It has been a while since I last made a blog post. In fact the one that I made the last time was rather emotional and I was well advised by friends and well wishers to remove it from the blog. But I am sure by then many actually had read that post and therefore I decided that I shall stay away from writing till such time that I was feeling comfortable with life again. That is precisely the reason behind delaying this post, which I otherwise wanted to make a week back.
I do not have to tell you about the exodus of people from the North Eastern part of the country leaving the southern states in huge numbers because they feared for their safety. The genesis of this problem lay in the fact that a couple of months ago students from the North Easter part of India were thrashed by some locals. And when rumours began to fly that deadlines were given for departure from various states, then people actually started moving out of Maharashtra and the southern states in huge numbers. The actual trigger for the incident is the killing of a people belonging to a certain religion in Assam by the agitators who have been demanding a separate state for the Bodos. This act had its echo in Mumbai where members belonging to the religion to which the killed members belonged held demonstrations saying that there was no security for the minorities in this country and that the government was doing very little or absolutely nothing to make them feel secure. Then there have been reprisals to these arguments and ultimately the whole thing culminated in threatening emails, phone calls and the exodus itself. What this whole episode demonstrates to me is an increasingly emerging xenophobia within the country. This particular episode is even more poignant because this time the xenophobia has been directed at people from a region which already feels that they are not treated as Indians.
It is common practice for people to refer to North Eastern people as Chinese due to the fact that they have features which are different from the people of the rest of the country. I have had many friends from the North Eastern part who have always told me that there are very few people in this country who actually know that they are Indians, most just think that they are Chinese. It is therefore not a big wonder that there are insurgency groups in the North East and their claims are vaguely recognized by some people.
Now let me come to the point that actually got me started with this blog in the December, 2009. I have consistently said that though I am a person from Telangana I oppose the movement for a separate state. I have also unequivocally stated that the argument "we will rule ourselves" is a potential minefield because the constitution of the country says anyone can contest an election from any place in the country and that they can acquire property. In fact the right to property was originally placed in the list of Fundamental Rights and only later when the constitution was amended and the word Socialist appended that it was converted from a Fundamental right to a legal right. I have argued that this particular argument would legitimise all the other demands for separate states, be they Bodoland, Gorkhaland, Vidarbha etc. Now this particular incident was a result of the Bodoland agitation continuing.
Ever the opportunists politicians demanding a separate Telangana have decided to the up the ante because they can now fish in troubled waters. The TRS and the Coordinator of the political Joint Action Committee who ironically happens to be an academician have seized the opportunity to once again start threats. The Convenor/Coordinator of the JAC has in fact threatened to call a Million March to the Centre of Hyderabad which happens to be the bund on the Hussain Sagar lake. Over a year ago he had called for a similar thing (in fact the nomenclature was the exact same Million March) and it resulted in vandalism and desecration of statues of famous Telugu literary, political, devotional and musical figures. Those statues have not been replaced yet. So what does the Convenor want? A finish to what was left unfinished then?
In India politics have taken huge precedence over everything else and in that caste and religion are the two most important variables. If the Telangana agitation was a Reddy attack on the Kamma people, it has now become a Backward Caste (this is a nomenclature that is NOT recognised by the constitution of India and is a convenient perversion of Other Backward Classes for the creation and maintenance of vote banks by visionless and ill educated politicians of this country) attack on all other castes. The dimension is beginning to assume even more menacing proportions since there is now a demand that there should be a separate roster of promotions for Scheduled Caste employees and this is being opposed by parties like the Samajwadi Party which claim that the Scheduled Caste people have already enjoyed too many benefits and privileges at the expense of the Backward Castes. In Andhra Pradesh there is already a movement which calls itself the Most Backward Castes movement and is fighting for recognition as those who are worse off than the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Already all Backward Castes are calling themselves Most Backward Castes.
So what we see is this race to be categorised as backward in India. A number of people have argued with me that this happening because the Constitution of India is a fundamentally flawed document. So everybody can demand reservations or other kinds of sops in the name of backwardness of caste (the BC and the SC movements), in the name of backwardness of regions (the Telangana, Vidarbha, Gorkhaland agitations apart from the Bodoland issue) and backwardness in the name of religion (those fighting for Dalit or Scheduled Caste status from among Christian denominations and those fighting for reservations for Muslims as backward community). This despite the fact that the State has almost completely (with the exception of UPSC exams) withdrawn from providing employment to people. I agree that there are a few problems in the Indian constitution one glaring example being the complete lack of definition or guidelines about who constitutes a tribal population. Loop holes such as this have led to the Lambada people being categorised as Scheduled Tribes in Andhra Pradesh, as Backward Caste in Maharashtra and General in the land of their origin which happens to be Rajasthan. In fact, most Lambada people draw their lineage to the Rajputs who happen to be Kshatriyas. But we know that no document in the world is perfect and the problems with the Indian constitution are not any more than the ones with any other constitution. So there is nothing seriously wrong with the constitution.
Even the best constitution cannot support politics that quagmired in chicanery, deception and duplicity. As long as greedy politicians are going to set the agenda for Indian democracy, irrespective of the constitution problems will arise and persist. It is perhaps India's bane today that there are coalition politics and that they will not permit any wise decisions to be taken. But if one were to look at the reason behind coalition politics then one can see that they are a result of the exploitation of fissiparous and parochial tendencies within the mindset of the Indian people. The success of politicians and their agendas of division of people into vote banks is a natural corollary to the basic intolerance that people in India have to difference. While it is all well to claim that India has survived as democracy for the last 65 years without interruption since independence, the prognosis need not be seen in this light. I have claimed before and am doing this again that to divide Indian people is the easiest thing in the world. That is because each individual and groupings draw their identities from different levels of society which is hierarchically organised. This has been the most unfortunate contribution of Brahminical Religion in India; a contribution that has become so strongly entrenched in the minds of people that they are unable to break free.
Centuries of Brahminical Religion and its domination means that it is firmly ingrained in the psyche of people to draw their identities from difference rather than commonalities. The upwardly mobile caste groups in the country have perpetuated this tendency. But in the last few years there has been a change. Thanks to the politics of the DK movement and its various iterations in Tamil Nadu and the Telugu Desam party in the Andhra Pradesh and the defining moment in Indian history when VP Singh to protect his Prime Ministership by introducing the Mandal Commission based reservations in the country, the caste pyramid has got inverted. Now lower in the pyramid translates to greatest power. This would be acceptable provided this pattern is consistent. What seems to be the real problem facing the country now is that there is fight amongst various caste groupings to occupy the lowest position in the pyramid and thereby garner most power. In all this those who do not have the hope of ever being called backward due to their caste or religious status have started taking recourse to the regional card. Due to the perpetuation of these divisions to gain power or to remain in power politicians have been keeping issues that need to be finished off alive and creating new ones wherever possible. The result is an increasingly fractured Indian Nationalism. At the rate at which politics are being played out on the basis of parochial identities, the days when the identity of Indian and Indian nationalism disappear may not be too far away.
I wish I could write to the Prime Minister, for he is a person for whom I have great respect. I wish I could tell him that he is not a politician and therefore should not act like one. I wish I could ask him to sacrifice his political career by taking a principled stand on issues which can be detrimental to the National interest of India. But then as some on said if only wishes were horses.....
