What Feeds Hindutva?

This may not be a great question to raise when Delhi is still recovering from its worst communal riots in 30 years, but it does not deserve to be ignored, or boxed into simple binaries.

Hindutva or "Hinduness" is described as the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. If you try to look deeper, the narrative, particularly in the English speaking world, has been dominated by Marxist historians and commentators. Prominent among them is Prabhat Patnaik who calls Hindutva a movement "almost fascist in the classical sense", adhering to a disputed concept of homogenised majority and cultural hegemony. This is also the view promoted by the editors of Wikipedia.

Needless to say, this dim view is not widely shared. If it were so, the Hindutva political grouping (BJP, Shiv Sena, etc.) would have neither come to power, or increased its vote-share in the last general elections. The very notion of a homogenised majority or cultural hegemony makes no sense in a country as diverse as India.

Over the past few days, I have come across two possible leads to this conundrum. The first is an oped by Faizan Mustafa, the Vice Chancellor of NALSAR, and the second a talk by Prof. Arvind Sharma at the Cervantes Institute titled, "Religious Tolerance".

Last week Mustafa wrote an oped titled, "Dishonouring a Pledge". The pledge here refers to the constitutional rights provided by the Indian Constitution, to religious minorities in India, which enable them to propagate and practice their religion freely, and assures protection to their places of worship.

The article refers to the following parts of the Indian Constitution, and related laws -

• Articles 25 to 30 - Right to Freedom of Religion
• Article 27 - Freedom from payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion
• Article 290A - Annual payment to certain Devaswom Funds
• The Places of Worship Act 1991 

I have always thought of Mustafa as a very erudite, balanced scholar and practitioner of law. So it was surprising to note a tone of grievance against Indian institutions. Referring to the constitutional provisions, he says that despite its pledge to be secular, the state funds religious institutions, and cites Art. 290A under which funds go to the Dewaswom Boards.

This is a clear case of cherry picking, an argument that deliberately overlooks the fact that the Indian state takes much, much more from Hindu temples compared to what it returns for their upkeep. Over 90,000 Hindu temples are controlled by the state governments while the state does not interfere at all in the functioning of churches, mosques and gurdwaras. Ditto for Hindu educational institutions.

Just the four government-controlled Dewaswom Boards in Kerala earn over INR 1000 Crores annually (USD 135 million), while under Article 290A, the state is obliged to spend only INR 37,50,000 (USD 50,850) every year! Where does the government spend the rest of the money collected from Hindu temples?

Prof. Arvind Sharma takes this point head on. He is perhaps uniquely placed to present a counter-argument - a former civil servant who went to the Harvard School of Theology, he now teaches abroad. According to him, Hinduism is only beginning to recover from the trauma of ideologies, massacres and the wanton destruction of temples that overwhelmed the country over the past 1000 years, at the hands of Islamic armies, British Colonialism and Post-Independence "Secularism".

Unless this trauma is acknowledged, as in the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission, the majority majority community will will only continue to increase its support to politicians who support Hindutva, which is seen as a bulwark against Indian Secularism in its present form, which is perceived to discriminate against Hindus.

Ironically Hinduism as a religion - if it can be called one - is not amenable to fundamentalism because it does not have a single set of fundamentals, based on one book or text. So far from being a fascist movement Hindutva is perhaps more of a collective pushback against sustained bullying, a reclaiming of its assimilative traditions.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* The Place of Worship Act, 1991 - http://legislative.gov.in/sites/default/files/The%20Places%20of%20Worship%20%28Special%20Provisions%29%20Act%2C%201991.pdf

* Managing Gods Wealth (ToI 2012) -- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/Managing-Gods-wealth-Keralas-four-Devaswoms-together-earn-Rs-1000-crore-annually/articleshow/16245083.cms

* Quora - Where does Dewaswom funds go? - https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-Kerala-Devaswom-board-is-used-by-the-government-for-other-purposes
* Kerala's unique Treasury Savings Bank system - https://www.cppr.in/article/the-unique-case-of-keralas-treasury-system/

ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED

Sitting in our metro cities it is difficult to imagine a world of alternate realities. The internet and our access to it, is perhaps one such world. One where screens suddenly blank out and you end up with a digi-dinosaur hopping over cactus.

At a panel discussion organised by the Indian Express yesterday, a group of experts sat on the stage to discuss what seemed like a rather vague and tenuous topic - "Is Internet Shutdown a New Order for Law and Order"? The fact that this event - IE Thinc - was sponsored by Facebook made me all the more skeptical about its relevance. 

The panel had an interesting mix:  a young bureaucrat responsible for an internet shutdown at Ranchi; a representative from the Intenet Freedom Foundation, one from the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), and an economist. Except for the last one, who seemed long winded and disconnected like most economists, the other three made sense. 

I was surprised to know that the Government of India is very secretive about sharing data on internet shutdowns. Data accessed from other sources (mainly UN) indicate that there have been at least 254 shutdowns in 19 states during the period 2012-2018. 

While the initial intent of many had been to prevent riots and loss of lives from the the rumours spread on Facebook, Whatsapp etc., internet shutdowns were now being implemented for reasons that could only be described as flippant and irresponsible. In the most recent case, in Udaipur, Rajasthan, the internet was shut down for a few days to prevent cheating in a government recruitment exam!

Considering how internet shutdowns affected the lives of millions of citizens - loss of business, access to basic services, education, payments and so on - what was the legal basis for such disruptions? Here are some of the laws/rules enumerated:

• Article 19(2) - places "Reasonable restrictions" on freedom
• Section 144 CPC - "Unlawful Assembly" -- used against freedom fighters during freedom struggle to confiscate Gandhi Caps, now used to shut down the net.
• Rules for Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services, 2017 -- just requires an SP+ officer to issue order
• Section 95 CPC - banning of books
• Section 6.2 of Telegraph Act - used for phone/network tapping

I am glad I decided to attend this event. If not anything else, it was a sobering reminder that it takes very little to turn the smartphone in our hands into a useless lump of plastic and metal.

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LINKS:

- Rules for suspension of telecom services, 2017 - http://www.dot.gov.in/circulars/temporary-suspension-telecom-services-public-emergency-or-public-safety-rules-2017
- Internet Freedom Foundation - https://internetfreedom.in/
- Report on IE event -7 Sept., 2018 - https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/iethinc-debates-implications-of-internet-shutdowns/1305181/

For Argument's Sake

A drunken Indian got run over by a bus. His friends vented their anger on public property, by overturning a few vehicles, torching some police cars and running amok until they got bored and exhausted.

This would have been a fairly commonplace sequence of events in most cities. Singapore was not meant to be one of them. Following the ethnic riots of the 1960s, the city-state under Lee Kuan Yew had enforced a series of measures to ensure small sparks did not lead to major conflagrations.

Unfortunately this is exactly what happened last week. Temporary migrant workers of Indian origin let loose their anger and frustration on public property. The police was at first taken aback but finally when the dust settled, 30 workers were booked, many were imprisoned or deported. While all this was going on, it was interesting to see what was happening on the sidelines.

One particular 'average singaporean' went overboard with his allegations about Indians in general, and in reply, this is what one Mogan Das had to say -

useful article.i was looking for a piece of writing for my students that will demonstrate fallacies in argument.you seem to have covered nearly all - ad hominem, burden of proof, reductive fallacy, argument from false authority,use of cliches, confusing correlation and causation, appeal to coincidence, false cause amongst many many other fallacies...in such a short article furthermore.i don't know where you were educated but it certainly paid off. i didn't know that people like you actually existed. people posting comments here may call you a degenerate and a dehumanized piece of asswipe, rightly so if i may add, but i still need to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this 'excellent' piece of analysis that will entertain my students for years to come.

Humor and sarcasm aside, I was not able to differentiate some fallacies in argument. Here is a refresher recap:

* Ad hominem - Attack on the character of a person rather than his arguments
* Burden of proof - Also known "appeal to ignorance" this fallacy places the burden of proof on the wrong side

For a full list of fallacies, please check the Nizkor Project link.


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LINKS

http://therealsingapore.com/content/stop-humanizing-banglas-indian-fts

Logical fallacies - https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/

The Nizkor Project - https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/