CASTE< VIOLENCE AND SUBALTERN IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY TAMIL NADU; A SICK SOCIETY REINTERPRETTED

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

On June 24th 2016, a young, educated girl hailing from a middle class brahmin family was brutally murdered in front of a large crowd on the platform of Nughambakkam Railway station. Shockingly not a single one of the onlookers stirred to help her even as a young man took out a billhook (aruval) from the back back that he was carrying and struck three times at her face neck and upper part of her body. The brutality of the crime was in fact a rerun of a typical ISIS operation:brutal, cruel, quick and in full public display. While the killing of Nirbhaya in December 2012 was an event that brought together a large proportion of civil  society and political parties to bring about change in the legal system, this barbaric attack was largely ignored. Does the fact that the victim of this brutal crime happens to be a brahmin girl  and the accused a dalit have anything to do with the cynical indifference with which this crime has been viewed. I have always said that the position of the brahmins in Tamil society today happens to be akin to that of the Jews in Germany during the Nazi era.

The Dravidian Movement, especially the anti brahmin Self Respect Movement made brahmin bashing, brahmin percecution, brhamin marginalization and exclusion an inherent part of South Indian public life. Like the Jews in Germany, brahmins were excluded from university positions and public office and like the victim of this monstrous attack, they had to take up employment in the soft ware industry or immigrate to USA in order to escape the vicious and untrammeled assaults on person and dignity. The public media both the Press and the Electronic media is conditioned to highlight dalit atrocities and ignore similar attacks on brahmins. Indeed, the condition of both the dalits and brahmins are more or less identical in post colonial Tamil Nadu ad scholars like the late M S S Pandian and others have sought to give legitimacy to upper caste domination by invoking the discredited theories of Cauldwell and others.

The attacker, Thiru P Ramkumar is a resident of Ambedkar Nagear in Meenakshipuram near Tirunelveli in the deep South. He had apparently been stalking the victim since May 2016 and the Tamil movies generally portray stalking as an innocent trivial assertion of male interest. The gross infringement of the rights of the girl/woman is not taken into consideration and the Police generally ignore complaints of such behaviour. Since the attacker happens to be a dalit, public discourse has suddenly gone silent and it is likely that in the days and months the crime will get politicized in the manner in which the murder of Rajiv Gandhi. And dalit poltical parties like the CVK and the PT and also sections of the dravidian parties will also start a chorus in favor of the killer. Who can forget the fact that the killer of the Madurai corporator,a dalit woman was pardoned by Karunanidhi when he was in power. Crime in Tamil Nadu walks hand in hand with political parties.

The world has to awaken to the plight of the barhmins in Tamil Nadu,. Their human rights anre being violated on a daily basis and while attacks on dalits are highlighted by the Media, politcal correctness prevents it from highlighting crimes against brahm,ins.

Clinton, Trump and the Circus of American Presidential Politics

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The American elections are a phenomena well worth watching. Without being unduly judgemental one can say that the campaign is both entertaining as well as infuriating at times. Here we, in India are used to semi literate foul tongued politicians like Mani Shankar Ayer, Manish Tewai, Laloo Prasad Yadava, Nithesh Kumar, Katheria, Khejriwal and others. So the comparison can only be of degree and quality. The Congress breed of dynastic fascists have their own brand of invective to hurl against their opponents. The BJP retaliates by launching a tirade against corruption, "Italian Mafia" etc. So we are used to foul language, insensitive remarks and down right abuse. So what is so surprising that we should even write about the endless stream of abuse and insults spewing out in torrents from the mouths of the two important Presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton.

The Presidential campaign started  with Mr Trump declaring to the world in general that "Crooked Hilary" is not to be trusted. He raised serious questions about her "ethics" as if ethics has ever been a factor in US politics. The immediate provocation for this rather large charge against Hilary is the ongoing FBI investigation into the use of a private server during the time she occupied, without honor or distinction, the office of the Secretary of State, as the Foreign Minister of US is often termed. Just before leaving office she deleted more than 30,000 emails stating that they were private in nature. Later it was disclosed that she raised more than 100 million dollars for the Clinton Foundation from donors in the Middle East even as she served as the Foreign Minister. Just imagine what would have happened if an Indian Minister had done the same. Salman , the Foreign Minister under the discredited UPA regime is still facing flak for the scandal over his Trust.

Hilary Clinton was not fazed. She breezed through the crisis and the American Media has been extremely kind to her by not raising any awkward question. I always marvel at the utter absence of an adversarial press in US. In India, Freedom of the Press is measure by the adversarial position it takes vis a vis the NDA Government. BJP bashing in general and Narendar Modi trolling in particular have become the bench marks of a free press here in India. Hilary Clinton was not questioned with the same passionate intensity with which Mr Donald Trump is question, over Trump University, for instance. Hilary Clinton thunders against the failed business projects of Trump but does not take any questions over the character, or better still, the lack of it in Mr Bill Clinton. The Monica Lewinsksy Scandal which almost brought the Presidency of BIll Clinton down making him the only President in over a century to be impeached is not brought out to embarrass Hilary Clinton. Imagine the same thing happening here. Impossible. Kumaraswamy, Deve Gowda's son still faces questions over his long term relationship with the starlet, Sandhya.

The two candidates revile each other in a manner that would make bazzar women, exemplars of perfect behaviour. Of  course, I do not mean any disrespect to bazzar women who are certainly better behaved than these two. Crooked Hilary has become the given name of Hilary Rodham Clinton and that has to be said with a vicious smirk. And Clinton cannot be out done: Trump will bankrupt USA like his casinos. The Press does not badger Hilary over her false statement made over the attack on the American Ambassador in Libya but hounds Mr Trump for his Tax Returns and he wards off the searching prying questions by saying that he is under audit, a statement that is at best half true. On the Orlando tragedy Trump has been quite honest even at the cost of political correctness. He has blamed Islamic terrorism for the attack, while Hilary taking her cue from Hussein Obama soft pedals the whole Islamic aspect of the tragedy. Trump has been consistently been saying that immigration from terrorism infested countries needs to be put on hold. And that is certainly a step that cannot be faulted and to make him sound like a dangerous demagogue for stating the obvious is certainly disingenuous.

The American elections are fun to watch. And certainly we hope that the Americans do not vote for another term in which the failed policies of Obama will continue.

From Orientalism to Academic Hinduphobia: The strange career of the American Approach to Indian Studies

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books American scholars are an intense serious lot. They take their state, their Government, their politics and their society far more seriously than the average Indian scholar. While I disagree with many of them,I retain a lurking sense of admiration for the integrity that they display in their research. I graduated with a Ph D in History from one of the leading Public/State Universities in the US and had the good fortune to be trained by a Historian who is rated as one of the leading scholars of the last century. Having said this, I must reflect on the recent controversy stirred by by Rajiv Malhotra in his various publications particularly his highly polemical book, The Battle for Sanskrit. An attack on Sheldon Pollock for his rather asinine political views is one thing, but a concerted attempt at delegitimizing his valuable contribution to early Indian History is an entirely different issue. I too find the collective petitions by YS based academics on the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi extremely patronizing and an affront to Indias dignity. The political process in India is of concern only to Indians and the American scholars like Martha Nussbaum, Wendy Diniger, Sheldon Pollock and a host of Jewish American scholars are all quiet when it comes to US crimes in different parts of the world. I have not come across the same sort of rant by these scholars on Israels attack on Palestinians, on the illegal War in Iraq and Syria, the large scale use of drone in slaughtering non white non combatants all over the world. My litany can go one. I am putting these facts across only to draw attention to the fact that US academics are often servitors of power and are quite willing to extend their expertise into sensitive areas of national security and espionage. The posture of moral outage adopted by these scholars is misplaced and we will find it more convincing if the Marthas, the Wendys and others direct their ire at US racialist policies in different parts of the world. Having said this I would like to highlight the contribution of one scholar who is the subject of Rajiv Malhotra's attack, Sheldon Pollock. In the Battle for Sanskrit Rajiv Malhotra, an NRI settled in USA has thundered against Sheldon Pollock and has tried to link Language of the Gods in the World of Men to a whole host of poltically sensitive questions. He accuses Pollock of arguing that India is the spiritual home of Nazism. This is quite absurd and nowhere does Pollock make that claim except to suggest that the notion of Aryan was introduced into Europe through the Western Indological scholarship. Pollock is too sophisticated a historian to make such a crude argument: Arya on well born is not the same as Aryan and therefore India is in no way responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust. By making this sort of claim, Malhotra undermines his otherwise well researched work. If his argument is that US academics are uncomfortable with the idea of a strong, vibrant India then he is not wrong. And that has to do with US strategic and geo political interests. Is Pollock saying that Sanskrit is irredeemably a language of oppression and exclusion. The answer to this question is far more nuanced than what Malhotra admits. True, like Latin, Sanskrit too was associated with a courtly culture marinated in oppression, caste purity, rituals of power etc. A language is only an instrument and does not carry the burden of sin associated with the speakers of the language. English is the language of slave traders, conquerors and the like but that does not make us reluctant to use it. Nowhere does Pollock make an explicit link between language and social structure. However, a profound question lies at the heart of the book under discussion. Why did Sanskrit reemerge in the sixth century as the language of prasastis, public eulogies and courtly literature at the same moment in time when vernacular cultures became more assertive. This question is important and an analysis of the mutual relationship between marga and desi is an interesting exercise. Now is raising critical questions a form of Hinduphobia. I have left out Wendy Doniger from my discussion as I find her work stupid and trashy. Her publishers rightly decided to pulp her work. However even she has a piece of research that is actually quite good, a study of the problem of evil in Indian thought. If we reject her approach we are left only with David Shulman and his work. I personally feel that while US scholars are rather politically motivated in the way they, at the instigation of Indian Left Liberals started bad mouthing the Hon ble Prime Minister of India, it would be wrong to throw the baby with the bath water. American scholarship is awe inspiring in many significant ways and if US scholars need to retain their legitimacy, it would behove them not to fall victim to the political machinations of third rate Indian scholars in Universities such as Delhi, JNU and others.

Massacre of the Innocents: Killing Animals in Zoos, a crime

See the majestic animal. Can anyone imagine such an animal to die for the negligence of humans. A harrowing tragedy took place in Cincinnati Zoo a few days back when this magnificent creature was shot, six bullets pumped into his back. He was there only because human beings captured him from the rain forests of Africa, shipped him to America where he spent 17 years of his life behind the bars of a Zoo. No fault of his. Just to entertain gawking crowds of men, women and children. Zoo were set up to entertain humans and are symbols of the enslavement of animals to the will of man and in this the incident in Cincinnati Zoo is not different from the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. In a similar incident in Chile two African lions were killed because a demented man bent on committing suicide entered their cage and the lions seem to have attacked him. The fact is that the Zoo used unreasonable force to kill the animals when the lions could very easily have been tranquilized and even if that was not possible, who are we to  determine that the life of a demented man is more valuable than

The Asssembly Polls and the Political Implications

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books The BJP led NDA Government was assailed by the Opposition on a number of issues. The Congress led by Rahul Gandhi tried to stir the youth into rebellion by fomenting trouble in different campuses following the suicide of Rohit Vemula in Hyderabad Central University. The rise of anti national pro secessionist hoodlums like Kannaiya in JNU stirred the Opposition for some time and men like D Raja, Sitaram, Karat and others could steal National Television exposure in which they could froth for hours on end about Modi. The fact remains that the Economy is picking up and inflation inlow though unemployment still remains a major concern. The Reserve Bank of India under Governor Raguhram Rajan is constantly increasing the interest rates thereby preventing industrial activity from picking up. Except for these minor glitches there seems to be order all around. The just concluded Assembly Elections in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam West Bengal and Pondicherry marks an important shift in Indian political spectrum. In Kerala, the Left Democratic Front consisting of the two Communist factions and a clutch of local parties has come to power. Significantly the vote share of both alliances has fallen and BJP's O Rajagopalan has won a seat in the Kerala Assembly for the first time. He is a senior leader of the BJP who served in the Vajpayee Cabinet. Even in the May 2014 Lok Sabha polls he led in 4 out of 7 assembly segments in Trvandrum and the Congress Party which fielded Sashi Tharoor who is in the news over the murder of his wife Sunanda, was able to scrape though only with a surge of support from the Catholic Church. The vote share of the BJP has crossed 12% and this means that the final frontier or bastion of anti BJP elements has been breached. In neighboring Tamil Nadu as I predicted in my tweet, AIADMK swept to power or rather proved the pollsters wrong by bucking the anti incumbency wave. The reason for AIADMK's success in spite of the lack luster administrative performance is beacause of the slew of populist measures undertaken by Jayalalithaa. The so called AMMA canteens, pharmacies and other such outfits have evoked a huge response from the electorate. The DMK which is neck deep in Corruption, with karunanidhi's daughter having spent time in jail due to the involvement in the 2G Spectrum Scandal along with A Raja tried to focus on the alleged corruption of Jayalalithaa. This diversionary tactic did not yield results and she romped home with a slightly diminished vote percentage. The triangular fight in Tamil Nadu certainly helped AIADMK as it split the anti incumbency vote and DDMK of Vijay Kanth came a cropper in the election. Stalin shrewdly tried to project the old Geezer as the Chif Ministerial candidate, but the electorate was not impressed with this ploy.And the feud in the dynastic fascist family did not help the DMK either as Azhagiri the elder son of Karunanidhi tacitly worked for the AIADMK. In West Bengal, mamta Banerjee survived the Sharada Chit Fund Scam and all the important names involved in the scam have been returned to the Assembly. This is not to say that the people of West Bengal do not care for the honesty and intergity of the political class. It is just that the memory of the 35 years of fascist Left rule is so terrible that even Mamth's scam tainted regime shines by comparison. The BJP has increased the vote base in West Bengal and has secured 9 seats. The release of the Netaji Files do not seem to have had a major impact in the election. The Alliance with the Congress has hurt the CPM as they now show sighs of terminal decline. Mamtha led a corrupt scam tainted Government but the people of West Bengal have no choice. In Assam, the Congress was playing with fire by encouraging illegal immigration from the neighboring Bangla Desh thereby hoping to create a captive elctoral blck for itself. The BJP campaigned against this subversion of the Constitution and even the local Assamese Muslims have voted for the BJP thereby disproving the theory that Muslims are afraid of voting the BJP. The Congress by fanning the flames of minority identity politics thought that the Muslim population of Assam and the marginalized tribal Bodos will vote for the Party. The fact is that BJP has won the Assemply elections in Assam and thereby acquiring a foothold in the North East. The BJP can now look forward to the Assembly elections in UP and Punjab that are due next year.

Caste and "Honour Killings" in Tamil Nadu: Dravidian Parties are encouraging caste violence

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books One of the many myths surrounding Tamil politics is that the Dravidian Movement launched by the Justice Party and later taken over by E V Ramaswamy Naikkar was a progressive and socially inclusive movement. Nothing is further from the truth. Like the Nazi Movement in Germany, the Dravidian Movement too targeted one ethnic group, the Brahmins for sustained persecution. During the course of nearly a century of Dravidian rule, Brahmins have been virtually eliminated from public life. There is no Brahmin MP elected after R Venkataraman. Even the election of Dr Subramaniam Swamy was due to the support of the AIADMK. The domination of the BC caste which are essentially land owning and socially opposed to SC assertion is reinforced by the politics of Tamil Nadu which is controlled by the Dravidian parties whose social base consists of the Vanniyars, the Mukkolothor, the Yadavas and the like. The Sc communities, the Pariahs and the Pallans do not find space in this coalition. In fact, the SC leaders tend to adopt the same strategy to reach out to their constituents as the mainstream Dravidian parties: adoption of an exaggerated sense of devotion to the imagined community of Tamils and their pristine past and their great classical heritage. By espousing the cause of Tamil Language and its alleged "antiquity"the Dravidian parties succeeded in gaining political legitimacy and electoral acceptance. The same strategy is being adopted by the parties which aim at the protection of SC rights and constitutional status. The killing of the Dalit man, Shankar who had married a Tevar girl has sent shock waves all over Tamil Nadu. This killing comes close on the heels of the murder of Elavarasan who was murdered for marrying a Vanniyar girl in Dharmapuri nearly 2 years back. Another Dalit man, Gokulraj was killed for having an "affair" with a Gounder girl near Tiruchegode in Salem District. After these killings we have the brutal hacking of Shankar by a five member gang which attached the couple after they stepped out of a shopping complex in Tiruppur. the garment capital of Tamil nadu. Apparently the girls family had opposed the marriage but the girl went ahead and married Shankar. In spite of repeated calls to the police no protection was offered to the young couple. There have been several instances of Brahmin girls marrying dalit boys and also other social groups. It is a matter of record that there has not been a single instance of "honour' killing in such cases. While the family m,ay not be very enthusiastic about the marriage, the Brahmin families show much greater tolerance. It is clear that caste violence is generally practiced by the Back ward castes and such acts of violence are generally not investigated. The Dravidian parties by encouraging the ideology of caste are in a state of denial as their politics breeds violence just as the Nazi ideology remained inherently genocidal. Indian liberals are somehow avers to accepting the link between caste based political assertion of identity and honour killing in India.

JNU Crisis and the "Idea of India" Debate

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books Jawaharlal Nehru University has been in the news for the week long student agitaion in which the leaders of the JNUSU, Shri Kannaiya Krishna and others seem to have raised slogans in favour of Afzal Guru who was executed for his role in the Parliament Attack. The electronic media, particularly NDTV and CNN-IBN have been screaming against the Central Government as though a great atrocity has happened in the University. No democratically elected Government can allow a University to glorify terrorists who have been found guilty by the highest court in the land. The video of the Press Club meet also shows a few women students shouting slogans calling for ther "barbadi" of India, destruction of India. Such barbarous attacks are not in any way related the the "Idea of India" or justified under the freedom of expression granted by the Constitution. JNU over the years has morphed into a training ground for extremists who carry their anti India attitude as a badge of honour. Right from the beginning of the University, successive Congress regimes have turned the University into a sanctuary for pro Left and pro Congress academics who justied their patronage by the State on the ground that their politics is "secular" and "anti communal". When the agitation for the Babri Mosque Issue was taking place the Department of History, of JNU issued a "fatwa" to the entire historical community stating that Rama was only a legendary character and there can be no debate on his historicity. As is often the case with JNU historians, they tried to rearrange the terms of the debate to suit their own ideological interests. No one claimed that Rama was a historical character. The debate was only on a historical fact: Did a temple exist at the site of the famous Mosque. There is no doubt now that there was indeed a Mosque and after the destruction of the domes on December 6th 1992, archaeological evidence came to light about the existence of a Vishnu temple at that site. Sir Alexander Cunningham in his Report had also drawn attention to the presence of Hindu temple pillars near the famous mosque. The fact is that JNU has been participating in high decibel controversies without much regard for the truth or evidence. Communalism is invoked as a blanket term to justify any kind of political programme, in much the same manner as the Nazi used the doctrine of racial purity. Considerations of ethics and politics are all brushed aside when an issue is labeled "communal" and the definition of what constitute communal is known only to the high priests of JNU. The ethnic cleansing of Pundits and ther large scale destruction of the life and property of Pundits from Kashmir does not constitute an atrocity in the definition of the Teachers and Students of JNU. Selective outrage and well calibrated attacks is the hall mark of JNU. I have not heard of a single protest in JNU relating to the massacre of the Sikhs organized by the Congress Party in 1984. This double standard itself exposes the hollowness of JNU claim that it represents the voice of the Indian youth. Rahul Gandhi has had some success in instigating the students on Hyderabad Central University and JNU because these"academic spaces" to use the post colonial labels of our fashionable JNU crew are already pro Congress. During the Emergency which the Congress regime under Indira Gandhi imposed, there was not a squeak of protest from JNU. In short, JNU is a pro Congress institution and it is only indulging in political gimmicky now. Unfortunately, the Narendra Modi Government for reasons best know to itself is not acting decisively. The entire Nation is appalled at the anti national activities taking place on the Campus. When question, the "intellectuals" of JNU will use post colonial labels like, Nation is only an Imagined Community. Yes, if the nation exists only in the Imagination, then everyone has the right to re imagine the Nation and pursue politics that is in tune with their changed perceptions. However, JNU has been imposing its version of Nationalism on the entire Nation. In Indian Universities, History Departments are dominated by JNU trained historians. These men and women do not allow any debate on crucial aspects of Indian history as their Manichean division between Secular and Communal Historiography is inherently anti intellectual and anti free thought. To give an example: No meaningful debate has yet happened on Partition and the complicity of the Congress in the tragic events of 1947. Similarly, no meaningful debate has happened on Nehru's misguided policy toward China which led to the War of 1962. The freedom stops when searching questions about India's past is raised. Even on the whole issue of the Arya/ Dravidian Dichotomy in India, historians like M S S Pandian who taught in the Center for Historical Studies conveniently drew sustenance from such divisive ideologies. It is time to take stock and prevent JNU from Talibanizing India by imposing its politicall charged and divisive Idea of India.