INSTIGATING A CONTROVERSY.

Is it compulsory for every citizen of India to chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai"? Obviously it is not. As Asaduddin Owaisi, the ebullient and often provocative leader of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), says, this is not a condition called for in the Constitution. In that narrow, technical sense he is right. Yet, it is not the language and precise wording of that sentiment that is the only issue of relevance today. The Constitution obligates every citizen ("We, the People of India...") to a certain commitment to India - the nation, the country, the collective, the Republic, the civilisation, call it what you will, of which that Constitution is an embodiment. Some choose to express that commitment by using "Bharat Mata Ki Jai", a simple yet evocative phrase that has resonance for many thousands and millions of Indians and goes back to the freedom movement and the larger enterprise of nation-building under the Mahatma.

Others may prefer "Vande Mataram" or use the Urdu "Madre Watan" instead. Still others may offer their "Salaam" to "Sar Zameen-e-Hindustan", or use the pithy coinage of Subhash Chandra Bose: "Jai Hind". A younger generation may get goose pimples listening to A.R. Rehman's electrifying "Maa Tujhe Salaam..." - composed and sung for the fiftieth anniversary of Independence in 1997. There could be those who may not use any of these terms at all but still show their commitment to India and the Constitution by simply and silently doing what they do best - working hard, paying taxes and living honest lives. Each one is free to choose. Having said that, while that commitment to India and its Constitution may not expressly demand that one stand up each morning and chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" - or any of the other phrases mentioned above - does it give anyone the right to deliberately mock those for whom such an expression is dear, revered and deeply felt? That is the key question, the answer to which must put Mr. Owaisi in the dock. He has been egregiously offensive and has manufactured and instigated a controversy where none existed, as well as sought to design a denominational quarrel on an issue that doesn't bother most ordinary Muslims at all. His unstated implication, that to have citizens who may be Muslim say "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" is an insidious attempt to force idol worship on them, is so ridiculous that even many of his co-religionists have been left exasperated.

Just what is a "Muslim Issue" - that is, a concern that genuinely affects religious sensibilities of Muslims and interrupts the manner in which they practice their faith? Let us go back 25 years, to the spring and early summer of 1991. India was preparing for a mid-term election, in the aftermath of the Mandal Commission announcement, the rath yatra and the Congress' decision to withdraw support to Chandra Shekhar's short-lived government. It was a pulsating political session that saw a genuine ideological context between very different concepts of India and nationhood. In the midst of all this, a Janata Dal politician - among the Asaduddin Owaisis of his age, if you get my drift - began a campaign to have the film Hum banned. A film that in effect began the second phase of Amitabh Bachchan's career - putting him in senior roles, rather than as the proverbial "Angry Young Man" - Hum had just been released and featured a popular and catchy song Jumma chumma de de... The song sequence had the hero serenading the woman he was wooing - she was called Jumma - and asking her for a kiss, as she had apparently promised, on Jumma (Friday).

Jumma or Friday is sacred in Islam and is the day of congregational prayer. According to that Janata Dal politician of 1991, the song was deeply offensive to Muslims and had caused outrage and anger in the community. As such it needed to be banned or acted upon in some manner by the government. His claim was absolute nonsense. This writer lived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) at the time, in a neighbourhood that had a substantial Muslim population. There were Muslims from a variety of social strata, ranging from the local paanwallah to a distinguished Professor of History at the University of Calcutta. The song was frequently heard in the neighbourhood (as were other popular songs of the period) and there was no sense of "anger" or "outrage". There is little reason to believe it was different in other mohallas elsewhere in the country. As can be expected, the silly controversy lasted only a few days. It gave the politician in question his 15 minutes of fame and then had him quietly moving on.

A film song and a slogan offering salutations to and expressing empathy with India are very different. It is not the intention to either compare these or place them on the same pedestal, not at all. However, the point remains that Muslim leaders like Mr. Owaisi do the Indian Muslim enormous justice by reporting to such gimmicks. In that he has been as dishonest as his Janata Dal predecessor of 1991. Mr. Owaisi is an articulate man and a frequent face on news television. Frankly, though, the national media tends to treat him with kid gloves. The inability to interrogate him or ask him harder questions has been disappointing. This may be due to absence of desire, or perhaps to an individual media person's inadequate engagement with history outside of a quick Google search.

Consider the contradiction. Mr. Owaisi attacks the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Hindu Right, accusing it of 'forcing its ideology' on others. His intellectual auxiliaries make references to 70 or 80-year-old quotes of RSS personalities, which may appear angular and unacceptable in a contemporary context, and ask whether the current leadership of the RSS and the Bharatiya Janata Party believes in them. Fair enough. Has anyone cared to ask Mr. Owaisi whether he subscribes to the letter and text of Qasim Razvi, the founder of the MIM and commander of the Razakar militia, who can only politely be described as a bigot and a religious fanatic? Could Owaisi tell us if he is willing to repudiate Qasim Razvi? The response would be revealing . ---Based on an article by Ashok Malik published in Deccan Chronicle dated 20th March, 2016. The author is a senior fellow, Observer Research Foundation. He can be reached at malikashok@gmail.com---        

BARBARIC INDEED.

When judges assume messianic roles while seeking to act on perceived outrage, it may result in inventive remedies but not necessarily achieve complete justice. It is not usual these days to find some of them traversing beyond the remit of the cases before them and seeking to find or suggest solutions to many of society's crimes and ills. In the Madras High Court, one has seen recent instances of a judge suggesting mediation between a victim and the perpetrator of a rape, another laying down that mere sexual relations amount to marriage, and one prescribing pre-marital potency tests to prevent divorces happening. The latest (27th October, 2015 in The Hindu) is the suggestion of Justice N. Kirubakaran that castration be made an additional punishment for child rape. Significantly, he himself acknowledges that this would be criticised as being barbaric and retrograde, but yet goes on to say that barbaric acts require barbaric punishments. But this is out of character with Indian Jurisprudence as well as known canons of modern criminal justice. For one thing, the principle of proportionality of punishment is a limiting norm that militates against excessive punishment, and is not an eye-for-an-eye rule. Secondly, civilised systems have moved away from retributive sentencing, especially from ideas such as torture, decapitation, mutilation and chopping  off parts of the body as forms of punishment. It may also be counter-productive if castration is added as a form of punishment as it may deter foreign courts from allowing the extradition of offenders to face trial in India.

The judge's suggestion is not qualified as 'chemical castration' in the operative part of the judgment. To be fair, he has listed the countries and some States in the United States that do have provision for chemical castration, or the injection of drugs that reduce testosterone levels and control libido - and it is not a suggestion that has not been made in the past. Also, he has called for wider consultations involving experts before such a measure is introduced. The Justice J.S. Verma Committee, which in 2013 recommended far reaching changes to criminal law to protect women from sexual offences, also received suggestions to that effect. However, the committee had noted that the effects of chemical castration were temporary, and repeated monitored doses at regular intervals may be required. It will violate human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bars cruel and unusual forms of punishment. In other jurisdictions it is done with the offender's consent and is a form of psychiatric treatment and not a judicial penalty. None, least of all the courts, should assume that rapes occur because of uncontrollable sexual urge. There can be no 'magical results' in curbing crimes against women, unless there is transformation in society and its very thought process. The rising rate of sexual crimes against children in the country is indeed alarming, but that is not reason enough for courts of law to advocate medieval forms of punishment.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------     

INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY UNDER THREAT.

The old colonial notion that ancient Indians had no sense of history has by now been blown to bits by outstanding scholars like V.S. Pathak and Romila Thapar. They have also established that ancient India drew its sense of the past from a vast range of sources, of which religious texts were one, and that its understanding of the past differed radically from the Western notions of history. Romila Thapar, in particular in her magisterial work, The Past Before Us - Historical Traditions of Early North India (published in 2013), scrutinises the vast corpus of Vedic texts, the great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, the itihas-purana traditions, the Buddhist and Jain canonical texts, hagiographies, biographies, inscriptions, chronicles and theatrical compositions like the Mudra-rakshasa to form her database and arrives at conclusions which frontally challenge received wisdom from the West. 

Court narratives: Come Medieval India and a new genre of history comes alive. These histories, more like court chronicles, titled Tawarikh, plural of tarikh which denotes both date and history, followed strict codes of chronological and spatial location of an event and were narrative rather than analytical in content, although a certain view point always inheres in any narrative account. There was an interesting dichotomy as part of the narrative. The framework that enclosed the tawarikh was largely derived from Islam, which not only brought a new religion to the world but also a new concept of history. The chronological framework that was almost invariably followed was that of the Islamic hijri era, with the exception of Abul Fazl, Akbar's courtier and historian. Abul Fazl abandoned it in favour of Ilahi era, created to commemorate Akbar's accession to the throne, and disengaged history writing from the axis of Islam. At any rate, Abul Fazl had rather a low opinion of the hijri era. Within this overall chronological framework, historians were more particular  about locating each event in the precise year of the reign of each ruler whose deeds formed their main narrative. 

More important, they did not look at history as a breach of Islamic theology, unlike their European counterparts. In medieval Europe, histories composed by church fathers, the only literate class, perceived all historical events as manifestations of God's will. For them the past, present and future - all constituted part of God's grand design in which nothing happened haphazardly, even as these appeared so to human beings. In medieval India, on the other hand, historical events are treated as individual, independent events and not part of a grand pattern, and historical causation is established in human violation and at best human nature. God is invoked only when the historian is unsure of the veracity of an event, akin to our everyday invocation, "God knows" when we are unsure of something.

We are thus introduced to "strong" or "weak" rulers, "liberal" or "orthodox" rulers and the complete history of their reigns merely unfolds their nature. Best examples: Muhammad bib Tughlaq ("his nature consisting of contradictory qualities"), Akbar ("liberal"), Aurangzeb ("orthodox"). Diversity necessarily inhered in the explanation since no two persons, not even rulers, would possess the same nature.

Colonial invention: It was James Mill who metamorphosed the entire, long history of ancient and medieval India, divesting it of all diversities by making the religious identity of the rulers, instead of their nature, the central category for understanding the past; all diversity of explanation was lost to the uniformity of the religious identity of all the rulers, whether Hindu or Muslim. His History of British Rule, published in 1818, created the tripartite division of India's past into the Hindu, the Muslim and the British periods. As a Utilitarian and as a colonialist par excellence, he had contempt for religion, for both Hinduism and Islam but more for the former, and emphasised that prior to the British rule, India was mired in religious obscurantism with no worthwhile achievement to its credit; thus the Indians ought to be thankful to the colonialists for setting them on the path of progress.

This was further reinforced by Elliot and Dowson's 8-volume History of India as told by its own Historians, published from 1854 onward, bluntly stating in the Introduction: "This history will teach the bombastic babus of India the great benefits British rule has brought them". The foundation of the infamous "divide and rule" strategy had been laid.

Since then the tripartite division has remained operative in the teaching of history in India and even when the nomenclature was altered to Ancient, Medieval and Modern, first by Stanley Lane-Poole in 1903, the basis of division remained the same until around the early 1960s. Religious identity and religious conflict were clearly the central analytical categories in this history. Fundamental to it was the assumption that colonialism was the harbinger of "modernity" to India, as it was to the rest of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This view was shared by almost all European thinkers during the 18th and 19th centuries from Montesquieu to Karl Marx, even as their modes of thought as well as their sympathies were as different from one another as chalk was from cheese.    

From the late 1950s and 60s, Indian historians began to revisit all the assumptions and categories of historiography handed down to them by colonialism. A few, indeed very few, of the historians who fundamentally revised colonial history writing were committed Marxists and many more were not. It is the Marxists who questioned even Marx's understanding of India's past, including his notion of the Asiatic Mode of Production. One substitute for it was the concept of "Indian Feudalism", but this was soon thrown open, with the question "Was There Feudalism in Indian History?" - the title of an essay that became the centre of a long drawn, international debate, which unearthed several facets that lay unseen below the surface. The long cherished colonial notion that India (indeed the Orient) was unfamiliar with any socio-economic mutations before the colonial engine of modernity was set in motion, was blown to smithereens.

Religious identities were assigned their due priority in the saga of change, but were no more the lone, determining element. History was no longer mono-causal but multifaceted. Sights were moved from individual character of rulers to social and economic structures, technology and trade as the motors of change, uprisings of peasants and artisans against the state's exploitative excesses. A threshold had been crossed.

From the 1980s and 90s, yet another threshold was crossed when still newer methods of looking at history evolved. The history of women and gender, ecology, inter-personal relations, sexuality, history of the notions of time, space, habitats, of perceptions of masculinity and femininity, the nature of polities, alternative views of history evident in the vernacular languages, the enormous dynamism of Hindu philosophy especially in the 17th century, the evolution of Bhakti culture and worldview in opposition to elite Brahamanic culture, the formation of identities and most important the recognition of and respect for immense diversity in the perceptions of the past either as a mega narrative or as individual events such as the Partition of India - all these and more have taken us a long, very long, distance from the colonialist and even Marxist historiography. We live in a fascinatingly fast-moving environment. 

Hindutava discomfort: It is this immense diversity and its inescapable premise - discussion, disputation and debate at a level of professional competence - that the Hindutva brigade finds so uncomfortable, largely because history can no longer revert to mono-causal explanations, which is its sole and entire worldview. It is no surprise that while we had some outstanding professional historians down to the 1960s, like R.C. Majumdar, who were committed to the "Hindu" version of history and were yet deeply rooted in the discipline, the Hindutva brigade has since failed to produce any notable professional historian. The new developments in the discipline have passed them by.

The categories created by colonialism have been abandoned even by the British scholars as a consequence of interaction with Indian historians. But the present regime, guided and controlled by the RSS, is still sticking to them with unprecedented fervour. Ironically, the Hindutva brigade touts its claim to "Indianising" Indian history as a giant step towards cleansing it of colonialist (and Marxist) pollutants. How masterfully George Orwell had in his fictional Ninety Eighty Four portrayed the crucial role of "doublespeak" in running a duplicitous state system.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------          

TEST THE MUSTARD.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the body that takes the ultimate decision on genetically modified (GM) crops, has reviewed the data presented on the GM mustard hybrid DMH 11 and decided that the data is not adequate. It has asked the developer for more information, including additional biosafety tests and a risk assessment and risk management (RARM) report. It is also to be welcomed that the GEAC has decided to proceed in a systematic manner in this case, instead of the usually ad hoc nature of its earlier responses. The committee will meet to draw up the concrete modalities of the additional data required to write up the RARM document pertaining to DMH 11. This will include details like the timeline for the preparation of the report and specific roles and responsibilities. Given the embarrassing nature of the rather cut and paste review document that was prepared by science academics in the case of Bt brinjal, it is understandable that the GEAC is proceeding with caution. 

Asking for overarching evaluations like an Environment Impact Assessment or a RARM document is fairly standard procedure in responsible nations testing genetically modified organisms (GMO). The United States department of agriculture, the federal department responsible for agriculture, forestry and food, including GM food in the US, emphasises the need for environmental risk assessment as well as the Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA) of GMOs.    

INSPIRING THOUGHTS.

• What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other. (George Eliot).
• I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. (Alice Roosevelt Longworth).
• Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it. (Ernest Holmes).
• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau). 
• The purpose of our lives is to be happy. (Dalai Lama).
• Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. (Albert Einstein).
• Sleep is the best meditation. (The XIV Dalai Lama).
• Every experience in life has something to teach us, if only we are ready to understand its importance. (Sreeram Manoj Kumar).
• Liberty and Equality are incompatible with each other. Liberty leads to competitive individualism, and therefore breeds inequality. (Mah Kumar). 
• Liberty , Equality and Fraternity is an ideal set out by all evolved and noble souls, but common mortals have to work at it. How much we actually achieve depends on how much sincerity and honesty go into our efforts. (Prem Lal).
• Ancient wisdom proclaims, 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' or the whole world is one big family. What happened to this dream? (Vidya Babla).
• It is true that the world is based on brotherhood. But brotherhood needs sacrifice, and thoughts of doing good for others, unconditionally and selflessly. Brotherhood brings peace and harmony in society and is of a divine nature. (Sanjay Teotia).
• Without a community, we cannot go very far. (Thich Nhat Hanh).
• A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbour's. (Richard Whately).
• Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. (Kahlil Gibran).
• I like it when a flower or a tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so heroic. (George Carlin).
• Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. (Marcus Aurelius).
• Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. (Anatole France).
• Open your thoughts to the probability that you are more intuitive than you realise. (Sylvia Clare).
• Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you are living? (Bob Marley).
• Yesterday is a cancelled cheque. Today is cash on line. Tomorrow is a promisory note. (Hank Stream).
• Mothers love their children, but after marriage when the son starts caring for his wife, the mother does not relish the idea. This is when her true love turns into attachment. The wife loves her husband, but when the husband seemingly cares more for his mother, the wife becomes agitated. This is love turning into possessiveness. Pure love does not have any hint of possessiveness, attachment or jealousy and is without expectation. (Krishnan).
• Love for the Self and love for God is the only thing in this world which will not make you weak at any time. (Sandhya Singh).
• everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. (Carl Jung).
• It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles. (Muriel Spark).
• Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. (William James).
• Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better. (E.W. Howe).
• There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. (Christopher Morley).
• You make mistakes. Mistakes don't make you. (Maxwell Maltz).
• The first rule of education, in all lands is never to say anything offensive to anyone. (Voltaire).
• The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant. (Richard Cecil).
• Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Will Durant).
• Knowledge is not given but earned, and character is not granted but cultivated. (Swami Vivekananda).
• Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is beginning of love. (Mother Teresa).
• Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. (Martin Luther King, Jr.).
• Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream. (Kahlil Gibran).
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle).
• Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. (William Penn).
• Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. (William James).
• Tears of joy are like the summer raindrops pierced by sunbeams. (Hosea Ballou).
• Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted. (John Lennon). 
• Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (Albert Einstein).
• A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love. (Max Muller).
• What is right to be done cannot be done too soon. (Jane Austen).
• He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave. (Matthew Henry).
• I think cinema, movies and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians...A movie is really like a question and when you make it, you get the answer. (Francis Coppola). 
• Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. (Leo Tolstoy).
• If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of. (Bruce Lee).
• The more people that meet each other, the better it is for all of them. (Fletcher Pratt).
• The first recipe for happiness: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. (Andre Maurois).
• Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light. (Norman B. Rice).
• I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. (John Muir).
• Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up. (Haruki Murakami).
• In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. (Terry Pratchet).
• The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do. (B.F. Skinner).
• We live with three thought processes: blind faith, devotion and spirituality. (Siddharth Chandra).
• I am confused when people say, God is everywhere; is omnipresent. I wonder then why we do have to go to temples, mosques, churches and Gurdwaras. (Ved Guliani).
• There is nothing more beautiful than a person whose heart is broken, but still believes in love. (Priya Kumari).
• The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. (Aristotle).
• You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. (William Blake).
• As the web issues out of the spider and is withdrawn; as hair grows from the body - even so, the sages say, this universe springs from the deathless Self, the source of life. (Mundaka Upanishad). 
• The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence. (Father Thomas Berry, eco-theologian). 
• Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. (Kahlil Gibran).
• If you don't believe that the world has a heart, then you won't hear it beating, you won't think it's alive and you won't consider what you are doing to it. (Charles de Lint).  
• Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. (George Bernard Shaw).
• There is more to life than increasing its speed. (Gandhiji).
• We do not remember days, we remember moments. (Cesare Pavese).
• Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - relaise it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it. (Sai Baba).
• This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Shakespeare).
• Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it. (Samuel Butler).
• You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up for something, sometime in your life. (Winston Churchill).
• Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. (Lao Tzu).
• A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. (Jackie Robinson).
• The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy - it's all that matters. (Audrey Hepburn).
• Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. (Sholom Aleichem).
• The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed. (Eminem).
• Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. (Buddha). 
• Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others'? (Martin Luther King, Jr.).
• Once you bring life into the world, you must protect it. We must protect it by changing the world. (Elie Wiesel).
• Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. (Dalai Lama).
• One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure. (William Feather).
• Life is really simple; but we insist on making it complicated. (Confucius).
• In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. (Abraham Lincoln).
• Throughout life, people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too. (Will Smith).
• If you live long enough, you will make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you will be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit. (William J. Clinton).
• I have found that if you love life, life will love you back. (Arthur Rubinstein).
• The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. (Joseph Campbell).
• The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. (William Morris).
• The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself. (Anais Nin).
• My life is my message. (Gandhiji).
• You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. (Albert Camus).
• We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing and inclusion. (Max de Pree).
• If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of. (Bruce Lee).
• A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. (Charles Darwin).
• A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. (G.B. Shaw).
• Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time. (Miguel Angel Ruiz).
• The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye, the story of love is hello, goodbye. (Jimi Hendrex).
• How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these. (George Washington Carver).
• Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments. (Rose Kennedy).
• Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars. (Jack Kerouac).
• Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life that you are living. (Bob Marley).
• You are only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way. (Walter Hagen).
• Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts. (Soren Kierkegaard). 
• Beware the barrenness of a busy life. (Socrates).
• Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. (Soren Kierkegaard).
• What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it - would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have. (Ralph Marston).
• Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale. (Hans Christian Andersen).
• Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. (Marie Curie).
• When I stand before God at the end of my lie, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me". (Erma Bombeck).
• Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. (John Lennon).
• Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. (Mark Twain).
• It's all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family. (Philip Green).
• The only disability in life is a bad attitude. (Scott Hamilton).
• I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. (Rabindranath Tagore).
• Life would be tragic if it weren't funny. (Stephen Hawking).
• Life is a succession of moments, to live each one is to succeed. (Corita Kent).
• I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it. (Audrey Hepburn).
• There are three constants in life...Change, Choice and Principles. (Stephen Covey).
• It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as it was the only one we had. (Elisabeth Kubler - Ross). 
• Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it. (Lou Holtz). 
• The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. (Henri Nouwen).
• Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. (Harvey Fierstein).
• To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. (John Henry Newman).
• A well-spent day brings happy sleep. (Leonardo da Vinci).
• The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. (Gilbert K. Chesterton). 
• Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. (Helen Keller).
• When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'. (Erna Bombeck).
• Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. (Mark Twain).
• Into each life some rain must fall. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
• Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind. (Henri Frederic Amiel).
• The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. (Bertrand Russell).
• Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summed away, to leave without regret. (Robert E Lee). 
• A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. (Carl Sandburg).
• Nobody got where they are today by living for tomorrow. (Tom Wilson).
• Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. (Mark Twain).
• We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. (E.M. Forster).
• He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. (Friedrich Nietzsche).
• May you live all the days of your life. (Jonathan Swift).
• Life is a lot like jazz...it's best when you improvise. (George Gershwin).
• The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions. (Alfred Adler).

We, the Giving.

If she drowns, she's a refugee. If she floats, she's an economic migrant. A friend from New York sent me this chilling cartoon and I thought to myself, I could apply as easily to India and our deplorable treatment of migrants / refugees. We have always been shockingly callous towards the plight of our own people. Imagine, then, what our response would behave been if boatloads of Syrians, fleeing tyranny, starvation and death, had arrived on our shores seeking refuge. Look at our indifference to the high number of farmer suicides in Marathwada. Apart from television reporters, and a few print journos / photographers who have taken the trouble to go there themselves, nor offered any relief. Without water or food to last more than a few more weeks, the precarious condition of our farmers is heart-breaking. And here we have fat cat sugar barons from other parts of the state (millionaires many times over) who are sitting pretty, and not lifting a finger to help their brothers. They too have turned a blind eye to the disaster, as has the state government, which should have considered declaring an emergency to rush aid to Maharashtra's farmers, some of whom own just an acre or two of land, and are unable to pay back debts amounting to less than Rs. 1 lakh! 

We continue to ignore the tragedy of a man taking his own life, and leaving behind helpless families to cope with hunger and debt. His story is getting lost in an overcrowded media field far more interested in giving extensive coverage to murder and rapes. It is also being asked how come so many Indians have reacted to that heartbreaking image of the drowned Syrian toddler clicked on a distant shore, and not cared a damn about equally disturbing pictures closer to home. It is a good question which I have been struggling to find answers to, myself. I still can't bear to see that little boy's tiny body washed up on a beach like a dead porpoise. I turned my eyes away, haunted by thoughts of what his father must have gone through as he lost his hold over his wife and kids and helplessly watched them drown. It is this single image that influenced world opinion and led to a major re-think, spearheaded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. We have equally moving photographs right here - but we have stopped seeing them. We no longer react to our own human crises, possibly because if there is one thing there is no shortage of in India, it is catastrophes. We have multiple catastrophes. There is an overload of catastrophes. Our systems have crashed and nothing registers - not even the heart-rending sight of a poverty-stricken family, sitting on a parched patch of land, bodies reduced to skin and bones, as they wait for deliverance... or death. We see the desperation in their eyes, and do nothing. Well, there are exceptions, of course. People like Nana Patekar whose NGO called "Naam" has launched a simple initiative that involves donations of just Rs. 15,000/- per family of affected farmers. The entire process is painless and smooth, making it convenient for individuals to contribute directly to this worthy cause.

We are not a generous nation. On the contrary - we are nauseatingly mean spirited when it comes to helping the needy. Poverty do not move us to the extent they should. May be we take both for granted - as if it's our fate to remain hungry forever. Even the most pathetic stories of dengue deaths in Delhi do not engage us sufficiently. We brush off confronting the abject state of our public hospitals, the neglect of health issues by authorities and the baffling absence of accountability! We shrug away these preventable deaths like it is normal in this day and age for people to die of dengue. No, it is not normal. And we should bloody well be bothered. But at least one positive aspect has emerged during the dengue disaster and that is the increased awareness of our despicably low sanitary standards, combined with the urgent need to clean up filthy neighbourhoods and tackle the problem of stagnant water. It's a small step - but an important one.

Epidemics come and go. We have coped with them in our own clumsy way in the past and moved on. The trouble is, till such time as dengue creeps into your locality and directly affects our lives, it will be considered a Delhi disease - nothing to do with the rest of India! The argumentative India, it would seem, is also an intensely unfeeling Indian. So here we are tut-tutting over the Syrian refugees / immigrants, and saying how magnanimous the German people are to accept so many asylum seekers, and lead the way for other European countries to follow. We have monumental problems of our own to deal with, but what do you think our response would be if we were asked to accommodate a few thousand Syrians (those crazy enough to want to start a new life in India)? I guarantee it will be far from compassionate or positive. Living is expensive in India. But life has always been dirt cheap.

Note: The article has been reproduced from The Times of India dated 20th September, 2015. It has been written by Shoba De. She can be contacted on www.shobhade.blogspot.com.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C.S. Chakravarthy

H. No. 12-13-301, St. No. 9,

Lane. No. 1, Flat. No. 203,

Satya Classic, Tarnaka,

Secunderabad- 500 017,

Telangana State, India.

e-mail: chakkuresearchscholar13@gmail.com

Cell: 9985732397

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Codes and Conduct

The responsibility of superintendence, direction, control and the conduct of all elections (to Parliament and to the Legislature of every state and the elections to the offices of the President and Vice-President) shall vest in the Election Commission of India. The quoted expression in Article. 324 of the Constitution of India remained just another set of lifeless words from January 1950, when the Constitution came into force, to December 1977, when the Supreme Court infused life into them through the case of Mohinder Singh Gill. Gill's case arose out of election to the Lok Sabha held on 16th March, 1977. Counting took place as scheduled, on 20th March, 1977, in five Assembly segments peacefully. However, the balance of the counting on the next day was halted by violence acts allegedly by the Akali Dal candidate. On a report from the returning officer, the Election Commission of India ordered cancellation of polls in the entire constituency - as was the wish of the Akalis - and directed fresh elections.

Gill, while conceding recount, challenged re-poll before the Punjab High Court and the case eventually landed before a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court. In the course of upholding the decision of the EC, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, speaking on behalf of the Bench, held: "...situations may arise which enacted law has not provided for. Legislators are not prophets but pragmatists. So it is that the Constitution has made comprehensive provision in Article. 324 to take care of surprise situations. That power itself has to be exercised, not mindlessly nor malafide, not arbitrarily nor with partiality but in keeping with the guidelines of the rule of law and not stultifying the presidential notification nor existing legislation. More is not necessary to specify; less is insufficient to leave unsaid. Article. 324, in our view, operates in areas left unoccupied by legislation and the words 'superintendence, direction and control', as well as 'conduct of all elections', are the broadest terms. Myriad maybes, too mystic to be precisely presaged, may call for prompt action to reach the goal of free and fair election".

Dealing with the objection that this will create a constitutional despot beyond the pale of accountability, a Frankenstein's monster who may manipulate the system into elected despotism, the bench's answer was that the judicial bench, at the appropriate stage, can "call the bluff, quash the action and bring order into the process". Thus, the concept of "free and fair election" was read into Article. 324 - a phrase that became the goal of that Article. And eventually the Article became the fountainhead of the EC's powers to meet the "myriad maybe" situations. The election manual and the official website of the EC contain hundreds of instructions and guidelines, all claiming parentage to Article. 324. The model code of conduct is a unique document in as much as it has evolved with the consensus of political parties themselves. It has no statutory backing and many of its provisions are not legally enforceable. Public opinion is the moral sanction for its enforcement. It was first conceived in 1960 in Kerala - a state that has turned coalition politics into a fine art. The EC issued a revised model code of conduct on 01st January, 1974, which was further modified and the model conduct as is prevalent now was re-issued in January, 1991 - all on the basis of consensus of political parties.

The parties, thus, reached an understanding that they would play the game of elections in accordance with the model code of conduct. The EC is like the umpire in a game of cricket. It has no police force of its own to bodily throw out an offending player - like the umpire, it only signals. So far the code has worked - in the sense that no one has openly defied the EC whenever infraction has been pointed out. The alleged offender has either denied the allegation or offered an explanation. Frequent appeals for LBW verdicts even from a fielder on the mid-wicket boundary are not uncommon. In affidavits furnishing information regarding own criminal antecedents, truth was often a regular casualty. Therefore, the Parliament in 2002 had to amend the 1951 Act and make filing of a false affidavit or concealing the truth of an offence. Demands for inclusion of more of the code in the already bulky statute book have mostly been ignored, and rightly so. However, the experience of post-2002 amendment does not encourage making of more laws. The code comes into force from the date of official announcement of election schedule. It applies only to elections to the lower houses - Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabhas - where voters directly elect the members. And it comes to an end with the declaration of the results.

It generally prescribes good behaviour for the political parties and candidates, thus making it amply clear that politicians are fully aware of what is good. However, the meat of the code lies in the last part that prescribes "dos and don'ts" for the governments in office. State governments have to obey them only during the general elections and elections to the assembly of that state. However, the Central government has to be watchful not only during the general elections, but also during the elections to one or the other state assemblies, which keep occurring periodically, thus hindering its normal functioning frequently. Once the schedule of elections is announced, the EC is the boss. It can do anything that is not prohibited by any statute - all in the name of free and fair elections. Curbing the influence of black money in the elections is a major concern of the EC. In this regard, there are nearly hundred written instructions from the EC. One such instruction prohibits carrying large amounts of cash. It was under this provision that the former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's son with Rs. 4.6 lakh in cash was questioned. 

Does the Prime Minister offend the code by continuing with his Mann Ki Baat on All India Radio? The EC has answered this question when it said you can speak all that you can at rally. May be, the EC should permit the use of radio for all concerned, without the obligation to supply the audience.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C.S. Chakravarthy

H. No. 12-13-301, St. No. 9,

Lane. No. 1, Flat. No. 203,

Satya Classic, Tarnaka, 

Secunderabad- 500 017,

Telangana State.

email id: chakkuresearchscholar13@gmail.com

Cell: 9985732397.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------