Independent India’s first President stood for values and ideals for our contemporary politicians have little regard, a tribute on his 138th birth anniversary!  

The illiterate and casteist political leadership has ruined the future of over 11 crore Biharis. The Bihari pride is severely dented by the few family-centric, feudal political parties claiming to be the champions of social justice. The state produced the legendary Dr Rajendra Prasad, a role model for the political class and common people alike, but alas, few received inspiration from him. Instead, we have seen the most pathetic leadership in the state.

Rajendra Babu was born in a village in Bihar, but his hard work and brilliance overcame the boundaries of his village. He was a brilliant student, getting his legal degree and later a Doctorate in Law from Calcutta University. He was very successful and had a lucrative legal practice at the Calcutta and Patna High Courts. In his own words “I had a very rich background and belonged to a scholarly family.”

He was drawn early into the non-cooperation movement, became a comrade of Mahatma Gandhi, and was imprisoned for a number of years during the freedom movement. He was President of the Indian National Congress in 1934, 1935, and 1939. A devout person, he had great respect for the ethos and traditions of Hinduism.

Rajendra Babu was a fiercely independent and strong-willed leader. It led to clashes with Pt Nehru on several occasions. The differences started even before the birth of the Indian Republic, with the Hindu Code Bill. Bhimrao Ambedkar presented the draft in October 1947 in the Constituent Assembly and Nehru strongly supported the Bill. They wanted this Bill to be part of the Constitution. Under this, a code for all Hindus was to be created. As the President of the Constituent Assembly, Prasad intervened. He believed religion in society is equally important as anything else and wanted to have a Uniform Civil Code for all Indians.

For the first Presidential election, Patel and the Congress party wanted Rajendra Prasad to be the President. Nehru, at that time, favoured the then Governor General Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari to be the first President of the nation. Rajagopalachari had not participated in the Quit India Movement and hence was not popular with the Congress Party cadre. Patel and Prasad had a strong hold on the organisation, even more than Nehru. The Congress chose Rajendra Prasad as the President of India.  The Constituent Assembly elected him as the first President of India unanimously.

In yet another disagreement over the then President of India, Prasad, being invited to inaugurate the Somnath temple, Nehru advised the President “against participating in a significant function which unfortunately has a number of implications.” Prasad ignored Nehru’s advice and added, “I would do the same with a mosque or a church if I were invited.”

The first President’s contributions to the freedom movement and the stabilisation of Indian Democracy were immense. He steered the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly sagaciously and helped the unanimous adoption of the Indian Constitution. Prasad established good democratic traditions during the twelve long years he occupied the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He was a simple, elegant, unostentatious person and conducted himself with humility and dignity. Dr. Rajendra Prasad turned out to be perhaps India’s Great President.

The rise of OBC politics caused the decay of Prasad’s vision of a prosperous Bihar. Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar, and a host of caste-based leaders have systematically destroyed Prasad’s state. The false promise of development supplemented with social justice fueled the aspirations of backward classes, and merit was sacrificed which led to the total collapse of the system in the state.

Caste politics created several Robin Hoods of different castes in several districts of Bihar, leading to the largest migration seen in recent times from Bihar to other states. Employment opportunities vanished and the Bihari pride had to take shelter outside the range of the hinterland. It is a different matter that a large portion of Bihari has made success in India and even outside India but the pain of leaving the motherland is felt even today.    

The golden age of Bihar was led by Shri Krishna Sinha, also known as Shri Babu, the first chief minister of Bihar (1946-61). Along with Prasad, Sinha is also among the 'Architects of Modern Bihar'. He was known as Bihar Kesari for his lion-like roars when he rose to address the masses.

However, in the Hindi heartland, people do not cast their vote but vote for their caste. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is no stranger to this brand of politics. Coming from the lineage of Ram Manohar Lohia, he too has once been a flag-bearer of Mandal. A Kurmi by caste, he stands on the second rung of the OBC ladder. During his previous tenure, he worked strenuously towards empowering the lower classes and appealing to socially privileged voters through his Vikas Purush persona.

The Mandal Commission polarised OBCs; they united politically to achieve their rights. It was in this era that Lalu Prasad Yadav turned into a political hero in Bihar. This became the watershed moment for Bihar. According to Lohia, in India, the basic unit of stratification is caste and not the class. This perverted philosophy crippled Bihar society, with caste trumping merit and a comprehensive institutional collapse of the state’s politics, bureaucracy, judiciary and media. The institutions were poisoned by the caste opium. On top of that, the JP Movement destroyed the education system of Bihar. JP targeted universities and colleges; youngsters disregarded education and indulged in reckless, hoodlum politics.

From an empirical perspective, the condition of backward groups, except for a few political families, has not improved. The bureaucracy opened up for those who were not socially privileged or came from humble backgrounds due to their position in the caste hierarchy. However, according to the bureaucratic representation report released in November 2014; the SCs, STs and OBCs account for less than 10 percent of the Central higher bureaucracy.

But things have improved from a psychological perspective in the political sphere. In the first four to five decades after Independence, the backward classes had little say in the system; the Mandal movement changed that at every level—from the local bodies to state Assemblies and Parliament. However, caste-based policies have had an adverse effect on the quality of governance.

With someone from their own community safeguarding their interests, psychological empowerment was achieved to an extent. But the merit in governance became the causality, an epidemic that ruined the state of Bihar permanently. Here it is important to mention that everyone must get the right to prosper in a flourishing democracy, the poorest of the poor must be given an equal platform by the state to compete in a dignified life.

In Prasad’s words, “In attaining our ideals, our means should be as pure as the end.” So the current generation of native Biharis must have taken a tough call—to imbibe the ideals preached by Prasad. The alternatives are non-meritorious, casteist, corrupt, mafia, and selfish leadership. Now is the time for the people living in Bihar to do serious soul searching whether they want to endure the status quo or opt for change. Rajendra Babu’s legacy can be of great help.

Mohan Bhagwat’s definition of a Hindu may not go down well with many

RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat has reiterated that all people living in India were by definition Hindus. He further added that anybody who agrees to sing Sanskrit verses in praise of Bharat Mata and is committed to the preservation of the culture of the land is a Hindu. Bhagwat said this while addressing RSS workers before concluding his four-day tour of Bihar. While his stand is welcome in that he sees Hindus in a larger context and does not limit his definition of a Hindu to a religious identity but on the other hand it is an unnecessary classification that is neither required nor warranted. True, Arabs gave this name to all people residing across Hindukush Mountain and it meant a geopolitical identity rather than a religious one but that time has long gone and now a Hindu is a religious identity, legally. Moreover, calling everyone Hindu without their consent is not a bright idea. Labeling anyone as per your convenience is fraught with dangers. Many religious groups would have reservations about being called Hindu. “Hindu” does not denote Indian and that is a fact. There is a difference between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hindustani’, ( of course the word Hindustani is now obsolete). And we are not even talking about ‘Hindutva’ which has political connotations.

Besides, even many Hindus would have objections to somebody branding them and giving them a certificate of being a Hindu. There must be millions of people who call themselves Hindus but cannot recite a single verse in Sanskrit so it is utterly insolent to test people for their identity on the basis of your own preconceived notions. Though his statement deserves merit when he says that identities have been made possible because of the Hindu ethos of acceptance. India has been an assimilating culture and its mighty diversity is living proof of it. Categorizing it and labeling it kills every nuance of Indian culture which made India that is Bharat what it is today - a bouquet of different identities, religions, languages, and creeds living as neighbours and working shoulder to shoulder to build a country that has seen some worst periods in history but with its resilience came over it. The contention that those whose ancestors happened to be Hindus is debatable. There may be people who had the same ancestors but now they have branched out as different groups and we should respect their divergences, no matter what.

Courtesy: The Pioneer 

The Church of Wokeism
Liberal Arts Becomes Dogmatic

Excerpts from Snakes in the Ganga by Rajiv Malhotra & Vijaya Viswanathan

The stated goal of liberal arts education is to equip students to process complex and diverse ideas, engage in abstract thinking, and consider opposing opinions with open minds. The teacher should provide students theoretical grounding from multiple perspectives and encourage them to engage each other and the faculty, and debate opponents with mutual respect. Such education should enable them to challenge beliefs, assumptions, and conventions. In practice, however, liberal education has become the exact opposite. Students are no longer encouraged to think for themselves but are tutored in the teacher’s specific ideology and social justice morality. Academic institutions are not sanctuaries for open inquiry and alternative viewpoints. The conservative thinker Allan Bloom was blunt in his influential book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, attacking American universities for spreading dogma as theory and for indoctrinating in the guise of scholarship. Ironically, in the name of ridding society of its power structures, academicians have created their own enormous power structure. Since the old structures are seen as stumbling blocks, they are to be demolished. This includes not just dismantling structures like religions, nation-states, and traditional values, but also objectivity, rationality, and meritocracy.

Genuine science is about formulating hypotheses and subjecting them to empirical testing, debate, contestation, and falsification. The social sciences, however, too often blur the boundaries between
facts and moral values. The power of social sciences in society comes not from their ability to theorize like the hard sciences, but from their ability to undermine societies. In addition, the globalization of liberal arts has had a colonizing effect. To be truly liberal, each society should develop its own content with its own cultural underpinnings and resist global homogenization. But domination by American scholars, institutions, theories, and funding sources has undermined local cultures. The system of academic rankings and global evaluation indices is also controlled by the West and undermines local excellence. We use the terms social sciences, humanities, and liberal arts interchangeably because of the inter-disciplinary movement to cross fertilize across them.

Popular Wokeism

The term ‘Woke’ was already popular in Black culture, but it became mainstream in the aftermath of George Floyd’s (a Black) killing by a White policeman. Becoming Woke is a general-purpose term
referring to being aware of social injustice according to the framework of Critical Race Theory. It means fighting all the invisible power structures that govern societies. We will use the terms Wokeism and Critical Race Theory are interchangeably; the latter is the more formal academic system, while Wokeism is its popular, informal version. Though we empathize with the oppressed and support movements that help them, we disagree with many of the methods being suggested by Critical Race Theory. We find that activist leaders are not persecuted innocent freethinkers but advocates of censorship, Cancel Culture, and aggressive evangelism of their newly founded religion. For instance, we disagree with Wokeism’s premise that rationality is a problem because the clever, upper-class elites have been using it as a tool for exploitation. The movement is not interested in constructive engagements. It is not open to free speech, debate, discussion, challenge, evidence, etc. This will be elaborated in a later section of this chapter. It is reasonable to think in terms of the Gospel of Wokeism as a dogma belonging to a new kind of Church. The high priests of Wokeism are the autocrats deciding who is underprivileged and entitled to special treatment. This is a powerful new institution with its own ideas of blasphemy. Those who disagree are to be attacked viciously. Dissent is not allowed. Woke is a form of groupism and tribalism, seeing society in terms of us/them, and waging an all-out war against its opponents. The table below shows some of the similarities between this movement and the dogmatic structure of some Churches.

Just as Adam and Eve committed the Original Sin that has inflicted everyone ever since so also systemic racism is the Original Sin of the founding fathers and all others involved in nation-building.
Individual merit is overshadowed by the structural Original Sin. Another similarity we find with organized Christianity is the use of victimhood. Wokeism inherited this from Marxism’s Frankfurt School whose leaders defined a new class called ‘the subaltern’ as ‘the oppressed’. This was a new kind of proletariat defined as those deprived of cultural power. This cultural hegemony has many names and forms: feminists call it patriarchy; sexual names and forms: feminists call patriarchy; sexual minorities call it heteronormativity, and racial minorities call it White supremacy.

Indians' concept of religious tolerance does not necessarily involve mixing religious communities.

For quite some time, opinion makers from different quarters have been asking the Narendra Modi government to scrap the Ministry of Minority Affairs and replace it with a new Ministry of Religious affairs. There is a great deal of justification for such a demand. India is a growing international power, and its identity of India can be secured globally by presenting its culture and religion from a global perspective. The proposed Ministry of Religious affairs could be headed by a practicing spiritual leader to propagate the face of India's spiritual strength.

India has all along respected all religions, but major religious groups see little in common with Hinduism and want to live separately. A learned spiritual leader at the head of the proposed ministry could bridge this gap and integrate the communities together. 

In the West, some people could argue that Hinduism is an old-styled religion with huge baggage to reconcile with the contemporary world. Modernity, which emphasises the relegation of religion firmly to an individual's private life, is a challenging idea for any culture. In India, it faces a particularly unusual problem: the persistence of numerous traditional and religious practices means that religion and modernity have to cohabit here in a complex, plural, transient, and historically evolving relationship.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has already  passed a resolution seeking an "immediate scrapping of both the Minority Commission and the Minority Affairs Ministry" as the “very idea” of these institutions "gives credence to a separatist mindset."

The resolution noted that “the Jehadis and Missionaries are not the persecuted but the persecutors,” and “with the help of the Minority Commission, separate Ministry, they gather sympathy and carry out their anti-Hindu and anti-national activities." It said that the National Human Rights Commission is "more than enough to take care of the rights of all citizens of the country.”

It contended that “the Minority Commission creates a false feeling that the Muslim and Christian communities are being persecuted,” whereas “the reality is that it is they who are responsible for the persecution of not only Hindus but on other minority communities like the Sikhs and the Buddhists.”

The main functions of the Ministry of Religious Affairs should be:

a) Extending overall co-operation in implementing development activities, providing grants, taking initiatives for resource mobilization, introducing online registration, and utmost use of ICT in religious affairs management;

b) Assisting research and publications in the field of religion, and providing cooperation in the management of charitable institutions;

c) Arranging and participating in international conferences, seminars and dialogues on matters relating to religions and religious affairs and establishing connections and improving relations, and signing contracts, agreements, conventions with different countries and international organizations/ institutions;

d) Conducting various programmes in the religious and educational institutions for social development, conducting research and strengthening anti-terrorism campaigns, religious values, integrity, brotherhood, and communal harmony;

d) Providing grants-in-aid including reforms of different religious organisations and institutions, matters relating to moon sightings and celebration of important religious festivals; and supporting the destitute people for their rehabilitation with financial assistance.

More than 70 years after India became free from colonial rule, Indians generally feel their country has lived up to one of its post-Independence ideals: a society where followers of many religions can live and practice freely. India's massive population is diverse as well as devout. Not only do most of the world's Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists.

Indians see religious tolerance as central to who they are as a nation. Across the major religious groups, most people say it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.” And tolerance is a religious as well as a civic value: Indians are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a member of their own religious community.

These shared values are accompanied by a number of beliefs that cross religious lines. Not only do a majority of Hindus in India (77%) believe in karma, but an identical percentage of Muslims do, too. A third of Christians in India (32%) - together with 81% of Hindus - say they believe in the purifying power of the Ganges River, a central belief in Hinduism. In Northern India, 12% of Hindus and 10% of Sikhs, along with 37% of Muslims, identify with Sufism, a mystical tradition most closely associated with Islam. And the vast majority of Indians of all major religious backgrounds say that respecting elders is very important to their faith.

Yet, despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs - as well as living in the same country, under the same constitution - members of India's major religious communities often don't feel they have much in common with one another. The majority of Hindus see themselves as very different from Muslims (66%), and most Muslims return the sentiment, saying they are very different from Hindus (64%). There are a few exceptions: Two-thirds of Jains and about half of Sikhs say they have a lot in common with Hindus. But generally, people in major religious communities see themselves as different from others.

Moreover, Indians generally stick to their own religious group when it comes to their friends. Hindus overwhelmingly say that most or all of their close friends are also Hindu. Of course, Hindus make up the majority of the population, and as a result of sheer numbers, may be more likely to interact with fellow Hindus than with people of other religions. But even among Sikhs and Jains, who each form a sliver of the national population, a large majority say their friends come mainly or entirely from their small religious community.

Indians, then, simultaneously express enthusiasm for religious tolerance and a consistent preference for keeping their religious communities in segregated spheres - they live together separately. These two sentiments may seem paradoxical, but for many Indians, they are not. Indeed, many take both positions, saying it is important to be tolerant of others and express a desire to limit personal connections across religious lines. Indians who favor a religiously segregated society also overwhelmingly emphasize religious tolerance as a core value.

In other words, Indians’ concept of religious tolerance does not necessarily involve mixing religious communities. While people in some countries may aspire to create a “melting pot” of different religious identities, many Indians seem to prefer a country more like a patchwork fabric, with clear lines between groups. Most Hindus in India say being Hindu, and being able to speak Hindi are very important to be ‘truly’ Indian.

Against this backdrop, the time has come to scrap the Ministry of Minority of Affairs without any further delay and create a unifying Ministry of Religious affairs.