Ban on Bandhs!

I was extremely happy to see the Supreme Court lashing out at the Tamil Nadu government for calling a ‘Bandh’ couple of days back. I had iterated in one of my earlier posts Save Namma Bengaluru about how these bandhs in India are not voluntary and are forced closures of business and cause immense social & economic turmoil. They intend to do it for a cause but almost always are nothing more than a show of strength by a political party. Normal life goes into disarray and the babus have a holiday.

Few would know that Bandhs have actually been banned in India and stated to be unconstitutional using this and one earlier case at the SC. A political party was even fined on account of calling Mumbai bandh some years back. The SC makes a clear distinction between a ‘bandh’ and the ‘right to strike’, which is called a ‘hartal’. The right to strike has been identified as the fundamental right of a citizen. But obviously, it should be voluntary, should be peaceful and should not try disrupt normal life of citizens. It can never involve forceful closure of schools and colleges, offices and businesses, violence and lynching.

The SC is one of the few institutions in India, which still has public faith. No wonder the politicians are after it calling moves like the one just stated as ‘judicial activism’. Demarcations between the legislature and the judiciary aren’t clearly defined and the legislature is always over enthusiastic to claim its sovereignty on many sensitive matters. This was more so evident in the fight between General Musharraf and Iftikar Chowdhary in neighboring Pakistan.

Hats off to the founding fathers of out constitution to have made an independent judiciary to let at least some good sense prevail in these times.

Unity in Diversity

28 States, 7 Union Territories, 2 Linguistic families with 23 Official Languages, 4 Major and innumerable minor religions, several castes and sub-castes, several tribes -1 Country! -- That’s what we learned in school to be our ‘Unity in Diversity’.

Reflecting about this cliché often talked about in India, I understand that keeping over a Billion people as one nation state is a great feat in itself. Other than the J&K insurgency and the now dead Khalistan movement, all other separatist movements are rather low profile with very less national interest and success rate.
In a country where a Delhite would struggle with his day to day living in Chennai and vice-versa, it is truly remarkable that the same two guys would cheer for the same Indian cricket team, be it Irfan (A Gujarati speaking Muslim) or Sachin (A Marathi speaking Maharashtrian Hindu) with the same fervor. They would also be equivocal about bashing Pakistan and equally competitive in trying for the IIMs. Amazing country this.

In this amazing country lie some very core ideas, egos and dogmas which many a times try to tear us apart.

Take for instance the recent protests by the Gujjars for being included in the ‘backward’ category, namely ST which will give them reservations in education and jobs. It had large scale violence and disruption in civic services. With the way policies are being framed currently in Delhi, this would only increase in the near term. Be it the reservation debate or the dalit atrocities or the inherently caste driven marriage system. The point is that we are divided on the basis of caste and we can take it to unimaginable proportions when it directly touches our lives.

No one in India would need any refresher course on the communal politics in the country primarily based on Hindu-Muslim or Majority-Minority vote banks. Far too many lives have been lost and far too many people have at least a sense of discomfort & uneasiness if not extremist views regarding this. I agree that not many people would impose a social boycott on a person of the other community. But most would almost always think twice before even renting out your apartment to a guy of the other religion, forget about matrimony.

Language is another major thing which divides our country like nothing else. It ignites passions to a great extent. During the Cauvery water dispute, lots of Tamil Nadu registered vehicles in Bangalore were burned as a mark of protest to the Tamil community here. When we recently had the final verdict for it, Tamilians were once again in danger. When Belgaum passed a resolution to merge with Maharashtra, there were huge tensions about backlash on the Marathi speaking people in Karnataka.
Forget about violence and security, you cannot even take your vehicle from one state to another in India without a lot of red-tape and that too a multilingual red-tape!

People from North Eastern states like Mizoram, Manipur etc are actually out-of-scope for all discussions about Indian problems. They are almost always referred to as pahadi or Nepali or worst still chini-japani! J&K has been accepted as an eternal problem and so should be ignored or be taken up as political issue sometimes.
This diversity also gives us the larger than life list of public holidays because you cannot ‘hurt’ any religious sentiments and in the meantime the babus can have a good time at home. It also gives us the super literate Kerala and the low literacy infested Bihar, the cosmopolitan Mumbai and the orthodox Trivandrum which drives the immigration cycle like none other and contributes to the burning anger about the ‘other’ being.

In all this strife is left a common Indian. He starts out trying to look around as an Indian but is forced to take positions on this side of the fight or that. Gets grounded many a times, faces the harsh music more often than not and finally settles into the comfort zone of ‘his’ identity making most of what he gets from the system.

This is not a pessimist rant but when people face innumerable obstacles and problems trying to go along with their daily life because of this diversity, one feels whether we really should be proud about it. Looking at uniform America, one gets a feeling that may be I would settle for a uniform, call it mundane society than a ‘Unity in Diversity’.

I read Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank being quoted one day, “When economics starts talking, religion takes a backseat”. I hope the economics starts talking really hard all across India soon, which has already started to some extent, so that one day we would be really proud of our diversity.

Save Namma Bengaluru

A linguistic minority passes a resolution in a local government body that it wants to merge with a neighboring state which is home to its language. A great regional language actor, who is adored by many, passes away a natural death. A religious minority takes out a protest march to condemn an event in a far off country which is followed by a procession by another community in the same localities for totally another reason. And then, a national tribunal gives its verdict on a water dispute against this regional state’s interest.

What all these events have in common is that, they happen in the same state within a span of a year and each one is followed by protests to start with, followed by ‘a bandh’, violence & arson leaving the capital city in fear, anger and sheer helplessness. Welcome to Namma Bengaluru (Our Bangalore).

We all feel frustrated, angered and sad due to many of the happenings around us. But does that mean you go out and torch a state government bus? Go out and pelt stones at people because they were trying to catch their train? Go out and break the glass windows and glass coverings of the buildings which dared to be open in spite of the bandh call? Get into people’s houses and torch their vehicles because they bear the registration mark of the state which you demise? Or worst, go on lynching people of the other religion?

First of all, all forms of violence and arson should be intolerable for any society. But the most ironic part of the story is that by calling bandhs and indulging in arson and violence, you end up punishing the very people whom you pretend to be standing up for!

By burning the state government bus, we are losing our state capital, by stopping trains, busses and making people shut shops, we are incurring a huge economic loss on our own state! And the bad publicity, image loss and fear which all this brings with it has a long lasting impact on the state’s future.

This very illogical idea of self-hurt prevails all across India, from Mumbai to Kolkata.
I sincerely appeal to all politicians, administrators, linguistic and religious groups to put our state’s interest on top. There is no point in closing out our own businesses and taking the law into our own hands as it inflicts a loss on our own people and it makes no difference to the world which looks at us as a downtrodden primitive society.
Let’s stand up to the ethics, principles and values of our mother nation. Let’s make our world a better place to live in. Lets save namma Bengaluru.