climate change in the run up to "Copenhagen" (or the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held from 7th - 18th December 2009), and to say the least, the behavior of the developed countries led by the United States of America hurts me deeply.

(Cartoon courtesy: Sunita Narain)

As if to openly advertise the lie that with material wealth comes spiritual knowledge, an attempt is being made by those errant states to teach ethics to India - like the ethics of physical restraint taught by a chronic rapist. Fortunately, India's response to the vulgar requests made by the USA remains praiseworthy at the time of writing this article.

Reading about this whole issue, I learnt that the unquenchable thirst for material comfort of the developed nations of this world (the foremost among them being the United States of America) has finally started hitting back at them. That greed has so destroyed the world's environment by pumping so much Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into the air that the resultant global warming is threatening to create worldwide floods, hurricanes, loss of rainwater, famines and other calamities which one can no longer describe as natural. In fact, a new term has been coined to describe it all: climate change.

Scientists agree that economic development is an exothermic process: apparently, nobody has devised a way of becoming richer or increasing one's material comfort without heating up the environment. If you made yourself happy today by increasing your material possessions, you have done your part in heating up the world. As an aside, while burning fossil fuels (or to be more clear, running all those gas-guzzling cars in the USA) is known to be the single most important reason for global warming, I wonder if the human feeling of happiness derived out of material possessions is itself exothermic in nature (not counting the increase in temperature due to environmental changes). It would be an interesting piece of scientific information which has important spiritual connotations. But I digress.

Since the greedy nations of this world have already dumped sufficient CO2 into the environment to make themselves hurriedly arrange for conferences such as Copenhagen early next month with no real persuasion from the rest of the world, I cannot but conclude that hidden in their environmental research labs must lie estimates of serious catastrophes looming large on their own countries very soon. I suspect that scientists in the USA have fine-grain estimates of which US cities will be hit by how many floods and hurricanes in the next century, and undeniable scientific evidence that global warming is at the root of all this. I have no doubt whatsoever that it's Adam Smith's invisible hand and not the milk of human kindness which is making US President Barack Obama make statements about the well-being of the entire world. The problem, of course, is that the action of the invisible hand got so delayed that it has become anathema to both parties - the developed and developing countries. Harsh truths learnt the hard way!

So in summary, it appears that the world can take only a finite amount of material progress, for there can only be a finite amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere without burning up the planet. The USAs of the world have already taken such a big share of this pie that there's not much room for developing countries like India to do their 'developing' - not if this developing is done using any known methods of developing - which involve heating up the planet!

In such a situation, what is the position taken by developed countries? In the words of Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi,

The US’ intentions are not good for the climate. It has proposed the following: first, it will not take international commitments, but follow a domestic legislation route. So, it will act on emission targets legislated nationally. Second, the amount it will cut is nowhere close to what is required of it. The global consensus is industrialized countries need to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 40 per cent over 1990 levels, to avert a 2C rise in temperature. But the US, after much fanfare on its Nobel-awarded president, has proposed a puny target of cutting 20 per cent over 2005 emission levels by 2020. This country’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 16 per cent between 1990 and 2005. Thus, it is saying it plans to do practically nothing but stabilize by 2020. Nothing to cut its gargantuan emission share—with some 5 per cent of the world’s people, it emits currently 18 per cent of global emissions. Forget, even, that this single country is responsible for 30 per cent of the global stock of emissions in the atmosphere. Criminal, when you think of the impact of climate change on the poor of the world.

Third, this puny target includes a huge amount of emission credits it will ‘buy’ from developing countries as offsets. In sum, it will actually continue to increase its emissions till 2017, at the very least. Doubly criminal and deplorable. Finally, it has made it amply clear it will do this little bit only if China and India and other ‘polluting’ nations are with it in this grand cop-out plan.

Fortunately, Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister from Karnataka, is doing the right thing by putting his foot down on signing up for any legally binding emission cuts, although there have been some rumours about him yielding to pressure from the US. India should not yield to pressure from the US to cut down CO2 emissions. Actually, I'd like to see India take its famed role of the world's spiritual teacher at this time of need and pass on Sunita Narain's message that efficiency is useless if there's no sufficiency. This time India should take up its famed role, for those who have not the slightest authority are up to it now.

I believe the following shlokas from the Bhagavadgita (3.14, 3.15) throw light on what needs to be done here. Contact me for further discussion on how these shlokas are applicable in this context - I do not wish to spend too much time on them in this article.

ಅನ್ನಾದ್ಭವನ್ತಿ ಭೂತಾನಿ ಪರ್ಜನ್ಯಾದನ್ನಸಮ್ಭವಃ |
ಯಜ್ಞಾದ್ಭವತಿ ಪರ್ಜನ್ಯೋ ಯಜ್ಞಃ ಕರ್ಮ ಸಮುದ್ಭವಃ ||

ಕರ್ಮ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮೋದ್ಭವಂ ವಿದ್ಧಿ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಕ್ಷರಸಮುದ್ಭವಮ್ ||
ತಸ್ಮಾತ್ ಸರ್ವಗತಂ ಬ್ರಹ್ಮ ನಿತ್ಯಂ ಯಜ್ಞೇ ಪ್ರತಿಷ್ಠಿತಮ್ ||

From food emerge the beings, and from rain food |
From yagna emerges rain, and yagna from karma ||

Karma emerges from brahma, and brahma from akshara |
Thus the omnipresent brahma is forever found in yagna ||

O Copenhagen! Will reason reign on the diplomats coming to thee to decide the future of this planet?

For the confused few - a clarification on my use of Sanskrit

I can only pray for reason to dawn on those who are confused as to how I can quote a Sanskrit shloka and at the same time emphasize the need to reverse the trend to over-sanskritize Kannada. Sanskrit is good for what it is good for, not for what it isn't. Thus, I have no problem reading or quoting from Sanskrit texts where I need to, and simultaneously argue for removing Sanskrit's influence from where it doesn't belong - for example from Kannada grammar and in the indiscriminate coining of new Sanskrit words when it is both more sensible and easier to coin new Kannada words. And yes, the Tamils under the Dravidian Movement have erred by treating Sanskrit as untouchable. We should not make that mistake, of course. Sanskrit holds far too much wisdom for Kannadigas or anybody to ignore or reject.