Wine is fine with our woman

March 5, 2009

Recently we witnessed the sad spectacle of a bunch of hoodlums belonging to a saffron brigade chasing and thrashing girls in a Mangalore pub in full media glare on the pretext that drinking by women was “not our culture’. There were plenty of protests and a public discourse followed (a woman minister now faces legal action for describing the assault as an attempt at “Talibanising” our society) but not a word was spoken against that not-our-culture assertion, which somehow left an impression that probably the hoodlums were right, howsoever silly may that seem in the land of Kamasutra, Tantra and Ganikas (remember Amrapali and Vasantasena?) Not to forget the dope-loving Lord Shiva, who all Hindu virgins are suppose to worship to be blessed with a good husband and the perpetually doped out Lord Indra, who presides over Heaven and should figure in the Guinness books for a record on chasing women!
With such a colourful and rich cultural heritage it would actually surprise if our past records didn’t show up women cheering up their evenings with an occasional drink or two or our menfolk so unimaginative or downright stupid as to deny themselves the pleasure of wine and women concoction. And guess what we found? There are plenty of delicious accounts!
Let us start with the profound and end up with the profane as the heady cocktail of wine and women takes its effect.

Sita and Draupadi
Our religious texts like Ramayana and Mahabharat are replete with references of royal ladies having gala evenings with generous use of wine. No less than Sita, the ideal wife and role model for all Hindu women, has been described sharing a drink with her Lord in the Ashok vatika after the demon king Ravana is killed! Yes, you read that right. She and her lord celebrated much as we would do in our age and time with, presumably, a cup of maireya, a ‘spiced liquor’, for that was her favourite drink.
(Ref: Economy and Food in Ancient India by Om Prakash; Wine in Ancient India by D.K. Bose and ‘Alcoholic fermentation and its products in ancient India’ by K.T.Achaya-who remains the first reference point for all food writers in India)

The books referred tells us further that maireya was a variety of Sura (Soma, that heavenly nectar that only the very privileged had access to and used in Vedic rituals, had presumably disappeared by then), a distilled liquor prepared from Guda (jaggery).

Sita even promises goddess Ganga, thousands jars of wine while accompanying her husband during his banishment thus: "Oh Goddess, be pleased, when we come back we shall propitiate you with thousands jars of wine."

We are told the women of monkey-king Sugriva were fond of wine. Queen Tara has been described in her intoxicated state with ‘uncertain gait and dancing eyes’. Yes, you would be right to check to closet of Ravana’s harem. There are passages that talk of the “charming women of demon king Ravana’s harem—sleeping beauties under the influence of liquor”.

Mahabharata has its own share. Here we quote: “Draupadi along with Subhadra, lovely sister of Krishna, went for a picnic on the bank of river Yamuna and enjoyed wine in the company of other women of the harem”. (M.L.Varadpande in “Women in Indian Sculpture”)
“Virtuous ladies like Sudesna (queen of King Virat with whom Draupadi stayed during her ‘agyantvas’) drank wine”. (Bose)

Soma and songs
Going further back in time, to the Vedic period and thereafter, when women had high status in society, when they studied and debated philosophy with men openly and participated equally in all important rituals, we find women had access and they enjoyed wine.

As far the heavenly nectar Soma—the very first wine known to India which had a prominent role in certain Vedic rituals apart from social use--is concerned no specific passage is found talking about women drooling to its effect (it was a very exclusive and expensive drink in any case and sourced from certain high mountains, the eponymous plant whose juice was extracted for preparing Soma, disappeared soon enough and heard no more) a Rig Vedic hymn lays bare the relation:
“Seven women stir thee with their fingers
blending their voices in a song to thee, you remind
the sacrificer of his duties at the sacrifice." (Bose)

As we travel through time (800 BC to 300 BC), we learn Sura (poor country cousin of Soma) had become a regular part of life, having found a place in several rituals. Om Prakash (referred earlier) writes that “it was served to women when a bride arrived at the bridegroom’s place” and that “women who performed a dance at the time of marriage were also served Sura”. It was also “served to the wives of forefathers in the Anavastakya rite”.
Elsewhere we find mention of a ritual in which young girls irrigating the Ashoka tree with ‘mouthfuls’ of wine (probably it had something to do with fertility rites).
What to make of another custom that talks of “drenching the limbs of young bride by sprinkling wine on her”! (Varadpande)

Wine and wonder
Coming down to the Christian era, we find wine turning even more irresistible part of life as a new discovery was made of its use. For, now we find wine being associated with beauty! Actually it was believed that wine imparted a ‘special charm’ to women and ‘heightened their beauty’ (how true!).
Om Prakash writes that during the Gupta period (300 AD to 750AD) “it was believed that intoxication gave a special charm to women; ladies of royal families, therefore, enjoyed drinking”.
He goes on to quote several instances:
“In the Malavikagnimitra, Iravati indulges in drinking. Indumati, the queen of Aja liked to receive wine from the mouth of her husband. The Mandasore inscription mentions a phrase, ‘like the cheeks of the intoxicated women’. The after effects of drinking on women are described in the Kumarasambhava. The Harshacharita also mentions beautiful ladies who had drunk wine. Kumarila mentions that in Ahicchatra (modern Ramnagar in Bareilly) and Mathura even Brahmin women indulged in drinking.”
“The Matsya Purana describes Krishna drinking with sixteen thousand ladies and doesn’t regard him as a sinner. Ajanta paintings also depict scenes of drinking such as wines being brought in large jars.”
“The Brahspati Smriti also lays down that drinking should be avoided by those women whose husbands are away.”
“The staple food grain of the people in north was wheat and women there drank liquors.”
“In Kumarila’s time Brahmin women in Ahicchatra (modern Ramnagar in Bareilly) and Mathura drank wine.”
“Even respectable women considered drinking wines a necessary embellishment.”

If these instances don’t make drinking of liquor by women a regular and essential part of our culture what would?

Nevertheless, we continue our journey to post Gupta Period (750 to 1200 AD). “Even some Brahmin youths wasted their time in company of dancing girls who were addicted to drinking. The sons of Harischandra by a Kshatriya wife are called madhupayina (addicted to drinking). Some women are described as intoxicated with drinking. Women liked the varuni variety of wine.”
“Medhatithi also says that while Brahmin women did not drink wine at festivals, Kshatriya and other women, to whom drinking was not forbidden, indulged in excessive drinking on festive occasions. Courtesans and Tantrikas were, no doubt, addicted to drinking.” (Bose)

‘Ornament of women’
Set aside those serious texts. Consider the literature, which has even more compelling descriptions indicating that not only was wine and women made an alluring concoction it was even glorified.
Kalidas too often spoke of ladies whose lips were scented with perfume of liquor! The Katha Sarit Sagara thus describes the drinking hall of King Naravahan Dutta. “It was full of goblets, made of various jewels, which looked like so many expanded lotuses and strewn with so many flowers, so that it resembled a lotus bed in a garden; and it was crowded with ladies with jugs full of intoxicating liquor, who made it flash like the nectar appearing in the arms of Garuda. There they drank wine- that snaps those fetters of shame that bind the ladies of the royal households, wine the essence of Love’s life, the ally of merriment!”
“In Mrichchkoti, we find that profligate youths came to the house of a woman, to drink iced wine. In Ratnabali we see at the ceremony in honour of the God of Love, citizens both male and female being drunk, reveling in song and dance.”
“We find wine is called ‘ornament of woman’. (Bose)


Women in Sene land
All the accounts given so far relates primarily to north India. What about southern part of India (part of the territory where Ram Sene, the hoodlums who said it was not-our-culture operate)? Well, going by the evidence, it is very clear that southern India (the Dravidian territory) was far more liberal and generous towards women even when it came to drinking. “Drinking wine after partaking of pepper and betal leaves was the general practice among the ladies of the south”. (Om Prakash)

Achaya agrees. The only passage in which he talks about drinking habits in south India, he wrote in his scholarly article in 1991 we have already referred to goes like this: “…..a favourite drink of women was munnir or triple-liquid, a mixture of tender coconut water, sugar-cane juice and palmyra juice, which may or may not have been fermented. Pre-Aryan society in the south showed no prejudice against (women) consuming liquor.”

Sculpture
Well, that is not all. Indian sculpture too provides its own share of evidence that well, you can’t really keep wine and women away from each other. We are told it was the Mathura school of sculpture that made drinking scenes popular in temple architecture. The National Museum has quite a few of sculptures that show woman with a wine cup.
At Sanchi (first century of Christian era), the earliest sculptures of Indian art, shows men and women drinking.
Yoginis and Ganikas were, of course, allowed their wine.

Wine and salvation
Ah, coming to the voluptuous Yoginis of our temples of love, lust and salvation. Whoever found that ‘magical route’ to salvation called Tantra must be laughing from the Heaven (surely he/she would have got salvation!). Tantra made women and wine essential parts of nirvana (Tantra didn’t spare even austere Buddhism or Jainism) and changed the face of our holy temples forever. India became the land of Kamasutra in sculpture too. Khajuraho is only one example. They are there in every nook and corner of the country.
One last quote to end. “Tantrikas gave religious sanctions to the use of wine and meat and the company of women, and associated pleasure with salvation in their teachings.” (Om Prakash)

Sculptures in national museum
1. woman serving liquor to pot-bellied man Kuber (kushan period)
2. young girl drinking from wine glass (kushan period)
3. drunk courtesan being helped

NaxalSpeak

Freedom movement
The Congress Party, and later the Gandhian leadership in the Congress, was brought forth by the British colonialists to divert and derail the growing anti-imperialist national liberation movement and to deprive the people of revolutionary leadership

Independence
The declaration of ‘Independence’ in 1947 was nothing but fake in essence. Actually the direct colonial and semi-feudal system of the British imperialists was replaced with semi-colonial and semi-feudal system under the neo-colonial form of indirect imperialist rule, exploitation and control.
Since India is semi-colonial and semi-feudal, neither there is real independence nor there is democracy. Therefore, this new democratic revolution will bring national independence uprooting the imperialist slavery, exploitation and control, and will establish the people’s democracy uprooting the feudal autocracy.

Green Revolution
After the transfer of power in 1947, the Indian ruling classes, in serving imperialism, resorted to several measures to promote alternative development models in place of radical land reforms based on "land to the tiller". Firstly, they brought forth community development programme, rural co-operatives and intensive agricultural development programmes (IADP) etc. with the aid of, and according to the needs and planning of, Ford and Rockefeller foundations, the World Bank and other imperialist agencies. Thereafter, in continuation of these steps they introduced the so-called Green Revolution in Punjab and some rural pockets of the country by the mid-1960s. This ‘Green Revolution’ was meant not only to provide captive market for the imperialist goods but also was an attempt to counter the emerging threat of the Red Revolution and to solve the chronic food crisis.

Parliament
In our country, parliamentary system was imposed by British imperialism from above. Moreover, bourgeois democratic revolution too has not been completed here. Hence no bourgeois democracy ever came into being here.
This state machinery is nothing but an instrument of suppression and repression, and represents the dictatorship of the comprador bourgeoisie and landlord classes subservient to imperialism. The repressive rule is sought to be covered up behind the façade of fraudulent parliamentary system. This state system represents the semi-colonial, semi-feudal system under neo-colonial form of indirect rule, exploitation and control.

Revolution
This new democratic state will be the people’s democratic dictatorship exercised by the united front comprising the proletariat, peasantry, petty-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie class under the leadership of the proletariat based upon the worker-peasant alliance. The state will guarantee real democracy for the vast majority of the people while exercising dictatorship over the tiny minority of the exploiters. The minimum programme of our party is to establish socialism by accomplishing the new democratic revolution and the ultimate programme is to establish communism on a world scale.

Election boycott
In fact, the tactics of participation in the election in the name of using it is tantamount to abandoning the tasks of building and advancing the armed struggle. Reality is that without people’s political power everything is illusion. The people’s political power can be established and advanced only through the path of protracted people’s war. Parliamentary path and participation in the elections are completely incompatible with Protracted peoples war in the concrete conditions of India. Even the advancement of real people’s political consciousness is closely linked with it. More so, the accumulation of forces, including the development and Bolshevization of the party itself are inseparably linked with it. That is why the armed struggle is the ‘centre of gravity’ of the Party’s work as comrade Mao stated. In this overall context, the slogan of ‘Boycott Election’, though a question of tactics, acquires the significance of strategy in the concrete conditions of India. It is also correct to raise the slogan ‘Boycott Election is a Democratic Right’ on a mass scale.

Stand up to fight!

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s offer of talks with Maoists who abducted a policeman in West Midnapur district last Tuesday once again exposes our failure to deal with a hostage crisis. Just it had happened in the past, often with disastrous consequences, the first reaction of our governments both at the Centre and the state-level have been to bend backwards and get the hostages freed at any cost. There have been three major cases in the recent memory—Rubaiya Saeed’s abduction, hijack of IC-814 plane and abduction of three truckers in Iraq in 2004—and in all these cases the governments negotiated with the hostage takers. Ironically, every such capitulation followed by an uproar in the country after which the Centre solemnly declared its resolve to adopt a no-nonsense hostage policy the cornerstone of which would be ‘no negotiation’. But this has remained more as a statement of intent.
No lessons were learnt by the Rubaiya Saeed abduction case and some of the most dreaded international terrorists were released after the hijacking of IC-814 plane. The NDA regime seemed firm in putting in place the ‘no-negotiation’ policy but soon it was forgotten. When the UPA came to power in 2004, it did the same—first it went ahead and negotiated release of three truckers in Iraq and the then said India would henceforth follow US, China and Israel in adopting the policy of no-negotiations. The then National Security Advisor JN Dixit went to the extent of saying that it had the backing of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Dixit went on to say how Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released after the IC-814 hijack, was responsible for the death of 400 to 500 people thereafter!
Cut back to October 2009. Everything has been forgotten and the West Bengal government is now “waiting for a well-defined line of talks from the Maoist”. In turn, the Maoists have promptly sought release of detained ultras, declaring the abducted cop in their custody as a ‘prisoner of war’. Mind it, Maoist ultras have been declared terrorists and a massive operation is being launched against them by the Centre to reclaim the land from their clutches. If the West Bengal government is ready to buckle to free just one policeman, imagine what a big incentive it would be for the Maoists to attempt kidnapping a few more cops and if possible, some high-profile individuals. And what chance in the hell the state has in its battle against the Left-wing extremists! Your task, therefore, is cut out Mr Bhattacharjee: Don’t stoop to submit, rise to fight the menace!

Carry on Mr Thackeray!

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray’s declaration that he and his party would now take up the Marathi issue more stridently, which essentially means the hate campaign against the north Indians would continue unabated, should surprise none. After all, it paid rich dividend in the just concluded Assembly election in which his party won 13 seats! And he should be a worried man, readying for the big challenge confronting him: Migrants from UP and Bihar constitute half the population of Mumbai as per a recent BMC survey, as he pointed out. But that is not the only justification. As a politician he has every right to continue with his sectarian politics. Look at the main national opposition outfit, the BJP. It may moderate its Hindutva policies to please the allies at times but it essentially remains and espouses the cause of one particular religious community, the Hindus. Same is true of the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Rashtriya Janata Party, the DMK and many other political outfits which champion the cause of one or more caste groups. This parochial politics may have promoted divisive tendencies but the fact that it continues to pay good electoral returns clearly means that it is doing something good for the people. And that leads us to an issue of greater importance: our development plans are skewed. Why else would people from UP and Bihar crowd Mumbai in such large numbers? Why employment opportunities are not created uniformly across the country? Why some sections of the society continue to lag in terms of education and feel they are sons and daughters of lesser gods? In fact, Raj Thackeray’s policy of hate is symptom of the flaw in our policies and plans. And so long as we don’t take corrective measures, Thackerays would continue to flourish and practice politics of hate. To that extent, Raj Thackeray serves a great purpose by constantly reminding us of our shortcomings and the need for course correction.

Whose brief the CM holds?

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has suddenly woken up to the fact that the CFL bulbs that she and her government have been promoting for the past two years can prove quite an environment hazard. Her statement last Sunday is self-explanatory: “I was told that mass use of CFL could pose environmental hazards in the long run as they contain mercury. So we must find an alternative.” What she didn’t say hold the key to what a good government should have done. One, she didn’t explain why she ignored presence of mercury in CFL bulbs then; two, she didn’t say what she did to ensure safe disposal of mercury and three, why she went full throttle promoting CFL bulbs without giving the matter a proper thought. Had she paused and deliberated before promoting CFL bulbs, she would not have been sorry. The worst part is she is rushing again into adopting another technology to replace CFL about which she and people in general know little: Light-emitting Diodes or LEDs, for short. While denouncing CFL, the Chief Minister declared that her government has already entered into an agreement to promote LED technology and that soon 100 buildings would be retro-fitted with LED bulbs. But she didn’t explain why she opted for LED, if one were to ignore her concern about mercury content of CFL bulbs. Is LED environmentally safer than CFL? Has there been any study or experiment to find out if it posed any health hazard to humans or to the environment in any way? Will there be any problem in disposing off these bulbs? Will there be any standard set or a regulatory body to ensure power quality of the appliance? We don’t know and the Delhi Chief Minister didn’t bother to explain. Just as she ignored the presence of mercury while promoting CFL, she has ignored concerns such as high-energy visible light that LED emits and its adverse impact on eye-sight. In fact, we should consider ourselves be lucky if LED turns out to be energy efficient as well as healthy, never mind that it is several times costlier than CFL. Yes, you read that right, we should consider ourselves LUCKY. For, the Chief Minister seems to work as promoter of a commercial product in the present case, rather than head of a government working for a better tomorrow.

Kashmir: A new opportunity beckons

A heartening piece of news came from London last night. A dispatch by the wire service said 13 Kashmiri political groups in the UK, who have been functioning under the umbrella of the Kashmiri National Party and is an important voice in matters relating to the Kashmir dispute, passed a resolution condemning Pakistan’s tribal invasion of the Kashmir Valley in 1947! What a turnaround for the Kashmiri diaspora which, for the past six decades, has been commemorating October 22 as a black day against India forces marching into Srinagar on that day in 1947. These Kashmiri groups mainly comprise of those who have mainly settled in UK after leaving the PoK. The resolution acknowledged that the tribal invasion was designed to force the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir to join Pakistan and that Pakistan had made the territorial acquisition of Kashmir a form of jihad. It went on to reject the “genie of extremism and hatred released in the name of jihad in October 1947 to advance political agenda”. Equally heartening news has come from those involved in the process of finding a solution to the vexed Kashmir problem. It has been revealed that some of the key groups from PoK are also disturbed about the precarious political situation in Pakistan and the battle with the Talibans. The strident voice in support of Pakistan has died down. Though all these Kashmiri groups still pitch for independent statehood for Jammu and Kashmir (that includes PoK), the statement emerging from October 22 meeting in London it is illuminating. One participant said that over the years Kashmiris remained confused about their identity: “We don’t know if we are Pakistanis or Kashmiris.” Now, this indicates that the time has come for a fresh round of initiative, an aggressive one at that, for India to push forward its case at bilateral and international levels for peaceful solution of the Kashmir issue. We may not be ready for a composite dialogue yet, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t raise the issue at international fora. In fact, this is the best time in decades when we can take the initiative away from Pakistan on the Kashmir issues and utilize the disillusionment of the Kashmiri groups to our advantage. This can then be used to pressure Pakistan to act in a manner that brings peace to the Valley. One caveat: We must think through and plan the peace offensive carefully for a positive result.

Romancing the ultras

The entire nation watched in shock and disbelief as the Maoists detained Bhubaneswar-Delhi Rajdhani Express for several hours in a forested stretch of West Bengal’s West Midnapur district. Some of the details about the entire hostage drama are fuzzy but what is clear is that members of the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA), which is a front of the Maoists operating in the area, detained the train and took the driver of the train hostage. Two persons, a passenger and driver of a police vehicle were injured, and there were telltale marks to show that the train had been attacked. Presumably, the Maoists fled as the local police and paramilitary forces closed in. As words spread that the Maoists wanted PCPA leader Chatradhar Mahato to be released, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee made a brave declaration that there would be no swapping of prisoners this time. It was clear that Union Home Minister P Chidambaram was in charge and was closely guiding and monitoring the situation. The only persons found missing from the scene were the civil society activists like Arundhati Roy and Nandini Sunder who had sprung to the defence of the Maoists when the Centre decided to mobilize additional paramilitary forces to crush them. Also missing were Mahashweta Devi, Aparna Sen and other West Bengal intellectuals who had earlier travelled to Lalgarh to show solidarity with Chatradhar Mahatao. Nothing surprising in that. They were all missing when the PCPA killed two cops and abducted another a few days back to secure release of 21 detained Maoists. Or earlier when 17 cops on election duty were gunned down in Gadchiroli. In fact, whenever the Maoists indulge in violence, which is pretty frequent in recent years, the civil society groups found missing. When they wrote a protest letter to Chidambaram, asking him to initiate an ‘unconditional dialogue’ with the Maoists, not a word was said about the Gadchiroli incident or violence unleashed by the ultras. They betray a romantic notion towards the ‘revolutionaries’ that characterized 1970s and has only emboldened the ultras to indulge in more mindless violence. The Rajdhani Express incident is only the latest. More would follow if these civil society groups and intellectuals don’t shut up and let the state deal with the ultras in an appropriate manner. Needless to say, the only right way to deal with a group bent on using violence for whatever goal it has in mind is to use force in a decisive manner. Let Punjab be the shining example of buying peace with the extremists.

What’s in a name, Mr Patnaik?

Just as it was visualized when the Shiv Sena bulldozed all sensible reasoning to turn Bombay into Mumbai in 1995, the propensity to change the name of our states, cities, parks and roads has spread like a contagious disease. (Not that this was the first but it caught the nation’s imagination like no other before or since.)The latest to join the bandwagon of name-changers is the Orissa government. Orissa now becomes Odisha and Oriya become Odia. The first question that the Centre should have asked before giving the nod should have been: How will it change the fortune of the people living in the state? After all, what does it do except pleasing the parochial bunch who have nothing better to fight for? Did the name change in anyway alter the fate of cities like Bombay, Calcutta and Madras which have become Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, respectively? No, it didn’t. On the contrary, it cost a fortune to affect the name change in official documents, stamps and seals, stationeries, signposts and publicity brochures etc. Secondly, the Orissa government forwarded the flimsiest of grounds for the change—the state was spelt wrongly. If this logic has to be accepted then Orissa must change three of its four key cities: Bhubaneswar (instead of Bhubaneshwar), Cuttack (instead of Kataka) and Balasore (instead of Baleshwar). Thirdly, the biggest challenge facing the state is poverty and unemployment. All big ticket projects of POSCO, Tata Steel and Vedanta groups are stuck because the locals are scared of losing the precious land on which they survive. Domestic and foreign investors are now shunning the state and the Maoists have now taken control of a large part of the state, preventing whatever little development work was in progress. Wouldn’t it be better to use the fund that the name change would gobble up in addressing more pressing problems of hunger, healthcare and education? And who better than the anglicized Chief Minister Navin Patnaik to understand what Shakespeare meant when he wrote that immortal line, “what’s in a name?.....”

Hot topic

The Delhi government’s decision to hike water tariff by as much as two-and-half times (expected to come into force from January 1) would surely cause heartburns in many. And justifiably so. It is one thing to pay for a service but quite another to shoulder the burden of an utterly inefficient and callous Delhi Jal Board that looks after the supply of water to the city. It has never managed to match supply with the need. Right now Delhi needs about 1100 mgd water while the supply is merely 800 mgd. The equation remains more or less for the past two decades. Worse, leakage and pilferage continue to be unbelievably high—at 50%! And as Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit admitted while taking the decision to hike the tariff, “tanker mafia” continues to charge several times more than what it should abd routinely diverts supply to the highest bidder.
If there is a crisis requiring a steep hike in tariff, which it seems with an annual loss of Rs 1500 crore a year to the DJB, shouldn’t the government first put its house in order? Say for example, by eliminating the leakage and pilferage or at least setting a target of reducing it by 10% every year? It is also known that while an ordinary resident is struggling for a regular supply even for the purpose of cooking, the privileged ones living in the Lutyens’ Zone and the commercial establishments, particularly the five star hotels in and around it, have no qualms in splurging by way of watering the sprawling swimming pools and lawns that dot the area. Reports suggest that the government plans to install fancy Jacuzzis in all the state-run hotels and the apartments being readied for the officials and athletes who would be attending the Commonwealth Games next year.
If the Delhi Jal Board is in a crisis, isn’t it more appropriate to begin an austerity drive? How about making a beginning by banning all Jacuzzis, for example?

You have blown it Mr Chidambaram

There is no other way of explaining what is happening in the naxal-hit states these days. There is a massive movement of people in West Bengal, Odisha and Chhattisgarth. Reports about hundreds of tribals fleeing their homes in fear of the impending Operation Green Hunt are pouring in daily. There are also reports that the naxals are retreating into Andhra Pradesh’s north Telangana region -- which had been quiet for the past few years because of Andhra government’s successful anti-naxal operation-- that borders insurgency affected areas of neighbouring states. The naxals have also paralysed life in Malkangiri, Koraput districts of Odisha and West Midnapur of West Bengal and elsewhere, first calling for a 48-hour bandh in protest against the Operation Green Hunt and then digging up roads and felling trees to block passages to interior areas. Some of the inter-state roads have also been cut off. These are obviously meant to prevent movement of security forces. Simultaneously, organizations sympathetic to the naxalsa have been staging protests in Delhi and elsewhere in the country. The implication of all these developments is clear. Once the security forces roll in, they will find a Lalgarh-like situation everywhere. They will find the passage difficult and may have to confront the tribals being used as shields by the naxals. Worse, they may find the hardcore naxal militants, who have already fled to the interior areas or retreated to north Telangana, missing from the battlefront. So, what’s the point of the Operation Green Hunt, Mr Chidambaram? By announcing the operation to the whole world without doing the basic ground works first, you have blown whatever chance of success there was. Would it not have been better had your intelligence agencies got into action first to prevent this kind of mobilization of manpower and logistics by the naxals? Besides, by depriving the security forces an element of surprise that is so essential in such operation, you have allowed the naxals to set the ground rule for engagement. Nobody would be surprised, therefore, if the Operation Green Hunt ends up like any other in the past decades.

Why this tokenism, Mr Raj?

The Indian Express’ expose that eight of 13 Maharashtra Navnirman Sena legislators, who assaulted Abu Azmi of the Samajwadi Party for not taking oath in Marathi, send their children to English-medium schools (and not to the Marathi-medium schools) has not come as a surprise. It is well known that the son and daughter of MNS chief Raj Thackeray study in English medium schools and colleges. Hypocrisy is not considered a sin in Indian politics, even if it is as blatant as this one. After all, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad set the standards through their diatribe against English education even while sending their children to the English medium schools. The easiest way to nurture a vote bank is through the politics of tokenism that the Indian politicians have mastered over the ages and Thackeray and his colleagues in the MNS are merely taking it forward. Just how serious they are is obvious from the way they singled out Azmi, who has come to symbolize the resistance to MNS’ attack on the north Indians, while ignoring several others who took oath in Hindi, English or Sanskrit that very day. The MNS doesn’t even have the excuse of the cultural anxiety that gripped Tamil Nadu in early decades of our independence when the Hindi was sought to be imposed by a section of politicians, to justify its action. On the other hand, people of Maharashtra have more pressing problems that require attention. Thousands of farmers are committing suicide every year, especially in Vidarbha, as moneylenders tighten their noose and repeated droughts. A few districts like Gadchiroli and Gondiya continue to languish in utter poverty and are now virtually cut off from rest of the state because of the naxal menace. Terrorism, communal tension and caste-related conflicts also plague the state in a big way. If the MNS is really serious about improving the lot of the Marathi manoos, as it claims to justify its sectarian politics, it should start focusing on these issues rather than indulging in politics of tokenism, which has done no good to anyone, at least not to those who get swayed by it.

Disband the Collegium

Is it beginning of the end of collegium system of appointing higher judiciary? It does seem so with the Supreme Court collegium deciding to disengage itself and asking the Centre to take a call on elevating Karnataka High Court chief Justice P D Dinakaran to the apex court. In its letter to the Centre, the collegium said it would forward details of the discreet inquiry the Chief Justice of India had ordered and other documents for the purpose of deciding the fate of Justice Dinakar. The move comes after Thiruvallur district collector stood by his report that Justice Dinakaran had encroached 197 acre of public land. By passing the buck to the Centre, the collegium has not only revealed its feet of clay, it has also abrogated its responsibility and has, thus, no right to arrogate itself the power to appoint the higher judiciary. It is particularly disappointing since the course of action was clear: Drop Justice Dinakaran from the list of judges to be promoted to the apex court! More so since an inquiry has confirmed his culpability in a criminal case and protest by lawyers have virtually paralysed the Karnataka High Court. In fact, in view of various controversies in appointment of judges, the Law Commission had recently suggested (before the Dinakaran issue hit the headlines) reconsideration of the collegium system. It had proposed that the Centre should either “seek reconsideration” of the three judgments that brought in the collegium system or bring in law to restore “primacy” of the CJI and the executive power to appoint Supreme Court and High Court judges. It was a nine-bench apex court bench that, in 1993, overruled an earlier judgment that had eroded primacy of the CJI in such appointments. The Dinakaran controversy later prompted eminent jurist Fali S Nariman to propose a “judicial ombudsman” over the collegiums to hear complaints against the higher judiciary. By expressing its inability to act decisively in the case of Justice Dinakaran face of clear evidence and other such controversies in the past the collegium has clearly reduced itself to a mere post office and there is absolutely no case for such a post office.

National Geographic pix

Click to enlarge the pix and find the real camels!

Status issue

So how did the Meenas in Rajasthan get ST status?
In 1953-54, the Kaka Kalekar Commission that examined the backward castes in India recommended ST status to Bheel-Meenas, a tribe mainly found in southern Rajasthan districts like Bhilawara, Udaipur, Chittor and Banswara.But in the final report, somehow the hyphen from Bheel-Meenas changed to a comma. And Bheel and Meenas became categorised as two tribes.There's another version of how Meenas became a tribe. While classifying various tribes, the British rulers classified Meenas as a ''Criminal Tribe''.
And from then on the label of a Tribe stuck. Today Meenas in Rajasthan are seen to have cornered the civil services. Here's the reason. Take a look at this hostel in Dausa. Spread over 10 acres, it has 60 rooms - all meant to shelter and support poor students of the community.
It is run by Dr Rameshwaranand, a 40-something trained neuro-surgeon from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who has now become a sanyasi.He runs another hostel for higher studies in Ajmer and two in Kota, the Mecca of IIT aspirants.''If you don't impart education, there will be no progress. The illiterate can't even be good farmers. They won't know what pesticide, seed or fertilizer to use. They won't know anything,'' said Dr Rameshwaranand, Meena leader.
So, of the 12 per cent jobs reserved for Scheduled Tribes in Rajasthan Meenas corner the most. They say Gujjars are not eligible for ST status because they don't lead a tribal lifestyle. Ironically, that's a charge the Meenas themselves face.

Prof Murli Manohar Joshi's malady

From ‘India Shining’ to ‘India was Shining’

May 3, 2009, Hindu's Sunday magazine

Murli Manohar Joshi is the Chairperson of the Drafting Committee for the BJP Manifesto, released on April 3, 2009. As Chairperson, he has written the preamble of the Manifesto, supposedly based on historical "facts" about Indian civilisation and culture. Below are excerpts from the preamble (in bold) along with brief comments given to The Hindu by eminent historians.
MMJoshi: Indian civilisation is perhaps the most ancient and continuing civilisation of the world. India has a long history and has been recognised by others as a land of great wealth and even greater wisdom. But India has also experienced continued foreign attacks and alien rule for centuries and this has resulted in a loss of pride in India and its remarkable achievements. Indians, particularly educated under the system of education imposed by the Britishers, have lost sight of not only the cultural and civilisational greatness of India, but also of its technological achievements and abounding natural resources.
India is not the most ancient civilisation. Civilisation is generally defined as having city cultures and that would make Egypt, Mesopotamia and China older. Nor is it the only continuous culture since China has a continuous culture that is older.
Every part of the world has been subjected to attacks by aliens and alien rule. In India the aliens were frequently assimilated and incorporated into Indian culture and ceased to be alien.
India lost its pride when it became a British colony and not before that. Colonial domination was more deeply destructive than any other had been before it.
The technological achievements of India had been known to those Indians who were part of these professions. Such achievements never became public knowledge. They were not applied to changing the technologies of Indian society in a major way. This is something Indians learnt through colonial rule.
MMJoshi: According to foreigners visiting this country, Indians were regarded as the best agriculturists in the world. Records of these travels from the 4th Century BC till early-19th Century speak volumes about our agricultural abundance which dazzled the world. The Thanjavur (900-1200 AD) inscriptions and Ramnathapuram (1325 AD) inscriptions record 15 to 20 tonnes per hectare production of paddy.
Agricultural abundance varied over time and space. There was no uniform abundance at all times. Joshi quotes inscriptions from Thanjavur but does not say which one. In AD 1054 (the period he speaks of as producing 20 tons per hectare of paddy) there is also a record that the area of Alangudi in Thanjavur Dt. suffered severe famine, so severe that even the state could not help the people and they finally went to the temple and sold their land to the temple treasury to get money to buy food from elsewhere. [M.E.A.R. 1899-1900, 20]
Famine was common and is mentioned in Indian texts. We do not have to go looking for certificates of merit from foreign visitors. References are made to anavrishti and ativrishti and locusts as the cause. Famine is referred to in the Ramayana [1.8.12 ff] and the Mahabharata [12.139] and in the latter it led to people eating all kinds of unsavoury things. The frequency of references to the 12-year famine is found in many texts. Manu in his Dharma-shastra states that in times of famine social codes can be dispensed with. [102 ff] The Jatakas refer to famines. [1.75, etc;]
MMJoshi: It has been established beyond doubt by the several reports on education at the end of the 18th Century and the writings of Indian scholars that not only did India have a functioning indigenous educational system but that it actually compared more than favourably with the system obtaining in England at the time in respect of the number of schools and colleges proportionate to the population, the number of students in schools and colleges, the diligence as well as the intelligence of the students, the quality of the teachers and the financial support provided from private and public sources.
Contrary to the then prevailing opinion, those attending school and college included an impressive percentage of lower caste students, Muslims and girls.

There were no schools or colleges as we know them today in ancient India. Upper caste children were educated in mathas, agraharas and sometimes monasteries. Children following a profession were apprentices in that profession. Lower castes and women were not educated generally. In Sanskrit plays they are the ones who speak the vernacular language Prakrit whilst the upper caste, educated persons speak Sanskrit.
MMJoshi: Old British documents established that India was far advanced in the technical and educational fields than Britain of 18th and early-19th Century. Its agriculture technically and productively was far superior; it produced a much higher grade of iron and steel. The Iron Pillar at Mehrauli in Delhi has withstood the ravages of time for 1,500 years or more without any sign of rusting or decay.
The iron-pillar at the Qutab has rusted but the rust cannot be seen as it is in the socket at the top.
Astronomy, mathematics and medicine were at a premium from the Seventh century onwards when there was close interaction between scholars from Alexandria, Baghdad, India and China.
MMJoshi: India knew plastic surgery, practised it for centuries and, in fact, it has become the basis of modern plastic surgery. India also practised the system of inoculation against small pox centuries before the vaccination was discovered by Dr. Edward Jenner.
India had no practice of plastic surgery until modern times. Nor did India know about vaccines.
MMJoshi: Fa-Hian, writing about Magadha in 400 AD, has mentioned that a well organised health care system existed in India. According to him, the nobles and householders of this country had founded hospitals within the city to which the poor of all countries, the destitute, the crippled and the diseased may repair.
"They receive every kind of requisite help. Physicians inspect their diseases, and according to their cases, order them food and drink, medicines or decoctions, everything in fact that contributes to their ease. When cured they depart at their ease."
The Chinese pilgrims visiting India - Fa Hien and Hsuan Tsang - make a brief mention of sick persons being treated by having to fast for seven days and being given some medicine. This was probably the treatment given to sick monks in monasteries. There were no hospitals.
MMJoshi: India’s worldview is known to have extended from Bamiyan/ Kandahar to Borobudur/ Indonesia on the one hand, and Sri Lanka to Japan on the other. Imprints of Indian culture are found in some other parts of the world as well.
India’s world view did not extend from Afganistan to Indonesia. Hindus in south India knew nothing about Bamiyan and those in north-western India knew nothing about Borobudur. Nor was there any knowledge of Japan. There was some knowledge of central Asia in the north-west of India, some knowledge of south-east Asia in eastern and southern India and the Cholas had contacts with Canton.
MMJoshi: The belief in essential unity of mankind is a unique feature of Hindu thought. The Vedic Rishi had also declared that Ekam Sad Viprah Bahudha Vadanti (truth or reality is one but wise men describe it in different ways). This is essentially a secular thought in the real sense of the term because it accepts that one can follow his own path to reach the ultimate. Hindus are well known for their belief in harmony of religions.
The notion of the secular was not known to the Hindus, as the secular requires giving priority to the human being irrespective of his/her beliefs. Hindus were concerned with establishing caste and sect. Only the Buddhists expounded a view that might be called secular since they emphasised social ethics irrespective of other links. And Buddhists were ousted by Hindus.
A new paradigm is called for, but one that endorses the primacy of the human being, the citizen of India, rather than the Hindu.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2009/05/03/stories/2009050350100400.htm


Interpretation Of Dreams

Jean Dreze, 28 Apr 2009, TOI

"No nation can chart out its domestic or foreign policies unless it has a clear understanding about itself, its history, its strengths and
failings." Jawaharlal Nehru could not have put it better. The author of this noble statement, however, is none other than Murli Manohar Joshi, in his preamble to the manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party, signed by him as chairman of the manifesto committee.
Ironically, this statement is at odds with the preamble itself, which peddles a series of myths (of the "India Shining" variety) about Indian history and civilisation. According to this preamble, India used to be "a land of great wealth and even greater wisdom". It was not only the most fertile land but also far ahead of other countries "in the technical and educational fields", with "a well organised health-care system" as early as 400 AD. Even "plastic surgery" has been "practised for centuries" in India according to Joshi. These achievements had their roots in the "Bharatiya or Hindu world view" of ancient sages and Vedic rishis.
Interestingly, the evidence given for these feats does not consist of Indian historical records. Instead, Joshi invokes scattered testimonies of foreign travellers, including some rather unreliable ones such as Megasthenes, whose account of India was embellished with stories of dog-headed giants and other fantastic creatures. The testimonies are highly selective, and, in some cases, grossly distorted. A few illustrations may help.
Joshi describes pre-colonial India as a "land of abundance", with an "economy as flourishing as its agriculture". Hunger and famines, in his perception, were obviously unknown in that period. But the fact is that famines have a long history in India. They are mentioned in the Jatakas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Arthashastra and Manu's Dharmashastra, among other ancient texts. As historian Romila Thapar notes: "Famine was common and is mentioned in Indian texts. We do not have to go looking for certificates of merit from foreign visitors."
In a similar vein, Joshi states that Gandhi was "absolutely right in saying that India was more illiterate in 1931 [than] in 1870". The fact, however, is that Gandhi was wrong on this. We know that from census data. Perhaps Joshi considers Gandhi as a more authoritative source than the census. But Gandhi, for all his wisdom, was not infallible, and this is not the only occasion when he was carried away. Elsewhere, he touchingly described "the Indian shepherd" as "a finely built man of Herculean constitution", at a time when the vast majority of the Indian population was wasted and stunted, with a life expectancy of less than 30 years. His hasty comment on literacy belongs to the same genre wishful thinking.
The most insidious part of the BJP manifesto's preamble is a fake quote attributed to Thomas Babington Macaulay. According to Joshi: "India's prosperity, its talents and the state of its high moral society can be best understood by what Thomas Babington Macaulay stated in his speech of February 2, 1835, in the British Parliament. 'I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such high calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage..."
This "quote" (abridged here) is a wonderful prop for Joshi's arguments. But there is a catch Macaulay never said this. The quote is a well-known fabrication, which has been the subject of many comments and articles. This does not prevent it from being publicised on numerous Hindutva websites. On a dissenting note, one of these websites advises against using this quote, as it "has a bad reputation amongst scholars of Indology who generally ridicule it". Joshi is evidently not among these "scholars of Indology", despite his emphasis on the need for the nation to "understand itself". Incidentally, Macaulay was in India on February 2, 1835, making it rather unlikely that he would have addressed the British Parliament that day.
Hopefully, these examples suffice to show that the BJP manifesto's preamble is an exercise in obfuscation. As it happens, large portions of this preamble were posted the same day on Wikipedia, in the entry on "Indian culture". Perhaps a well-wisher thought that inserting this gem in Wikipedia would add credibility to Joshi's propaganda. Be that as it may, this entire portion of the "Indian culture" entry was removed from the Wikipedia website a few days later.
Behind this fairy tale are useful insights into the psychology of Hindutva leaders and the political strategy of the BJP. The dominant theme of Joshi's preamble is the hurt pride of the higher castes (or "of India" as he calls it). Humiliated by foreign dominance in so many fields today, their coping strategy is to claim that "we were actually ahead all along". Their agenda is to restore India's lost glory as they perceive it. This lost glory is nothing but the traditional, exploitative social order dominated by them. Over the centuries, this domination has been achieved partly through force, and partly through deception. The BJP manifesto's preamble continues this tradition of "deceive and rule".
The writer is with the department of economics, Allahabad University.

The Indus ‘non-script’ is a non-issue

Iravatham Mahadevan
May 3, 2009, Hindu, Sunday Magazine
There is solid archaeological and linguistic evidence to show that the Indus script is a writing system encoding the language of the region (most probably Dravidian). To deny the very existence of the script is not the way towards further progress.
The Indus script appears to consist mostly of word-signs. Such a script will necessarily have a lesser number of characters and repetitions than a syllabic script.
Is the Indus Script ‘writing’?
"There is zero chance that the Indus valley is literate. Zero," says Steve Farmer, an independent scholar in Palo Alto, California. "As they say, garbage in, garbage out," says Michael Witzel of the Harvard University. These quotations from an online news item (New Scientist, April 23, 2009) are representative of what passes for academic debate in sections of the Western media over a serious research paper by Indian scientists published recently in the USA (Science, April 24, 2009).
The Indian teams are from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and the Indus Research Centre of the Roja Muthiah Research Library (both at Chennai), and backed by a team from the University of Washington at Seattle. They have proposed in their paper, resulting from more than two years of sustained research, that there is credible scientific evidence to show that the Indus script is a system of writing which encodes a language (as briefly reported in The Hindu, April 27, 2009).
This is a sober and understated conclusion presented in a refereed article published by an important scientific journal. The provocative comments by Farmer and Witzel will surprise only those not familiar with the consistently aggressive style adopted by them on this question, especially by Farmer. Their first paper, written jointly with Richard Sproat of Oregon Health and Sciences University, Portland, has the sensational title, "The collapse of the Indus script thesis: the myth of a literate Harappan civilization" (Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 11: 2, 2004).
The "collapse of the Indus script thesis" has already drawn many responses, including the well-argued and measured rebuttal by the eminent Indus script expert, Asko Parpola, "Is the Indus script indeed not a writing system?" (Airavati 2008), and a hilarious and intentionally sarcastic rejoinder (mimicking the style of the "collapse" paper) by Massimo Vidale ("The collapse melts down", East and West 2007). Here is a sampling from the latter: "Should we be surprised by this announced ‘collapse’? From the first noun in the title of their paper, Farmer, Sproat and Witzel are eager to communicate to us that previous and current views on the Indus script are naïve and completely wrong, and that after 130 years of illusion, through their paper, we may finally see the truth behind the dark curtains of a dangerous scientific myth."
I am one of the co-authors of the Science paper. But my contribution is limited to making available to my colleagues the electronic database file compiled by me in collaboration with the computer scientists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and partly published in my book The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977). I have no background in computational linguistics. However, I have closely studied the Indus script for over four decades and I am quite familiar with its structure. The following comments are based on my personal research and may not necessarily reflect the views of the other co-authors of the Science paper.
In a nutshell, my view is that there is solid archaeological and linguistic evidence to show that the Indus script is a writing system encoding the language of the region (most probably Dravidian).
Archaeological evidence
The strongest argument against the new-fangled theory that the Indus script is not writing is provided by the sheer size and sophistication of the Indus civilisation. Consider these facts:
• The Indus was by far the largest civilisation of the ancient world during the Bronze Age (roughly 3000 - 1500 BCE). It extended all the way from Shortugai in North Afghanistan to Daimabad in South India, and from Sutkagen Dor on the Pak-Iran border to Hulas in Uttar Pradesh - altogether more than a million sq km in area, very much larger than the contemporary West Asian and Egyptian civilisations put together.
• The Indus civilisation was mainly urban, with many large and well-built cities sustained by the surplus agricultural production of the surrounding countryside. The Indus cities were not only well-built but also very well administered with enviable arrangements for water supply and sanitation (lacking even now in many Indian towns).
• There was extensive and well-regulated trade employing precisely shaped and remarkably accurate weights. The beautifully carved seals were in use (as in all other literate societies) for personal identification, administrative purposes, and trading. Scores of burnt clay sealings with seal-impressions were found in the port city of Lothal in Gujarat attesting to the use of seals to mark the goods exported from there. Indus seals and clay-tag sealings have been found in North and West Asian sites, where they must have reached in the course of trading.
This archaeological evidence makes it inconceivable that such a large, well-administered, and sophisticated trading society could have functioned without effective long-distance communication, which could have been provided only by writing. And there is absolutely no reason to presume otherwise, considering that thousands of objects, including seals, sealings, copper tablets, and pottery bear inscriptions in the same script throughout the Indus region. The script may not have been deciphered; but that is no valid reason to deny its very existence, ignoring the archaeological evidence.
Another important pointer to the literacy of the Indus civilisation is that it was in close trading and cultural contacts with other contemporary literate societies like the Proto-Elamite to the North and the Sumerian-Akkadian city states (and probably the Egyptian kingdom) to the West. It is again inconceivable that a civilisation as urban and well-organised as the Indus could not have been alive to the importance of writing practised in the neighbouring literate cultures and was content with "non-linguistic" symbols of very limited utility like those employed by pre-historic hunter-gathering or tribal societies.
Linguistic evidence
While denying the status of a writing system to the Indus script, Farmer, Sproat and Witzel point to the extreme brevity of the texts (averaging less than five signs) and the presence of numerous "singletons" (signs with only one occurrence). Seal-texts tend to be short universally. Further, the Indus script appears to consist mostly of word-signs. Such a script will necessarily have a lesser number of characters and repetitions than a syllabic script. Thus the proper comparison should be with the number of words in later Indian seals or cave inscriptions. The average number of words in these cases matches the average number of signs in an Indus text. There are, however, many seal-texts that are much longer than the average. (See illustrations of longer Indus texts). As for singletons, they appear to be mostly composite or modified signs derived from basic signs, apparently meant only for restricted or special usage. An apt parallel would be the difference in frequencies between basic and conjunct consonants in the Brahmi script.
The concordances
Three major concordances of the Indus texts have been published: a manually compiled edition by Hunter (1934), and two computer-made editions, one by the Finnish team led by Asko Parpola (1973, 1982) and the other by the Indian scholar, Iravatham Mahadevan (1977). All the three concordances provide definitive editions of the texts, sign lists, and lists of sign variants. The Mahadevan Concordance also provides in addition various statistical tabulations for textual analysis as well as for relating the texts to their archaeological context (sites, types of inscribed objects, and pictorial motifs accompanying the inscriptions).
The concordance is a basic and indispensable tool for research in the Indus script. It is a complete index of sign occurrences in the texts. It also sets out the full textual context of each sign occurrence. The frequency and positional distribution of each sign and sign combination can be readily ascertained from the concordance. A study of near-identical sequences leads to segmentation of texts into words and phrases. Doubtful signs can be read with a fair amount of confidence by a comparative study of identical sequences. Sign variants can be recognised to a large extent by studying the textual environment.
It is the concordance which conclusively established the direction of the Indus script to be from right to left on seal-impressions and direct writing (naturally reversed on the seals). The concordance also reveals the broad syntactical features of the texts, like the most frequent opening and terminal signs, as well as pairs and triplets of signs in the middle representing important names, titles etc. Numerals have been identified. As they precede the enumerated objects, we know that adjectives precede the nouns they qualify. This is an important result ruling out, for example, Sumerian or Akkadian as candidate languages. According to competent and objective scholars like Kamil Zvelebil and Gregory Possehl, the concordances are the most tangible outcome of the prolonged research on the Indus script.
The concordances have been criticised for employing "normalised" signs that are sometimes different from what are actually found in individual inscriptions. The differences are as between a handwritten manuscript and the printed book. All the three concordances employ normalised signs, as there is no other possible way of presenting hundreds of inscriptions and thousands of sign-occurrences in a compact and logical arrangement for analytical study. The concordances have also been faulted for differences in readings. The criticism overlooks the fact that the Indus script is still undeciphered and such differences are unavoidable, especially in reading badly preserved texts or in deciding which are independent signs and which are mere graphic variants.
The serious student of the Indus script will consult the concordances, but refer to the sources for confirmation. Statistically speaking, differences (or even errors in coding) in the concordances are marginal and have not affected the interpretation of the main features of the texts.
This was confirmed by an interesting study published recently by Mayank Vahia et al of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 37:1, 2008). They removed all the doubtfully read signs (marked by asterisks) and multiple lines (with indeterminate order) from the Mahadevan Concordance and analysed the rest, a little less than half of the total sign-occurrences. They found that the statistically established percentages of frequencies and distribution of signs and segmentations of texts remained constant, attesting to the essential correctness of compilation of the full concordance.
The Dravidian hypothesis
There is archaeological and linguistic evidence to support the view that the Indus civilisation is non-Aryan and pre-Aryan:
• The Indus civilisation was urban, while the Vedic was rural and pastoral.
• The Indus seals depict many animals, but not the horse. The chariot with the spoked wheels is also not depicted. The horse and chariot with the spoked wheels are the main features of Aryan-speaking societies. (For the best and most recent account, refer to David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel and Language, Princeton, 2007).
• The Indus religion as revealed in the pictorial depictions on the seals included worship of buffalo-horned male gods, mother-goddesses, the pipal tree, the serpent, and probably the phallic symbol. Such modes of worship are alien to the religion of the Rigveda.
Ruling out Aryan authorship of the Indus civilisation does not automatically make it Dravidian. However, there is substantial linguistic evidence favouring the Dravidian theory:
• The survival of Brahui, a Dravidian language in the Indus region.
• The presence of Dravidian loanwords in the Rigveda.
• The substratum influence of Dravidian on the Prakrit dialects.
• Computer analysis of the Indus texts revealing that the language had only suffixes (like Dravidian), and no prefixes (as in Indo-Aryan) or infixes (as in Munda).
It is significant that all the three concordance-makers (Hunter, Parpola, and Mahadevan) point to Dravidian as the most likely language of the Indus texts. The Dravidian hypothesis has also been supported by other scholars like the Russian team headed by Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov and by the American archaeologist, Walter Fairservis, all of whom have utilised the information available from the concordances. However, as the Dravidian models of decipherment have still little in common except the basic features summarised above, it is obvious that much more work remains to be done before a generally acceptable solution emerges.
I am hopeful that with an increasing number of Indus texts, and better and more sophisticated archaeological and linguistic methods, the riddle of the Indus script will be solved one day. What is required is perseverance, recognising the advances already made, and proceeding further. To deny the very existence of the Indus script is not the way towards further progress.
Iravatham Mahadevan is a well-known authority on the Indus and Brahmi scripts. He is the author of The Indus Script: Texts, Concordance and Tables (1977) and Early Tamil Epigraphy (2003).

Inquiry Commissions in India are black holes

Nanawti Commission report on the Godhara incident has once again opened the Pandora's Box over logic of setting up Inquiry Commissions in India
Part one of the Nanawti Commission report, probing into the Godhara incident in Gujarat, released last month has once again opened the Pandora's Box over logic of setting up Inquiry Commissions in the country.
The report while giving clean chit to the Narendra Modi Government has supported the theory of conspiracy, leading to a widespread criticism across the country.
Many call it 'eye wash' and other call it 'sponsored report'. Communists have termed it a 'piecemeal' and fabricated report, whereas; National Democratic Alliance (NDA) calls it 'triumph of truth'.
Justice Nanawati report in fact contradicts the UC Banerjee report which also probed the Godhara incident. How a single incident draws two extreme conclusions?
The two reports have raised a very debatable issue. What do judicial commissions, appointed by the various governments to examine issues ranging from riots, scandals and assassinations to inter-state disputes actually achieve?
Critics of commissions say that their recent history has been extremely spotty. Apart from taking inordinately long to deliver reports, they seldom achieve anything.
Keeping apart from such allegations and counter allegations, the issue that has again come to fore is whether an inquiry commission can substitute criminal prosecution?
Do these Commissions serve any purpose? Is it not an eye wash? Are these Commissions able to bring culprits to book? Are not Commissions of inquiry a waste of time and money?
To understand the entire issue, one has to discuss the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952 itself. Before this Act came into being, the governments used to order an inquiry by executive notifications under Public Service Inquiry Act, 1850. Sometimes, they used to enact adhoc and temporary legislations too.
To meet the public demand for impartial and judicial inquiries, the Government of India came out with a comprehensive legislation, which resulted into passage of this Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952. Since its enactment, the constitution of Inquiry Commissions has become a tool for the various governments to subside the public anger.
Since Independence, more than a hundred Inquiry Commissions have been set up, but a very few have served the purpose. And the reasons are obvious. First, the provisions enshrined in this Act are not of deterrent in nature and secondly, most of the time the Commissions are set up under retired Judges for obvious reasons.
Section 4 the Act provides for powers and it is clear that the Commission has no power to compel a person to adduce before it and give evidence. It cannot pass verdicts or judgments which could be enforceable.
The helplessness is such that even if an offence has been committed in view of or in presence of Commission, the Commission needs to forward the case to the Magistrate for trial as provided in Criminal Procedure code.
The appointment of retired Judges, as head of the Commission is very much suitable for the government. It is not merely a chance that one Judge has headed more than one Commission. The public perception is such that these Inquiry Commissions are becoming post retirement placement schemes for the favourite retired Judges.
We have a long list of such Commissions, which have made inordinate delay in submitting their reports. Many of them have taken decades in so called "conducting inquiries" and even then the report which was submitted were so voluminous that we required another committee to find out ways to implement the recommendations.
For example, as many as ten Commissions or committees have so far been set up with regard to the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi after the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
First of all it was the Marvah Commission headed by Additional Commissioner of Police Ved Marvah, that was set up in November, 1984.
The Commission was about to finish the assigned task when it was abruptly wounded up in May 1985 and a new Commission headed by Justice Rangnath Misra was constituted. The new Commission was asked to carry out further inquiry hitherto done by the Marvah Commission.
The Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission which was appointed under Section 3 of The Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, was asked to inquire into "allegations" of violence and not to inquire into the "nature" of violence, a departure from the terms of reference of over a dozen other commissions on communal disturbances since Independence.
But surprisingly the terms of reference was, to find out whether this was an organised riot only? This Commission submitted its recommendations in August, 1986 and recommended for setting up of three committees to do further work. Therefore; Kapur-Mittal Committee in February, 1987, Jain-Banerjee Committee in November, 1987, Potti-Rosa Committee in March, 1990, Jain and Agarwal Committee in December, 1990, and finally Justice G.T. Nanavati Commission in 2000 were set up. Incidentally, the same Judge was made in charge to inquire into Godhara incident.
It is needless to mention that what has happened to reports and how much amount have been spent on these exercises. Has any prominent leader been punished so far? Many persons, against whom leveled charges were being inquired into, have died. Such are the frustrating results of these Commissions and Committees.
As far as time and money aspect of these Commissions are concerned, its enough to look into the expenses of just couple of Commissions to understand the quantum of impact-both in terms of the amount and time spent.
The one that tops the chart is the Liberhan Commission. Set up under retired Justice M S Liberhan on 16 December, 1992 to probe into Babri mosque demolition, the Commission has so far been given more than 41 extensions. Overall the government has already spent Rs 90 million on this single man inquiry Commission, which is yet to come out with its report.
Similarly, Justice B N Kripal Commission of inquiry was set up on 13 July, 1985 to probe into the bombing of the Air India Flight 182 on 23 June, 1985 which led to the crash of this plane into the Atlantic Ocean leaving 329 passengers including crew dead. The Commission submitted its report after extensive tours of countries like Canada and USA but when the prosecution began, nothing could be proved and none could be punished. The entire 'investigation and inquiry' went in vain. It is needless again, to calculate the amount which was spent on such inquiries.
Phukan Commission was set up to probe the Tehelka expose into fictitious defence deals. Everyone saw the tape on television and the then Government just to avoid immediate legal course, set up this Commission. In May 2005 the Newsweek reported that Justice Phukan along with his wife and eight officials used IAF plane and went to Pune, Mumbai and Shirdi. The Ministry later said that the Judge was not entitled to use the military plane and it was made available to him by the then government in order to influence the Judge.
Such allegations and incidents definitely erode public faith in such Commissions. The situation is such that every Government in power uses this provision to oblige the retired judges.
In Bihar for example, Justice Amir Das Commission was set up to probe into the alleged connections of political leaders with a banned outfit called Ranveer Sena in 1997. The Commission was finally wounded up in 2006 as it could hardly do anything except for some tours and recording the statements some leaders in over eight years of its existence.
Similar is the case of Justice Ali Ahmed Commission that was set up to look into excess withdrawal in 1996. In fact, very little is known about the outcome of the Commission, including the recommendations that it submited or the actions taken by it.
Commission under Justice R C P Sinha and Justice Samsul was set up on Bhagalpur communal riot in 1989. Reports were submitted in 1995. But when the new government came to power it set up N N Singh (retired Justice) Commission to investigate the matter again.
In 2008 a Commission under retired judge Sadanand Mukherjee was set up to probe into the Kahalgaon police firing. This commission is still a non starter vis-a-vis investigation of the incidence.
Not to miss the fact that when the recent breach in Kosi embankment that caused a major flood in Bihar led to lot of allegations and counter allegations, the state government was quick to constitute a Commission under Rajesh Walia, again a retired Judge to probe into it.
And while there is no bias against the judiciary or the retired judges, who are a national repository of knowledge as far as judicial matters are concerned, the question needs to be examined is whether a Commission can substitute the country's criminal investigation system.
How can a Judge be better equipped to do forensic test, do scientific investigations than a professionally trained police officer? Has the Commission power to make arrests to the persons likely to tamper evidences?
The answer to these and many such questions has been provided by a two Judge commission itself. Set up by in 1987 to investigate the Fairfax Deal, the Justice Thakkar and Natarajan Commission in its report have said that the Commission of Inquiry Act was "ineffective and toothless". They two, in fact, devoted one full chapter on the inadequacies of this Act.
It is important to note that India has a criminal justice system, which is based on the twin pillars of investigation and dispensation of justice. How can the Judiciary be asked to do the work of investigation, which is the work of the State as enshrined the law of the land?
The Criminal Procedure Code and for that matter entire Criminal Justice System is erected on this principle (Article 50 of Chapter IV on Directive Principles of State Policy) and perhaps it is due to this principle, that the judiciary and executive have been completely separated in 1973, when the Code of Criminal Procedure was amended.
Besides, most of these Commissions, after years of its investigation, usually submit reports that are so voluminous that it again requires some committees to suggest measures to implements the recommendations.
Not to talk about the fact that such reports are not obligatory and mandatory for the government to implement.
It is also worthwhile to mention here that the Judiciary in India is an independent system and that is precisely the reason why Article 220 restricts practise by retired Judges. The idea is that there should not be any scope, whatsoever, of favour or disfavour by the serving Judges.
By appointing the retired Judges in these Commissions or for that matter in any other body tends to clearly violate the spirit of the Constitution itself.
What is more shocking is that instead of modernising and equipping the investigating agencies to probe into such serious issues of national shame, the country has been a mere spectator to the cosmetic make ups.
In India, every one knows about the 'normal' pace of the court proceedings, and so all these commissions, needless to say have virtually become black holes.
( 10/3/2008 ) http://www.igovernment.in/site/Inquiry-Commissions-in-India-are-black-holes/

Left often on wrong side of history: PM

April 11, 2009
Needling the communists, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in Kochi: "The Left that rules the state has unfortunately often been on the wrong side of history. When Mahatma Gandhi started Quit India movement the Left did not participate in it. When India became Independent, they said this independence is not for real," he said. Singh said in 1960s when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ushered in Green Revolution, the Left opposed it saying it was only for the benefit of foreign seed companies. Similarly, he said, when Rajiv Gandhi started the communication revolution they opposed it saying it will take away jobs. "When our government started nuclear deal with the US to end India’s nuclear isolation and to provide the much-needed energy for development, the Left opposed and walked out of our government. Time will prove the wisdom of our decision," the prime minister said.

The Taliban is already amidst us in India

Jyotirmaya Sharma
Mail Today, April 28, 2009

They will not come from Pakistan, they are here in the form of Narendra Modi and his zealots

THE Supreme Court has asked the SIT to probe Narendra Modi’s role in the post- Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002. But that will not still the chorus for Modi as a future national leader of the BJP. As it is, the timing and context of the Modi- for- PM demand is curious.
In part, it is admission that the BJP- led NDA will have to wait a few more years before making a bid for power.
But it also implies that the prime- minister- in- eternalanticipation and perpetual desperation, Lal Krishna Advani, has failed to capture the imagination of even his own flock.
Other than the obvious reasons, there is an obvious tactic at play here: the BJP hopes that Modi’s name as a future leader would actually help win some votes in these elections. It is an appeal to the highly voluble, if not sizeable, number of the Indian middle class, which has not merely discovered the simple joys of voting, but has the temerity to now reclaim the public space they have for so long spurned with mighty disdain.
It has two things in common with Modi. The first is a certain brand of vulgar impatience and haste, a hallmark of the mob as well as the tyrant, born out of a sense of self- proclaimed purity and righteousness. The other is a misplaced sense of aspiring for such indeterminate goals such as ‘ progress’ and ‘ development’, a chimera that leaves everyone out of the equation other than the sort of worthies who stood on a stage and argued for Modi’s elevation as prime minister.
Ethical
There is, then, little difference between the two Aruns, Shourie and Jaitley, and Ambani, Mittal and Tata: they feel emboldened enough to suggest who the next prime minister ought to be without a care in the world for the democratic process to decide on such weighty issues. The message from them is: we know what is good for you. We represent the country because we produce wealth or facilitate in its production.
Apart from the cheerleaders for Modi, it would be instructive to look at the man himself in terms of three statements made recently. In the absurd debate regarding whether Manmohan Singh is a weak prime minister, Modi came up with a priceless statement. He dared the prime minister to hang Afzal Guru in order to prove his strength and establish his machismo.
There was a time when Gandhi shook a mighty empire through nonviolence and yet never abandoned fundamental moral principles in order to take on the British. He broke laws that were unjust, but understood the importance of laws as a guiding framework for any civilised society. Killing someone just to prove an imaginary idea of strength had no place in his moral universe.
Modi represents an alternative ‘ morality’, which seeks to justify, albeit covertly, encounter killings in the name of swiftness and expediency.
This haste, too, is born out of a disdain for constitutional and legal procedures as well as from the selfappointed role of judging who the ‘ enemy’ is and finding effective ways of dealing with such real and mythical enemies. It is a mechanical world of action and, in this instance, unequal and opposite reaction, untouched by norms of ethics and morality.
Modi’s disdain for the old and for children also springs from a corpus of ideas that are far removed from any acceptable version of the Indian ethos. The polarities represented by the ‘ budhiya’ and the ‘ gudiya’ remark comes from a 19th century European set of ideas that celebrated the useful, able- bodied, young, masculine, virile individual who could work in factories, contribute to development and progress. This view found the old and the very young to be a burden on society, a universe far removed from a world that venerated a Vyasa, a Vashistha and a Bhisma, and found merit in the lives of a Dhruva and Prahalad. In this sense, Modi is a worthy inheritor of Golwalkar’s mantle and the only hope for the RSS. It was after all Golwalkar who categorically suggested that once an RSS worker grew old and infirm and ceased to be useful to the organisation, the best course left for him was to sit by the wayside, beg to keep body alive, and die. It is another matter that an old and infirm Golwalkar was looked after by the same organisation and his health became a priority for the RSS in the last years of his life. This accent on youth and machismo also was the very stuff that Hitler’s version of a fascist movement found its sustenance from and thrived on, peddling this skewed idea.
Barbarism
Lastly, Modi’s recent statement that he is ready to be hanged in public if charges against him regarding his complicity in the post- Godhra riots were to be proved is enormously important and is to be taken seriously.
Mussolini, the Italian fascist, was summarily executed by communist partisans and hung upside down.
The bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were then hung on meathooks from the roof of a petrol station and stoned by civilians. In this country, till such time that civilised values are still in place, people are not hung in public.
There is a rule of law, however flawed, that takes care of crimes and doles out punishment that affords a degree of dignity to even criminals.
Medieval forms of justice are no more in vogue in this country and will not be so till such time that the Indian people actually commit the grave error of allowing an authoritarian individual like Modi to assume the office of the prime minister.
Parallel
Let us recap the three statements Modi has made in the past few months. These were about hanging a man pronounced guilty as a sign of strength, about old women and little girls playing with dolls, and about himself being hanged in public.
There is an uncanny resemblance in all the three to what we have known all along as the Taliban’s preferred way of meting out justice. We frown on these kinds of barbaric acts and the Sangh Parivar often implies that there is a relation between these forms of barbarism and the religious affiliation of those who indulge in these acts.
In rightly expressing our moral indignation against the Taliban, we forget that the Taliban will not enter this country through our northern borders but is already present in an indigenous version in the form of Modi and his supporters.
The Taliban of today is only a mirror image of the irrational and mindless rage of Ashwatthama, the son of Drona in the epic Mahabharata . Modi is the inheritor of Ashwatthama’s rage. In the epic, Ashwatthama had to ultimately pay for his deeds. But before that he wrecked destruction and brought sorrow to countless people. Is Modi’s future and fate the same as that of Drona’s misguided son?
(The author teaches politics at University of Hyderabad)

Incredible CBI

J. S. Verma
Indian Express
Apr 11, 2009

A few days back I wrote in these columns cautioning against failure of the twin duties to preserve our democratic polity: duty of political parties to eschew selection of tainted candidates; and that of the people to reject them, even if they are fielded. A later unsavoury incident has highlighted the generally perceived failure in its statutory duties by the premier investigating agency - the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI); a failure which abetted these twin failures enabling growth of corruption and increase in criminalisation of politics, which are the bane of the polity. The incident indicates the waning credibility of the premier investigating agency, with people’s growing frustration driving them to resort to extra-legal means to ventilate their grievances against perceived injustice. The dangerous consequence is the erosion of the rule of law, which is the bedrock of democracy. These failures and the aftermath negate good governance.
I refer to the shocking behaviour of a journalist at a recent press conference of the genteel and suave Union Home Minister, P. Chidambaram. It was his dignified reaction that saved the situation and its awkward repercussions. The culprit made no attempt to justify his misconduct, conceding immediately that his mode of ventilating the grievance against the injustice was wrong and indefensible. However, he justified his grievance against the CBI for partiality towards a politician set up as a candidate for election by a ruling party. The media has reported prompt reaction of the concerned ruling political party to withdraw not only that candidate, but also another candidate allegedly with similar taint. Are we to assume that only extra-legal means can be effective to deal with corruption and criminalisation of politics? It is tragic, if such an impression were to gain ground.
The above incident reveals our penchant for reaction instead of proactive response to cure evils. We tend to treat only the symptoms when they become eyesores, forgetting even then the need to eradicate the root cause of the malady. It is time we took steps to eradicate the malady that produces the symptoms. In this context the statutory role of the CBI needs to be revisited, and the public perception of its lacklustre performance needs scrutiny. For obvious reasons, I refrain from referring to any specific matter that is sub judice, and confine myself only to the emerging issues pertaining to its governance, to focus on the malaise corroding the polity.
The genesis of the CBI was the post-World War II need to combat corruption. Increasing, unpunished corruption eroding the polity is eloquent testimony to its failure to efficiently serve this purpose of its existence. The occasion for the Supreme Court’s intervention resulting in the judgment in the Hawala case (1997) was the reluctance and failure of the CBI to investigate allegations of corruption against the powerful. It gave autonomy to the CBI and insulated it from political influence by judicial creativity, despite a few doubting it as judicial overreach. It was held that the government’s statutory power of "superintendence" over the CBI does not empower it to interfere with or regulate the investigation into any offence conducted by the CBI. The CBI’s power to investigate being statutory, it is insulated from any extraneous influence, including that of the concerned minister.
The legal impact of insulating the CBI from political influence in discharge of its statutory duty of impartial and effective investigation into charges of corruption and criminal offences levelled against the powerful has not been doubted, at least since then. It is sad that even now the CBI continues to disappoint the people whenever it deals with cases against the powerful. The blame can no longer be laid elsewhere. It is too much of a coincidence that in sensitive matters, the outcome of the CBI’s investigation invariably depends on the political equation of the accused with the ruling power, and it changes without compunction with the change in that equation. The nadir is reached with the somersault in the CBI’s stand witnessed recently even in the apex court on the culpability of such accused with the changing political equations, which invited caustic comments from the court, but no effect. A former CBI director who enjoyed insulation from political interference given by the Supreme Court has publicly claimed that an attempt was made by the then prime minister to influence investigation in a sensitive matter, adding that there was nothing new about "political interference" in the agency’s working! It is happening too often, inviting public outrage.
As the author of the judgment in the Hawala case, I am often asked whether it has any practical utility if the behaviour of the CBI personnel remains unchanged in spite of being given immunity from political influence. The final outcome of the Hawala case with the discharge of all accused is cited as the first example of the many such instances that followed. Half-baked charge sheets were filed against the accused without investigation into the substantive offence of possessing disproportionate assets - based only on diary entries of corroborative value, which without basic substantive evidence were bound to fail. There was a miserable failure in its statutory duty to investigate impartially into the charges and to faithfully prosecute the accused, in spite of the full autonomy it had been given for the purpose. The CBI is not to be insulted by imputing to it the ignorance of even elementary law. Subsequent public reminders, including that in my D.P. Kohli Memorial Lecture, to the CBI top brass that discharge is not acquittal to debar a subsequent trial on further investigation are blatantly ignored to avoid political displeasure of all shades.
More so, no attempt has been made to discover and plug the common source of funding of terrorism and corruption at high places in governance, even though the Hawala case originated with the arrest of two terrorists funded by that source, thus disclosing the link between them. The issue relates to national security and can be ignored only at great peril. Credibility of the premier investigating agency, in spite of the insulation from extraneous influences in the performance of its duty, including that of the government, is at a low ebb.
Politicisation of crime is a corollary of the above evils because of the CBI’s failure. Corruption and crime are visualised as high profit and low risk business of the powerful. This trend must be reversed. The lure of post-retirement benefits and honours at the discretion of the government accruing to the top brass in the CBI and other national institutions perceived as a reward for their pusillanimity during the tenure in high office has to be insulated by systemic changes. There should be no scope for any temptation to the head of any national institution to deviate from the course of total objectivity and integrity at the highest level. Once the sanctity of the top is secured, the rest will fall in place. Reaching the top of the profession should be considered sufficient reward and lifetime achievement. Then only the nation will thrive!
(The writer, as Chief Justice of India, authored a judgment guaranteeing CBI autonomy)

Bureau of nods and winks

Fali S. Nariman
Indian Express, April 13, 2009

The Central Bureau of Investigation is again in the news. With the filing in court of its (second) "closure report" in the case of Jagdish Tytler, it has become the cynosure of suspicion. Could it have been a mere coincidence (people say) that the "closure report" came hard on the heels of Tytler getting a ticket from the ruling Congress party to contest the ensuing general elections?
This raises a fundamental question - how independent is the CBI? Experience shows that it is as independent as the incumbent director of the CBI wants it to be - the director now has a fixed two-year tenure.
Structurally the CBI is under the control and direction of the administrative ministry in charge, which is the Department of Personnel and Training in the Government of India: the act under which the CBI is set up (The Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946) provides (Section 4) that it must function under the "superintendence" of the Central government. When exercising investigatory powers into offences under the Code of Criminal Procedure, however, the word "superintendence" does not have its ordinary meaning viz "superintend, direct and control". The word has a special meaning - especially since the decision in Vineet Narain (1998) which held that Section 4 cannot be construed so as to permit supervision of the actual investigation of a criminal offence by the CBI and the Central government is precluded (by judicial diktat) from issuing any direction to the CBI to curtail or inhibit its jurisdiction to investigate into offences.

But whatever the judges may say, the public remains sceptical. It knows that governments do not function only by issuing directions to those who occupy high positions. Central governments - whether during the NDA’s term of office or during the UPA’s - have effectively functioned not solely by notes on files, but also on the nod-and-wink of the minister in charge or of the senior bureaucrat in the ministry in charge. Whether such dignitaries do or do not so nod-and-wink in a given case is of no moment: the working of governments has been so messy in recent years that contrary to the express provisions of the Indian Evidence Act (that official acts are presumed to be regularly performed) the reality has been that as a rule official acts are not regularly or properly performed.

This is acknowledged even by the highest court. In November 2006 in the Taj Corridor Scam case (investigated by the CBI) the Supreme Court said: "In matters after matters, we find that the efficacy and ethics of the governmental authorities are progressively coming under challenge before this court by way of PIL for failure to perform their statutory duties. If this continues, a day might come when the rule of law will stand reduced to ‘a rope of sand’."

It does appear to many - though it may not be true in a particular case (because though appearances are deceptive we have only appearances to go by) - that public servants who fill important positions in government are generally (with some notable exceptions) neither able nor willing to resist pressures from "higher-ups" (that beautifully ambivalent phrase which defies definition). Normally, the filing of a closure report by the CBI would be the end of the matter: but having regard to human frailties (and failings) there are certain safeguards provided by judicial decisions, viz that even after filing a closure report by the CBI (or by the police) the court before which it is filed has the choice to disagree with it and either direct further investigation or, after pursuing the papers already submitted to it, to take direct cognisance of and register the case and proceed to trial.

However if the court decides to accept the closure report the court should give notice and hear the informant (complainant) and (though this is not yet settled) a representative from the group that persists in saying that there is sufficient evidence on record for a charge sheet to be filed. Where the court ultimately after such hearing accepts the closure report, the persons aggrieved can invoke the "justice provisions" of the Constitution: Article 226 or Article 136.

Though the request for this article was occasioned because of the Tytler drama (and the trauma accompanying it) the more important question is a general one, viz whether it isn’t time that the CBI be made institutionally independent of pressures and pulls from within the government or without. I believe we must have in place an Independent Bureau of Investigation (an IBI). But this can only be by law expressly enacted by Parliament. There are models in the US which are available which could and should be adapted.

In the end it is the personality of the man or woman at the top that counts. If newspaper reports are to be believed (The Indian Express, April 9) the Department of Personnel in charge of the CBI, notwithstanding the dictum in Vineet Narain, inquired why the ministry had not been kept informed of the CBI’s closure report - which is only illustrative of the fact that officials who read the statute just cannot accept that the word "superintendence" cannot mean "control". But kudos to the present director of the CBI who reportedly informed his controlling ministry that his duty as CBI director was to report his investigation to the court, and not to the government.

In the present state of affairs, courts appear to be the only place where justice can be expected. But a citizen does expect justice from the officials in the administration though this has become rare over the years. I recall the wise words of Swaran Singh - India’s elder statesman who during the Internal Emergency of June 1975 presided over a committee to consider whether to recommend deletion of Article 226 of the Constitution. He said that when he was a minister in the government of Punjab he found it difficult to render justice in individual cases, and it was best that courts were left to deal with them. That is why he opposed deletion of Article 226 - it is regrettable that it was the lawyer members of the committee who disagreed with him. But it was Swaran Singh who prevailed upon Indira Gandhi not to amend the Constitution and take away the right of citizens to approach the courts by way of writs. The moral of this is that though lawyers are good, sometimes they are also exceptionally good at rationalising tyranny!

One hopes that the ministry in charge of the CBI, or the IBI if established, would inculcate in all its officials the understanding that it is better for the public administration and for the image of the government that directions, commands or hints - to "fix-him" or "drop the case" - are consciously eschewed. This would help remove current public cynicism of departments of government and restore confidence in the expectation of getting justice from the administration. Approaching the courts to intervene is always a slow, tortuous process: and should be an exception. This is how good government will be ultimately achieved.