Sunday Posts

India, after sixty years of committed secularism, has turned a corner. The founding assumptions of India was that in order to survive, it must become a secular country. Indeed, such thinking was shaped by the then recent battles with two-nation theory, which the Indian nationalists lost and the country was divided, and the persistent British argument that India couldn't be a viable country because of its diversity. It was all but natural to make diversity a central theme of the constitution that was drafted - it was avowedly secular and non-sectarian and allowed the Indian states to retain many powers - and the subsequent efforts of the nation's leaders were to commit to an 'idea of India' free of any religious or cultural definition. We are now entering the second stage of the process, when the partition, and all the doubts about viability of India, are distant memories. A new confidence has now replaced the insecurities and doubts that shaped the responses o...

India is a proud democratic country, even more so after the magic of a clear majority has been achieved by the new administration in Delhi after quarter of a century of coalition politics. Everywhere one goes, democratic pride is in display: If some people started doubting if a democratic system will only produce politics of division, they have now been thoroughly convinced that Indian democracy is a system that works. In this rather triumphalist environment, it is rather blasphemous to question whether democracy is enough in itself. Indeed, blogging with a contrarian opinion is quite hazardous in India, where people are commonly arrested for political opinions using colonial era gagging laws. Besides, even if there is no legal ground to arrest someone, smashing up people's houses by agitated supporters of one party or the other is quite common. TV channels are routinely silenced, either by political mandate or by corporate takeovers, with the objective of squashing any criti...

I wrote about Reverse Migration at various times on this blog, and it is interesting to read these back posts now to see how my views have changed over time.  First, in 2009, when Vivek Wadhwa made the case first, I was excited about India's opportunity and wrote Reverse Migration: India's Chance . My point was that the relatively unaffected Indian Economy would benefit from the phenomena of global Indian talent returning home because of the Great recession. However, India's economy stalled thereafter. But even before that, returning Indians would stumble onto my blog post and wrote about their experiences, mostly of disappointment. I also realised that I misread how open India would be to the phenomena - I was subject to resident Indians' ire for assuming that these returners would be, should be, given a red carpet return, because they did not stick around to make India's prosperity happen. The arguments, strangely enough, were the usual arguments one mad...

Hope has made a comeback in India. The grand yet sombre swearing in of the new Prime Minister yesterday made an impression; at least one Western commentator, John Eliot, wondered whether Mr Modi will become a transformational leader like Nehru ( see here ). The assemblage of South Asian leaders, specially invited for the occasion, also ignited hope of peace, stability and freedom of movement in South Asia, which will, in turn, make India's prosperity stronger and sustainable. Besides, the spectacle itself, that a new Prime Minister from outside the ruling elite is being sworn in, is a sign of how strongly embedded democracy has become in India (though as I argued elsewhere , it should never be taken for granted). The hope for India's prospects rests primarily upon the electoral fact that first time in thirty years, India has a majority government. The successive coalition governments, held at ransom by India's regional parties, struggled to move forward and respond to...

Narendra Modi made a big point when speaking in Varanasi after his election win: That his administration will represent the first in India's history to be led by someone born after India's independence in 1947. Voted in by voters mostly born after independence, this is an unsurprising claim. What goes unsaid is that one factor that helped him most also comes from the post-Independence mentality: That his voters have taken India, and its democracy, for granted. Narendra Modi's elevation as India's Prime Minister shows how well we have managed to wipe any historical memory. Indeed, BJP talked a lot about the historic injustice done by the Mughal Emperors, particularly Babar, whose eponymous Masjid was the party's rallying point, but it choose to be silent about India's struggle for Independence: This goes well with a generation which will rather read the fictionalised accounts of the exploits of the mythical Shiva, rather than spending time reading about the...

There are many remarkable things about the Indian Elections 2014. Many in the country believe that this will mark an end and a beginning: Which end and which beginning are being contested, though. It may be the end of the unipolar politics of Congress versus the others, but then only to be replaced by Hindu Nationalists versus the other politics. It may be the decline of India's most prominent political family, the Gandhis, which is drawing most attention: The family scion, Rahul Gandhi, has been comprehensively rejected by the Indian voters. This may also be the end of the Indian Republic as conceived by its founding fathers, and what comes next can be reasonably called the Second Republic.  That may mark a new beginning. Indian Second Republic may not have any of the indecisiveness of the French. Duke of Wellington mused during the Second Republic "France needs a Napoleon and I can't yet see him", but India has its Bonaparte now.  This election marks a firm ch...

1.  Rahul Gandhi must have read Lincoln, "I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chances will come". Instead, he should have followed, "Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle." Lincoln, again! 2. There are three kinds of people in politics, Self-Made, Never-Made and Self-Destroyed. Good that there is never a category called 'Born Into" in democratic politics. 3.  Larry Summers had a brilliant idea in the 1980s. He suggested all the polluting industries should be relocated from the First World to the Third World because the life costs less in the latter. They just did that with Organised Political Marketing. 4.  I was reading about the world's luckiest man, Frano Selak . Prakash Karat will somewhat come near him if he still survives this election being at the helm of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).   Perhaps he knows how to do what this man in video is doing. 5. India w...

As India's democracy reaches a critical juncture, with a very real danger of a authoritarian take-over, Rabindranath Tagore's birth anniversary is a perfect occasion to revisit the founding idea of India once again. There are many things in his politics that we may need to dust up and reconsider: Tagore's political ideas, because of his inherent aversion of popular nationalism and enthusiasm about Pan-Asianism and universalism, were outside the mainstream of the Indian National Movement, seen as impractical and effectively shunned. He was seen mostly as the Poet and the mystic, someone whose politics remains in the domain of the ideas rather than action. Tagore himself, after a brief passionate involvement in politics during the division of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905, withdrew from political action: He never belonged to the political class, despite his iconic status and itinerant interventions, such as returning the Knighthood after the massacre of Amritsar in 1919. ...

Indian election is quickly turning into a battle between democracy and development. Underlying this tension, there is a thesis that democracy is only a luxury and can wait. Despite India's pride in being a democracy, this idea is as old as the country itself. Many people thought it was madness to have democracy in India, a poor and illiterate country at the time of Independence, in the first place. The privileged, the upper caste Hindus, the landlords, the princes, the educated, almost always thought this was a disaster. Indira Gandhi's brief adventure in authoritarianism was cheered on by many of these people: This was perhaps the reason why she was so wrong-footed eventually - everyone around her told her that this was great idea until the voters threw her out. Wealthy Indians nowadays point to China's development and blame their own democracy for failing to catch up, and this has become well accepted among the rich, powerful and the non-residents. Middle Class Indians ...

Now that BJP manifesto is out, it is interesting to read and compare the manifestos published by two leading parties on the issue of Higher Education. Admittedly, this is only a minor issue in this election. This election is, as I have written about before, more about the idea of India and how the republic will be shaped. Minds are focused on bigger issues of identity, and should be. Trying to deconstruct manifesto approaches on one issue or the other is surely inconsequential in the face of what's at stake. Besides, parties hardly keep manifesto promises, and BJP almost did not have a manifesto ('Modi is the manifesto', someone said in jest, but got it right). Besides, if Manifestos are inconsequential, Higher Education is inconsequential among other issues addressed in the manifestos. Indeed, there are bigger issues and clear themes that cut across these manifestos, and dare I say that there are clear ideological undertones. Congress seems to be saying 'yout...

Next week, the electioneering in India will start. It is set up like any other election: With parties lined up on either side, politicians trying to get maximum advantage, money being spent like water, with the noise, promises, processions and frustrations like the other times. But this is not like any other election. There is an existential threat to the Indian Republic and what it stands for. This is no exaggeration. The leading candidate, though by no means certain, is a man with an agenda: Narendra Modi is trying to convince Indians that he will bring the development that Indians crave for, and will run a corruption free administration. But he has an ugly record of abetting a genocidal riot in Gujrat back in 2002, and he and his apologists are trying to see that it does not matter. In fact, in a shocking TV interview, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, the champion of multiculturalism in Britain, was trying to argue Mr Modi's case saying that we should not be talking about the past and ...

India's election in 2014 is going to be a defining one. Whoever wins, and whoever becomes India's leader afterwards, it is going to be a definitive break with the Post-Independence Republican experiment. And, though it is far from certain that Gujrat's Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, will finally prevail, powered by a carefully orchestrated campaign by the American firm APCO Worldwide, his prominence is symptomatic and an indicator of things to come: Hence, the title of this post. There are lots of things in balance. The balance between the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the city and the village, the English Speaking and the non-English Speaking, the Big City and the Small City, the metropolis and the regions, the Majority and the Minority, all the balances that the constitution makers had to grapple with, during the founding days of the republic, are up for grabs again. The foundational principles, yet again, need to be interrogated. However, we are per...

As India approaches the 2014 General Election, and the prospect of a Fascist takeover becomes real, the grand old idea of India - that of a cosmopolitan nation - comes to the fore in sharp relief. This foundational idea of modern India, a nation that welcomed everyone and rejected no one, with an  identity to be conceived on the basis of inclusion rather than exclusivity, is the one up on the ballot paper, so to speak.  But this is a strange contest. Despite the fact that the idea of India is being contested upon, there is not a side standing for it. In the post-modern reality of Indian politics, the parties are jostling for positions on various other issues, ranging from India's pride to the battle against corruption, with various local and parochial issues lined up in between. The idea of India as conceived by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in its constitution is being represented, ironically as it must be, by the 'None of the Above' option on the ballot. Wh...

All signs are 2014 will be a defining year in India's history. It is only a freak accident that this year's calendar is identical to 1947's, the year India became independent of the British Rule. But more significantly, India's General Elections this year may mark a departure from its course so far, in more ways than one.   It is now all set for the elections in May. Battle lines are sharply drawn, protagonists, old and new, have taken up their positions and the rhetoric is reaching the fever pitch. But, the debate is more than about which party would eventually win, or even, despite being highly contentious, who becomes India's next Prime Minister, despite the countless Facebook-hours Indians are investing on these issues. This year's significance may lie in a re-definition of what India stands for. For all the hoopla, the election means less than it is projected to be. The hand voters are dealt with is quite poor. Their effective choice is between a he...