Election Season and Return of Lord Ram

In the wake of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) UN High Commissioner, Michele Bachelet, has filed an intervention in the Supreme Court petition challenging the constitutionality of the Citizenship Amendment Act, as she is critical of CAA. Responding to her, India’s Foreign Minister S. Jai Shanker strongly rebutted her criticism, saying that the body (UNHCR) has been wrong and is blind to the problem of cross border terrorism. The issue on hand is the possibility of scores of people, mainly Muslims, being declared as stateless. The problem at hand is the massive exercise of going through the responses/documents from over 120 crore of Indian population and screening documents, which as seen in Assam, yield result which are far from truthful or necessary.

The issue of CAA has been extensively debated and despite heavy critique of the same by large number of groups and despite the biggest mass opposition ever to any move in Independent India, the Government is determined on going ahead with an exercise which is reminiscent of the dreaded regimes which are sectarian and heartless to its citizens, which have indulged in extinction of large mass of people on grounds of citizenship, race etc. The Foreign minister’s assertion is that it is a matter internal to India, where India’s sovereignty is all that matters! As far as sovereignty is concerned we should be clear that in current times any sovereign power has to consider the need to uphold the citizenship as per the principle of non-discrimination which is stipulated in Art.26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political (ICCPR) rights.

Can such policies, which affect large number of people and are likely to affect their citizenship be purely regarded as ‘internal’? With the World turning into a global village, some global norms have been formulated during last few decades. The norms relate to Human rights and migrations have been codified. India is also signatory to many such covenants in including ICCPR, which deals with the norms for dealing with refugees from other countries. One is not talking of Chicago speech of Swami Vivekanand, which said that India’s greatness has been in giving shelter to people from different parts of the World; one is also not talking of the Tattariaya Upanishad’s ‘Atithi Devovhav’ or ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam’ from Mahaupanishad today.

What are being talked about are the values and opinions of organizations which want to ensure to preserve of Human rights of all people Worldwide. In this matter India is calling United Nations body as ‘foreign party’; having no locus standi in the case as it pertains to India’s sovereignty. The truth is that since various countries are signatories to UN covenants, UN bodies have been monitoring the moves of different states and intervening at legal level as Amicus (Friend of the Court) to the courts in different countries and different global bodies. Just to mention some of these, UN and High Commissioner for Human Rights has often submitted amicus briefs in different judicial platforms. Some examples are their intervention in US Supreme Court, European Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. These are meant to help the Courts in areas where UN bodies have expertise.

 Expertise on this has been jointly formulated by various nations. These interventions also remind the nations as to what global norms have been evolved and what are the obligations of individual states to the values which have evolved over a period of time. Arvind Narrain draws our attention to the fact that, “commission has intervened in the European Court of Human Rights in cases involving Spain and Italy to underscore the principle of non-refoulement, which bars compulsory expulsion of illegal migrants… Similarly, the UN has intervened in the International Criminal Court in a case against the Central African Republic to explicate on the international jurisprudence on rape as a war crime.”

From time to time organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been monitoring the status of Human rights of different countries. This puts those countries in uncomfortable situation and is not welcome by those establishments. How should this contradiction between ‘internal matter’, ‘sovereignty’ and the norms for Human rights be resolved? This is a tough question at the time when the freedom indices and democratic ethos are sliding downwards all over the world. In India too has slid down on the scale of these norms.

In India we can look at the intervention of UN body from the angle of equality and non discrimination. Democratic spirit should encourage us to have a rethink on the matters which have been decided by the state. In the face of the greatest mass movement of Shaheen bagh, the state does need to look inwards and give a thought to international morality, the spirit of global family to state the least.

The popular perception is that when Christians were being persecuted in Kandhmal the global Christian community’s voice was not strong enough. Currently in the face of Delhi carnage many a Muslim majority countries have spoken. While Mr. Modi claims that his good relations with Muslim countries are a matter of heartburn to the parties like Congress, he needs to relook at his self gloating. Currently Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia and many Muslim majority countries have spoken against what Modi regime is unleashing in India. Bangladesh, our neighbor, has also seen various protests against the plight of Muslims in India. More than the ‘internal matter’ etc. what needs to be thought out is the moral aspect of the whole issue. We pride ourselves in treading the path of morality. What does that say in present context when while large section of local media is servile to the state, section of global media has strongly brought forward what is happening to minorities in India.   

The hope is that Indian Government wakes up to its International obligations, to the worsening of India’s image in the World due to CAA and the horrific violence witnessed in Delhi.

As Covid 19 has created havoc all rounds, the rulers of certain countries are using it to further intensify their set agendas. The democratic freedoms are being curtailed in certain forms, the reaction to which has come in America in the form of a campaign, which is opposing “stifling” cultural climate that is imposing “ideological conformity” and weakening “norms of open debate and toleration of differences”. In India similar intimidations have been intensified. In addition the occasion has been used by the sectarian forces first to link the spread of Corona to Muslim community and now in the name of reducing the burden of curriculum certain chapters on core concepts related to Indian nationalism are being deleted from the text books.

It has been reported that chapters on federalism, citizenship, nationalism, secularism, Human Rights, Legal Aid and Local Self Government and the like are being dropped. Education has been an important area for communal forces and they constantly keep saying that leftists have dominated the curriculum content, it suffers from the impact of Macaulay, Marx and Mohammad and so needs to be Indianized. The first such attempt was done when BJP came to power in 1998 as NDA and had Murli Manohar Joshi as the MHRD minister. He brought the changes which were termed as ‘saffronization of education’. Their focus is more on social science. Some of the highlights of this were introduction of subjects like Astrology and Paurohitya, and chapters defending caste system, nationalism of the type of Hitler was praised.

With defeat of NDA in 2004, the UPA did try to rectify some of these distortions. Again after 2014 the RSS affiliates working in the area of education have been active, interacting with MHRD officials to impress upon them the need to change the curriculum matching with their Hindu nationalist agenda. Its ‘Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas’ has been asking for removal of English, Urdu words in the texts. It has asked for removal of thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore on Nationalism, extracts of autobiography of M F Husain, references to benevolence of Muslim rulers, references to BJP being Hindu party, apology of Dr. Manmohan Singh for anti Sikh pogrom of 1984, the reference to killings of Gujarat carnage in 2002 among others. This they call as Bhartiykaran of syllabus.

As RSS is a multithreaded hydra one of its pracharak Dinanath Batra has set up ‘Shiksha Bachao Abhiyan Samiti’ which has been pressurizing various publishers to drop the books which are not conforming to their ideology. One recalls their pressuring withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s ‘The Hindus’, as it does present the ancient India through the concerns of dalits and women. Mr. Batra has already come out with a set of nine books for school curriculum, giving the RSS view of the past and RSS understanding of social sciences. These have already been translated into Gujarati and thousands of the sets of these books are being used in Gujarat Schools.

The present step of deleting parts of curriculum which gives the basics of Indian Nationalism, secularism and human rights is a further step in the same direction. These are the topics which have made the Hindu nationalists uncomfortable during last few years. They have been defaming secularism. They removed it from the preamble of Indian constitution, when they put out an ad on the eve of Republic day in 2015. From last few decades since the Ram Temple movement was brought up, simultaneously the secular ethos of India’s freedom movement and secular values of Indian constitution have been constantly criticized. Many an RSS ideologues and BJP leaders have been asking for change of Indian Constitution for this very reason.

Secularism is part of the concept of Indian nationalism. In the name of religious nationalism, sectarian divisive nationalism they have been attacking various student leaders in particular. When we study Nationalism, the very genesis of Indian nationalism tells us the plurality of our freedom movement with its anti colonial roots. The struggle was for Indian nationalism and so the Muslims and Hindu communalists kept aloof from this great struggle against colonial masters, it was this struggle which built the Indian nation with all its diversity.

Similarly as we have equal rights as citizens the chapters on citizenship are being dropped. Federalism has been the core part of India’s administrative and political structure. As the dictatorial tendencies are becoming stronger, federalism is bound to suffer and that explains the dropping of this subject. Democracy is decentralization of power. Power reaching the lowermost part of the system, the villages and average citizens. This got reflected in Local self Government. The power is distributed among villages, cities, state and center. By removing chapters on federalism and local self government, the indications of the ideology of ruling party are on display.

While we are not dealing with all the portents of the planned omissions, one more aspect that related to dropping of chapter on Human rights needs our attention. The concept of Human rights and dignity are interlinked. This concept of Human rights also has international ramifications. India is signatory to many an UN covenants related to Human rights. The indications are clear that now rights will be for the few elite and ‘duties’ for the large deprived sections will be put on the forefront.

In a way this incidental ‘Corona gifted opportunity’ to the ruling Government is being fully used to enhance the agenda of ruling party in the arena of Educational Curriculum. The part of curriculum with which the ruling party is uncomfortable is being removed. This act of omission does supplement their other acts of commission in changing the shape of educational curriculum, which are reflected in RSS affiliates’ suggestions to MHRD regarding Bhartiyakaran of contents of syllabus. As per this the things like regarding the great epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata as History, the things like India having all the stem cell technology, plastic surgery, aviation science etc. will have a place in the changes planned by communal forces!