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RSS/BJP Ideology Is No Spiritual Citizenship To Shudras And No National Citizenship To Muslims
The Hindutva, a political child of the Brahminic Hindu religion, denied spiritual citizenship to Shudras historically. Now it has decided to deny national citizenship to Muslims. The Brahmin/Bania forces want to consolidate their power with an iron grip on all sections of India by denying basic citizenship to different sections of India in different modes. Shudras and Dalits were denied all basic rights for millennia through the Hindu spiritual system. Now through the Hindutva school they are going after Muslims with a nationalist agenda. In this agenda even the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis do not get anything but their muscle power will be used for fighting Muslims and vote power will be used for Brahmin/Bania/Ksatriya empowerment.
The citizenship Act 2019 bans migration of Muslims from only three countries—Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Why only these three countries, not from other Muslim countries? The reason is that these three countries are part of Hindutva Akhanda Bharat. Hindutva ideology still believes that Islam has taken away the Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis, who would have been under the thumb of the Brahmin/Bania/Ksatriyas of India as a great majority. All of them went into Islam and carved out their own nation states based on the religious ideology and philosophy.
From these three countries over a period of few decades many Brahmin/Banias migrated to India under the rubric of Hindus. They got the best of the resources in North India and most of such migrants got, with the help of the central Government, English medium education and got into bureaucratic positions, politics and so on. L.K.Advani (Sindhi Bania) is one such leader who came from Pakistan. He organized the Banias around the RSS/BJP networks. Now Narendra Modi, a Bania (with OBC certificate) and Amit Shah, a Jain Bania, who are his disciples doing yet another level mobilization of their own forces. Mohan Bhagwat as the head of the RSS and Modi and Amit Shah, as the rulers of the Indian state and while controlling their party, are moving with a design. Though many labouring non-Muslims– who are lower castes– migrated from these three countries they were left in the labour camps.
RSS/BJP never believed in all caste equality with all spiritual, social and political rights for everybody . Till today the Sangh Parivar did not discuss about the question of abolition of caste which was the source of expansion of Islam in the Indian sub-continent. Even now the Shudras/Dalis/Adivasis have no basic spiritual citizenship rights in Hinduism. RSS/BJP forces are trying to build a massive Ram temple with the labour power of the Shudra/OBCs but they cannot become priests in that temple. Even now RSS basically is Brahmin controlled network. BJP is a structure of Brahmin/Bania controlled political formation.
The nation knows how Hegdewar, Golwalkar, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Deendayal Upadhyaya to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Brahmin saga established its hegemony in the RSS/BJP structures. Now the Brahmin/Bania combination is working with a clear cut direction. But no Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasi was allowed to come to any Brahmin-Bania leader’s status. Yet most Shudras/Dalits/ Adivasis were/are set against Muslims believing that they are their enemies.
For this situation the Muslim elite of India, who are mostly upper caste converts, are also responsible. We all know that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was Gujarati Bania convert and Allama Iqbal was Kashmiri Brahmin convert. Many Muslim leaders working around Congress now are from the brahminic family converts and the masses are from the productive castes background.
The pattern of the Brahmin/Bania migration from Afghanista, Pakistan and Bangladesh as Hindus was the same as what happened in Kashmir in the 1990s. All the pundits migrated in the name of Hindus. Who remained in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bandladesh as Hindus till date, and what is their social status, apart from minority status, is not known. If the ‘Persecuted Hindus’ as the Act defines once migrate to India if they get citizenship would they get some caste status or not. Suppose all of them claim that they are Brahmins or Banias or Ksatriyas. In which case they would be automatically granted the status spiritual equality but not for those Shudra/OBC/Dalit/Adivasis even if they want to claim that status while living in India from the days building the Harappan civilization they will not get. That is caste and Hinduism.
Shudras within Hinduism do not have spiritual citizenship. Whether they are Jats, Patels, Gujjars, Marathas, Yadavs, Reddys, Kammas, Lingayats, Vakkalingas, Naykars, Nairs who are known as upper Shudras also do not have the spiritual citizenship, leave alone OBCs of India.In West Bengal broadly Shudras who are Bengali agrarian communities also do not have spiritual rights. They cannot aspire for priesthood and a spiritual philosophical position in Hinduism. The RSS/ BJP would not like to discuss this question because that would create a condition of conflict that would result in overthrow of the Brahminic hegemony.
The Muslim citizenship question will have to be clubbed with Shudra/Dalit spiritual citizenship question. Whether Muslim elite would support such broad equal rights within political society, spiritual society is a fundamental question.
The Indian Muslims never understood the caste nature of Indian society and never stood by the untouchables and Shudras in the modern period. Their intellectuals and leaders remained caste blind and also class blind. They were living within the fold of their religious institutionalism. Both Hindutva forces and communal Muslims were locked up in the rioting process for quite long time. Muslims never realized the importance of democratic mobilization, in spite of Ambedkar repeatedly telling them that democratic struggles are more important than communal fights.For the first time they realized.
At least now they have to realize the importance of democratic mobilization against Hindutva brahminism on consistent basis.
If the Shudra/OBC/Adivasi get spiritual equality; if they control every institution, including Hindu structures, that would remove the fear of Hindu conversion to Islam or other religions. But the Brahmin/Bania forces would not like such transformation because their spiritual, social and political hegemony will collapse. Once spiritual democracy gets established and the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis control Hindu spiritual system there will not be anti-Muslim thinking among Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis as there is food cultural commonality, though they belong to different religions. Indian Brahminism, then, will be put in its proper place.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs
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The Question That Won A Big Battle
In Andhra Pradesh Assembly the anti-English medium, opposition leader, Nara Chandrababu Naidu, surrendered in a debate on 12 December, 2019. He said “we are not opposing introduction of English medium in Government schools’. With this surrender all his supporting media network, street dharna teams,the forces of pro-private English medium schools will now follow the suit. Thepro-English medium in Government schools forces won the battle with fundamental question: Where are your children studying? Are they studying in Telugu medium or in English medium school?
Where are the anti-English medium media management children studying? Where are the road rolling agitator’s children studying? In two Telugu states they got thoroughly exposed before the rural masses. They lost the battle very badly. But at the national level such forces are still very strong.
So far number of commissions were constituted to study the question of medium of instruction in Indian schools and its viability. Most of the commissions recommended that studying in mother tongue( regional languages) would be better for the children’s learning. But all such commission chairpersons (men and women) and members sent their children and grand children to private English medium schools. In many cases their children studied in schools that do not teach even one subject in that regional language, which is called their mother tongue.
This duplicity of the top elite of India destroyed the school education system in India. We do not stand anywhere near the Chinese school education standards. The reason was China has only one national language—Mandarin. Now they adopted English as second language as a teaching language, across the school education. For the last one decade the Chinese school standards have been said to have achieved superior status to even that of American and European school standards.
The regional language lovers in India know pretty well we do not stand anywhere near the school education standards of China. Yet they do not want to evolve one national language in India. The scope to emerge as Indian national language is possible when English medium becomes the school education medium across the country. However, such language policy cannot destroy regional languages. Instead every child in India will becomes bilingual—English and regional language. That will improve our standards enormously.
In Andhra Pradesh the defeated forces will now knock the doors of AP High Court from there to the Indian Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has already made it clear that about the medium of instruction the courts cannot interfere.
Education in our constitution is in the concurrent list. Both the Central and several State Governments are running English medium schools. The Centre runs Kendriya Vidhyalayas in English medium from LKG to 12th. All the newly started model schools all over India are run in English medium only. Several state Governments including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana run several residential schools in English medium.
Even all the private English medium schools are run with the state and central Governments recognition. That is part of the state policy. If the courts object to the Andhra Pradesh policy of English medium in Government schools all English medium schools in the country need to be closed. The children have a fundamental right to learn school education in the language that they want. Judiciary cannot undo that fundamental right. If the state does not run such language school the child can go to such school wherever it is or the child can establish his/her own school to learn that language.
In fact several private schools won the cases about the right to teach any language without any controls. That is the reason why many rich private schools teach many foreign languages but not a single Indian regional language. A.P is a mother of costly private English medium school chains. If the A.P Government cannot run English medium schools in the villages it should close down all English medium schools in the state. Then the problem also becomes that of the nation.
The constitution is silent about the language of instruction in schools and colleges quite deliberately. Dr.B.R Ambedkar foresaw the Nehruvian strategy of private English medium and state Government regional language school education, as he lost the battle for getting enough votes to recognize English as the national language in the Constituent Assembly . The Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis in his times were meant to be pushed into regional language education whereas the top three communities—Brahmins, Vaisyas and Ksatriyas–were likely to get English medium private education. That is what exactly happened in the last seventy years.
In India as of now the law makers, the law adjudicators like bureaucrats, the judges who over see justice educate their own children in private English medium schools. Of course, that is their own right to do so. But all of them must recognize the right of the poor to get the same medium of education free of cost in the state institutions. Human fundamental rights cannot be in operation based on their wealth.
However, the battle for the English medium education of the poor children of India who cannot be sent by their parents to private English medium schools will finally depend on the policy formulated by the Government of A.P. and that policy passing through all hurdles including the judicial hurdle.
2020-21 will be a revolutionary educational year in India.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs
https://countercurrents.org/2019/12/the-question-that-won-a-big-battle
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Do English Educated Become Christians?
The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S.Jaganmohan Reddy remained firm on the question of introducing English medium in Government schools and issued the orders to start the new education programme from 2020-21 academic year. Since then a new theory has been floated by forces that do not want the children of the poor and lower castes learn English. They do not want the village children to compete with their private sector English educated children. They are not just in one political party or in one political ideology. They are well spread over the right wing party organizations to media industry heads to academics of left wing ideologies. The new theory is shocking. What is that theory? All English educated become Christians. Is this not shocking?
If that is so by now all Amaravathi rich, Banjara Hill bungalow living, Jubili Hill mansion living would have become Christian. If that is so the Greater Kailash Khan Market (New Delhi) Indian intellectuals and business forces, Marine Drive Queen’s Necklace Beach (Mumbai) high rise apartment livers, Chennai Iyer and Iyangar colonies should have been Christian by now. They would be having Bible in one hand Cross on their foreheads.
Our liberal and left comrades who smell colonialism in English, which is also accused to be Christian, but who studied in English medium schools only, conduct their Central Committee and Politburo meetings only in English, would have been Christians with Cross as their election symbol, but not hammer and sickle.
Look at the way when equality of education comes into the villagers who produce our food, who feed our cities, who see that rich in the urban areas live a comfortable life behave. One can understand the right wing hypocrites spreading the venom that English educated become Christians. But the left upper castes and their followers are also behaving like super right. Karl Marx will only pity them and would feel sorry for their sub-Telugu nationalism of the worst order. Now Marx cannot save them. God alone should save them.
Mahatama Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi, Jyothi Basu to Nambudripad to Indrajit Guptha to Sitaram Yecuri to Prakash Karat to Brinda Karat studied only in English medium. Not only that in the right wing Lal Krishna Advani to Arun Shourie to Arun Jatley, Nirmala Sitaraman to most intellectuals working in Modi industry of modern market and media are English medium educated and by and large are anti-Christian. The right wing hero Veer Savarkar studied in Ferguson College (Poona)where Gopalakrishna Gokhale and Balgandhar Tilak studied. Remember Ferguson College was the best English medium college in Bombay Province. Shyama Prasad Mukharjee studied in English medium school and later studied in Calcutta Presidency College again the best in that province with English as his major. If English medium education converts people from Hinduism to Christianity most of these above mentioned people would have been pastors, bishops but what they were we all know. What they did and teach the nation we all knows.
Those who already died from among them, their dead bodies were not buried with Cross symbol on their tombs, but their dead bodies were burnt with proper Hindu rituals and recitation of Vedic mantras. Why then all those leaders who follow the above mentioned Hindu leaders who studied in English medium schools, in Andhra Pradesh, think that the children of poor who cannot afford private convent school English education will become Christian? Why they become Christians only when they study in Government English medium schools? Where does this argument come from? It comes from a very deep fear of equality. One can understand the BJP and TDP leaders suffering from that fear but how should we understand the communists suffering from that fear?
The real fear is equality in medium of instruction, syllabus content and serious educational environment. They are afraid that the poor will challenge the rich, the lower castes will challenge the higher castes once educational equality is established.
Human history has shed lot of blood in the fight for equality. It fought for equality before God. It only won half of the battle. It fought for equal rights of land. Only half of the battle is won in that field too. In India the largest number of lives were lost in the struggle for land. The dead only come back on their descendant’s recall to ask “what did we achieve in the tortures we underwent”? What did we achieve in brutal death we faced? How much land our descendants got? .
From Telangana Armed Struggle to Naxalbari to Srikakulam struggles huge number of lives were lost on the land question. But that equality did not come about.
The communist ideology could never predict that liberal capitalism would bring about computer and internet revolution. The Hindutva ideology does not want any technological and linguistic revolution. That is understandable. But how the left who believed in internationalism got into this level of decadence? Why the left has lost all its creativity and got into the realm of hypocrisy that could be easily perceived.
Computer and internet revolutions are not brought about by shedding blood. They were brought from good schools, colleges and universities. This revolution was brought by English language education, not by Telugu, Tamil or Hindi. A language should also have the potential to discover new things. Nobody expects the Hindutva forces to understand the history of new revolutions but every body expects the communists to understand as they believe in the principle of ‘the workers of the world unite’. How do they unite without having a common global language as an instrument of communication among the workers?
Before any other politician thought about educational equality in terms of medium of instruction, syllabus content, school infrastructure the communists should have done that. But what they did was the opposite. Without questioning the two different mediums they sent their children silently to English medium schools. Worst, where they were/ are in power they forced the children of working class, lower castes and the poor into the regional language Government schools. They destroyed West Bengal with the same school education system. Now they are opposing English education in the villages in Andhra Pradesh.
The English medium Government schools in villages and 15000 rupees in mother’s accounts (Amma Vodi) whose children are in school will bring about bloodless revolution. The youth in every village must organize into English education protection squads. The mothers must organize into ‘Amma Rights’ teams to fight against those who oppose English education to their children. Let us not allow this opportunity to slip from our homes in the villages.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social activist and author
https://countercurrents.org/2019/12/do-english-educated-become-christians
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Why It’s Necessary to Remember George Reddy
Why It’s Necessary to Remember George Reddy
George Reddy, murdered by right wing forces in the 1970s when he was only 25, remains an inspiration for thinking youth even today
I watched the Telugu film George Reddy with a lot of curiosity.
It was released on November 22, 2019 and is based on the life of the famous Osmania University student leader George Reddy who was murdered by right-wing forces on April 14, 1972. He was a gold medalist in nuclear physics and was doing his PhD at the time of his murder.
A believer in pro-poor socialist ideas, he fought for the rights of the poor and women students, both on campus and outside. Within a short time he became a legendary figure. So much more the reason why pro-feudal right-wing forces got him murdered on the campus itself.
The film, produced by Sudhakar and directed by Jeevan Reddy captures the spirit of the times and his many ideas . The makers have skilfully recreated the Osmania campus of the 1970s.
Somewhat predictably, the Telangana wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party deployed its firebrand leader Raja Singh to oppose the release of the film. They tried various means, including approaching the court, but the release went ahead. It is now running well in both Telugu speaking states.
I was one of those people who were influenced by his serious academic scholarship. I joined my M.A. Political Science course in 1974, just two years after his brutal murder. The Arts College at Osmania University, where I studied, became the main attraction and stood as a symbol of the scholar’s activism, even though he was a student of physics. His college is slightly away from the Arts College building.
However, this Arts College was the centre of political discourses and activism, even though it was a testament to the magnificent Nizam’s feudal architecture.
The ideology of George Reddy endured among students and was unsurpassed by any other figure in the two immediate decades since his death. No teacher or scholar influenced the campus’s intellectual environment as he did.
How could a 25-year-old youth do that even without writing much?
His appeal lies in three things: 1) acquiring knowledge as a weapon, 2) using it for liberation of the oppressed within that short time, and 3) getting martyred by the oppressors’ men.
When very young persons stand for justice and display knowledge of uncommon values and stand for human equality, civil society looks at them with awe and disbelief. The feudal ruling forces around them see them as a danger. This is what happened in the case of Jesus Christ and so many more thinkers. Christ’s contemporary rulers and spiritual authorities got him crucified, though he did not use any violence in his fight for justice for the poor and oppressed.
Several decades later, another student in Hyderabad arose. Rohith Vemula did not use violent methods to fight for justice. He killed himself as Socrates did at a very old age. Bhagat Singh was killed and George Reddy was also killed.
The film has successfully transformed the story of George into a mainstream narrative that has captured the public imagination. It has contemporarised George’s budding socialist-revolutionary ideology into a pro-poor, pro-lower caste and farmer’s suicide campaign, with a heroic smattering of emotional fights with political, anti-social and casteist ideologies.
The anti-serious educational agenda of the state is an issue that plagues many campuses even today.
Mediocre and forces with a lot of muscle power within and outside the student populace thrive–George was a negation of all such forces, both in the realm of scholarship and in physical fights. The film captures that personality of George very well all through.
George Reddy in the 1970s and Rohith Vemula in the 2010s inspired thousands of students on the university campuses across India for similar reasons. George Reddy was murdered when he was just 25. Rohith Vemula hanged himself in protest against similar human oppressors on in 2016, when he was just 26. Both of them have something common in their socio-spiritual and cultural roots — the belief that oppression is unethical, anti-social and that they need to fight for justice.
Both George’s mother Leela and Rohith’s mother Radhika fed them on a deeply spiritual ethic.
Though the film used the ongoing farmers’ suicides to showcase George, in the 1970s, his family’s ethics of sympathising with the oppressed and poor was in tune with the socialist waves that were sweeping the world. The impressive Super Power status of Soviet Union in the Cold War period, the ongoing cultural revolution in China, the Cuban revolution under the leadership of young Castro and Che had a huge impact on him.
The pro-Vietnam and anti-American campus movements all over the world posited themselves as a significant mediator between democratic civil rights and socialist campaigns. Sharp intellectuals were getting drawn into serious classroom and library studies and street activities. George’s unusual energy came from that source. This energy of George inspired many of us. But not a single one after him combined both the spirits. Many of his followers went into the Naxalite movement and some took to serious studies achieving only partial success. No one of us made a great mark after him in any field, though a few of us attempted, in separate spheres.
Because few rare humans do such powerful things at such a young age, they are seen as miraculous beings. There is a spiritual saying that ‘God puts a different seed in exceptional humans’. Science, arts and morality operate through them.
Indian biographic heritage has hardly textualised the life of such exceptional martyrs. Indian cinema also is loathe to grow out of the maya of song and dance. A regional, small budget film took this experimental step.
What is very impressive about the film is that it has concentrated on George’s distinctive childhood. He took everything positive and humanistic from his mother and went beyond her imagination to follow his own instinct. The nurturing of that instinct socially, culturally and spiritually is very important.
From family to school to university, providing encouragement for that creativity, goodwill and intellectual rigour is very important. The Indian civil societal ethos has a tendency to kill such exceptional human combination, either by killing the entire persona or by killing the main spirit in such persons. Once that spirit is killed, one would not make history.
There is an ongoing attempt to see that such sharp minds do not come up on campuses.
Any conservative living environment, be it a family, school, university and so on, will not allow creative experiments. Those young people who want to experiment with new things need to rebel against anything conservative.
Rebellious minds need to be negotiated with, not suppressed. The nation will lose their game changing mental abilities if they are suppressed. Any young George budding in any corner of of the nation should be nurtured. To start with, this film should be dubbed into all languages for all kinds of audiences to see.
Social activist and author Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist who taught at Osmania University till 2012.
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Nehru’s message is alive, thanks to the BJP, his most ardent critic
Before the election campaign of 2014, Jawaharlal Nehru was in danger of being forgotten by ordinary Indians. Even the Congress was not using his photo in the elections as often as they were using images of Mohandas Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. India’s first prime minister had been relegated to a few academic corridors. But thanks to the Bharatiya Janata Party, Nehru has been resurrected in his full blood. From Narendra Modi’s attacks on him during the 2014 campaign to invoking him as a justification for revoking Kashmir’s special status, the BJP has demonstrated an obsession with Nehru.
This is all for the better.
Even people like me who were anti-Nehru were prompted to read the books of the first prime minister with ardent curiosity because of the fact that every BJP member who had not read him or about him was attacking him fervently. It seems clear that if Nehru was still alive, he would have been jailed for being an “urban naxal”.
From reading Nehru, it’s clear that these attacks would have left him unfazed. Nehru loved criticism. If there was no one be around to criticise him, he wrote essays against himself. This is not a characteristic of a politician but that of a thinker. A politician loves choirs of praising acolytes around him. A thinker or writer loves critiques.
The hornets nest
When Nehru was about seven, his father beat him badly for stealing a pen from his table. But Nehru had the intellectual ability to understand his father’s gesture. “I do not remember bearing any ill will toward my father because of this punishment,” he wrote. He would doubtless have attempted comprehend the BJP’s attacks on him.
His humanity was so enormous that when he was in jail, Nehru even made friends with the animals there. He wrote about this at some length. “For over a year after that I lived in that cell surrounded by these wasps and hornets; they never attacked me and we respected each other,” he noted. There were also three or four snakes his cell, but like the insects, these didn’t bother him. “News of them got out and there were headlines in the press,” he wrote. “As a matter of fact I welcomed the diversion.”
It was in this jail that he discovered a creature called udumu in Telugu, which I have eaten in my childhood. It looked like something between a lizard and a crocodile. Nehru did some research on it and after reading FW Champion’s The Jungle in Sunlight and the Shadow realised that it was a scaly mammal called a pangolin .
In jail, Nehru was surprised that the British officers gave him even German illustrated magazines to read, despite their country being at war with Germany. Prisoners today are starved of books to read and paper on which to write, almost in an attempt to kill them of boredom.
A visionary
If Nehru had died in jail, India would no doubt have found another prime minister – perhaps Vallabhbhai Patel. But the world would have lacked Nehru’s three great books: Glimpses of World History, An Autobiography and The Discovery of India. A ruler can be replaced by another ruler but a thinker cannot be replaced.
Few first leaders of any nation have faced the attacks Nehru has borne after his death. George Washington has not been attacked. Lenin faced criticism after Gorbachev’s glasnost but not as vitriolically as Nehru. Mao was criticised by Deng Xiaoping but with dignity. Lenin and Mao’s mausoleums are still monuments of national pride.
One concerted line of attack on Nehru has been related to his handing of Kashmir in the early years of the republic. For contemporary India to understand his actions, it’s essential for us to attempt to recognise Nehru’s situation as a Kashmiri Pundit.
Nehru had Kashmiri roots and, as is clear from his name, was a Pandit. “We were Kashmiris,” he noted in An Autobiography (also known as Toward Freedom), written when he was in Dehradun jail in the early 1930s. “Over two hundred years ago, early in the eighteenth century our ancestors came down from the mountain valley to seek fame and fortune in the rich plains below.”
In Kashmir, they were Kauls. He writes that his ancestor Raj Kaul migrated to Delhi in 1716 but doesn’t tell us why the family chose to move. If they had not, the family’s prospects would have been quite different. Given Kashmir’s location, he would not have been a national leader. In Delhi, they acquired new family name. Since they lived near a nahar or canal, they became Nehrus.
Kashmiri aspirations
Nehru wanted his ancestral land to be part of India. He was not heading a government of today’s strength or living in a world of global peace and stability. In the late 1940s, the world was full of people with hopes for nationhood and Kashmir was among them. It was not like Hyderabad state or Junagadh, within the broad geographical boundaries of India. Kashmir, though small, was a viable nation of its own. To ensure that it was included in India, Nehru agreed to give it a measure of autonomy through Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.
Our younger intellectuals will assess the present Kashmir situation only in a few decades. But even if the BJP closes down all the social science departments in our universities, not only just in Jawaharlal Nehru University, the resurrected Nehru will come back onto our streets and into homes to talk to us, just as he did in Dehradun jail cell with insects, squirrels and snakes.
The Nehru I talked to in his books did not appear to be a man who was power hungry but a man who was knowledge hungry. That was the reason why he was reading not just books, but reading nature – trees, mountains, animals, birds, the people around and writing about them. Power-hungry men and women can never defeat knowledge-hungry men and women. Thanks to the BJP, Nehru is still with us now, not as a vote catcher but to give us knowledge.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social scientist and author.
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Countering Hypocrisy of Ruling Class on English Medium Education in Government Schools
The Y.S.Jaganmohan Reddy Government recently issued orders for implementation of English medium in Government schools from the academic year 2020-21. It said that from next academic year from class 1 to 6th all Government schools will teach in English medium with one subject compulsory in Telugu. The orders are issued almost seven months in advance before the academic year starts. This is not a hurried step nor is it not known to the people of the state. This was one of the key Navaratnas (nine diamonds) of his election manifesto. If he does not implement his election manifesto that would be a problem and we should find fault with Y.S.Jagan’s Government. The people have voted him to power to make English as the main language of instruction in Government schools.
Why is Chandrababu Naidu, the opposition leader, opposing the educational reform and why is he deploying his pro-private English medium educational squads on to the roads in the name of Matrubhasha Pariraskshana(Protection of mother tongue)? What is the mother tongue of his grandson, whose mother and father studied in private English medium schools that do not even teach one subject in Telugu compulsorily? Devanshu’s mother and father studied in America adopting an American accent as well. Why did not Chandrababu send them to world class Telugu teaching centre in Telugu Desham?
Is mother’s language a fixed entity or is it likely to change as the mother of child learns new languages and speaks to children in different languages? Is language an instrument of sentiment or it is an instrument of development of a person, family, region and nation? If English is anti-national or anti-Indian or anti-Telugu mother why did the founding fathers retain that language and why it survived only among the elite who rule the nation and the states? Why the young generation rulers of India are English medium educated people? Should not the village poor and lower castes join that English educated brand new Indian club of rulers?
If one goes by the editorial of Eanadu on November, 9, 2019 there is a move to instigate an anti-English medium agitations in A.P. If the rural lower caste children of poor study in English medium in their villages the Telugu language dies, why it did not die in all the houses and colonies of the rich whose children studied and studying only in English medium private schools? How could they become the rulers of the states and the nation by studying only in English medium? From Jagan Mohan Reddy to Akhilesh Yadav to Rahul Gnadhi toNirmala Sitaraman to Nara Lokesh to K.T.Rama Rao to Sanchin Pilot to Jyotiraditya Scindia to Aditya Takrey, all are English medium educated leaders. Should not the rural poor and lower caste youth aspire to emerge like them? If not in Government school where could they study English medium? Y.S.Jagan wants the poor children learn English like him. What is wrong with his policy?
The argument that by introducing English medium in Government schools of Andhra Pradesh by the Y.S.Jagan Government is destroying the first linguistic state, namely Andhra Pradesh, is quite ironical. According to Eanadu that even the beneficiaries of English medium education in Government schools, who live in remote villages and Tribal areas should oppose, this decision. This is very emotive and sentimentalist and provocative argument.
Ramojirao’s younger son, Suman, who unfortunately passed away very early in his life, was my student in Nizam college and studied his B.A. He was from English medium school education background. His Telugu was not so good but he was good speaker in English. I used to appreciate his sincere and serious learning approach. He used to come to discuss international relations subject with me personally as I used to teach that subject to his class. A moot question is :why Ramojirao, who was running such a big Telugu media industry has put his son in English medium school? Why did he not put him in a school thought taught him his mother tongue? What is wrong if the rural poor mothers’ children study in English medium in Government schools in their own villages? How does Telugu disappear from poor’s houses when it did not disappear in Banjara Hills, Jubily Hills and Film cities?
Ramojirao is also running an English medium public school in his wife’s name called Rama Devi public school at Abdullapurmet, Hyderabad for several years. How did or does this school serve the first Telugu linguistic united Andhra Pradesh? Can Ramojirao allow a survey to be conducted into the school education background of the main anchors who run his entertainment channels? It is easily perceivable when they slip into English speaking that most of them come from English medium school education background. Let there be a survey in the film industry that Ramojirao is fully associated with. All the young heroes and heroines are English medium educated yet they make Telugu films.
All this shows that there is a conspiracy against the poor Dalit/OBC/Adivasi children learning equal range of English with all these forces that Ramojirao and Chandrababu’s family networks associated with. The language deceptivity as against the lower caste/poor is not just contemporary. This skillful deceptitvity is historical.
In ancient and medieval times before the Persian language became a ruling language Sanskrit was the ruling language of India. The teaching of Sanskrit was in the hands of private Gurukulas. The Shudras and Dalits had no right to study Sanskrit in those Gurukulas or outside. After the Persian became the ruling language in urban areas the Muslim elite and rich upper castes could learn Persian but not the village poor. From mid-nineteenth century English became the ruling language. English as a teaching language started in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1817 with the initiative of William Carey a British cobbler, who came as a missionary to India.
The first English educated Shudra was Mahatma Jotirao Phule apart from Gopala Krishna Gokhale and Balagangadhara Tilak, in Bombay Province. That is where the lower caste liberation started with English education.
After 1947 in spite of Dr.B.R.Ambedkar’s insistence to recognize English as national language and must be taught in Government schools the Nehru Government relegated English teaching to private school education and the regional languages were adopted as teaching languages in the Government schools. This policy denied equal rights in the education system and language played a key role in that denial of ruling class language to the poor and lower castes.
The A.P. Government initiated a process to bring school education in Government and private sectors to a level playing field. If the opposition leader and the media network around him oppose this, the rural lower caste and poor masses will see through this game. Naidu and his anti-English education supporters to the poor must be aware that if their game ends with this issue of poor’s most decisive empowerment project, they will never be in the play ground again.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is Political theorist, Social Activist and Author
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Andhra Pradesh’s New Education Policy Could Create Lasting Structural Changes
In a two-pronged approach, the state is providing financial assistance to mothers of school-going children and changing the language of instruction in government schools to English.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy announced a few days ago that all mothers from poor families who are sending their children to school will get Rs 15,000 into their bank accounts for educational expenses, under a scheme titled ‘Amma Vodi (Mother’s Lap)’.
The scheme applies to mothers of school-going children whose families are living below the poverty line. To identify beneficiaries, having a white ration card is the deciding factor, similar to several other welfare programmes. The state government has allocated Rs 6,455 crore for Amma Vodi.
Prior to this, the chief minister also announced that from the next academic year, all government schools will be converted to English-medium, with Telugu as a compulsory subject. This double-track educational reform for the first time has the potential to abolish educational inequality in the state.
After independence, though the states were given the power to handle the school education sector, the Central government allowed a diabolical school education system to operate. The poor must send their children to poorly funded, regional-language government schools without any financial aid to the parents. The rich, on the other hand, in the urban and semi-urban areas, could send their children to English-medium private schools which also have better infrastructure.
Money decided the future of child born in a democratic nation. In caste/class terms, the lower castes, who are the working masses, are confined to regional-language, ill-equipped school education, and the upper-caste rich send their children to globally connected English-medium schools.
Jagan has also promised to improve the government school infrastructure within three years. The Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi has done this, but without combining with the other components that Jagan is offering.
All political parties, including communist parties and extreme right-wing nationalist parties like the BJP and Shiv Sena, accepted the old Congress formula of school education wherever they were in power. The same system continues even today. Even the hypocritical liberal intelligentsia, though talking about quality school education, did not challenge the medium of instruction or offer the necessary financial assistance to poor mothers.
Amma Vodi is likely be a nationwide trendsetter in this regard. The scheme will change the basic structure of the school education system, and the market as well.
Quality government English-medium school education connects the remote rural child to global knowledge systems, along with national and regional knowledge systems. Their location also becomes their knowledge centre, communicable in a global language. Thus, local and global knowledges are connected. The fields around school – where their families likely have roots – make the children firmly grounded the different kinds of dignity of labour and knowledge.
Urban children will not be able to see those connections. More imaginative education in villages leads to quicker learning of languages as well. A child learning while living with her parents makes her more experienced than those who live in hostels since an early age.
Amma Vodi, in my view, will change the market in Andhra Pradesh in a positive way. Unlike fathers, mothers are not likely to spend this money on alcohol. Rather, she will likely spend this money on uniforms, good shoes and quality food. This new purchasing capacity in villages and towns will create a market boom. The Rs 6,455 crore will be ploughed back into the markets that cater to children’s needs. There may even be a chain of changes: the school changes the child’s life, and the child changes the parent’s life.
Amma Vodi could also improve child health in poor families in a significant way. A mother will now see her child as earning Rs 15,000 per year. Expenses on the child’s overall well-being are also likely to increase, in that case.
If there is good school in a village, which makes children creative like Western schools, critical thinking skills improve too. A more democratic cultural environment is put in place, and the caste system also weakens. The school is a better institution than the family to annihilate caste hierarchies and untouchability. The school syllabus should include lessons on the dignity of labour.
All theories of purity and pollution should be taken out of school textbooks. The textbooks must tell children about leather work, washing clothes, cutting hair, tilling land, making pots, teaching and being priests – and that all these jobs deserve the same respect. This is where the seeds of human equality are sown in the child’s mind.
Amma Vodi will have serious implications on the state’s health, education and market. If this programme is implemented with the intent that it is declared, Andhra Pradesh will be a different state within 20 years. This education policy will challenge the New Education Policy of the BJP government at the Centre.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author.
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BJP’s Linguistic Agenda Is Antithetical to Progress and Education
BJP’s Linguistic Agenda Is Antithetical to Progress and EducationWhom exactly does Amit Shah want to impose the learning of Hindi on in south India and the northeast? Clearly, this proposal is only applicable to poor children in villages who study at government schools.
By Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
A few days ago, I was giving lectures around the Silicon Valley in California. The IT hub of the world, the Silicon Valley is the site of several pioneering endeavours in the recent past – Apple, Google and so on – and various innovations in the field of electronics which spurred the internet revolution.
South Indians working in different fields ranging from IT to electronic engineering in the Silicon Valley outnumber north Indians. Representation of Indians from the Hindi-cow belt in any one of the major IT and electronic companies is meagre. The top executives of two of the biggest IT companies in the US – Satya Nadendla and Sundar Pichai – are from south India. Why? Not because of Hindi, but English.
South Indians, apart from learning their regional language – Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu or Kannada – learnt English with more emphasis. The movement to learn only two languages at the level of school education by entirely avoiding Hindi was led by Tamil Nadu because of E.V. Ramaswamy Naickers’ anti-Hindi Dravida Khazagam Movement.
Eight Decades Later, the Original Mahalaya Still Unites Bengalis in Communion
Kerala developed its own model of advancing English medium education by negating Hindi because of the presence of a large number of Christian English medium schools. Telugu states and Karnataka were also influenced by the models of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The first Dalit president of India, K.R.Narayanan, and the first Dalit Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, came from Kerala. These men were not simply handpicked but had built a name for themselves before reaching high positions. Why? Not because of Hindi, but English.
Now the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has taken a new step to introduce English medium teaching in all government schools with one compulsory Telugu subject, which no North Indian chief minister would dare to do. Gujarat has very poor levels of English education. The educational development patterns in South India are far higher than those of any north Indian State’s and more so than in the Hindi-Cow belt.
Additionally, the youth from the northeastern states have secured entry into some of the best educational institutions due to their English medium education and, in the next few decades, are likely to lead in many fields if English continues to be their primary medium. The RSS and the BJP view this development unfavourably and any attempt to impose Hindi in the northeast will be unwelcome.
Also read: Language Policy: Education in English Must Not Be the Prerogative of Only the Elites
Amit Shah and the BJP however, have plans to turn the clock back and impose Hindi on south India and the north-east and eliminate English, thereby bringing the whole country down to the educational level and standard of the Hindi-cow belt. Only then will the BJP have accomplished their goal of establishing a Hindu-Hindi Rashtra.
I am sceptical of their denial regarding the imposition of Hindi – which has been a long-standing agenda of the BJP and the RSS – despite the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi attempted to assuage fears in Houston on September 22 about Amit Shah’s recent remarks. For greater impact, the prime minister could have clarified this issue while he was in India instead of choosing to address it in a foreign country.
The BJP’s long term goal of establishing Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan nationhood and slowly proposing a change in the name of the nationfrom India – the Bharat as it exists in the preamble of the constitution – to Hindustan is well known.
In this whole scheme, Pakistan is the model and competition with the theocratic and backward Muslim nations is the direction. The competition is not with China or South Africa who have made significant headway with a spirit of global competition with Europe and America. Their focus on learning English is like ours in south India.
Language is a key link in modernisation and also in the post-modernisation phase. Former French colonies in Africa are not insisting on promoting education in their native languagesand are slowly shifting from even French to English. Their economic growth is faster now because of their global integration with English language communication and techno-economy development.
The BJP and RSS leaders do not have any serious understanding of the global direction of linguistic and cultural spheres. Even in Israel, which the BJP and RSS venerate, pushing for English education, apart from Hebrew, is a common cultural shift.
In India, the entire industrial class that finances the BJP and the RSS hardly cares for Hindi. The linguistic and cultural class difference in north India is far greater than it is in south India. In the south, all sections have realised the need for learning English along with their regional languages. Hence the linguistic and cultural gap is narrowing while in north India it remains wide and the poverty of economic and cultural resources is stark.
Can Amit Shah or the RSS force all the top industries that are running global standard English medium schools for the children of the rich to shift to Hindi medium in north India? Can Amit Shah coerce his party leaders into sending their children in the north and south to Hindi medium schools? Whom exactly does Shah want to impose the learning of Hindi on in south India and the northeast? Clearly, this proposal is only applicable to poor children in villages who study at government schools.
Dalits, OBCs and even the upper Shudras must be very cautious regarding the sentimental language discourse being propounded by the Hindutva forces. Their children are only now catching up with modern civilizational and globalised cultures. If they allow themselves to get carried away with Hindutva fantasies of one nation, one language and one culture, they risk slipping back into medieval poverty, ignorance and inequality.
Comparing the scientific tempers of people in the Hindi-cow belt and south India, it is evident that the absence of superstition, ignorance and exploitation in south India have contributed to an atmosphere conducive for scientific thinking.
Knowledge levels and assertion for social, economic and political equality in south India is much higher. A child who learns a language of global communication, which is rich in its vocabulary, would have better confidence and knowledge than a child who is fluent in a language that is spoken by a small group of people or one small region.
The BJP and the RSS are already inflicting a lot of damage to universities by weakening the study of social and natural sciences. Their belief that puranic science and mythology books will engender knowledge of all the sciences is laughable. They deploy fake scientists as DNA and archaeological science specialists and declare that all theories of human migration by global scientists are wrong. The scientific world is treating all this as a joke. Now their politicians are trying to tell we must learn Hindi by giving up all other languages only then the Akhand Bharat will become the land of gold and silver.
All south Indians, fortunately, rebelled against Amit Shah’s absurd Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan theory. To keep our children’s future safe, we must stick to a two-language formula like Tamil Nadu and strengthen our scientific temper so that India does not get colonised by fast-developing countries like China again.
Kancha Ilaih Shepherd is political theorist, social activist and author.
https://thewire.in/education/bjp-rss-hindi-national-language-education
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OPINION: Food-related lynchings have roots in Gandhi’s vegetarian nationalism – The Week
OPINION: Food-related lynchings have roots in Gandhi’s vegetarian nationalism
‘Gandhi defined Hinduism as a vegetarian religion and India a vegetarian nation’
By Kancha Ilaiah ShepherdOctober 01, 2019 14:31 IST
Kancha Ilaiah, Mahatma Gandhi
How do we assess Mahatma Gandhi on the occasion of his 150th birth anniversary? The BJP, which never had very high opinion of him, has given a call to celebrate his birth anniversary with such fanfare as if he was a BJP man. Since Gandhi alone is known across the world after Gautama Buddha, Narendra Modi uses him to project himself almost as his inheritor. Modi’s love for him, apart from being the most popular leader of India in the world, flows from the fact that he is a Gujarati Baniya. Modi has shown his love for Gujarati Sardar Vallabai Patel by building the tallest statue. The UN celebrations on September 25, when he was in New York show he will use his international stature to his full advantage.
I would like to assess Gandhi’s role, however, from a mass point of view. Gandhi’s image has been built at two levels. One, his work and ideology as a top national leader in the freedom struggle; second his brutal murder by Nathuram Godse, who belonged to the same Hindutva ideology 71 years ago. What did his life, ideology and subsequently murder because of which he got a massive martyrdom icon hood, do for the dalit/shudra/OBCs of India? Not much. On some of the key fronts, his ideology hindered human equality and development, and the most affected are dalits and adivasis.
ALSO READ: The unknown Gandhi: The extraordinary journey from Mohandas to Mahatma
Let us imagine the dalit/shudra/OBC and adivasi situation if Ambedkar was not there as a strong spiritual, moral, political and legal supporter of productive masses in the backdrop of Gandhi’s support to ‘Varnadharma’ and ‘Ramrajya’ civil society and state. The idea of reservation would not have taken roots as Gandhi was totally opposed to that idea. Imagine if Nehru, as a Kashmiri Brahmin, did not support and be part of multi-cuisine food culture—including beef and pork—in opposition to Gandhi’s food ideologies.
Gandhi defined Hinduism as a vegetarian religion and India a vegetarian nation. He took up a massive campaign for vegetarian food culture. He did not accept cow-related murders. It is astonishing to know that as a mass leader, he did not realise that more than 60 per cent of Indian food consists of meat and fish. The whole food culture of shudra/dalit/adivasis, leave alone Muslims and Christian minorities, in his times comprised of meat and fish. Gandhi did not see all that as Indian. The present food culture-related lynchings of human beings have roots in this Gandhian Hindu-India vegetarian nationalism.
Gandhi’s role as a freedom fighter was outside the state structure. He tried to build moralist nationalism with non-capitalist village centred economy. But that kind of economy does not exist in any country in the world. Fortunately for us, Nehru took the capitalist welfare economic route with sugar-coated socialist model called democratic socialism.
Gandhi asked for abolition of the Congress party after independence. Now, the BJP uses that opinion of Gandhi to dismantle the Congress party. Imagine if the Congress was not there to establish a constitutional democracy after independence, India would not have remained even this kind of democracy. Nehru realised that as a civil societal leader Gandhi played a great role but he would not have played a good role as administrator. Hence, from the beginning he carefully operated against the Gandhian ideals. Hence, Indian democracy survived.
So long as uncritical Gandhians remained strong in India, Ambedkar’s image did not get serious public attention. By the 1990s, the hegemony of the Gandhians in society, state and other public institutions got weakened. With implementation of the Mandal Commission Report, Ambedkar came to the central stage of our socio-political discourses. This impacted all structures including the BJP/RSS and hence Narendra Modi who claimed an OBC status could become the Prime Minister. Otherwise if it were to be strong Gandhian civil society, an OBC would not have been allowed to become the PM.
After 71 years of Gandhi’s death, he has become more closer to the BJP because of many pro-Hindutva ideological positions. Secondly the Baniya monopoly industrial capital which is supporting the BJP—particularly Modi and Amit Shah—would promote his traditional Hindu ideals more and more. His global presence will also increase as the monopoly capitalists are willing to spend on propaganda on Gandhi. For all the crony capitalists, he will become a moral and internationally acceptable personality.
Since he is known for his theory and practice of non-violence many global organisations accept him as an icon. However, within India, for many of us who came from the dalit background and are convinced with Ambedkarism as an authentic Indian ideology and philosophy, Gandhian theory of Ramrajya and vegetarianism will go against the very constitutional values.
Since the weakened Congress cannot stop the BJP/RSS from using Gandhi to their advantage, the Ambedkarites and the left intellectuals must critique his ideology and practice from the present predicament of the nation.
(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is political theorist, social activist and author)
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Christian Women better educated
By Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
It was a pleasant surprise last week to come across a news report about the findings of a survey done by what was described as a ‘RSS think tank’ on the status of women in India.
Besides claiming that married women and women who seek spiritual help are happier than others, it also acknowledged that employment was found to be highest among Christian women, followed by Hindus, Muslims and Jains.
While the report appeared to have made no mention about women’s education, the 2011 Census data indicated a lower percentage of Christian women to be illiterate (28.03%) compared to Hindu women (44.02%) and Muslims (48.1%). Illiteracy among Buddhist women was higher at 34.4% than among Christians.
What the findings seem to suggest is that a religion that promotes gender equality and is more democratic even in the spiritual sphere, witnesses advancement of women more than religions which promote patriarchy.
Didn’t the western Christian world develop at a quicker pace after women and minorities like blacks got educated and entered the employment market competing with men?
Societies that did not confine their women in houses and trusted them and their sexuality, developed more rapidly. Societies which saw a woman’s body as a sexual object and a child-bearing machine, remained mostly backward.
The orthodox Hindu Varna phase (child marriage, Sati, ban on widow remarriage) and unreformed Muslim societies are examples of poor development because of unreasonable restrictions on women.
In India, most Christians are Dalits and Adivasis. Studies have also shown that most conversions to Christianity are initiated by women who want better education and better lives for their children.
It is remarkable, therefore, to find an admission that these Dalit/Adivasi women converted to Christianity are today better educated and better employed. These communities may not boast of as much wealth, land, property or capital, they appear to be leading lives that are better and more comfortable. Their congregations are also collectives that promote cooperation and distribution. The available resource distribution among Christian community is higher than in other communities. They are a collective, national resource.
The question is why then does the RSS oppose conversions to Christianity? Why doesn’t it accept religious freedom and people’s right to choose a faith of their choice? If one accepts the narrative that most Christians were converted forcibly, how does one explain better education and better employment among them, as even the RSS seems to admit now?
The question to ask is why Hindu and Muslim women are more backward and why Christian women are more advanced in terms of education and employment despite being historically the most oppressed in caste terms?
Significantly, even in China, a recent study on religion and economic development indicated higher Christian participation in development than others.
The reason, to my mind, is that Christianity is a spiritually more democratic religion that allows more social and economic democratic participation leading to better lives for Christians. That is why China is now looking the other way when conversions take place in that country, despite being a repressive state and to some extent a restrictive society.
Why are then anti-conversion laws still in place in a large number of states? Why are churches and Christian institutions still under attack for allegedly forced conversion?
A multi-cultural and multi-religious society should allow to compete and challenge many laws of religion that come in the way of their freedom. Religions need to adapt to those changes but not force women to conform to feudal laws.
Even Christianity has had to overcome the hurdles. Christian women too have had to fight against inequality, patriarchy and restrictions imposed by religion. They have become more free, less bound by rigid norms controlling their sexuality, more free to share public and private space with men of any religion.
The RSS should re-think its position on conversions and allow the poor Dalits/Adivasis the right of freedom of religion. It is time to abrogate all anti-conversion laws in India.
(Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. This article first appeared in nationalheraldindia.com on September 30, 2019)
http://mattersindia.com/2019/10/christian-women-better-educated/
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd 