Feminism - the Burkha Dutt way

Burkha Dutt is a self avowed feminist.  When she was attacked from all quarters over her alleged role in Neera Radia scandal, she said the criticisms were motivated by misogyny also. So rather than her actual guilt it was people's prejudice against women as such that drag her to the center of the controversy. This is a favorite defence among all kinds of people, turn personal criticisms into criticism against any specific group you belong to especially if you can identify yourself with a group which has been discriminated against like women,minorities etc.  But I've never heard her attributing - even to some degree -  the admirations and awards she has received to people's wish to accomodate women rather than her own skills.  Her feminism somehow is not applicable in such cases. If someone is being good to her presumably its due to her own charms, but if someonw is getting nasty than its misogyny. Logic.

To her feminist temperament, laws for strict alimony is not good for women's dignity. Why should a women be given the favour alimony? Can't she be financially independant like a man? Logic.

On religious constitutionalism

A very 'in' thing now a day is to attack Anna movement by saying that they are dictating terms to parliament and thereby undermining constitutional institutions, this line of defense is very famous particularly among governing elite, the latest condemnation of this kind is from the president Pranab mukherji himself.

This line of thinking can be best expressed by B R Ambedkar's constitution assembly speech quoted below,

"If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgement we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution.  It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha.  When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods.  But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us."

This is misconceived, there is an assumption here that constitutional democracy would be representative or efficient, that it would truly represent the aspiration of the masses. As a matter of fact it doesn't, no person would consciously want corruption,hunger,malnutrition, he doesnt choose his leader in order to perpetuate misery. No democracy in the world can be representative enough to be complacent about, government establishment itself creates a class structure with its own survival instinct and self-interests which are many a time in sharp conflict with interests of people it represents. This is particularly so in our case, our governments (be it any) can be easily formed even if they garner 20-30% of available votes, this is hardly a case for representative democracy. We have a constitutional democracy not always representative. So when a governments are irresponsible,rigid, vacillating pressure groups,civil society,social activists play an important role in filling up the lacunae in representation.

Quoting from american declaration of independence where the framers of the declaration adequately realized the importance of revolution..
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

On Jainas

Duarte Barbosa -a Portuguese traveler visited India during first quarter of 16th century. He writes vividly about Indians and their lifestyle,their dresses,customs,laws etc. He has this to say about Jain merchants when he visited Gujarat..
"These live amongst the Moors(Muslims), and trade with them in their goods. They are men who do not eat meat nor fish, nor anything that has life; neither do they kill anything,nor like to see it killed, because their idolatry forbids it them; and they observe this to such an extreme that it is something marvelous. For it often happens that the Moors bring them some worms or little birds alive, saying they intend to kill them in their presence; and they ransom them, and buy them to set them flying, and save their lives for more money than they are worth. And in the same way, if the governor of the country has got a man to be executed, these Banians unite together and buy him from the officers of justice, that he may not die; and frequently they sell him to them. An in the same manner Moors who beg for alms, when they want alms from these people, take great stones and strike themselves with them on the shoulders and the breast, and on their stomachs, as if they were going to kill themselves with them, and they receive alms not to do it, and to go away in peace. And others bring knives stab themselves in the arms and legs before them, in order to extract alms; and others come to their doors to decapitate rats and snakes and other reptiles, and they give them money not to do it, so that they are very ill-treated by the Moors.If these people meet with a band of ants in the road,they hasten out of the road, and go and look for a place to pass without treading upon them. They likewise sup in the daytime because they do not light candles at night, in order that the mosquitoes and other insects may not come and ide in the flame; and if of necessity they must have a candle, they keep them in lanterns of paper, or off stuff dipped in gum, so that no living thing can get there to suffer......"

And just when you start wondering how could these Jains survive with such a meek attitude other remarks from the author follows
"..they are usurers and falsifiers of weights and measures, and merchandise, and coin; and liars and cheat"

Tavernier - another traveler of medieval India makes similar observations
"The members of this caste are so subtle and skillful in trade that, as I've elsewhere said, they could give lessons to the most cunning Jews."(Jews were renown for their trade acumen)

I wonder whether its a mere chance that Jains evolved as a merchant community or was the commerce only option left for people adopting the doctrine of strict non violence.

knowledge through revealation

Knowledge through revelation(divine or otherwise) that is, not through reasoning is problematic. If two persons claim to have acquired knowledge through revelation and claim that their knowledge is beyond reason and if they are contradictory, we cant say which one is true. It becomes necessary to admit multiplicity of truth if we take these reveled truths seriously. According to bible universe is incredibly new and according to Hindu scriptures its incredibly old. Now even a kid can tell you both cant be true. This is a very elementary objection but no one cares to explain it. But we cant escape this with a world having 7 billion minds- all vulnerable to revelations, it becomes impossible to discern whats a gospel truth and whats a blatant lie.

It is wrongly argued that intuition is the ultimate source of all knowledge and therefore revelation is any way important. A proposition is not true or false unless its proven to be so through reason, before application of reason that proposition is a mere proposition without any known truth value. So it might be that Einstein had a sudden intuition of relativity and he then set out to prove that intuition through mathematical formulas. But so what? He must also have had wrong intuitions of all kinds. Once the theory is proved the source of the knowledge just doesn't matter it might be revelation or a random guess or a crazy computer program. At any rate its hard to believe that any revelation is sudden, its not sudden there always are psychical precedents to it, if at all einstein had any intuition than it must have preceded by proper understanding of relevant concepts of physics and all the relevant data might have undergone a subconscious gestation ultimately culminating in a conscious intuition. So a sudden Eureka is never a sudden Eureka.

Satire as an outlet to frustration

A joke from a declining USSR regime..
A Communist Party bureaucrat drives down from Moscow to a collective farm
to register a potato harvest.
“Comrade farmer, how has the harvest been this year?” the official asks.
“Oh, by the grace of God, we had mountains of potatoes,” answers the
farmer.
“But there is no God,” counters the official.
“Huh”, says the farmer, “And there are no mountains of potatoes either.”

Another one from contemporary India..
A journalist asks Manmohan Singh "Tamara raj ma at atla kaubhando thai chhe tamara mantrio hajaro karodo rupiya khai jai chhe tame kem kai bolta nathe?"
PM's reply "Hu khati vakhte bolto nathi"

There were many humorous slogans during Egyptian revolution, Pakistan has become a 'hotbed' of satire not all of them political.

Its almost universal that when people are frustrated things being out of their control, when governments are suppressive, satire inevitably comes out. I think if we find out popular satire of a particular society in a particular political,economical milieu we can understand their perception of the condition. It effectively captures the mood of the times. If we track down how satire changes its forms and modes of expression we can view history from popular point of view. This might further illuminate us in a modern mode of historiography called 'subaltern history'.

Somnatha - III

Few books I read with a prior opinion, Romila Thapar's "Somnatha the many voices of a history" is such a book. But I must admit I'm mellowed after reading it but still I find it difficult to agree to her thesis in substance. The book is an attempt at a sort of revision of the popular history of Somnatha raid by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026 AD. Going by her own admission she doesn't try to recreate the entire event but mainly attempts to understand different voices emanating from various sources. What the book tries to analyze is essentially this - was the raid of Somnatha by Mahmud in 1026 really a seminal event which created the most inveterate of antagonisms between Hindus and Muslims? or lead to an ultimate crystallization of a collective hindu psyche? She analyzes five different kinds of sources 1. Turko-Persian 2. Sanskrit Inscriptions around somnatha 3. Oral traditions 4. Courtly literature of Rajput kings and biographies and Jaina texts 5. Colonial interpretation

Book can be summarized in following points..
1. Religious fanaticism was not the only factor there were many equally(and perhaps more) important factors such as desire for booty, breaking hindu political backbone by destroying somnatha etc etc. Economic motives are more rigorously advanced by her predecessor - if that's the right term - Mohammad habib, she just builds upon it

2. Turko-Persian accounts mentioning the raid are often exaggerated in order to appease Caliphate so that Mahmud can get political legitimacy from the him which he subsequently did get.

3. It might well be the case that Mahmud raided Somnatha believing that its idol was actually an idol of Arab goddess Manat destruction of which was the command of prophet Mohamad himself. Therefore Somnatha was more important to the conquerors than the conquered(somnatha being only one of 12 jyotirlingas for hindus)

4. At the time of the raid Somnatha was already under repeated attacks by various local Rajas and chieftains and therefore attack on Somnatha by Mahmud left local Hindus unperturbed. An explanation which goes well with the fact that almost no sources other than Turko-Persian accounts(chronicles of the conquerors) mentions the raid.

5. Activity of raiding or building the temples in those times was carried out in order to gain political legitimation, Rajas funded construction of temples to assert their authority and legitimation and by the same token Mahmud's raid should be viewed as an 'inverse legitimation' that is legitimation through destruction

The author is an eminent historian of India and a authority in ancient India but that no more impresses me after reading this book. What I find is a clever marshaling of facts to suit her hypothesis. Much can be said against her thesis...

1. Her's is a two pronged technique firstly she tries to diminish credibility of Turko-Persian chronicles by pointing to the contradictions in it. And secondly she tries to increase the reliance on other sources like hagiographies and epics and all that. This is against the classical approach where Islamic chronicles are considered more reliable than indigenous accounts which are full of myths and contradictions. In both this approach I think she is mistaken the contradictions in Turko-persian accounts are contradictions of details but in essence they inevitably agree. For example Turko-Persian accounts mention one fresh raid in every half century some say a mosque was built at the place of temple but all agrees that raid did occur different thing if mosque was constructed or not. And about other sources I think there is some indirect evidence as elucidated in earlier articles(see Somnatha-I, somnatha-II).

2. Arab chronicles maintains that Manat(arab goddess) was sent to Somnatha because it was a safe place for idols similarly Jaina texts also mention that jaina idols were sent to Somnatha for safety(probably from Turks). If raids on somnatha were so common that Mahmud's raid was considered minor irritant then why was this place considered safe?

3. If there were other motives(apart from loot and iconoclasm) such as political legitimacy and all that then why did Turks keep on raiding somnatha repeatedly particularly when after raids Mahmud restored local hindu kings? It seems rather odd that Mahmud was keen on destroying political symbols of hindus and glorify it when his actual political interests in India was so little that he didn't even care to install a Muslim ruler.

4. She stresses too much on Sufi stories regarding Mahmud many of which twists the story by asserting that Mahmud was a pious ruler and attacked somnath to emancipate people of somnatha from tyrant hindu raja. This must not be confused with views of hindus, these stories are propagated by sufi saints who might be familiar with Turko-persian sources(author admits this possibility). Sufi saints were missionaries also, they wanted to convert people through persuasion, in doing so it was necessary to create a positive face of Islam and while doing so they have to re-brand Mahmud and cast a benign image of Mahmud, sufi stories regarding Mahmud is but an example of such endeavors.

3. Then comes the confusion created by Tantrik tradition stories, here they seem to praise Mahmud as a brave man(though no mention of raid). This I cant understand but surely this must not mean that hindus praised Mahmud for his iconoclasm or a decisive evidence that hindus have forgotten raids by him.(this perplexity can be better understood with what is discussed in Somnatha-I, Mahmud survives in oral traditions long enough even when intermediate ages show no mention of him, this means penetration of Turko-persian or sufi sources in oral traditions and also means that hindus didnt have any direct memory of the even but that doesn't mean that the anguish created by the event had subsided- it might have been transformed from a person to a religion i.e. from Mahmud to Islam in general)

4. There is another approach that I cant agree to. She(all marxist historian in general) argues that the concept of the Hindu as a monolithic identity(like Islam and Christianity) is fundamentally flawed, that hindus didn't have any common identity they were divided and known by their castes,varnas etc and 'hinduism' is more of a convenient label. This I agree wholeheartedly. Modern idea of a religion stems from our understanding of religions of book like Islam,Judaism and Christianity all of which have a high level of ideological uniformity. On the other hand there is almost nothing that cements all hindus in one frame. So a freshness in attitude is indispensable to understand Indian history. But this conceptualization should not be selectively applied, each hypothesis must be re-examined whenever religious factor appear to influence order of events. This is not what the author does, she invokes the idea of nonuniform 'hinduism' only when it aids her thesis. For example she lays too much stress on hindu kings and bramhins allowing(grants were also given) Arab traders to build their mosques in and around somnatha in 13th century, this she asserts is a sign that there was no animosity between hindus and muslims. This is a flawed conclusion. An ordinary hindu has nothing to do with hinduism as such his only religious concern lies in temple rituals and following caste norms, and in this a mosque doesn't give any threat to his limited religious objectives. And for priests there was no reason to feel threatened by Muslims because their thin number would mean that muslims will never be able to compete for state patronage. Here the primary reason is lack of any zeal to proselytize. For a muslim mindset(or any religion who believes in proselytizing) a center of worship of some other religion is something undesirable, because in his ideal world there is no other religion but Islam. Hinduism simply lacks this incentive, their outlook is fundamentally different. A merchant is both a merchant and a religious man, in his mind there is division between dharma and artha, so he wont mind doing business with an Arab merchant(as prevalent in somnatha of that era) but at the same time due to his dharma he wont eat food cooked by him(as mentioned by Al beruni in his Kitab-ul-hind, he was contemporary of Mahmud). A muslim mindset cant comprehend this for him Islam is not just a religion but a politico-economic doctrine(I am just comparing without implying any moral overtone). This lack of dominantly religious outlook- the division between karma and artha - helps us to reconcile many a contradictions.

Let me explain it a bit further, Al biruni's account goes diametrically opposite to what Thapar tries to explain through indigenous sources. Al-biruni is sometimes called 'first indologist', his erudition is evident even if you read a few pages from his book on India. So if you go against his observations you have to explain it satisfactorily why he was mistaken. Sadly, Thapar doesn't try to explain his observations in any serious way. Al-biruni makes following observation relevant to our discussion(he writes this in 1030 a few years after Mahmud raid) 1. Somnatha economy is devastated due to raid 2. Raid has created the most inveterate antagonism between hindus and muslims 3. Hindus find Turks and their customs so alien that they frighten their children with us. Thapar says that economic devastation of somnatha was temporary and Al-biruni was talking about brahmans when he used the word Hindus. The contradiction completely escapes her that those grants to the mosques she is so obsessed to talk about were provided by these very bramhans and those sanskrit inscriptions too were written at the behest of these bramhans only.

Addendum:-
om namo adesha guru ka,
turkani ka put mahmanda bir,
nari ka put narsingha bir,
age chale mahmanda bir,
piche chale narsingha bir. - A couplet from Tantrik tradition

Somnatha - ll

This should be read in continuation of Somnatha-I

A college going Muslim girl from Ahmedabad said she had started wearing veil- the symbol of her faith after Godhra riots(apparently telling the government "you killed muslims I am muslim do whatever you want"). It didn't deter her that she had never worn a veil before and it will only increase her discomfort without creating any problem for government. Such themes are understandable, Government was held responsible for attacking people of a particular identity and as a result that identity became more assertive and more crystallized. In such events fear of losing one's identity makes him more assertive about it. There are other examples of such themes, importance of vegetarianism and non-violance increased when jainism threatened hindu faith, caste system became more rigid after the rise of Buddhism, Dharmashashtras and Manusmritis were written to counter the effects of increasing urbanization In this background I find it easy to understand why temple building activities increased after the raids of Mahmud Ghazni, it was a peculiar kind of resistance not unlike that of an anxious Muslim girl. As I understand it the author(R.Thapar of Somnatha many voices from a history) attributes this rise in temple building to economic prosperity of Rajas and the increasing importance of temples, but even that explanation leaves unanswered the question why temples were increasingly more important. Unlike author I tend to see even this activity as an 'epics of resistance'.

Somnatha - I

When Mahmud of Ghazni raided Somnatha and desecrated the temple, what was the subsequent reaction from the local people? how did hindus view that event? how did they come to terms with it? After Ghazni's raid he had been and still continues to be hailed as a champion of Islam, as a holy warrior who brought Islam in India. His raids are glorified in words and repeated in deeds throughout the medieval Islamic world. Turko-Persian accounts mention the event in gory details. If we call this 'epics of conquest' what were the corresponding 'epics of resistance' from hindus of the time? what was the retaliation?

There is a serious lack of contemporary accounts to begin with and that hindus have no sense of history writing complicates it further, what is available is the inscriptions and texts from about a century onwards of the event and there seem to be a mysterious silence about the event. Almost all accounts mentioning somnath apart from Turko-persian ones don't mention the raid at all. But one unusual 'memory' manifests itself repeatedly. One inscription dating the reconstruction of the temple in 12th century(that is more than a century after the raid) attributes the dilapidated temple(and hence the need to reconstruct) to 'Kaliyuga' where there is moral decay,rajas dont protect their temples and administrators are corrupt. There are stories saying that temples will continue to be destroyed in Kaliyug. In one such story from 15th century speaks of a dialogue between Narada and Vayu, a question is posed that, if an image, when consecrated, becomes the habitat of the deity, how can it be destroyed by the Yavans(meaning Turks here)? Why do the gods not prevent this? The answer covers more than one facet. It is said that there has been and will continue to be a conflict between devas and the daityas and other evil ones. The Yavanas are a part of this conflict, which will continue until the end of this Kaliyuga cycle. The current Yavanas are presumably repeating what the earlier ones have done and doubtless the Yavanas still to come will be doing the same. The Yavanas destroy images as do the asuras, and devas do not prevent this, since the conflict is eternal and cannt be stopped. It is now the Kaliyga and iconoclasm is to be expected because the world turns upside down in this age. The Yavanas are already carrying the burden of being cursed. Whenever rulers are lax in their duties or devoid of faith in Shiva, the Yavanas will break images. Fatalism is complete in this story, no one is thinking of fighting against the Yavanas and save the temples, all they are prepared to do is to rebuild the temples once the Yavanas have their rampage spree. In another story it is said that due to too many good people heavens are overflowing and then gods decide to destroy the temples themselves and thereby corrupting people so that they become less virtuous and heavens become less crowded again. In yet another story it is explained that in the Kaliyuga gods leave the idol so it simply doesn't matter if you break them or worship them. How utterly resigned to fate! Am I using this myths selectively or is it really that after having failed to resist the Turks, after having failed to protect themselves, Hindus resorted to mythmaking to assuage their trauma? Is this the sign of Trauma? To me it seems rather clear that these are the 'epics of resistance' represented not through defiance and glories of war but slowly and subtly through mending inner beliefs in such a way that not only tolerates but accepts the mayhem of the outer world no more in your control. Myth-making is effectively used as a balm to the wounded conscience.

Romila Thapar poses a question somewhere in her book("Somnatha the many voices of a history") "why the saviour figure of Kalkin, the tenth and last Vaishnava avatara, is not invoked to counter the Turkish attacks on temples?", she considers only two admissible answers to her quest "..those so traumatized either exorcise it by referring to the experience again and again to expurgate their fear; or, alternately, they suppress it by withdrawing and refusing to have anything to do with those who have perpetrated the trauma." No there can be other possible reactions if only we are ready to understand their semantics.