Ram Temple Verdict Judges Get Ayodhya Invite; Persistence of Modi Degree Controversy a Fallout of Lack of Transparency
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
Snapshot of the day
January 19, 2024
Siddharth Varadarajan
Narendra Modi’s educational qualifications need not be the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that they have become if only the system he runs were to allow basic transparency in the face of Right to Information requests. On Friday, the Delhi High Court postponed – to May 2024 – Delhi University’s challenge to the Chief Information Commissioner ruling that all degrees issued by Delhi University in 1978 (the year Modi says he got a BA from DU) are open to an RTI scrutiny. The lengthy adjournment was granted after DU said its counsel – Solicitor General Tushar Mehta – was busy in another matter, reports Bar & Bench, adding that this case has already been pending for five years. “Notably, the case was listed only twice in the year 2022 and only three times in 2023.”
The fact is that Narendra Modi spoke at length about his educational qualifications in a televised interview to Rajiv Shukla in the year 2000, well before he rose to national prominence as Chief Minister of Gujarat or even as Prime Minister. There, he admitted never having entered the gate of a college but added that he had obtained a BA and MA degree by correspondence at the urging of colleagues in the RSS. While a man who is PM may have an incentive to lie about nonexistent degrees, someone who was just a mid-level BJP apparatchik is unlikely to have made that story up. Yet, DU’s reluctance to provide the requisite records, and Amit Shah’s brandishing of Modi’s MA degree in ‘Entire Political Science’ when no such subject exists in Gujarat University or anywhere else in the world have unnecessarily muddied the waters.
The sensitive border state of Manipur has witnessed seven deaths — including two security personnel — in the past 48 hours alone, 260 days after the violence first erupted last May. According to the Manipur Police, an “irate mob” also targeted an Indian Reserve Batallion unit and a police headquarters in the state’s Thoubal district, injuring three BSF personnel.
Now the other M word, Mandir. In another unprecedented development in an event already unparalleled in a constitutional democracy like India’s, the five Supreme Court judges who ruled in 2019 that the site where the Babri Masjid stood till it was illegally demolished in 1992 must be turned into a temple have been invited as state guests for the consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir on January 22. The invitees also include over 50 jurists including former CJIs, judges and lawyers. The five judges were last seen posing for a group photograph after drinking the “best available” bottle of wine that the Taj Mahal hotel had as part of their celebrations for having delivered a historic verdict. That’s according to Ranjan Gogoi’s memoirs.
Modi and BJP will take centre stage for the Ram Temple but, for seven decades, it is actually the judiciary that has slowly but surely converted what was a functioning mosque in 1949 to a temple in 2024. Vineet Bhalla traces legal developments from 1951 to 2019.
On the temple run, Jeremy Page, Asia Diplomatic Editor of The Economist writes in the Essential India newsletter caught up with Champat Rai, general secretary of the Ram temple trust and a Vishwa Parishad leader who had been indicted for his role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid:
"When I asked him what message the ceremony would send to Indian Muslims, he said they should show their allegiance to India and re-discover their Hindu roots, suggesting that their ancestors had all been forcibly converted to Islam.
"It’s Mr Rai’s words that I’ve heard echoed ... in interviews with BJP workers and supporters over the past few weeks. Many have gone further, expressing hope that Mr Modi’s government will replace more mosques on sites claimed by Hindus and scrap Muslim family laws if the BJP wins a third term. Ayodhya, the city, may serve as a showcase for Mr Modi’s economic plans. But the temple’s inauguration is an explicit rallying cry to the BJP’s Hindu nationalist base.”On another note, here is a fact check of Modi and his dietary requirements doing rounds in the media.
Across the country, Muslims are laying low, staying indoors and avoiding travel, as fear and paranoia ropes in. “I have to think twice before speaking in front of my best friend from childhood. Everyone has changed. My friends, my batchmates,” Parveen Talha, India’s first woman Muslim bureaucrat, told Betwa Sharma in a conversation about the Ram Temple inauguration, the public euphoria and being sidelined in their own country. “It is a celebration of historical victimhood, the obsession with majority victimhood because there was nothing else. There is no vision. Forget the 14%, what is the vision for the 86%?”, a Muslim academic noted.
The Supreme Court has dismissed applications filed by the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, seeking more time to surrender. A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan, which considered their applications, said that the reasons cited by the applicants “have no merit in as much as those reasons in no way prevent them from complying with our directions”.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution expressing concern about “acts of violence, increasing nationalistic rhetoric and divisive policies” in India. The resolution, adopted months ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, draws attention to acts of violence and discrimination against religious minorities and the “harmful effects” of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on civil society organisations. The resolution urged the European Council and European Commission to call on political leaders in India to “cease making inflammatory statements in order to resolve social conflicts, including those in Manipur”. The European Parliament also said there was a need to closely monitor the “worrying situation” in Jammu and Kashmir pertaining to human rights and fundamental freedoms. The body said that the European Council and European Commission should remain committed towards “de-escalation and rapprochement through good neighbourly relations between India and Pakistan”. The resolution described the Citizenship (Amendment) Act as “dangerously divisive” and said that the law, along with other legislations that discriminate on the grounds of religion, are matters of serious concern.
There is no end to the deification of the Prime Minister. West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government is yet to put up sign boards and flexes with the National Food Security Act (NFSA) logo and photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at all ration shops. After the Modi government sent “repeated reminders” for Modi photographs, it has decided to withhold the release of Rs 7,000 crore to the state government to buy paddy for the schemes, reports The New Indian Express. State government officials are obviously in a bind, and have said the Centre’s refusal to reimburse the sum could leave a serious impact on paddy collection on the state in the ongoing financial year. However, this is not the first time the Modi government has withheld funds from West Bengal over branding issues. In November last year, Banerjee had written to the PM urging him to release funds under the National Health Mission (NHM) that were withheld due to the colour of the health centres.
In more signs of a thaw in ties with China, industry secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said at Davos that India could ease curbs on investment from China if the border situation continues to stabilise, Reuters reports. “You can’t have somebody nibbling at your border while at the same time having red-carpet treatment for investments from there,” Singh was quoted as saying. He did not provide a time frame for an easing of the curbs, which, according to Reuters, have disrupted investment into India worth billions of dollars and have halted planned projects, including from Chinese auto manufacturers.
India could deploy civilians to operate the emergency evacuation aircraft it provided to the Maldives, the government of Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu has suggested according to the Deccan Herald. The island nation has asked India to withdraw its military personnel from the country by March 15. ICYMI, there have been reports that Maldives is getting Turkish drones to replace what India did for it in the past.
Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met his Maldivian opposite number Moosa Zameer in Uganda and said the two leaders had a “frank conversation” on Indo-Maldivian ties. Zameer said it was a “pleasure” to meet Jaishankar on the margins of the 19th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. “We exchanged views on the ongoing high-level discussions on the withdrawal of Indian military personnel, as well as expediting the completion of ongoing development projects in the Maldives, and cooperation within SAARC and NAM,” he wrote.
The Indian Navy on Thursday successfully rescued the crew of the US-owned vessel Genco Picardy in the Gulf of Aden after an attack by Yemen’s Houthi movement, reports Reuters. Following the attack on the American vessel MV Genco Picardy late on Wednesday, the US military said it had conducted strikes on 14 Houthi missiles that “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region”. The Houthis claim to be acting in solidarity with Palestinians and threatened to target US ships in response to US and UK strikes on the group’s positions, says Reuters.
Fourteen children and two teachers were killed after a boat carrying 27 students on a picnic capsized on a lake outside Vadodara. Three persons, including a manager of the boat contractor under IPC sections 304, 308, and 337 have been arrested.
The absence of snowfall in Kashmir is getting noticed across the world. BBC tracks experts who say it is beyond a ski-less holiday story. The “snowless winter will have a disastrous impact on the territory's economy as the tourism sector accounts for about 7% of Jammu and Kashmir's GDP. It will also impact farming and water supply as scanty snowfall will not replenish groundwater reserves adequately.”
Days after Iran and Pakistan launched airstrikes against alleged militant hideouts in each other’s territory, the two countries are discussing ways of dialling down the tension.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has pushed Civil Aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia – ever quick to want a fight with the Congress after defecting to the BJP – on the defensive about the mess that Indian airports are. Scindia’s pushback isn’t quite taking off, this round goes to Tharoor.
Ujval Nanavati explains why ‘affluent India’ alone cannot sustain the growth of consumption in the country. The article is paywalled but this chart released by The Morning Context shows how companies catering to richer Indians have experienced more rapid growth than those whose products are bought by lower income groups.
Lack of storage for over two lakh heritage items at New Delhi’s National Museum has stalled plans to shift its location, the New Indian Express has learnt. It is planned to be replaced by a new museum, touted as the world’s largest, named the Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum.
The Maharashtra government’s decision to include eggs in its mid-day meals has received pushback, ironically from organisations affiliated to the state’s ruling parties. Some reasons cited by opponents of the move include fears that children from vegetarian families will eat eggs to emulate their friends, and the dissonance in serving eggs in a scheme named after an avowedly vegetarian prime minister.
Fake encounters of the Gujarat kind
The Gujarat government yesterday questioned before the Supreme Court “a selective public interest” in seeking a probe into the alleged fake encounters in the state from 2002 to 2006, contending such things "also took place in other states". Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the state government, contended before a bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta, that encounters have taken place in other states as well. “The petitioners say that they want an investigation of a few encounters during a particular period in the state of Gujarat. Why this selective public interest? They have to answer that,” Mehta submitted before the bench. Earlier, the state government had questioned the locus standi of the petitioners.
The court was hearing two separate pleas filed in 2007 by senior journalist BG Verghese (who died in 2014) and lyricist Javed Akhtar and activist Shabnam Hashmi, seeking a probe into the alleged fake encounters. The top court had earlier appointed a monitoring authority headed by former top court judge Justice H S Bedi, which probed 17 alleged fake encounter cases in Gujarat from 2002 to 2006. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, for a petitioner, said that the committee had already filed its report and sought prosecution of people who have been identified in the report. He said the committee has come to a prima facie conclusion in three cases.
By the way, in 2019, the committee had submitted its report, though in a sealed cover. The committee had recommended prosecution of police officials in three out of the 17 cases it probed.
FDI at a Low
Foreign investments in India have plunged to lows not seen in decades, in the current financial year. This is both in absolute terms as well as as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP). The gross FDI into India in the first half (April-September) of this financial year stood at just $10.1 billion. The last time it was lower than this was in the first half of 2007-08.
As a percentage of India’s GDP, gross FDI flows dropped to just 1 percent in the first half of financial year 2023-24, while net FDI fell to 0.6 percent. These are levels last seen in 2005-06. While global FDI inflows have been falling, India is receiving a decreasing share of what remains! India’s share in global FDI inflows fell to 2.8 percent in the January-June 2023 period, the lowest since 2017.
During the first term of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), both gross FDI and net FDI shot up as a percentage of GDP — from 0.8 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively, in FY 2004-05 to 3.5 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively, in FY 2008-09. Thereafter, it fell sharply again, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008-09. But the UPA ended its term with both gross and net FDI making up a higher percentage of GDP than when it came to power. The Modi government has seen the opposite. Gross and net FDI as a percentage of GDP fell marginally over its first term, but the second term has seen both go down and even faster.
Sub-categorisation of castes remains tricky
The Modi government has formed a five-member committee of Secretaries, chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, to evaluate and work out a method for the equitable distribution of benefits, schemes and initiatives to the most backward communities amongst the over 1,200 Scheduled Castes across the country, that have been crowded out by relatively forward and dominant ones. This includes Secretaries of the Home Ministry, Law Ministry, Tribal Affairs Ministry, and Social Justice Ministry. There is no deadline for the committee, except, “to do so at the earliest.” This comes in the backdrop of Modi’s promise to look into the demand for sub-categorisation of Dalits as raised by the Madiga community in the run-up to the Telangana Assembly election.
This is even as a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court is set to start hearing the question of whether sub-categorisation among dalits and tribals is at all permissible in the constitutional scheme of things. The government panel will be looking into “other ways to take care of their grievances”. The committee has a strict mandate to not deviate into the questions of reservation, or that of the break-up of what the dalit quota should be for employment and education as this is being treated as sub-judice.
The Long Cable
Must Justice Have a Colour?
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
In an “inspired” statement after visiting the temples at Dwarka and Somnath in Gujarat earlier this January, Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said:
“I was inspired this morning by the dhwaja at Dwarkadhish ji, very similar to the dhwaja, which I saw at Jagannath Puri. But look at this universality of the tradition in our nation, which binds all of us together. This dhwaja has a special meaning for us. And that meaning which the dhwaja gives us is– there is some unifying force above all of us, as lawyers, as judges, as citizens. And that unifying force is our humanity, which is governed by the rule of law and by the Constitution of India”. It is a dense statement with philosophical implications if connected to the future spirit of the law in India. There is a politics of mysticism behind the statement. The statement suggests that behind (and “above”) the force of law is another “unifying force”. This force binds us prior to the force that binds us to the law. It is the force of national tradition.
The dhwaja, or flag, in a temple represents the idea of a specific tradition within a nation. It does not represent all other traditions. The flag or any other symbol belonging to a tradition can’t be universal. To consider tradition as part of sacred territory is still an argument of difference, distinguishing it from other traditions. It is not a mark of universality.
Universality is an idea connected to a secular culture (and a secular state). It does not represent any tradition. The principle of universality in a nation comes from the life that people of various cultures and traditions share together as citizens. Nehru called it “a sense of common living and common purpose” in The Discovery of India. The “special meaning” of traditions doesn’t become less special if it isn’t universal. Traditions are special precisely because they add to a nation’s diversity. To consider the “unifying force” of tradition “above” all of us suggests that we are bound to a tradition before we are bound to any other idea or system of law. But the force of tradition can’t undermine the law of the state if that relationship has to be retained in any meaningful manner.
Traditions are prejudicial, and their pretention to universality is circumscribed by prejudice. The profound prejudice of traditions governs the lives of people who swear by it. It also governs people’s lives with others, those who do not belong to that tradition. The relation between traditions is governed by mutual prejudice. There are, however, ethical guidelines within traditions regarding how to relate to others outside it. These guidelines are part of the law of tradition, the tradition of law that predates the universal law of the secular state. These guidelines are still not universal, for each tradition understands its relation with others in distinct ways, connected to its own precepts and history. The ethical nature of the relationship between traditions is derived from their mutual capacity to partake in shared life. The element of prejudice however persists in that relationship, and is often the cause of mutual animosity and strife. Justice in a secular nation is often, simply, the management of strife.
In Pensées (1670), Pascal identifies three sources behind the essence of justice: legislative authority, sovereign interest, and the surest of all, current custom. Justice is not eternal, but a matter of time. In his famous essay “On Experience” (1587-1588) Michel de Montaigne calls custom the “mystical foundation of authority”, where he means to say that people follow the law not because it is just (or, brings justice) but because they are laws to be obeyed. One obeys, or bound to obey, authority, even if it isn’t just. Authority is a matter of collective belief, ruled by custom. Montaigne suggests that the customary nature of law prevents the possibility of imagining the just. It curtains, curtails justice. Does secular law overcome the constraints of custom to become, or realise itself as, universal, and just? Can this law become what Aniket Jaaware meant in his evocative phrase in Practising Caste: On Touching and Not Touching by “just us”? In his words: “Not us and them, not you and me making up a divisible us. Just us.” Justice is us, about us, the un/just us, the destitute of law. It is an undefinable us that cross the crisscrossed borders of traditions to seek what makes us, and what is denied us.
Let us go back to the Chief Justice’s statement. He not only invokes tradition but also “nation”, equating the two to mean that there is a tradition of the nation that is symbolised and embellished by the dhwaja on the temple. The force of tradition binds both the giver and receiver of law, which in turn forms the essence of the rule of law and the Constitution. The question arises: Does this force of tradition include the force of other traditions? In other words, can “universality” be posed as an idea (and a value) within– in the name of– the nation by not naming the diversity of traditions within it? Can the idea, or essence, of a singular custom become the unitary basis of the law, of that elusive possibility we call justice? Are “lawyers”, “judges” and “citizens” together bound by a single tradition as the “unifying” source of our prejudicial authority? What if the idea of unity– proposed in the name of a “unifying force”– does violence to the idea of diversity?
It is also not that traditions are eternal, immune to changes. They have evolved across time and undergone numerous improvisations through internal debates. Traditions are always in flux. The element of prejudice in traditions includes caste and gender. Nehru underlines modernity’s critical relationship with tradition succinctly in The Discovery: “Traditions have to be accepted to a large extent and adapted and transformed to meet new conditions and ways of thought, and at the same time new traditions have to be built up.” Traditions are not sacrosanct.
A flag belonging to a tradition also has a colour to it. Traditions, among other things, are also a display (and play) of colours. The colour of tradition is a singular colour within a diversity of colours. Can it also colour the law? Are the laws of the world (especially that of secular states) coloured by the mystical force of authority? The blind/ed figure of the law gives the impression that the law is also colourblind. Justice, we understand, has no colour. Is it just a foundational myth of the law’s representation of itself?
To end, I shall invoke a line from Jacques Derrida’s essay “Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority” (1994), the force behind my meditation: “To address oneself to the other in the language of the other is both the condition of all possible justice.” The ethical condition of modern (secular) law presupposes disputes between people following different customs and traditions, therefore different prejudicial authorities. In a similar manner, the law of the nation presupposes a society of minorities. The idea of unity, in this sense, presupposes the existence of diversity. It makes the law bound to the history (and possibility) of many customs, or traditions, that resource the “unifying force” behind the idea, and spirit, of justice. The force of law of my tradition is paradoxically limited and expanded by the presence of the force of law of the other who belongs to another tradition. It is the other that brings the fundamental predicament to law and justice: How to be just to what is prior to – and yet becomes the basis of– unity?
The law must arbiter between our mutual prejudices. It must be above what limits us.
The writer is the author of Nehru and the Spirit of India. He is working on a book on Gandhi.
Reportedly
Rahul Gandhi in his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, has hit Assam, where it hurts the most. He termed the Assam government as possibly, the most corrupt government in India. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congressman, now an aggressive peddler of all that works for the BJP, has been under a corruption cloud personally too. Gandhi said, “He thinks that money can buy the people of Assam. But Assamese people cannot be bought.” Sarma retorted, with a counter on the Gandhi family, but he has not really had many good answers for some time now. Gandhi slammed the ruling BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for also “spreading hatred” (other than looting public money). Sarma has been saying the Yatra is not allowed to go through Guwahati, as no permission was granted. True to tradition, the police have filed an FIR against the Yatra organisers.
Prime Number: 46 days
In a strike, asking for the basics of life — “a liveable wage, edible food, and a clean and safe space for the children entrusted to their care — Maharashtra’s anganwadi workers have taken on the might of the government”.
Deep Dive
In 2009, the Karnataka government allotted 160 homes for people with HIV in Bengaluru. But when residents moved in, they realised the colony was solely for people with HIV, and that this made them the target of even more stigma. “There is a possibility that there was no land anywhere else so they gave us this. But personally, if you ask me what I feel, then yes. I do believe we’ve been banished here because we are HIV patients.” Infact, the report sharply narrates how merely providing housing without taking into account other needs of a community can do a lot of harm. Read this report by Johanna Deeksha in Scroll on the “HIV colony” outside Bengaluru.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
If India wishes to be taken seriously by the rest of the world as a responsible global player and a model 21st-century democracy, we will have to take ourselves seriously and responsibly as well. Our media would be a good place to start, writes Shashi Tharoor in demanding “a media that contributes to shaping an informed, educated and politically aware India, one ready to hold its governments accountable, its society safe and its people ready to push boundaries.”
Milind Deora’s exit from the Congress is bad optics; one must wait and watch if the damage is anything more than that, write Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari.
Prabhat Patnaik on the truth about how Indians live. Hunger and undernutrition stalk the land.
TCA Raghavan writes on the “looming polycrisis” in the region. If the problem is identified as a regional one, he argues, “then piecemeal solutions and approaches will not be enough. An even sharper focus on our immediate neighbourhood is called for.”
Anirudh Kanisetti writes that the contact with Turkic politics certainly invigorated how Indian kings saw Ram, and he finally came into his own as a major political figure, the king’s divine analogue. Across India from the 12th century, both Vaishnavite and Shaivite kings compared themselves to him, and their rivals — irrespective of religion — to Ravana.
Main Atal Hoon reviewed by Nandini Ramnath. She terms it “a puff piece about AB Vajpayee and his party”. Rahul Desai of Film Companion has also panned the film and Pankaj Tripathi.
“I might feel stung, for instance, at someone making a Salman Rushdie joke. We all have our own pantheons, and it isn’t any comedian’s responsibility to pussyfoot around what I may consider sacrilegious,” writes Raja Sen on why we need to stop telling comedians what they cannot say.
Listen up
On the Bretton Goods podcast, listen to journalist Pramit Bhattacharya talk about India's singular statistical history — and the current state of national accounting.
Watch out
Watch Indian cricketer, the glorious R Ashwin’s take here, especially on the series against Afghanistan. It has generated a lot of chatter on social media.
Over and out
The aroma of a steaming cup of chai beckons almost every Indian like a veritable siren’s call. One sip of this delicious and refreshing beverage can help smooth a frazzled spirit and help us feel energised when we are down. Coming in various shades of black and brown, chai is ubiquitous in India. India’s favourite beverage — masala chai has been voted as the second most popular non-alcoholic beverage in the world!
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.