Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD)

A BYRONIC PRAYER.....

2005-08-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

A BYRONIC PRAYER FOR MY COUNTRY
(Vijay Times, ed-page main article, August 4, 2005)

P.N.BENJAMIN

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi has recently demanded an inquiry into the report of the Shiv Sena leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi's winning bid for a NTC mill property in Mumbai. According to reports, the former Speaker, in partnership with another Shiv Sena leader, Raj Thackeray, had secured the bid worth Rs.421 crore.

The Congress has, perhaps inadvertently, touched a raw nerve in the Indian political class. There has been a massive conspiracy of silence among all political parties not to raise matters of the personal wealth of leaders, though for decades now every party and every leader of any consequence has promised a "war against corruption." Meanwhile, leaders of humble origin and representing even humbler "constituencies" have become rich and resourceful. As the political parties have lost their institutional character, political leaders have strived to build up personal war chests, which they use to finance elections, factions, and party apparatus.

Now by raising the matter of Mr. Manohar Joshi's assets, the Congress has broken the silence on a subject that has troubled civil society. Because of the Mahatma's legacy, anyone opting for political life was deemed to be performing a "sacrifice" and engaging in a "service" to society. If that was ever an honest characterisation of politicians as a breed, it certainly does not hold true now. Today a political career is the easiest route to easy street. No political leaders can be said to be the exception to the rule.

The question of the acquisition of power leading to corruption was uppermost in the mind of Sardar Patel who was second only to Jawaharlal Nehru in the government of free India. He fully realised the temptations of office and power and he wrote to a friend as follows: “I do not subscribe to the view that it is impossible for men in office to render service to the organisation outside. There are undoubtedly bad tendencies. The scramble for power and office is there, but it is not any defeatist attitude that is required but firmness and determination to combat these evils from within.”

Sardar then went on to say: “My own candid opinion is that the best service to the Congress organisation can be rendered by ministers setting tone and standard from the top and studiously and scrupulously avoiding to succumb to pressure from below. It is comparatively easy to have one’s career unsullied when he is out of power. It is much more difficult to maintain that reputation in power. If you can succeed in achieving the latter, you can be much more of an inspiration and guide to the Congress organisation”.

Sadly this has not happened. Politicians in power, irrespective of the party they belong to, have become richer and richer day by day during the past fifty years. In this they have been aided and abetted by unscrupulous businessmen, multinational companies, underworld dons and land-grabbers. In the last five and a half decades, the links between politicians, businessmen, criminals, anti-national elements and government officials have become closer and stronger, resulting shady deals and scams involving thousands of crores of rupees.

When Sardar Patel died, his daughter Maniben Patel noted that he had left behind a sum of Rs. 18 lakh he had collected for party purposes. In those days it was a big amount. She lost no time in informing Prime Minister Nehru and Dr. Rajedra Prasad about it. She handed over every paisa to the party treasurer. Is such integrity conceivable in these days?

Today, hypocrisy has become the chief characteristic of our politicians. There has been talk of public accountability, value-based politics and owning up moral responsibility for one’s lapses. But the chief occupation of politicians inside their parties is ceaseless quest for power. No one is ready to quit office unless he is compelled to do so by circumstances.

Soon after Independence, serious differences developed between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel. These pertained to administrative and political issues. The two were not pulling on together. Each wanted to resign. But there was no name-calling, no character assassination or planting of stories in the press. Though differences were acute, their personal relations remained cordial and civilised.

Nehru informed Patel of his decision to quit and asked the latter to take over the prime ministership. In a note to Mahatma Gandhi Nehru said: Practical difficulties continuously arise…this means that either I should go out or Sardar Patel should go out. For my part, I would greatly prefer my going out. Of course, this going out of either of us need not and should not mean any kind of subsequent opposition. Whether we are in or out of the government we remain, I hope, not only loyal Congressmen but also loyal colleagues, and we will still try to pull together in our respective spheres of activity.

When Gandhi sent Nehru’s letter to Patel, the latter wrote to Mahatma as follows: “The Prime Minister has also referred to his preference for leaving office if mutual accommodation cannot be secured. I maintain, however, that if anyone has to go, it should be myself. I have long passed the age of active service. The Prime Minister is the acknowledged leader of the country and is comparatively young. He has established an international position of pre-eminence for himself. I have no doubt that the choice between him and myself should be resolved in his favour. There is therefore no question of his quitting office”.

Meanwhile, Gandhi was assassinated. The Nehru-Patel differences persisted. In a long letter, Patel wrote to Nehru: “I have no desire to continue if I cannot fulfill the mission entrusted to me by Bapu in his last moments and strengthen your hands”. Nehru replied: “I know how much pains you have taken in the past to accommodate me and I am grateful to you for it”.

A major crisis was averted, though the two continued to differ on many issues. If either of them had resigned the newly independent nation would have been plunge into an unprecedented crisis. But their main concern was the welfare of the country and the unity of the party for which they considered no sacrifice too great.

What a great legacy Nehru and Patel left behind and how wantonly and callously it has been squandered away by their unworthy successors! The salt has lost its savour, as far as Indian patriotism and nationalism are concerned. What happened to all that idealism? The new crop of leaders is different. No values, ideals, principles but it is power that counts with them. And no price is big enough if they can make it to the chair,

Politicians like Singhvi cannot be expected to recall the little known facts of Nehru-Patel legacy with the same nostalgia and sentiment that overpowers the older generation. Moreover, it is futile to go on talking about the good old Nehru-Patel days or freedom struggle. These memories are too precious to be squandered on unheeding ears.

What is really disturbing today is not the loss of idealism. This could have been made up by the dynamism of the new leaders. But the young and the old rogues, who have inherited the legacy of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and others have created such a climate of cynicism in the country that the continued misgovernment is though to be safer than the uncertainties of democratic change. The field now belongs to the men and women who have perfected the art of purchasing purchasable politicians. The list is an ever-lengthening one.

But away, away, with this black mood of doom and despair and decay, let me summon to my aid, in the end, the Byronic prayer: “Fare thee well, and if for ever/Still for ever, fare thee well/ My beloved country, fallen on/ Evil times…”

benjaminpn@hotmail.com
.

Could Partition been averted?

2005-06-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

COULD PARTITION HAVE BEEN AVERTED?*
(Sunday Vijay Times, June 12, 2005)

P.N.BENJAMIN

The threat that the Muslims had been uttering for years, their warnings that a cataclysm would overtake India if they were denied their state, took on a terrifying reality. Suddenly India was confronted by the awful vision that had sickened Gandhi and sent him into the jungles of Noakhali: Civil war. To Jinnah, that prospect now became the tool with which to pry India apart. In August 1946 itself Jinnah, flinging the gauntlet down to Congress and to the British, had vowed: “We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed.”

At dawn on August 16, 1946, in Calcutta, Muslim mobs howling in a quasi-religious fervour came bursting from their slums, waving clubs, iron bars, shovels, any instrument capable of smashing a human skull. They came to answer the call issued by Muslim League, proclaiming August 16 “Direct Action Day”, to prove to Britain and the Congress Party that India’s Muslims were prepared “to get Pakistan for themselves by ‘Direct Action’ if necessary.” They savagely beat to a pulp any Hindu in their path and left the bodies in the city’s open gutters. Soon tall pillars of black smoke stretched up from a score of spots in the city, Hindu bazars in full blaze.

Later, the Hindu mobs came storming out of their neighbourhood, looking for defenceless Muslims to slaughter. Never, in all its violent history, had Calcutta known twenty-four hours as savage, as packed with human viciousness. Like water-soaked logs, scores of bloated cadavers bobbed down the Hoogly river toward the sea. Other corpses, savagely mutilated, littered the city’s streets. Everywhere, the weak and the helpless suffered most. At one intersection, a line of Muslim coolies lay beaten to death where a Hindu mob had found them, between the pole of their rickshaws. By the time the slaughter was over, Calcutta belonged to the vultures. In filthy grey packs they scudded across the sky, tumbling down to gorge themselves on the bodies of the city’s six thousand dead. The Great Calcutta’s Killings, as they became known, changed the course of India’s history. They triggered bloodshed in Noakhali, where Gandhi was, in Bihar, and on the other side of the subcontinent, in Bombay.

Mullahs roamed the Punjab and the Frontier Province with boxes of human skulls said to be those of Muslims killed in Bihar. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs who had lived for centuries on the Northwest Frontier abandoned their homes and fled towards the protection of the predominantly Sikh and Hindu communities in the east. They travelled on foot, in bullock carts, crammed into lorries, clinging to the sides and roofs of trains. Along the way – at fords, at crossroads, at railroad stations – they collided with panicky swarms of Muslims fleeing to the safety in the west. The riots had become a routine.

The summer of 1947 was not like other Indian summers. Even the weather had a different feel in India that year. It was hotter than usual, and drier and dustier. And the summer was longer. No one could remember when the monsoon had been so late. For weeks, the sparse clouds cast only shadows. There was no rain. People began to say that God was punishing them for their sins.

Some of them had a good reason to feel that they had sinned. The summer before, communal riots, precipitated by reports of the proposed division of the country into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan, had broken out in Calcutta, and within a few months the death toll had mounted to several thousands. Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is that both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.

By the summer of 1947, when the creation of the new state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people – Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs – were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead. And all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier.

Could the Partition have been avoided? This question has troubled many in the sub-continent since 1947. What led to the Partition? Was it necessary to concede demand for Pakistan? Was so much bloodshed avoidable? How did British administration and Indian communal politicians manipulate people towards such a hideous end? These questions have troubled many, in the sub-continent, since 1947. Based on extensive research on official documents and other material many have come to the conclusion – it was unnecessary.

The Congress Party leadership, especially, Nehru and Patel, are held to be culpable along with Jinnah, Mountbatten and many British civil and military officials. By August 1947 Jinnaha and the Muslim League could not have settled or anything less than Pakistan. Once the communal carnage had been let loose, their ability to compromise evaporated The actions of some departing British and civil and military officials favouring Pakistan because of personal loyalties or because of realpolitik visions of British and Western interests have been well documented and can also possibly be regarded as a conspiracy hatched against India.

In retrospect it has been said: “If Nehru had followed the lead of Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Azad a united India would have resulted. The latter favoured the British Cabinet Mission’s proposal based on a confederation. (Baren Ray: “Partition of India and other related matters”). He suggests that Nehru was overtly influenced by the Hindu business community who feared their economic dominance would be diluted. However, it is not easy to dismiss the fears of Balkanisation of India under the Cabinet Mission plan, which had been articulated even by an outsider like Ambedkar.

Nehru and many of his contemporaries in India did believe that the Partition was temporary. But the series of Indo-Pak conflicts, the decision of Bangladesh to retain separate identity and the present level of sectarian passion prevalent in the sub-continent indicate that this was unduly optimistic.

Partition is moving into history. We need to study it even more carefully and objectively than was done in the past. It is, therefore, time for us to move away from our old mindset and accept the new realities. That is exactly what Mr. Advani has tried to do in his speeches in Pakistan. But so long as sectarianism and narrow provincialism are allowed to poison the minds of the people, so long as there are ambitious men and women with corruption inside them, seeking power and position, so long will people continue to be deluded and misled, as the Muslim masses were deluded and misled by the Muslim League leaders, and so long will discord and disruption continue to threaten peace and security of millions in the subcontinent.

P.N.BENJAMIN
benjaminpn@hotmail.com

B-1, Lan Castle,
186 Wheeler Road Extn.,
Bangalore 560 084

* Sunday Vijay Times, 12 June 2005

WHY ARE WE STILL IN DARK AGES?

2005-05-20T00:03:00.000-07:00

WHY ARE WE STILL IN DARK AGES?

(Vijay Times, 18 May 2005)

P.N.BENJAMIN

Indian law sets 18 as the minimum age for a woman to marry and 21 for a man. When Indian Parliament adopted the Child Marriage Restraint Act in 1978, legislators hoped that the statute would curb child marriages and the social ills they perpetuate. Concern focused on an arc of populous northern states where child marriages are most deeply rooted: Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.

Child marriage is illegal but many rural children are still forcibly married on Akha Teej, an auspicious Hindu day traditionally used in some rural areas as a date for child marriages. Girls, some as young as six months old, are married to older boys every year during this controversial annual festival held usually in late April or early May.

The authorities and various social activists have been trying to stop them for years, but they have been largely unsuccessful. Women's groups and social activists have gone to villages to urge people not to marry off their young daughters. But the efforts appear to have been largely in vain. Now there are attempts to encourage families to delay the date when the married daughters leave home to join their husbands, when the marriages are actually consummated.

Recently, in Madhya Pradesh, a social worker Shakuntala Verma had her one hand severed and the other badly wounded in an attack when she was trying to stop child marriages in Bhangarh village.

While Shakuntala lay critically wounded in hospital, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Babulal Gaur responded to the attack by throwing up his hands to high heavens and said: “The law to prevent child marriage is so ancient. But even after so many years of the law coming into being, child marriages continue to take place. We cannot stop it forcefully. What is required is awareness.”

Why should we criticise him for his supposedly thoughtless and heartless comments? Haven’t we heard such reactions before? Gaur is not the first politician to do so nor would he be the last. Here’s a little history. In 1994 the National Commission for Women urged the Congress government at the Centre, headed by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, to consolidate the separate marriage laws that exist for each of the major religious communities -- Hindu, Muslim and Christian -- and to include a provision requiring that all marriages be legally registered. That, the Commission reasoned, could be used to bar any under-age marriages. But the government rejected the proposal, as did its successor, the United Front government headed by Prime Minister Deve Gowda, in 1996.

"It has been the consistent policy of the government not to interfere in the personal laws of the distinct communities unless the initiative comes from the communities themselves," the government said in a statement then. "The government is of the view that it is only through social and economic upliftment of these sections of the community that the practice can be eradicated."

Sociologists trace the origin of child marriages to Muslim invasions that began more than a thousand years ago. The havoc unleashed during Muslim rule led to panic in Hindu society. Through enticement or, more usually, by wielding the sword Muslims started mass conversions of Hindus. Partly in reaction to this desperate situation Hindus started degenerate practices such as child marriage and sati. Legend has it that the invaders raped unmarried Hindu girls or carried them off as booty, prompting Hindu communities to marry off their daughters almost from birth to protect them. Today, the stories have an echo in the local view that any girl reaching puberty without getting married will fall prey to sexual depredations.

Tradition has been reinforced by necessity. Securing early marriages for daughters can mean the difference between subsistence and hunger. In many cases documented by sociologists, girls as young as six or seven have been taken away by their husbands' families to begin working as servants or field hands. After all, with the addition of a girl to the household, the in-laws get a laborer, someone who will feed the cattle and clear the house, a servant who comes free of cost.

Child marriages contribute to virtually every social problem that keeps India behind in women's rights. The problems include soaring birth rates, grinding poverty and malnutrition, high illiteracy and infant mortality, and low life expectancy, especially among rural women.

In Rajasthan, a survey of more than 5,000 women conducted by the government showed that 56 percent had married before they were 15. Of those, 3 percent married before they were 5 and another 14 percent before they were 10. Barely 18 percent were literate, and only 3 percent used any form of birth control other than sterilization.

Large families and poor health for children and mothers were among the results. The survey showed that of every 1,000 births, 73 children died in infancy, and 103 were under the age of 5 when they died. Sixty-three percent of children under 4 were found to be severely undernourished. Average life expectancy for women was 58. In every case, the figures were among the worst for any Indian state.

Social workers report that many husbands ‘get tired’ of their marriages after the third, fourth or fifth child, when their wives are still teen-agers. Alcoholism contributes to domestic violence, with sometimes fatal beatings. In some cases, husbands sell their wives, and even their unmarried daughters, as sexual partners to other men. In scores of cases every year, village women strike back by killing their husbands, only to face long terms in prison.

A few pertinent questions could be asked at this stage. Who are the guilty ones in perpetuating social evils like child marriages? Who has been ruling this country – at the Centre and in States – for the last 58 years? It is the Congress party, which swore to protect the interests of the poor and the oppressed, children, women and men alike. It should be remembered that every single one of the leading protagonists and social reformers in the long-running political drama of musical chairs has been a Congress, or a Communist or a Socialist politician – except for a few years during the BJP-led governments. However, it must be borne in mind that the BJP governments in MP and Rajasthan also seem to have done precious little to cure the villagers of their superstitious beliefs and obscurantism.

P.N.BENJAMIN
benjaminpn@hotmail.com

BIBLE THUMPING

2005-05-17T04:29:00.000-07:00

It’s time to confront the Bible thumping preachers

- By Nicholas D. Kristof
Even aside from his arguments that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that St. Paul was a self-hating gay, the new book by a former Episcopal bishop of Newark is explosive.
John Shelby Spong, the former bishop, tosses a hand grenade into the cultural wars with The Sins of Scripture, which examines why the Bible — for all its message of love and charity — has often been used through history to oppose democracy and women’s rights, to justify slavery and even mass murder.
It’s a provocative question, and Bishop Spong approaches it with gusto. His mission, he says, is "to force the Christian Church to face its own terrifying history that so often has been justified by quotations from ‘the Scriptures’."
This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States.
Yet liberals have tended to stay apart from the fray rather than engaging in it. In fact, when conservatives quote from the Bible to make moral points, they tend to quote very selectively. After all, while Leviticus bans gay sex, it also forbids touching anything made of pigskin (is playing football banned?) — and some biblical passages seem not so much morally uplifting as genocidal.
"Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong asks. Or what about 1 Samuel 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders to wipe out all the Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and infant." Hmmm. Tough love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament, Revelation 19:17 has an angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner of "the flesh of all people."
Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School, argues that while Christianity historically tried to block advances by women, Jesus himself treated women with unusual dignity and was probably married to Mary Magdalene.
Christianity may have become unfriendly to women’s rights partly because, in its early years, it absorbed an antipathy for sexuality from the Neoplatonists. That led to an emphasis on the perpetual virginity of Mary, with some early Christian thinkers even trying to preserve the Virgin Mary’s honour by raising the possibility that Jesus had been born through her ear.
The squeamishness about sexuality led the church into such absurdities as a debate about "prelapsarian sex": the question of whether Adam and Eve might have slept together in the Garden of Eden, at least if they had stayed longer. St. Augustine’s dour answer was: Maybe, but they wouldn’t have enjoyed it. In modern times, this same discomfort with sex has led some conservative Christians to a hatred of gays and a hostility toward condoms, even to fight AIDS.
Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith."
The bishop also tries to cast doubt on the idea that Judas betrayed Jesus. He notes that the earliest New Testament writings, of Paul and the source known as Q, don’t mention a betrayal by Judas. Bishop Spong contends that after the destruction of Jewish Jerusalem in AD 70, early Christians curried favour with Roman gentiles by blaming the Crucifixion on Jewish authorities — nurturing two millennia of anti-Semitism that bigots insisted was biblically sanctioned.
Some of the bishop’s ideas strike me as more provocative than persuasive, but at least he’s engaged in the debate. When liberals take on conservative Christians, it tends to be with insults — by deriding them as jihadists and fleeing the field. That’s a mistake. It’s entirely possible to honour Christian conservatives for their first-rate humanitarian work treating the sick in Africa or fighting sex trafficking in Asia, and still do battle with them over issues like gay rights.
Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the Left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid.
By arrangement with the New York Times

BIBLE THUMPING

2005-05-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

CONFRONT BIBLE THUMPING.....

2005-05-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the Left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid.

By arrangement with the New York Times

CONVERT TO GOD OR CHRISTIANITY?

2005-05-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

CONVERT TO GOD OR CHRISTIANITY?
P.N. Benjamin*

“If the churches were engaged in conversion spree, the whole of India would have been Christianised,” claimed one Richard Howell of Evangelical Fellowship of India, writing in a Bangalore daily some time ago. I reacted swiftly and sharply in the same paper three days later, wondering whether the guy wasn’t living in the proverbial fool’s paradise. Wasn’t he touchingly naive and provocative? And I prayed: “Father, forgive him, for he knows not what he is talking.”

No one can deny that genuine conversions do take place through the influence of one individual on another. In the mid-1970s, a lovely Canadian girl came to Bangalore on a Government of India scholarship to learn Bharata Natyam. (She was staying with the late Dr. Fredrick Mulyil and Mrs. Gladys Mulyil. Dr Mulyil was a Professor at the United Theological College and Mrs. Mulyil, Professor of English Language and Literature at the Central College, Bangalore. I was their neighbour.) Like most of her generation in the West, she was an agnostic. She was U.S. Krishna Rao’s star pupil and made her debut in six months. One day she met Mother Teresa. She fell under her spell. She abandoned dance and donned the robes of a nun. “You are a born artist. How dare you become a nun?”—Krishna Rao raged in vain. She went to Calcutta and later to Mexico where she was working in a slum when I last heard about her. Not even the RSS or the VHP could quarrel with such a conversion. But when a well-organised body financed by foreign money begins to shift a whole herd of people from one caste to another one begins to suspect their motives.
Some forty years ago, a brilliant Danish Professor, Dr Kaaj Baggo, in the United Theological College, Bangalore, made history when he said: “Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists should never give up their religion for the Christian Church.” On the other hand the Church should humble itself and find ways of identifying with other groups, taking Christ with them Christ, he said, was not the chairman of the Christian party. If God is the Lord of the universe he will work through every culture and religion. We must give up the crusading spirit of the colonial era and stop singing weird hymns like “Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war”. This will lead to Hindu Christianity or Buddhist Christianity.

It may involve the disappearance of the Indian Christian community, but he reminded us “a grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls to the ground and dies”. Needless to say, the Indian Christians were furious. He left the College, the Church and the mission and took refuge with the Danish Foreign Service! He later returned to India as his country’s Ambassador and died in harness in 1988.
About a hundred and fifty years ago England was sending out a very important Anglican Church dignitary as Metropolitan of Calcutta. The Brahmin priests got wind of it. They were perturbed. This foreign religion might become a threat to their own traditions. They must investigate. So, they sent one of their men to assess the situation. He wandered around the city till he came to the Bishop’s residence. It was a vast sprawling opulent mansion. As he stood at the gate, the great man walked down the steps, dressed in his magnificent robes. He stepped into the waiting carriage drawn by two horses with a postillion sitting at the rear. The Brahmin returned to his friends. “Have no fears,” he said. “This is not a religion we need to fear.” The priests were relieved for the pomp and splendour of organised Christianity holds no appeal for any genuine seeker after truth.
The most precious freedom that Indian Christians enjoy is to hold Jesus Christ as their saviour, as the Son of God, as the “only true divinity”. It is their absolute right to cherish that belief—and if any Hindu outfit or government tries to impeach upon that liberty, then definitely Indian Christians should fight tooth and nail for their religious privileges. They would be justified to speak about Hindu fundamentalism, saffron brigade or Hindutva. But the moment Christianity tries to impose this belief of only one true God—Jesus Christ—on the world, then it is itself impeaching upon the freedom of others. For this belief of the “onlyness of our God” as the real one and all others are false is at the root of many misunderstandings, wars and terrorism.

If “all religions are ultimately for the welfare and salvation of humankind”, then conversion is absurd. The Church leaders have miserably failed to take care of the 16 million Dalits converted to Christianity. Besides, indiscriminate conversion has ruined the spirit of Christianity into savagery. Christianity is a path of life paved with suffering and service. Christ said: “If anyone wants to follow me, let him take up the cross and follow me.” The Indian Christian leaders want the government to carry the Cross of Dalit Christians!
Christians form just about 2.5 per cent of the Indian population. “Very often they have to depend not so much on their rights as on the goodwill and generosity of the powerful majority Hindu community. Christians in India are dependent in a double sense, on the goodwill of the Hindus and on the Churches in the West whose fellowship sustains them and whose affluence often supports them. Judging from numbers there is hardly any equality in relationship. But Christians in India can play a creative and critical role in the life of our nation. What matters most is the quality of their life as Christians and the courage of their faith.” (Dr Stanley Samartha, Courage for Dialogue). While Christ’s call to conversion is a turning towards God stands what it need not imply is conversion to Christianity.
Christianity in today’s India with a renascent Hinduism faces an unprecedented crisis. If it is alive to the situation and sensitive to the signs of time, it has to rethink itself, reorient itself, and rediscover its basic substance and interpret that in terms acceptable to the Indian mind and genius.
P.N.BENJAMIN
benjaminpn@hotmail.com

Vijay Times, May 12, 2005

NORTH-EAST COMPLEXITIES

2005-05-12T02:20:00.000-07:00

NORTH EAST COMPLEXITIES IN PERSPECTIVE*
(Vijay Times, 4 May 2005)

By P.N.BENJAMIN

In an interview to the BBC World, the general secretary of the National Socialist Council of NagalandSCN, Thuingaleng Muviah has said: “ It’s not possible for the Nagas to come within the Indian Union or within the framework of the Indian Constitution. Nagaland was never a part of India. Sovereignty of the Naga people belongs to the Naga people alone.” He demanded the integration of all Naga areas outside the present boundaries of Nagaland with the Greater Nagaland within a reasonable time frame. “We do not want our people to live under the Assamese, Manipuris or others. Our areas were forcibly occupied. We want them back to protect and pursue our own culture, our own way of living and our traditions. How can Nagas be ruled by ‘foreigners’?”

He added that the slogan “Nagaland for Christ” did not mean that he intended to set up a theocratic state. "Because more than 95 per cent of the population is Christian naturally they have to profess that way.... Nagalim or Greater Nagaland has to be secular. If it is not secular then we will be betraying ourselves.”

Thus, the eight-year-long negotiations - 41 rounds of dialogue, to be precise, - between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muviah)- the biggest outfit fighting for Naga independence - have hit a major roadblock.

The Naga separatists claim that Nagas had never been part of British or post-British India. This might be true. But you cannot hark back to what used to be more than 100 years ago. The Hydaari Agreement of June 27, 1947, which the Nagas accepted, said they would be free to choose for themselves the precise pattern of administration within the Constitution of India. They went back on the undertaking when Constituent Assembly Committee incorporated the conditions of the agreement in the Sixth Schedule for safeguarding the Naga demands. There might be resentments. What should people of India make of the Nagas participating in the assembly and parliament elections and nearly 60 per cent of them turning out to vote? The government in Kohima is that of the Nagas and come through the process of polls.

Alteration in the boundaries of any state is a dangerous proposition. No political party or leader has the courage to raise the issue, much less convince a state to part with its territory. If a state were to be touched without its consent, there would be civil strife everywhere. Some boundary disputes, dating back to 1955, are still working against ethnic groups because no state wants to give up its claim on the territory that was once its own. In short, it is important for the Naga secessionists to realise that it is not possible for the Government of India to expand Nagaland at the expense of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal.

Yes, many if not most, Nagas would prefer to be independent and sovereign rather than part of India. Should we permit Nagaland to break away, the latent nationalisms in other parts of Indian states could flare up. As Yugoslavia has shown, it does not take much for a supposedly “united” federation to disintegrate into a squabbling congeries of peoples.

The reasons for the continued insurgency in Nagaland and elsewhere in the NE are not far to seek. One of them is, of course, lack of development. Then, the insurgent outfits thrive because at one level, existing international borders are porous; at another, liberally buffetted by their friends and benefactors, residing abroad, and politicians playing a double-game at home, the insurgents have had everything going for them. Add to that the combination of terror and sympathy both among the common masses, and we have fairly clear picture of the North East.

The insurgents have been recipients of foreign funds and arms in massive quantities. The Indian State can be said to have utterly failed to check the huge largesse. Half-hearted attempts in the shape of legislation cannot obviously work as a useful check, because the funds and arms have now become part of a hard-to-break-established chain. It shows the inability of successive Indian governments to grapple with the problem with a sense of urgency and commitment.

In all fairness it must be said that the role of Christian missionaries in the secessionist activities in North East India has not been above reproach. In 1970, in the Rajya Sabha, the late Mr. Joachim Alva had reminded the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi: “foreign money was poured into India’s borders and the Nagaland problem was damaged by the flow of funds from Churches abroad.”

In the guise of uplifting the backward classes, the fundamentalist Protestant missionaries have been engaged in a massive proselytisation drive for several decades now. Their main targets have been the gullible tribals in the hill regions and other backward classes in the plains of Brahmaputra valley. Although the proselytising activities themselves should be a cause for concern, a more disconcerting aspect of the missionary activity has been their tendency to influence the politics of the North-East region.

Delivering the Zakir Hussein Memorial Lecture on “Secularism &Minorities”, on 30 November 1979 in Bangalore, the late Prof. V.V.John, the noted educationist had said: “Christians have also an obligation to take note of the circumstances that a section of the Christians of tribal origin in the North-Eastern region adopted secessionist attitude. And some diehards still persist in their original stance. The non-Christian sees in this phenomenon a failure on the part of Christians to keep politics out of religion, as they in their secular moments counsel others to do.”

The missionaries have been active in the North-East because of the failure on the part of the Centre as well as the state governments to address themselves to the basic problems facing the people. If the idea is to make the Indian State and its measures popular in one of the most neglected parts of the country, step-motherly attitudes should give way to really genuine ones.

It is also true that the state governments, central and para military forces have often been guilty of mistaking repression for a remedy to endemic terrorism. Certainly one form of terror cannot be countered by resorting to another; after all, as is well known, the socio-political roots of insurgency need to be understood and eradicated if any lasting peace is to be provided to a region which has seldom had any respite from the cult of the gun.

P.N.BENJAMIN
benjaminpn@hotmail.com

RAPE, AN INCURABLE SOCIAL DISEASE?

2005-04-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

RAPE, AN INCURABLE SOCIAL DISEASE?*

(*Vijay Times, Bangalore, 27 April 2005)

By P.N.BENJAMIN

Rape is the one crime no woman is safe from. All over India, the incidence of this dastardly and damaging crime is steadily creeping up the police graphs. Virtually everyday one hears the ugly word: rape on minors, on children, old women, widows and so on. Every meek and powerless woman is a potential victim of rape. She is a faceless entity in the surge of humanity. Whether she is beautiful, ordinary or ugly, it doesn’t matter. How old is she? Under 10? Over 50? In her twenties? Who cares? What is her profession? Her socio-economic background? Her marital status? Immaterial.

Another ghastly aspect of the crime is the growing incidence of rape by policemen. In a chilling incident last week, a sixteen-year old school girl walking on Marine Drive in Bombay along with her friends was taken inside the police outpost by a motorcycle-borne policeman and raped her. The cases are legion, each one more horrifying than the other. Many of them get published in the media. But there are innumerable other atrocities, less extensively written about, which are sad reminders of the increasing venality of a nation. All this is happening in a country, which has always prided itself of having a long tradition of respecting women!

Why does this thoroughly degrading crime take place? Ours is a nation where offenders get more smug by the day in the belief that no one can convict them anyway. The core, perhaps, is essentially callous attitude exhibited by many towards rape itself and a general contempt for the second sex, whether overt as in the case of a sex-offender or more subtle like the vast majority of males who steadfastly refuse to accept women as equals. Women are subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace, in the streets - a phenomenon which, despite its increasing crudeness, still goes by the innocuous appellation of ‘eve-teasing’ - and any other place offenders can get access to.

The widely-held notion that every rapist is a candidate for the psychiatrist’s couch is a myth that needs to be shattered. The average sex offender is as normal as the man next door is. And, rape for him is merely a calculated, cold-blooded instrument of oppression or revenge, whether on individual women, a caste or class. The mass rape of womenfolk of the rural poor to crush an uprising and the regular brutalisation by policemen of helpless victims will bear out the statement.

Numerous studies show that there is a definite relationship between common acceptance of myths justifying violence against women and actual anti-social behaviour against them. The commonly heard myths are: “When a woman says no, she means yes’, ‘She was provocatively dressed for it’, ‘She’s fair game’ etc. The audacious assumption in these attitudes is that women are not individuals, but property on whom it is perfectly admissible to unleash assault if they get ‘out of hand’. Thus, the cold statistics remain that babies of a few months and little girls under ten are regular rape victims; old women get raped. The majority of young victims of rape are not provocatively dressed or inviting sirens as some would have us believe, but they are the meek and the male-fearing ones who are raped simply because they were around.

Crime is endemic to the human condition, but a crime specifically directed at women – rape - is the most despicable. It is unfortunately the one crime that is punished the least. Despite amendments in the rape law the official figures of reported rapes are on the increase and the rate of convictions low. With the rape graph spiralling and little interest on the part of law enforcement agencies to pay special attention to the crime, what can be done to contain this extreme form of violence against women?

Despite all the hype and hyperbole, the protective laws and action plans, the seminars and speeches, walkathon and ‘women in black’ demonstrations and processions organised by foreign-funded NGOs, the basic patriarchal structures and attitudes have undergone very little change. The majority of women are still second class citizens, their worth measured purely in economic terms; how much work they can do inside and outside the home, how many male children they can bear, how much dowry they will bring.

Long ago, the then Chief Justice of India, Mr. Chandrachud had said: “No amount of manipulation of the law by piecemeal amendments can help protect women’s honour, dignity and rights. The reason for rape and other such crimes is more due to moral values of the society than any other apparent reasons.”

This writer remembers that Justice V.D.Tulzapurkar had even suggested years ago introduction of public flogging as a punishment for rapists. Traumatised and often destroyed by the act itself, a woman has to further bear the strictures of a society that blames her in some way for a crime of which she is the victim, not the perpetrator. With the rape graph spiralling and little interest on the part of law enforcement agencies to pay special attention to the crime, people like this writer helplessly throw up their hands into high heavens and wonder what can be done to contain this extreme form of violence against women.

Be that as it may, there is hardly any hope unless we respect our women and give them proper place in our hearts, minds and society. That she deserves this is beyond any doubt. Rape is a sordid crime, which is more than sectarian concern than a personal one. It should be attacked from all angles – legal, social and psychological. Morality too should not be forgotten.

P.N.BENJAMIN
benjaminpn@hotmail.com

HOOCH TRAGEDIES: A SOCIETAL PERSPECTIVE

2005-04-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

HOOCH TRAGEDIES: A SOCIETAL PERSPECTIVE

By P.N.BENJAMIN

TWENTY-four people, men and women, have “officially” died an agonising death last week in Nelamangala, near Bangalore, after consuming illicit liquor or hooch, laced liberally with the deadly chemical, methyl alcohol. Not a voice has been raised against the vendors of death. Not a single minute has been spared for condolences. And this does not seem to be a matter over which our politicians, intellectuals and secularists lose their sleep. But then, why should there be even a whimper over this trivial matter? Haven’t we absorbed greater shocks than this, as far as hooch tragedies are concerned?

Nelamangala is not the first, nor will be the last and the worst liquor calamity. In one of the worst tragedies, 323 innocent people perished in Bangalore, in 1981. That was the official figure and all of us who wrote about it then knew that the number was an understatement. Liquor tragedies involving smaller numbers, some reported and some not, are constantly occurring in towns and villages all over the country.

A feature common to all these tragedies is that the victims are invariably from the poorer sections of society. Vijay Times rightly pointed out in its report that most of the victims of the Nelamangala tragedy were from Scheduled Castes and were breadwinners of their families. What drives them to drink is their pathetic living and working conditions. Such people chronically ill and weak are poorly placed to resist the poisonous drink. It is a combination of an urgent need to drink – to escape from physical and spiritual discomforts, hard labour and the lack of physical stamina to bear the consequences of such indulgences that drive the victims to certain death.

Poverty is the worst crime of all, said Bernard Shaw. It is the poor, the slum-dwellers, workers in cities and mines, fishermen and farm workers who go in for cheaper drink after a hard day’s work or to celebrate a marriage or festival. Exhortations to the poor to give up drinking appear pathetic and particularly sanctimonious when they come from those who are more fortunately placed. The poor have reason enough to know better than their moral exhorters that drinking does no good. The evidence is there all around them. It is there every moment of their lives. And yet, if a poor man takes to drink and persists in the habit even when he knows that every drink carried with it the possibility of blindness, paralysis and death, it is not because he is morally insensitive or degenerate; it is that the conditions of his life and work make it impossible for him to see the day through without the spurious feeling of well-being induced by drinking. But, the task of making the poor not to feel the need to drink to escape from living horrors of their existence is far more difficult than taking executive decisions to deprive people of liquor.

Following last week’s tragedy, the Karnataka Government has “swung” into action - ordering a judicial inquiry, announcing compensation to the kith and kin of the victims and thundering declarations made that “stern action” against the offenders would be taken. Some bootleggers are arrested and a few police and excise officials are suspended or transferred, but no one knows the end result.

It is obvious that methyl alcohol poisoning is the result of the free hand given to liquor contractors and private traders. The government machinery as well as vested interests are clearly responsible for the trail of horror. Those who have started out as small fry in the liquor business are now billionaires. Some of them have become MLAs and ministers. They are the kingmakers in several states, wielding control of underworld gangsters.

As a result of high political connections of the liquor vendors, there is a near absence of will on the part of the authorities to deal “sternly “ with them and their henchmen/women in the excise and police departments. Honest police officials will be pulled up for being over-zealous. It is an open secret that the local police are fully aware of the places of manufacture, bottling and selling points, but they choose to ignore them because they are the “gold mines”. The big sharks are seldom caught; they have an elaborate system of arranging for the bail, defence and family welfare of their agents who may be caught and jailed! No wonder, the government’s vigilance squads and qualified analysts also have failed to end the activities of the vendors of death who distill, bottle and market the killer brew.

All the past judicial inquiries into the liquor poisoning cases have evaporated into thin air with the passage of time. Does any remember the Bangalore tragedy of 1981 and the report of the Commission that inquired into it? Do you know that the Hooch Queen of the 1981-notoriety is today a highly “respected” and sought after politician?

In the eyes of the law everything is neat and clear: he or she who has been instrumental in the death of many innocent lives must face the consequences. But the reality is more eloquent than law, and the reality tells us that those who have been guilty of mass murders are given all the facilities and privileges of free citizens. Anticipatory bails have been given galore to the suspected distillers and distributors of the killer brew. Many of them have been forgiven and let off in the past. There is no law by which they can be hauled up – not even to make a thorough inquiry. The inequity of it all cries out to high heaven, showing up the mockery to which we have permitted our democracy to be debased. “O, Justice, thou art fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason.”

P.N.BENJAMIN
e-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com

18 April 2005

THE TRAGEDY OF AMBEDKAR'S LEGACY

2005-04-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

THE TRAGEDY OF AMBEDKAR’S LEGACY*

By P.N.BENJAMIN

LONG ago, Tolstoy acidly observed: “The abolition of slavery has gone on for a long time. Rome abolished slavery. America abolished and we did, but only the words were abolished, not the thing.”

We in India, have performed a similar feat of verbalism vis a vis the Dalit victims. The colonial masters called this social proletariat, many millions in number, ‘depressed classes’ and Gandhiji called them ‘Harijans’, a Sanskritic, sophistic substitute to upgrade at least in name this untouchables and subhumanised category. Their status substantially remained the same and ‘Harijans’ became a blend of the pejorative and the sanctimonious, without the higher castes integrating, with egalitarian passion, these down-trodden species into a casteless Hindu fold.

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, himself a mahar (untouchable caste), fought this malignant degradation with tooth and nail and tried his best to set his brethren free as equal members of the Indian society. He battled and wrote into the Constitution purposeful provisions annihilative of caste victimisation and promotion of their socio-economic status.

The Constitution, however, uses the colourless terminology, “Scheduled Castes”, which hardly expresses the terrible lot and traumatic humiliation. Were they mere words, or calculated to catalyse a transformation, which would establish a dynamic human solidarity so necessary for a progressive nation on the march? If they were really a summons to action, how far have we succeeded? And if we have failed, what is the diagnosis for this pathological failure? What is the prognosis for a vibrant Dalit egalite?

The agenda of action for the future, so that Indians may redeem their constitutional tryst, has been uppermost in the minds of informed thinkers and socialsensitives. “ Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life, which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy. Liberty cannot be divorced from equality; equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many…

Dalit identity, crushed for centuries, now re-asserts its right to be treated as human. No more subaltern submission but a chapter of challenge, battle and goal-oriented democratic march! The marginalised shall no longer surrender but there are two ways of achieving the end. One peaceful, agitational and by converting the majority to their obligation to the lowly minorities: the other is the desperate and violent methodology whereby terrorist operations may be the only means of securing justice.

Obviously, in a democracy the peaceful means can win if only there is an inclination to listen and act on the part of those who command public opinion. It requires dissemination of information, presentation of views and appeal to the finer sensibilities of the people as a whole. Leaders with sensitivity of the soul can guide, by their thoughts and writings, the course of history written with the ink of justice.

Untouchability is an offence and atrocities on the Dalits are grave offences. But the law in the books has no locomotion unless the bugle of battle demands justice through social movements and judicial action. India can have social stability and claim human justice only if the Dalit sector is guaranteed social and economic status consistent with an egalitarian ethos.

The enormous pain, privations and frustrations suffered by the dalit population in our country must make every sensitive citizen to hang his head in shame. The tragedy is that not only have we not eradicated untouchability during the last fifty five years despite the good intentions of the founding fathers of independent India, but also have created newer and subtler forms of untouchability. India is as far away from being a civilised casteless society as ever.

Ambedkar rightly believed political democracy without social and economic democracy is a double deception . Almost all Indian political parties have showered only lip sympathy to the plight of the Dalits in order to get their votes, but with no intention of doing anything to ameliorate their conditions. Leaders of Dalits must campaign to liquidate the lowliest castes among them and consolidate themselves into one united Scheduled Caste. Why tolerate sub-castes among “Harijans” themselves? The upper layers among the Harijans and Girijans swallow the few jobs and admissions to professional courses. The ‘pariahs’ among the pariahs are permanent pariahs. This shall not be! Radical socialist-humanist militancy is needed among the dalit themselves..

The tragedy is that Dr. Ambedkar’s legacy, which ought to operate outside Hindu religion, has also not succeeded in breaking the status quo. Dr. Ambedkar felt that organization, education and agitation would enable the Dalits to reverse caste prejudices. As it has turned out, Dalit political groups are totally disorganized. Education has only led to the emergence of a Dalit elite class, which has slowly distanced itself from agitational Dalit politics. Dalit movements have either been absorbed within mainstream parties or else have degenerated into negative militancy. The deification of Dr. Ambedkar by building statues in every village appears to have taken precedence over any fight for equal rights. What shall we do to ‘change this sorry scheme of things entire and remould it nearer to our Heart’s desire?’

P.N.BENJAMIN
e-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com

*Vijay Times, edit-page main article on Ambedkar’s birth anniversary. 14 April 2005

CHILD WORKERS

2005-04-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

BLIND TO THE CRIME OF CHILD-LABOUR*
(Vijay Times, Edit-page article, April, 6, 2005)

BY P.N.BENJAMIN

TUCKED away at an insignificant corner of an inside page of Vijay Times of March 30 there was a heartrending story- in just three sentences. A nine-year-old girl, Nasima Begum, a domestic help in Balasore, Orissa, was subjected to inhuman torture by her employer to extract a confession from her that she had stolen a gold ornament. She sustained multiple burns when her employer stripped her and pressed hot iron on her body. And, the accused has fled the Balasore after the incident!

We are not shocked because it is not an isolated brutality that has taken us by shock and surprise. We have been hearing of such brutalities with such monotonous regularity that we shrug our shoulders and ask: "What’s new?" The latest outrage is simply one more step, perhaps a leap forward, in our steady drive towards a state of conscienceless bliss where Satan is on the throne and all’s right with the world.

There are hundreds of child-workers like Nasima in our neighbourhood. We have eyes to see, but we don’t see the suffering of the domestic child-workers living and working right amongst us and around us. We have also ears to hear but do not hear their heartrending cries. It is to us, the impotent and passive spectators of the outrage, as it were, that the famous German playwright Bertlot Brecht addressed the following words: “Outside, men scream and you hear them not: outside flames burn and you see them not. Grandfather, when the Day of Judgment arrives, how will you stand”

Several studies have highlighted various types of exploitation of domestic child labour, which include physical and sexual abuse. This writer is reminded of the poignant story of the fifteen-year-old Uma, who was rescued by a voluntary organization in Bangalore two or three years ago. It was a story, too deep for tears, proving once again that we are up against a brutal and conscienceless society. Uma was branded with an iron rod on her back, hands and thighs, for allegedly not working properly. Her employer pinched her arms when she complained of being tired and denied food when she woke up late. If she screamed out loud, her ‘Madam’ would stuff her mouth with cloth so that no one could hear Uma screaming!

Child labour is an assault on the children’s legitimate rights to education and freedom to grow in an atmosphere of love and care. It is a pity, though, that the Indian law frowns upon child labour yet Indian life freely practises it. Our founding fathers, dreaming of a brave new Bharat and its tryst with destiny, laid down the great testament of the Constitution where the value vision for future generations was projected. Deep concern for the material and moral welfare of the Juvenilia of India is underscored and social injustice is anathematized. Universal primary education is assured. Freedom from labour during the tender age is mandated.

Figures do not bring out the magnitude of suffering that has arrived for these millions of already impoverished children. Thousands of children work for almost 15 hours everyday in the most hazardous atmosphere because they have to pay off the loans borrowed by their parents from the employers. They suffer from many physical ailments and thus, these children are unable to mature to their full potential as adults. Commercial sexual exploitation is all pervasive and pernicious. Hunger and destitution have gripped them as never before. Disease and death stalk them. Most of them are undernourished and unhappy as they were in Dickens’ days. However, much more alarming is the callous emotional vacuum that exists in our minds. It does not seem to have touched the nation. For us all, the serried columns of these unfortunate victims of hunger and privation, without homes and hope, bring no tears, not to speak of stirring conscience, if at all we still have an ounce of that precious commodity left within us. The truth is that the iron has entered into our soul. Just as the twilight zone to which most of us escape, forgetting we’ve left these children behind. The curse of the Pied Piper of Hamlin endures!

How many of us have taken even a small step in our own way to free children from servitude and enable them to grow and develop in an environment, which we expect for our own children? On the contrary, haven’t many of us employed children below the age of 15 as domestic help? Quite often, the employers of domestic child labour justify it by saying that they provide food, shelter and clothing to those children who would otherwise beg on the streets. A whole spectrum of the sorrows of child-labourers remains to be exposed, a whole saga of their blood, toil, sweat and tears remains to be lived down.

The challenge of the child workers points to “the petty done; the undone vast”. If the Supreme Court judgement of 1996 banning child labour in hazardous industries and regulating the employment of children in other fields, like domestic labour, has been implemented in letter and spirit, it would have done much to end the brutal exploitation of millions of children in the country. “And, how long, O Lord, how long,” will the child of the 21st century have to wait to find himself/herself in that heaven of freedom of which Rabindranath Tagore has spoken in Gitanjali?

P.N.BENJAMIN
E-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com

ARE WOMEN CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD?

2005-03-07T02:54:00.000-08:00

(Vijay Times, Sunday March 6, 2005)

P.N.BENJAMIN

Spare a thought for the Indian women – children of a lesser God- on this International Women’s Day (March 8). Bride-burning. Rape. Female infanticide. Dowry deaths. Wife-beating. Child prostitution. Even witch-hunting. Crimes against women seem to be increasing at an alarming rate. Every day. Yet, for some strange reason, we have reduced them to statistics. Cold, brutal statistics that pile up in the morgues of government offices, welfare homes, small town courts and prisons. Confirming our worst suspicions: that the single largest minority in this country is being viciously battered into submission.

On the one hand, you have years of cultural domination by men. Where women have to choose between a lifetime of abject slavery at home and warding off mandatory passes at the work place, where they are rarely treated as equals. On the other, in many less than literate sectors of our society, they are treated as children of a lesser god. To be burnt as young bride, for not brining adequate dowry, or, worse still, as a young widow, on her husband’s funeral pyre, to celebrate a barbaric religious rite. If she survives all this, and the ignominy of being forever treated as a receptacle for male lust, often forced into whoring or raped by her near ones, she could be lynched for being a witch.

There is scarcely a day when cases of rape or a d dowry murder are not reported from different parts of country. Domestic violence is not even reported: husbands who physically ill-treat their wives do so with utter impunity because neither the police nor the public will interfere in a ‘private matter’.Women are hunted down and murdered by mobs because they are branded witches. Girl children are kidnapped from their homes or sold to pimps and forced into prostitution. Women are encouraged if not forced to burn themselves on the pyres of their husbands. Girl infants are left to die – sometimes drowned or given poison by their own parents who perceive a daughter as an economic burden. They are often not even allowed to be born – sophisticated scientific tests have been misused to detect sex of the foetus and an abortion follows promptly if the test reveals the sex to be female. In short, it is indisputable women are increasingly being subjected to greater violence and aggression, both physical and mental.

What perverse instincts impel such acts of aggression? And why do they go unpunished? No one can argue that these issues have not received their share of publicity today. In the print-media there are women’s pages, general interest magazines carry articles and reports on contentious women’s issues and even special supplements. Television boasts of woman’s programmes. The other powerful medium – advertising – has always been over-eager to use women in ways women would rather not be used. Even politicians, who have often forgotten that women form any part of their electorate have bestirred themselves and, with unaccustomed activity, have launched a flurry of legislation ostensibly aimed at helping and protecting women.

With all these seemingly positive changes, women, it would appear are on an easy wicket. Why, then, have they become the targets of increasing violence? Why, if there is an amendment in the law against dowry to make it more effective, have dowry deaths registered such a sharp increase? Why, despite amendments in the rape law, has the ‘official’ figure of reported rapes doubled in the last decade and (90 per cent of rapes are not reported) and the rate of conviction been so low? Why are there so many child prostitutes in big cities, and how does just one district in Bihar come to register, yearly, 200 deaths of women killed by mobs who have branded them as witches? Why is the right to live denied to a girl child in some communities and why are women still the most chronically undernourished sections of the population? And, finally, why do the shocking statistics and daily reports about the deteriorating condition not create the kind of national uproar that the antics of film-star-politicians and other leaders do?

Crime is endemic to the human condition, but a crime specifically directed at one sex is most despicable and, unfortunately, the one that is punished least. Because, despite all the hype and hyperbole, the protective laws and action plans, the seminars and speeches, the basic patriarchal structures and attitudes have undergone very little change. The majority of women are still second class citizens, their worth measured purely in economic terms: how much work they can do inside and outside the home, how many male children they can bear, how much dowry they will bring.

The media exposure and all the legislation thus have little impact. Besides, they are themselves contradictory and often betray their own biases. Print and electronic media may carry reports castigating police connivance in a rape case or highlight a dowry death, but at the same time will carry/telecast advertisements, photo-features and illustrations that exploit women’s bodies, and perpetuate sexist images of women and flippant headings that belittle important issues. The media’s understanding of the issues involved is so confused and half-baked.

Legislative enactments so far by government have so far been mere tokenism. Another factor that blunts the edge of any attempt to give women a better deal is that women’s issues are often politicised. Whatever positive changes taken place so far on the women’s front are due to the dedication and commitment of the women’s organisations and other NGOs that have worked towards bettering their lot. But, waiting for the real changes to occur for women in India is rather like waiting for Godot.

Vijay Times, Sunday. 6 March 2005

PLIGHT OF DALIT CHRISTIANS

2005-03-03T03:45:00.000-08:00

Living as Dalit Christians
Author: P.N. Benjamin
Publication: Deccan Herald
Date: January 9, 2004
Twenty-two bishops and nearly three hundred delegates from dioceses spread all over the four Southern States will descend on Bangalore to attend the four-day Synod meeting of the Church of South India (CSI), beginning on January 10. The CSI runs 2000 schools, 130 colleges and 104 hospitals. More than 75% of its four million members are Dalit Christians.

Social justice has been one of the main concerns of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in India since the 1960s. Though social justice is a profound idea, yet, like many other profound ideas, it gets profaned when men who mouth it are sans character. That is why "almost 20 million Dalit Christians have been tamed and reduced to eternal slaves of the organised Church bodies," as a statement issued by a Dalit Christian organisation revealed recently.

To corrupt George Orwell's famous aphorism: all Indian Christians are equal, but some are more equal than others. By embracing Christianity, the Dalits have not found themselves emancipated from economic and social inequalities. Conversions have neither offered the Dalits a way of escape from the bondage of caste nor have they fostered the social transformation of the Dalit Christians. They still live under the same conditions of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.

The Dalit Christians are "twice alienated', both by the Government and the Church. On the one hand they are denied, as Christians, the rights and benefits availed of by their fellow Dalits, and on the other, as Dalits, they are dominated and persecuted by the upper castes and the elite Dalits within the Church. The majority of Dalit Christians suffers from economic disparities, demoralising social discrimination and cruel denial of equal rights.

The Church has sinned more than others in perpetuating social injustices against Dalit Christians. In Indian Christian communities, caste discrimination takes many forms. There are some churches built for separate groups. These places of worship even today retain their caste identity. Another example of casteist practice is allotting separate places in churches. Usually, the Christians of Scheduled Caste origin occupy the rear of the church. A flaring instance of caste distinction is found among the dead. The dead of the Dalit communities are buried in separate cemeteries

It is said that charity begins at home. But, the home (Church) where it begins, the Dalits Christians do not belong. According to a study, all the landed properties of churches in India put together, the church is the second biggest landlord in the country, next only to the Government. In addition, the Church institutions and Church or Christians-led NGOs receive foreign financial support amounting to over Rs. 2500 crores per year. There is no transparency with regard to these funds as well the massive income accruing from the elite schools, colleges and hospitals and also shopping complexes built all over the major cities in the country. The poor Dalit Christian does not even get the crumbs, leave alone participation in Church matters. There seems to be a vested interest in keeping the Dalit Christians where they are to maintain the status quo in the Church.

The Church's call for re-distribution of national resources in favour of Dalit Christians will be heeded only when its own resources are re-allocated and used with a clear partiality for Dalits in its own fold. The Church's fearless stand for justice will no longer let it remain silent about the discrimination within the Church - a matter of shame to its members and an embarrassment to its friends.

To a religion that has always prided itself on the advocacy of complete equality of all human beings, irrespective of caste, colour or race, the charge of discrimination within its own family is galling. Strangely enough, the Church has won its adherents in this country on the strength of its teaching about the dignity of all human beings and its rejection of distinctions based on birth, colour and race. Now it finds itself charged with failures on this very score. To the untouchables, the oppressed and those victimized in socially stratified society, Christianity once brought a message of hope. The reason it has lost its appeal is not that it has ceased to preach equality, but it has lost its nerve to practise it. It has compromised its own teaching.

Church of South India Synod Executive Committee recently declared: "Caste discrimination is a blot against humanity. Caste is a direct assault on 200 million Dalits of India denying them their dignity and humanity and as Church we condemn this draconian discrimination." After reading it, one is tempted to tell the CSI leaders: "Physician, heal thyself!"

The Church must realize that the Dalit Christians' plight calls for a deeper analysis of the problem so that Christian leaders do not throw stones at the caste system prevailing in Hinduism, but look to something more meaningful and constructive within itself.

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CALLING THE BLUFF....

2005-02-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

CALLING THE ENVIROMENT LOBBY’S BLUFF
(Vijay Times, Bangalore, dt. 27 Feb. 2005)

By P.N.BENJAMIN

The Karnataka deputy chief minister Siddharamaiah has, recently at a conference in Bangalore, reproached the “environment-lobby” for coming in the way of development by objecting to large dams, reservoirs and hydel projects. It reminded me of what Norman Borlaug, who had helped create the hybrid technology that brought about our Green Revolution, said in a letter on April 12, 2002 to M.S.Swaminathan and others: “I was very supportive of the environmental movement when it began in the 1960s. However, in recent years, the movement has evolved more and more towards an anti-science, anti-technology reactionary force.”

Most of the environmentalists and human rights warriors claim to be specialists and experts on any subjects. Nicholas Murray Butler had defined an expert as one “who knows more and more about less and less”. But experts are multiplying in number and barging into new pastures where their presence was not thought necessary earlier. Interminable debates and hair-splitting go on, and various ‘experts’ offer solutions many of which stink of biases. “Trust one who has proved it”, said Francois Villion, but in the environmental and human rights fields such people are in short supply, and second-rate ‘experts’ seize the chance to jump a rung or two when no one is looking!

These ‘experts’ who oppose large dams, reservoirs and hydel projects, ignore the many well-known benefits of major Indian dams, particularly to agriculture, energy and flood control sectors. They are blind to the overall impact of dams on economic development and its role in employment generation and poverty alleviation. Similarly, the support given to sustainable, social and environmental well being of the people in a sub-basin by the construction and subsequent operation of dam project does not find a place of importance in their ‘movements’ against large dams etc. The need for increased food grain production and drinking water requirements of the burgeoning population in India has never been their concern. They paint a doomsday scenario that the poor, other vulnerable groups and future generations would have to bear a disproportionate share of social and environmental costs of large dam projects without getting a commensurate share of economic benefits. In short, they concentrate their efforts in outlining the negative effects in detail so as to paint a picture of gloom in the aftermath of a dam project.

The environmentalists’ advocacy for constructing small dams and rainwater harvesting structures is not a novel idea since the country has been engaged in the construction of such structures from time immemorial. Going for such options in exclusion of dam projects will not provide the requisite storage capacity to harness the annual monsoon flows occurring within a short period of 3-4 months. The unevenness of rainfall distribution in space and time necessitates large storages to be built to hold the run-off to make available the water when and where required during the non-monsoon period. To achieve this goal, it is estimated that we need more than 10 million rainwater-harvesting structures to be constructed within a limited period to store the 400billion cubic meters (BCM) of river flows discharged into the sea annually without being utilized. This would involve acquisition of lakhs of hectacres of land mostly from small landholders, displacing millions of poor farmers. Further, with the failure of a monsoon, these water bodies get dried up resulting in crop failures, causing large-scale, devastation and consequent hardship to people.

The environmental lobby’s alternatives to hydel power are non-conventional energy sources like solar energy. At present India’s shortfall peaking capacity is reportedly 10,000 MW. It would take decades even to meet the existing shortfall through this option. The production levels of other options like wind and tidal power are also meagre compared to the demands. India has thus no alternative but to go in for a combination of major, medium and small storages to harness water resources for its water and hydropower needs.

India’s achievements in the development of its water resources have been remarkable since Independence. Displacement of people, loss of cultural or historic sites and submergence of forests or scenic landscapes due to dam construction is a small price to pay for development. Progress in Western Europe and North America was achieved at an enormous cost to the people and the environment but no one seems to remember it today.
These problems pale into insignificance when viewed in the broader context of the tangible and intangible benefits that the major dam projects in India have brought to millions of people in the last 58 years. But, how many people would have died in famines since Independence if we hadn’t gone in for building, what Nehru described, “the Modern Temples of India? Yes, a vast number of people, no doubt, have been displaced but they are still alive. However, the authorities concerned should address the concomitant environmental and human problems, specially the problem of resettlement of the displaced people immediately.

With a projected population of 1500 million by the year 2050, the water requirement to meet the needs of food grains, drinking and other uses would just match the water availability then, provided we take immediate actions to harness the surface flows through major, medium and minor storages, improve water-use efficiency to the optimum levels.

P.N.BENJAMIN
E-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com

Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD)

2005-02-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD)

BIRD -AIMS& OBJECTIVES

2005-02-25T19:42:00.000-08:00

Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) is a little lamp, lit and kept burning, by a group of kindred souls and fellow pilgrims. Theirs is an inter-faith voyage of discovery, sailing on the winds of near-identical views on people and events.

BIRD's premise is simplicity itself -striking a match in a dark immense cavern, to dispel the surrounding gloom

BIRD seeks to promote inter-religious dialogue by providing an open forum for the exchanges between and among followers of different religious paths. While BIRD encourages creative and bold responses to the questions of pluralism confronting religious persons today, it also recognizes the plurality of perspectives concerning the methods and content of inter-religious dialogue. It represents a variety of religious view points.

BIRD is convinced that healthy dialogue is a necessary tool for overcoming alienation and halting the march of hatred and misunderstanding and to diffuse the recurring tension between religious groups and communities

BIRD believes that amidst the conflicting claims made on behalf of different religions there is an urgent need for a full and free exchange of our differing religious experiences, in a spirit of mutual respect, appreciation and empathy.

BIRD realizes that any attempt to weaken the hold of the truth of any religion upon mankind is to weaken religion itself. Therefore we strive not to weaken but to strengthen each other by mutual respect, trust and co-operation

BIRD invites people of all faiths to share through it the richness of their various religious traditions and experiences in this adventure of spirit.

Inter-religious communities often spring up in response to crises and public emergencies also. There is a vital need of forming inter-faith communities in rural areas. Every person and institution, especially places of worship, should take the initiative in forming inter-religious communities in cities and rural areas.

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PROPOSED PROGRAMMATIC ACTIVITIES:

BIRD has proposed to embark on a three year programme with four specific programmatic components and they are:

Inter-faith dialogues

That will consider organization of inter-faith dialogues among religious leaders, institutional hierarchies, professionals, service clubs, Non-government organizations, corporate houses, students of schools and colleges

Forum for artists, orators and writers

Organisation of exhibitions, publications and debates on communal amity inviting well known artists, orators and writers and also upcoming aspirants to be able to express their opinion and thus arouse the social concern of the masses.

Campaign for creation of larger mass base

Creation of a larger mass base to be able to embark on a movement approach; where all people could be helped to thing and act alike in one accord with concern and compassion for the fellow being

Cadre evolution

To prepare motivated men and women with skills to organize and monitor peace committees in their respective residential areas and also to inculcate human values among the student community of the local schools

ANTICIPATED OUTCOME:

Enrichment of one another’s religious life
Mutual respect, understanding and tolerance
Co-operation in purifying and strengthening the religious attitude of mind
Inculcation of human values
Development of love, care and concern for fellow beings
Longing for peace and harmony
Concern over personal, social and national problems

An Appeal

BIRD needs your support. Please send your contributions by cheque or demand draft drawn in favour of Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue to:

P.N.BENJAMIN
Coordinator
Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue(BIRD)
300 Deepika Layout
Cheeramkuzhy House
Kalyan Nagar
Bangalore 560 043
INDIA
e-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com

A TRIBUTE TO DR. STANLEY SAMARTHA

2005-02-25T19:27:00.000-08:00

A TRIBUTE TO DR. STANLEY SAMARTHA

It is with more than ordinary sorrow that I stand before you to pay my humble tribute of honour to Dr. Stanley Samartha, who was literally my friend, philosopher and guide, and influenced and shaped my thinking, since 1981. He was a jewel among men. A scholar par excellence, Dr. Samartha was a bold pioneer who opened new paths for Christian belief and action.

To gather a few strands about his life and philosophy from his exhaustive mass of writings is a daunting task. An original thinker, Rev. Samartha was compassionate in his ways yet unsparing in his critique. It was by his life as much as by his words that Rev. Samartha spoke. He was an instrument of peace, a channel and avenue through which Jesus’ love and compassion flowed out to others. He sought in every endeavour to encounter his living God. Essentially, Dr. Samartha’s life, as I knew it, was a reminder of the prophets in the Old Testament who declared God’s will for the people, especially in troubled times. Micah who lived 800 years before Christ was one of them. He saw vice and crime and misrule crush the poor, and the priests preoccupied with the evolving of more elaborate and costly rituals. After a passionate condemnation of the religious rituals of his day Micah discloses in gentler tones what true religion is: “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.’

Deeds of righteousness of which the Bible is full are what make a good and godly man. And these were the stuff of Dr. Samartha’s life. His life was a humble walk with God, seldom visible to people, even to himself. His life was a life lived with God in Christ. A life not lived to be visible, approved and applauded. It is not a subject to our pietistic judgement but thrives upon its simplicity and straightforwardness, even dispensing with the culturally prescribed norms of social behaviour. Its deceptive lack of visibility makes for depth and a hidden richness.

Dr. Samartha died not in defeat but in victory, unafraid and in unabated trust in his Maker. For more than a year of mounting sickness and unrelieved pain he remained calm and undismayed, never displaying anxiety or concern for himself. In his passing, Samartha, has left a legacy of compassion and care for others.

We are stricken with grief. Dr. Samartha’s death can neither separate us from the bond of love and friendship in which he and his loved ones and his friends remained when he was alive nor can time take away its hidden torments from us for years to come. I think the only way to cope with this grief is to thank God at every remembrance of Dr. Samartha. And we have the assurance that in living a dead, we are all held together in the fellowship of our risen and living Lord. May God grant Mrs. Samartha and the rest of Samartha family, at this time, a deeper understanding of this faith and hope.

P.N.BENJAMIN July 4, 2001 St. Mark’s Cathedral, Bangalore

BIRD ACTIVITIES 2004-2005

2005-02-25T18:50:00.000-08:00

BANGALORE INITIATIVE FOR RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE (BIRD)
ACTIVITIES 2004- A REPORT

Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD), established by a group of kindred souls in 2001 to promote understanding, tolerance and pluralism among people of different religious backgrounds, has been a platform for addressing those issues that are causes for inter/intra religious tensions and resentment in India. It believes that only through inter-religious dialogue can the recurring tension between religious groups and communities in the country be diffused.

BIRD’s experience has proved that peace can be achieved through talking to our perceived enemies because they are the ones ‘allegedly’ behind communal tension in the country. They have the support of dedicated cadres unlike the present day religious leaders. Our strategy has been simple and straightforward. Disarm one’s perceived enemies with a broad smile.

Networking

During the year 2004, BIRD has established close working relationships with various organizations in Bangalore and in other parts of Karnataka to promote peace and communal amity through dialogues. It is networking with the Fireflies Ashram, Temple of Understanding, YMCA, Senior Citizens Forum, Indian Heritage Academy, Institute of Universal Consciousness etc. BIRD has also been promoting the cause of inter-religious dialogue through about a dozen of Y’s Men’s Clubs in Bangalore. These clubs regularly invite the Coordinator of the BIRD to deliver lectures on the need for promoting religious harmony and peace.

On 10 October 2004, BIRD took the initiative in forming the Youth for Peace & Progress, an active group of students drawn from various colleges in Bangalore. Prof. N.S. Ramaswamy, Prof. Mumtaz Ali Khan and Fr. Mathew Chandrankunnel addressed the gathering. It is aimed preparing motivated men and women to organize and monitor peace committees in their respective residential areas and also to inculcate human values among the student community. It will also organise exhibitions and debates on communal amity.

As part of its prophetic and propagative mission, BIRD has promoted a group called "THE INTER-FAITHS" all over the State of Karnataka and elsewhere. (The Inter-faiths is a terminology coined by BIRD and it is also an operational or contextual definition The Theosophists / Atheists / Communalists / Fundamentalists / Fanatics / Lions / Rotarians / and Y's Men etc. ).”The Inter-faiths” already initiated are: Shrisisti Seva Samithi in Belgaum, CHETAN in Bidar, Sant Kabir Education Society in Hosur, Seva Samithi in Haveri, Pioneer Society in Dharwad, CRUES in Kolar, CSCA in Udupi and Ashraya in Bangalore. All of them will be brought under the banner of BIRD.

Indian Christians for Peace thru’ Pluralism (ICPP)

A group of enlightened Indian Christians settled down in the USA are in the process of forming the above organisation. The final touches for its form and shape are being given now..

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) has been in touch with BIRD during the year under review and been seriously considering establishing fraternal relations with each other

Dr. Samartha Memorial Lecture

BIRD has made the Stanley Samartha Memorial Lecture a permanent annual event since 2001 on the general theme of “Transcending Barriers in a Divided World,” on 7th October of each year to coincide with the birthday of that great soul. (Rev. Dr. Stanley Samartha, the first director of Dialogue Programme in the World Council of Churches, is known as “the Christian prophet of religious pluralism”. He had boldly claimed: “ I am a Hindu by culture, Christian by faith, Indian by citizenship and ecumenical by choice)

The first lecture was delivered in October 2001 by Francois Gautier on the ‘Need for Inter-Religious Dialogue.’ On October 7, 2003, Dr. C.T.Kurien delivered the second lecture on “Communal Harmony- A Societal Perspective”.

Prof. M.V.Nadkarni delivered the third Samartha Memorial lecture on October 6, 2004. He spoke on “Religion in 21st Century: A perspective of Hope”. It was held in the SCM Auditorium. The auditorium was packed to its capacity. It was a select crowd that listened to Prof. Nadkarni. There were a large number of university students, activists, academicians, religious leaders and thinkers from all major religions. Newspapers gave wide coverage to the function as usual. An English daily (Vijay Times) with a readership of more than 5,00,000 carried the synopsis Prof. Nadkarni’s lecture in two parts on the following days.

BIRD has printed and published 2,000 copies of the Second Samartha Memorial lecture delivered by Prof. C.T.Kurien. It was released on 6 October 2004.

Prof. Nadkarni’s lecture is under print now and will be released soon.

In its effort to introduce well-known ecumenical leaders to the followers of other religions, BIRD bought and distributed 250 copies of Dr. Stanley Samartha’s book, One Christ, Many Religions, to several leaders and thinkers of the Hindu community – some of them have been branded as “fanatics and fascists and belonging to the lunatic fringe” - during 2004. But to them all it was unbelievable that there ever lived a Christian thinker like Samartha!

BIRD is organising “An inter-religious evening with Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite hymns & prayers”on 30 January 2004 - the anniversary of Gandhi’s martyrdom.

P.N.BENJAMIN
Coordinator
Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD)
B-1, Lan Castle
186 Wheeler Road Extn
Bangalore 560 084
INDIA
Tel. 080 2580 0647
21 December 2004

ROAD TO PEACE

2005-02-25T04:19:00.000-08:00

DIALOGUE: THE BALM FOR RIOT-ENTREPRENEURS

By P.N. BENJAMIN*

The approach of successive governments to the communal situation has not undergone any change in the last five and a half decades or more. The latest example is the Communal Harmony Bill being drafted by the Home Ministry which is considering special procedures of investigation and trial through establishment of special courts with powers for summary trials and day-to-day hearings

The recurring tragedy of communal riots scars our conscience. Why should the blood of Indians be spilt in the streets in a manner that makes us an object of derision all over the world? Are the communal riots always pre-planned? Why should it take long to bring the riots under control? Do the police take sides? Which community suffers most? These questions have always remained unanswered. And, the administration, or whatever we have under that name, will try and gloss over them. The different political parties, like vultures, feed on the carcass, each trying to draw some petty, short-term gain for itself.

The discourse on communal riots in India has, all too often, amounted to little more than platitudes, hand-wringing, and blame-casting. We are sorely in need of a concrete, creative and clear-headed solution that is firmly grounded in both theory and on-the-ground realities to tackle the recurring communal clashes: a soberly argued and articulately presented solution that will result in halting the Hindu-Muslim blood letting. It should also provide an opportunity, moreover, to review the existing schools of thought attempting to explain Hindu-Muslim conflict, and highlight their inadequacies as a comprehensive framework for analysis.

What kind of civic ties between Hindus and Muslim can contain, or even prevent, communal violence? Ashutosh Varshney, noted Indian-American academic at University of Michigan, in his book, “Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life”, analyses, in scholarly detail, how the decline of civic institutions has impacted on communal harmony and addresses this important question. He examines three pairs of Indian cities - Calicut and Aligarh, Hyderabad and Lucknow, and Ahmedabad and Surat— one city in each pair with a history of communal violence, the other with a history of relative communal harmony—to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs in some situations but not others. His findings are of strong interest to scholars, politicians, and policy-makers of India, but the implications of his study have theoretical and practical relevance for a broad range of multi-ethnic societies in other areas of the world as well. The book focuses on the networks of civic engagement that bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. Strong associational forms of civic engagement, such as integrated business organizations, trade unions, political parties, and professional associations, are able to control outbreaks of communal violence, says Varshney. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including powerful politicians, who would polarize Hindus and Muslims along communal lines.

Communal integration in all facets of society is, therefore, the key to communal harmony. Uncoordinated integration on playgrounds and neighbourhood is not only necessary but also important to stop wild rumours that will inflame communal passions. Societal integration brings about economic interdependence in positive ways. It is an effect of peace not a cause. Economic disparity can lead to humiliation and alienation, two of the most common conditions for fanning the flames of religious hatred. Economic disparity also runs against integration, even if there is interdependence. So interdependence is desirable in tackling the problem.

Communal riots are instigated and manipulated: whatever the proximate trigger for violence, there is always a politician with an axe to grind, pulling the strings, inflaming passions, exploiting the victims for purely political ends. But the chances for success of such politicians - the breed of “riot-entrepreneurs” - would be remarkably lower if there is vigorous and communally-integrated civic life, not just through everyday casual contact but through formal associations that consolidate the mutual management of the two communities. For instance, it is known to us that the Hindus of Varanasi would not attack the Muslim artisans who make the masks and effigies for the annual Rath Lila, even if an irresponsible and bigoted politician egged them on to do so.

It is important to remember that the withering away of cadre-based political formations, the enfeeblement trade unions and mass-rooted social organizations that welded the society together have made the descent to communal violence in recent years possible. The increasing polarization we are seeing today will make matters worse, not better, since the prospects for an integrated civic life in many parts of the country have already worsened.

Needless to add that in a pluralist society like India peace can be established only on the basis of dialogue, not on aggressive assertion of sectarian rights. The path to confrontation will only result in promoting separatism. The communal conflict is fundamentally a political conflict, fought on the battlefield of religion. Peaceful groups use dialogue to recognise common interests and to build from there. And, a dialogue would benefit all every one. All that is required is the awareness and desire on the part of local officialdom to make it happen. Dialogue, a well developed method too powerful to ignore and one that is standing the test of time, is the only solution to the problem.

It is true that a dialogue will not end majority-minority conflict overnight. But such a dialogue can always help in defusing an explosive situation. It may even turn out to be slow and tortuous, trying one’s patience to the utmost. We must be prepared for this. But the effort would be worthwhile.

P.N. BENJAMIN
Coordinator,
Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue(BIRD)
E-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com
VIJAY TIMES Feb. 20, 2005

BIRD- AIMS & OBJECTIVES

2005-02-25T04:12:00.000-08:00

BANGALORE INITIATIVE FOR RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE (BIRD)

Coordinator: P.N.BENJAMIN
e-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com

Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) is a little lamp, lit and kept burning, by a group of kindred souls and fellow pilgrims. Theirs is an inter-faith voyage of discovery, sailing on the winds of near-identical views on people and events signifying that whatever the darkness, however profound the sense of lostness, the light of God’s love – be it Ram, Allah or Jesus - will continue to shine, for those who have the eyes to see, a heart to love and a soul to believe.

BIRD’s premise is simplicity itself -striking a match in a dark immense cavern, to dispel the surrounding gloom by promoting understanding, tolerance and pluralism.

BIRD is convinced that only through inter- religious dialogue can we diffuse
the recurring tension between religious groups and communities. We believe in strengthening of inter-faith dialogue in order to elevate communal harmony to the level of a practicing doctrine. In any such dialogues there is need for a full and free exchange of our differing religious experiences, in a spirit of mutual respect, appreciation and sympathy. An exchange of individual or collective experiences will lead to enrichment of each others religious life, purifying and strengthening the religious attitude of mind against irreligious and materialistic attitudes from which stem our personal, social and national problems.

BIRD believes that we must all share our deepest religious convictions with one another, but sharing them on a basis of equality, of genuine respect for and acceptance of the validity of each other’s faith. Such a sharing demands earnestness, both in holding one’s own faith and in seeking to understand another’s for we get nowhere if we meet on a basis of indifference to all faiths. When we openly and unreservedly assert that there is no monopoly in religious truth, the followers of the different religions can help each other in understanding that old adage that there's only one Truth, with different paths leading to it. We must realize that any attempt to weaken the hold of the Truth of any religion upon mankind is to weaken religion itself. Therefore, we must strive not to weaken but to strengthen each other by mutual respect, trust and co-operation.

People of all faiths must learn to share the richness of their various religious traditions and experiences in a spirit of adventure and support of one another in the struggle for social justice, identifying themselves as closely as they are able with the oppressed and the disinherited, and treating all human beings as brothers and sisters.

BIRD affirms its faith in one another, and our hope for a society where divisions will cease and people will live together in harmony, respect, love and compassion.

Since its inception in 2001, BIRD has been providing a platform for addressing issues which are the causes for religious tension and resentment.

An appeal

In order to work towards our goals we propose to organize more meetings and dialogues between the religious heads and community leaders to ensure harmony between different faiths and communities. We also propose to conduct public lectures, seminars, workshops, conferences and meetings on topics useful to the people at large. In addition, we work towards the upliftment of poor and marginalised communities and to integrate them into the mainstream of the Indian community.

The road ahead of the fellow pilgrims of inter-faith dialogue and peace -makers is long, narrow and arduous. We seek your guidance and support – moral, material and financial.

P.N.BENJAMIN
Coordinator
Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue(BIRD)