I/III. http://www.outlookindia.com/article/the-hindu-software-code-bill/295495
ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAAHIL The Hindu Software Code Bill They’re joined at the hip: the superficial modernity of Digital India and a deep, unspoken ‘Hindutva’ NISSIM MANNATHUKKAREN “I know, to achieve the vision of Digital India, the government must also start thinking a bit like you (Silicon Valley).” —Narendra Modi “We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilisation need to be restored—be it the history we read, our cultural heritage or our institutes that have been polluted over years.” —Mahesh Sharma MoS for culture, Government of India *** If there is one characteristic that can define India since 1991, it is the fundamental disjunction between the scientific-technical and the economic on the one side, and the ethical/moral and the social/public good on the other. The latter are sacrificial lambs at the altar of a neo-liberal, market-led model of development that can be essentially termed as technicism. In this conception, development is merely reduced to economic growth and progress in science and technology rather than a broader understanding of human or planetary well-being. Of course, science itself is not pursued for its revolutionary implications, while technology is merely a panacea for practical needs. Both are seen in a vacuum, quarantined from social contexts. While this tendency is not unique to India, under the present Narendra Modi-led regime, it acquires a radically new feature. Technicism is married to a virulent and aggressive cultural agenda. A Digital India is sought to be ushered in, but premised on the revival of the great Hindu civilisation. The attempt to reach the pinnacle of economic and scientific development is accompanied by the project of cultural “cleansing”. But development and culture mirror each other—in yoking culture to technicism, culture itself becomes mechanical, losing its vitality. Recently, the Financial Times, London, argued that Narendra Modi “embraces modernity...just not at home”. It sees a dichotomy between “India’s first tech-savvy, social media-enabled prime minister” and his party’s own culturally regressive agenda at home. On the one hand, there is the globe-trotting and internationalist PM, courting world leaders and business heads to “Make in India” and visiting the Silicon Valley to “Start-Up India”, and on the other, there is his party and fundamentalist supporters who seek to enforce an unmodern code when it comes to meat-eating, romantic relationships, school pedagogy, critical thinking, foreign culture, the religious “other” and so on. But this dichotomy between development and Hindutva, widely shared by even critical commentators, is a false one. Even during the elections last year, this narrative was dominant that the majority of the people who voted for Modi wanted development and not Hindutva and that the BJP was following the cue. This misunderstands the nature of the BJP and its relationship with the RSS and the Sangh parivar, and underestimates the large numbers who might not be explicit supporters of Hindutva, but give silent assent to a majoritarian Hindu national identity by not actively rejecting or resisting Hindutva. Unlike common wisdom, the latter is more dangerous than the former. More importantly, it misunderstands the unifying logic of both neo-liberal capitalist development and Hindutva (which is technicism). Both have an instrumental attitude, the former towards economic growth and science and technology, and the latter towards culture. Both thus miss the fundamental purposes of economic growth/science and technology and culture, and their vital progressive and critical aspects. Thus seeing Modi’s seeking of economic and technological progress for India as “embracing modernity” is fundamentally a mistake. For modernity is not technicism or the expansion of the market, it is a larger project in which technological and economic betterment is only one aspect. More significant is the liberation of the human mind from the shackles of unreason (in which science is a mere aid), the seeking of the end of all oppressions, satiating the craving for liberty, equality and fraternity. Without this, there is no modernity. It is wrongly thought that technicist development is somehow above culture; that it merely seeks to bring about economic progress and science and technology without any cultural accoutrements. That is why seeking from the BJP-led government just development and not Hindutva is seeking an Eden that does not exist. It is ironic to see commentators who had argued circa 2014 that Indian democracy and its institutions are strong enough to resist right-wing majoritarianism now lamenting the “closing of the Indian mind”. Even the most modern of nation-building projects rely on myths of all kinds. What more cogent example of this than Nazi Germany, which used the most advanced forms of science and technology in the service of the most horrifying cultural agenda built on its own interpretation of Teutonic mythologies? Thus when the culture minister of India, who interestingly is a physician by profession, exhorts us to join the project of cultural cleansing and states that “I respect the Bible and Quran but they are not central to the soul of India in the same way as Gita and Ramayana are”, we are on familiar territory of myth-making by modernising nations. The attempt to reclaim the glorious cultural essence and the nation’s own myths and “superstitions” is thus only seemingly opposed to (an instrumental) science and capitalism, but is almost completely in sync with them, and the technicist notion of development. That is why there is the great urge to assert that plastic surgery, genetic science and nuclear testing already happened in Vedic times; yogic farming is the best solution to India’s devastating agrarian distress; and that yoga has been adopted by the most developed of countries. When the prime minister visits the Google headquarters and asks that Khagaul, Bihar, be pinpointed on Google Earth (Khagaul is where the ancient astronomer Aryabhatta was believed to have had an observatory), a Hindu India is claiming itself as the original repository of scientific and technical knowledge. Ganesha’s transplanted elephant head and Karna’s out-of-womb birth are not magical legends contradictory to a Digital India, but one in the long lineage of scientific achievements. Illustrations by Saahil In drawing a tight line between Hindutva and development, we risk missing its linkages and affinities. As the scholar Thomas Blom Hansen presciently argues, Hindu nationalism is attractive for it fulfils the “desire for recognition” in a globalised world marked by complex cultural and financial flows and consumerist desires. More importantly, according to Hansen, it provides an anchor and order in a fractured social formation threatened by the political assertion of ‘lower castes’, and the fear of the Muslim. In seeing Hindutva as a fringe element of the Yogi Adityanaths, Giriraj Singhs and Sakshi Maharajs, we miss the insidious and subtle growth of a Hindu national identity (which for all purposes is inflected by Brahminical and ‘upper-caste’ values) among the ‘modern’ sections of India, including its tech-savvy youth. That is why the hip NRI crowds of Modi cheer his eulogies to Sanskrit, Bhagavad Gita and yoga and his relentless mocking of secularism, a concept which is still enshrined in the Indian constitution. A Hindu India, barring some minor contradictions, is at home with the superficial modernity of a Digital India. Even if explicit Hindutva is not embraced, India is mainly conceived through a Hindu lens. India wants to become modern but not as deracinated India—faceless among the millions of moderns elsewhere, especially in the West. It wants to assert its place as a modern Hindu India. A digital and Hindu India converge when thousands of people change their Facebook profile pictures to one with tricolour hues in support of Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative, and when the overwhelmingly Indian audience at the Facebook headquarters welcomes the PM with chants of “Modi, Modi” and the song Chak de India playing in the background. Many of these are not Hindutva supporters, but nationalists, who, keeping in line with the technicist compartmentalisation of ethics, close their eyes to depredations wrought by the idea of a Hindu India. Thus the exhortation by the Financial Times to choose one among the two options (“Mr Modi may have to decide whether he wants to be leader of an ancient Hindu civilisation too proud to think it needs help from the outside world, or of a modern, outward-looking nation of young people even more tech-savvy than he is”) is unable to make sense of the kinships between a Hindu India and a globalised world. As the technicist notion of development goes hand in hand with Hindutva’s instrumental notion of culture, the arts and social sciences are worthless except for some purposes of political propaganda. This is not a feature of a right-wing Hindutva regime alone, but the incendiary nature of its cultural project takes instrumentality to a new low. Thus the government wants to convert the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) into one which showcases ‘governance’, the pillars of which would, of course, be ‘smart cities’ and ISRO’s unmanned flight to Mars, the crowning glory of our scientific advancement. What is more significant than the brazen bureaucracy at work in the government’s treatment of FTII (and other institutions like the NMML and ICHR) is the lack of resistance from the public and the value accorded to cinema and history in our society. While nations like Iran and China, despite their authoritarian regimes, have produced films which have touched the pinnacle of world cinema, our new economic and technical cinematic prowess, supposedly capable of taking on Hollywood, produces puerile films which earn Rs 700 crore at the box office. Thus a development sphere gripped by technicism is the breeding ground for instrumental and mechanical understandings of culture, both feeding off each other. The apathetic responses to periodic health crises and farmer suicides, the scotching of critical thought by killing non-conformist thinkers, the continuous abridgement of cultural freedoms are parts of the same technicist puzzle. India of the present, despite its abysmal levels of human development, has global power aspirations. These aspirations demand not only an unshakable faith in the power of science and technology but also in the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism. And now we are asked to embrace the cultural project of Hindu India along with it. Here culture becomes a mere appendage. As philosopher Theodor Adorno said, “Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.” This spread of a superficial modernity—of capitalism and instrumental science—should not be confused with modernity. A Hindu India, barring some minor contradictions, is perfectly at home with the superficial modernity of a Digital India. The seeds of a critique can emerge only in a counterculture of incessant questioning which is the fundamental basis of modernity as well as scientific enquiry. When Narendra Modi says his government wants to think like the Silicon Valley, this incessant questioning is not what he has in mind (nor is it in the minds of the digital corporations of Silicon Valley). For that, just literacy, digital or otherwise, is not enough; but critical forms of pedagogy which challenge dominant forms of thought which legitimise all forms of exploitation are an absolute necessity. This is impossible without abandoning an instrumental notion of culture. India’s future does not lie in a Hindu India, however digitised. The author is with Dalhousie University, Canada. II/III. http://www.dailyo.in/politics/hindutva-narendra-modi-rss-vhp-ichr-ftii-sushma-swaraj-gajendra-chauhan-vedas-delhi-university-panchjanya-bjp/story/1/6428.html How Modi, RSS and other Hindu fanatics are crushing India's spirit History will remember the present government as one that led the country into a dark age. POLITICS | 4-minute read | 24-09-2015 DN Jha My personal experience with Hindu and Jain fanatics (RSS, VHP and the extended parivar) goes back to 2001 when my book Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions was published. They threatened me with dire consequences, demanded my arrest, attacked me in the university campus, tried to vandalise my house, and burned copies of my book. They went to court at Hyderabad and got the book banned. But I challenged the ban and succeeded in getting it lifted; also I got the book published from London under the title The Myth of the Holy Cow. I defied the ban but I was in police protection for more than two years. The Hindutva forces have been carrying out their agenda of "cultural purification" even before the BJP came to power in 2014. Their ideologue Dinanath Batra got A Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana dropped from the Delhi University syllabus and forced Penguin Random House to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s book on the Hindus from the shelves. Emboldened by the BJP’s majority in Parliament, the saffron brigade is now using organisations like the VHP, Hanuman Sena, Ram Sene, and Sanatan Dharma Sanstha for attacking, assaulting and even killing scholars whose ideas go against their beliefs. Instances of the illiteracy of BJP governments at the Centre and states are multiplying every day. Beef has been banned in several BJP-ruled states, and in Rajasthan, the government has also declared cow urine as a substitute for phenyl which, we are told, will be used even in hospital ICUs. Then you have Sushma Swaraj saying that the Bhagavad Gita is India’s national book and, soon after that, we hear the Haryana government deciding to include Ramayana and Mahabharata in school textbooks. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently claimed, without any basis, that Ashoka belonged to the Kushwaha caste. Relevant sources do not refer to Ashoka's caste or to the existence of the caste called Kushwaha during his time. Then, we were told that Aurangzeb Road in Delhi must be renamed as it was named after a tyrannical and oppressive ruler. One can argue that many Hindu rulers also had negative aspects. Even Ashoka, considered to be a "good" ruler, is said to have ascended the throne after killing 99 of his brothers. So why not change the name of Asoka Road? Why do you have roads named after Bhagwan Das and Man Singh who fought the Hindutva icon Rana Pratap? The purpose of renaming roads and cities is plain and simple: to black out the Islamic past of India. In a recent move to communalise the history of India, the Sanskrit department of Delhi University declared its intent to push back the date of the Rig Veda to 8,000 BC by using dubious astronomical evidence and ignoring the inscriptional, linguistic, ethnographic and geographical information which form the basis of the accepted Vedic chronology. This is a mockery of research, for the department has already arrived at the conclusion before researching the facts. The Modi government is trying to destroy the basic character of academic institutions by appointing mediocre people to head them: Y Sudarshan Rao, who is better known for his ignorance than for his knowledge of history, has been appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR); Baldev Sharma, the former editor of the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya has been brought in to replace the well-known Malayalam writer A Sethumadhavan as chairman of the National Book Trust (NBT); and Gajendra Chauhan, a BJP functionary, whose claim to fame rests on his role as Yudhishthir in the TV serial Mahabharata, had been appointed chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), ignoring the stalwarts who had made huge contribution to the film industry. More recently, a well-known historian Mahesh Rangrajan has been made to resign as Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), to facilitate the induction of someone without any academic credentials. The RSS and the Hindutva brigade, including Prime Minister Modi, attribute fantastic scientific achievements to ancient Indians. We are told that they had knowledge of stem cell research, plastic surgery and aircraft much before the West came to know of them. But none of their claims is supported by evidence. On the other hand, there is much in ancient Indian science we can be proud of, such as the contributions of Charaka, Shushruta, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara. But the Hindutva brigade has seldom mentioned any one of them. By the time the current regime runs its course, the BJP would have damaged Indian social polity irreparably and hijacked academic discourse to a level of abysmal ignorance. History will remember the present government as one that led the country into a dark age. With Modi at the helm, India has become a benighted nation. III. http://www.dailyo.in/politics/dadri-murder-beef-hindutva-indian-constitution-bjp-article-48-dpsp-veer-savarkar-jammu-kashmir/story/1/6585.html Beef, Hindutva and bigotry: Constitution has no place for it This ban is not principled but opportunist. POLITICS | 3-minute read | 03-10-2015 KAMAL MITRA CHENOY Why did the BJP suddenly and selectively ban beef? They say it is in the Constitution. That is not quite true. In the Directive Principles Article 48 is titled "Organisation of agriculture and animal husbandry". It mentions that the State shall "take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle". Therefore there is no religious reason for the ban, it is to preserve and improve the breeds. Has that been followed? However, milch and draught cattle includes buffalos, mithun and yak, which are eaten in India, especially the first. That was no accident. But in every city, town and village, stray and emaciated cows, calves and bulls are seen feeding on garbage. How far is Article 48 being followed in scientific breeding of cows and calves? Hardly at all. But it is crystal clear that there is no religious basis to the ban on cows including milch and draught cattle. In any case Directive Principles are not binding, unless they are supporting a Fundamental Right. This is clearly not the case here. Also read: Should I be worried for the Muslim family in my neighbourhood? There are other Directive Principles. Article 41 lays down the "Right to work, to education and to public assistance in certain cases" including "unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and other cases of undeserved want". Ever heard any pious Hindutva politician referring to this? Article 39(b) "The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing that the ownership and control of the material resources are so distributed as best to subserved the common good;" Article 39(d) "that there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women; Article 44 "The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India." None of these articles have been completely implemented. Why not, after so many governments, political parties? They are clearly not interested. But all of these articles seek to empower the Indian people. The beef ban, as the recent murder instigated by a Hindu priest in Dadri has shown, is not based on Constitutional principles but Hindutva. It is generated by debased communal sentiment not religion. And this is not new. It predates independent India. But VD "Veer" Savarkar greatly respected by the Sangh Parivar, had written that beef should be available as it was a source of cheap protein for the poor. The BJP has brought out a stamp of Savarkar, but seems to have selectively read his works. In Kashmir, a Dogra king banned beef decades ago. But now there are demands for beef to be legalised. Yet, the same BJP has permitted beef in Goa, as the Congress-led front has allowed beef in Kerala. So this beef ban is not principled but opportunist. It is intended to communalise Indian society, to garner votes in coming elections, apart from cowing minorities and secular people. If secularism and our Constitutional Rights mean anything, this challenge must be met. Reason not reaction must be our motto. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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