Happy Birthday Vajpayee!

Happy Birthday Vajpayee!
published youthejournalist.com on December 26 and December 282007 By : Premchand Sahajwala
After listening to the discourse of Krishna in the battle of Mahabharata, Arjuna finally told Krishna: Na Dainyam Na Palayanam (I shall neither fear nor escape.) This is the title of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s collection of poems first published in Nov. 1998 when he had completed just 8 months as prime minister after the mid-term elections that year.

While any BJP leader or ordinary worker may proudly say that Vajpayee is the only non-Congress PM to complete a full five years term, it will be better to talk about Vajpayee without binding him into any party frame, the more suitable way being, to see him as the leader of the masses, nay matinee idol. His ‘Sinh Garjana’ (Lion’s roar) and his spotless pure poetry, both rule over the hearts of Indians; it may be difficult which one to chose, the roaring lion or the nationalistic poet!

In the title poem ‘Na Dainyam Na Palayanam’, he says very proudly that we have given the drops of our sweat to the path of duty but we never stopped in the journey to our destiny nor bowed before any challenge! He describes India in these lines and India only rules his heart.

In 1996 when Vajpayee first took oath as prime minister, the newspapers reported that when he was a newly elected member of Lok Sabha in the 50s, Pandit Nehru introduced him to a foreign dignitary, saying ‘Meet the future prime minister of India’! In one of his articles, Mani Shankar Aiyyar, currently a minister in Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, too wrote pleasantly that while Aiyyar himself was new in the parliament, he would at times rush excitedly to the house on hearing that Atal Behari Vajpayee was soon going to begin his speech there.

Vajpayee was first elected to Lok Sabha in 1957 from Balrampur constituency after an earlier defeat in a 1955 bye-election and by virtue of his oratory he won the hearts of even his adversaries. The people of India were happy to learn that this young man began his political career as an assistant to Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookherji, the founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS). Vajpayee would soon become a craze for his fans, anxious always to hear his ‘Sinh Garjana’ at Delhi’s Ramlila Ground or in other cities mainly of UP or MP. His sense of humour would add to the charm of the speech focusing on the current problems of India and failures of the Congress. The posters informing about his public meeting at any place would show his photograph punching his fist forcefully into the sky with the caption reading – Atal ji ki Sinh Garjana’ (Atal’s Lion’s roar). People would leave all necessary work and excitedly rush to the venue of the speech by whichever conveyance available. Those were the years when democracy in India was still at a fledgling level with India’s defeat at the hands of China in 1962 war coming like a rude shock to the people.

Indians learnt for the first time what a ‘No Confidence Motion’ meant and the talk of first such motion by Acharya Kripalani, Minoo Masani and Dr Lohia against the government after debacle in the China war was the first hot talk of democracy, which the Indian educated masses enjoyed. After defeat from Congress’s Subhadra Joshi in 1962 Lok Sabha elections, Vajpayee was elected to the Rajya Sabha and any one in the Rajya Sabha could enjoy hearing a cool, attacking and confident Vajpayee saying firmly to Nehru that your non-alignment policy is a fiasco, you should, as such, refuse to go to attend the forthcoming international disarmament meet! Making Violet Alva, the then Deputy Chairperson in Rajya Sabha, smile while she was in control of the house, he would jokingly say, I shall just speak another five minutes when Alva would point out to him that his time was already over.

Once, many years later, as PM, Vajpayee said in New Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium on an International Literacy Day that he was not habitual of delivering a small speech. This made the audience burst laughs with love for their loved leader Vajpayee. The fact of the matter is that when people heard Vajpayee, they never wanted him to end the speech and would rather enjoy an endless humorous speech throwing light on India’s current situation in his own fantastic way.

Vajpayee’s real political journey began when Indira Gandhi became India’s PM in 1966. Two leaders were always at Indira Gandhi’s centre of nerves, Dr Lohia and Atal Behari Vajpayee. While Dr Lohia would question Indira Gandhi even as she left the parliament in between his speech, Indira Gandhi would explain nervously that some foreign dignitary had arrived, she had to leave on getting a slip message. Vajpayee would suddenly make the house laugh by drawing Indira Gandhi’s attention to the fact that two women members Maitreyi Devi and Tarakeshwari Sinha had abruptly got up during his speech and started brick batting words at each other, now who would hear his speech, a novice Indira Gandhi would simply smile at such a friendly way of seeking her help. Lohia was the one to point out to Indira Gandhi that her car had violated red light signal at a certain point on a road, Indira Gandhi would humbly request Lohia to see reason and realize that a prime minister’s position was peculiar when she was short of time. Lohia once even questioned Indira Gandhi why she deposited in the Reserve Bank, a necklace gifted to her at Saudi Arabia after three weeks instead of the constitutionally permitted two weeks! Those were the days of oratory and unlike today’s unpleasant scenario of rushing to the speaker’s well, the members concentrated on substance as well as humour, to maintain dignity of the house as well as a friendly atmosphere. Lohia died tragically on 12 Oct 1967 after a life and death battle in New Delhi, the nation lost a strong parliamentarian hereafter.

But Vajpayee kept the show going on. He delivered a lion’s roar after furious riots in Bhiwandi saying that the riots had taken place on petty insignificant excuses. He was perhaps at that time too, one of the very few secularists of his communal party but he told an audience of not less than five lakh people at Delhi’s Ramlila ground that some beetle leaf eating Hindu passers by had spitted on the outer side of the mosque walls. But when he visited the said mosque after the riots along with some Muslim devotees, he went inside the mosque with them. He questioned the devotees that there were red spit marks even on the inner side of the mosque walls. The devotees would tell him at this point that some Muslim devotees too ate beetle leaves and spitted on the walls inside! Vajpayee would not raise such points to pinpoint only the Muslim tendency to dispute the Hindus. He would rather make it clear that being a Hindu was no license for being secular or a peace loving Indian.

In the later decades when his party took an unfortunate turn through LK Advani’s ill-conceived Rath-Yatra, he would visit Gujarat and shame those Hindus who would chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’ bursting their throats but not concentrate on any genuine work of the nation. Perhaps Vajpayee would be wondering how the Hindu pride could have a stronger bearing on a person than the pride of being an Indian!

Vajpayee was a close friend of Morarji Desai and some say that when Morarji Desai’s government fell, in which Vajpayee was the minister of external affairs, he was inspired by the name Janata Party and named his new party the Bharatiya Janata Party. The close friendship between Vajpayee and Morarji would also create humorous situations when once the duo visited Russia together. Morarji Desai was the strict disciplinarian, strictly against drinking and as such would deliver a lecture to Indian students in Moscow preaching them not to drink under any circumstances. The students after the speech and during a refreshment interval would ask Vajpayee that in such cold environs, how could they help drinking, Vajpayee would wink friendly at the students and say – piyo, piyo. khoob piyo (drink drink. As much you like).

Once Vajpayee said in an interview to the Hindi weekly Dharmayuga, that he had said somewhere in a lighter vein that he was fond of ‘Rasgullas’ (a sweet), and the effect was that at one place where he went to deliver a speech, a full room was packed with baskets containing ‘Rasgullas’. His fans and workers would not miss a chance to please their favorite leader.

Vajpayee formed his new party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 6 Apr. 1980. He did away with communalism for which his party was off and on cursed. When the Morarji government was on the verge of falling, he moved heaven-earth as a leader to save the falling government. He entered spirited discussions with leaders of all parties and in the process of working day and night to save the government from falling, he himself fell on the floor of parliament’s central hall, became unconscious for sometime! He had offered to Morarji Desai that if his government was being questioned for the communal credentials of the Janata Party’s BJS faction, all BJS members would resign immediately from the government and support it from outside. Sacrifice is the jewel of all nationalistic leaders and Vajpayee could not be an exception. The government could somehow not be saved and Chowdhry Charan Singh was lured by Indira Gandhi to topple Morarji, though at an opportune time, Indira Gandhi toppled Chowdhry Charan Singh too!

Vajpayee never strayed from national interests. When Indira Gandhi liberated Bangladesh from the brutal Pakistani Army and ambitious politician Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Vajpayee was the first to greet her despite being an opposition leader. He congratulated her saying – Aap ne mujh se kaha tha ki aap jo karma chahti hain use kar dikhaati hain aur sachmuch, aap ne kar ke dikkhaya (You had told me that whatever you decide to do, you do, and really you did it!).

Once, Vajpayee was roaring in the parliament and this time interestingly, not against Indira Gandhi, but in favor of her on a peculiar issue. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto had said in an interview to some foreign journal that at Oxford, Indira Gandhi had the record of just being a mediocre and at times she would nervously seek notes from others. Vajpayee took exception to such an interview winning admiration from all in the house, irrespective of party affiliations, by saying that leaders of our country may oppose their prime minister democratically, but under no circumstances could they bear another country’s leader casting aspersions on India’s prime minister; she should immediately send a protest note to Pakistan government. But Indira Gandhi herself said friendly to him that she had decided to better ignore such utterances by outside leaders!

Vajpayee introduced the phrase ‘Positive Secularism’ in the constitution of his newly formed party. He also took in the party, a secularist leader Ram Jethmalani and a Muslim leader Sikandar Bakht. The RSS, whose workers were on record of having indulged in rowdism at Sikandar Bakht’s marrying a Hindu woman, felt offended at this. But in fact these two leaders were the ones to pen down the constitution of BJP along with a traditional leader Sunder Singh Bhandari. The RSS chief Balasaheb Deoras was interestingly with Indira Gandhi in those days.

Indira Gandhi had suddenly found a new wisdom on becoming prime minister again in 1980. She felt that the Hindu vote bank of the country was always a force that sabotaged Congress’s chances under RSS influence. As such the best course for her second innings would be to go the Hindu way under Balasaheb Deoras’s tutelage. This meant that Indira Gandhi and Vajpayee in reality exchanged positions and treaded new roads. The friendship between Indira Gandhi and Deoras originated to days of Emergency when the RSS was banned and Deoras sent from jail a series of letters to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi requesting her to relieve the RSS workers jailed during the Emergency. Indira Gandhi relieved them and Deoras praised Indira Gandhi’s much-publicized 20-point programme on TV. Deoras therefore became a tutor of Indira Gandhi’s new incarnation, a politician treading Hindutva. Deoras condemned Bhindranwale for playing separatism in his so called ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and in the killing of Bhindranwale in the Operation Blue Star, Deoras’s morally supporting shadow was fully behind Indira Gandhi. This was also a way to humiliate Vajpayee who was now, according to him, a spoiled leader, who had gone secular.

But Indira Gandhi was unfortunately, assassinated on 31 Oct. 1984. North India saw indiscriminate killings of innocent Sikhs and some Congress leaders of Delhi were being suspected as the perpetrators of these deadly killings. But Deoras’s Hindu Rashtra’ sentiments and support for Congress continued to live even in the post-killing elections of 1984 and Vajpayee had virtually gone into oblivion. His BJP got only two seats in these elections! Deoras appealed to the voters on the eve of elections that they should vote for pro-Hindutva candidates irrespective of party affiliations and the country saw the RSS workers helping Congress candidates wherever they felt that the candidate had even slightly communal inclinations. In Rohtak, the RSS workers weighed a Congress candidate with coins and in Delhi’s Karol Bagh constituency; Congress’s Sundervati Naval Prabhakar got elected on the shoulders of the RSS workers. Vajpayee himself faced miserable defeat in Gwalior from Madhav Rao Scindia and had to wait for two years to become Rajya Sabha member.

Vajpayee’s tough days began actually when Advani, given newly the charge of the BJP by RSS, suddenly began his Rath Yatra. The nation came in the grip of hatred and Hindu-Muslim divide, and for once it appeared that India’s history was going to be re-written by Lal Krishna Advani, Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s post-independence Indian incarnation.

The secularist Vajpayee must have felt discomfiture in such a scenario and somehow, he must have existed in the party of discipline as he had himself christened it to be. Discipline was first and foremost in Vajpayee-founded BJP as it was in Mookherji-founded BJS. During the Rath Yatra, Vajpayee could have held in his possession with agony only, a letter of withdrawal of support to the new PM VP Singh which he was to hand over to president if LK Advani’s Rath of hatred was stopped or he was arrested. VP Singh, who became PM after 1989 elections was supported from outside by BJP.

Deoras ditched Rajiv this time, and discovered the new blue boy L K Advani, who within a year ditched VP Singh in the name of Hindu unity since the latter had raised the bogey of reservations to OBCs on the basis of Mandal recommendations. The nation was now reeling under a wave of hostilities when the Rath was running across ten states to reach Ayodhya, the birthplace of Hindu deity Rama, where the first Mughal king Babar had supposedly demolished a temple and built a mosque known as Babri mosque. But Advani was arrested in Bihar by the then chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s government and Vajpayee had to hand over the letter of withdrawal of support to VP Singh’s government.

For some years the country had virtually forgotten Vajpayee and some sections of the Hindus especially the upper caste were cramming entirely a new language. They were talking of Hindu rights in this ’Hindu Rashtra’ which according to them was living in danger as there were Muslim countries all around India! The people knew for the first time the meaning of Uniform Civil Code, and that Article 370 was the sin which Congress had committed; that the Congress was appeasing the Muslims and so on.

Hereafter, the course of events was very dangerous for India and on 6 December 1992 came the most shameful day of Indian history after independence. Babri mosque was demolished by RSS VHP and Shiv Sena and the division between Hindus and Muslims was virtually complete. But the nation soon saw the disillusionment that followed in the BJP circles especially after the 1993 elections in 4 states namely UP, MP, HP and Rajasthan. Communalism was virtually defeated and Advani’s BJP lost three states, UP MP and HP; in Rajasthan, a political look alike of Vajpayee, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat somehow managed to form a government with the help of some independents.

This disillusionment with the communal policies of the BJP also created dichotomy in the party, one secular faction being behind the back of Vajpayee and the other communal faction behind Advani though the latter posed to be a bridge between his party and the RSS, the self-styled ideological boss of the party as well as the cadre supplier.

Come elections 1991, and Vajpayee found a new political friend in the new PM PV Narasimha Rao who wanted to lead the country through economic reforms. Vajpayee’s first collection of poems ‘Meri Ikyavan Kavitayen’ (My 51 poems) was interestingly inaugurated by Narasimha Rao in 1995 and Narasimha Rao’s political novel ‘The Insider’ was inaugurated by Vajpayee.

Vajpayee thus found more friends in other parties and lived like a stranger many times in his own party. He in fact never failed to rule the hearts of his political opponents so that Somnath Chatterji had to comment once that ‘Vajpayee is good, but his party is bad.’ In the inauguration of ‘Meri Ikyavan Kavitayen’ Narasimha Rao commented that in politics, a Guru is always required and Vajpayee seems to be the right Guru. But Vajpayee wittingly said during his speech that a Guru is not required as much as a Guru Ghantaal (A clever Guru)!

Vajpayee is not only a friend of friends and enemies both, but at times, he displays excellent social culture in his political circle. This became evident when he, as an opposition leader was invited along with virtually all-political leaders, to the marriage ceremony of Madhav Rao Scindia’s daughter. Madhav Rao Scindia was then the Railway minister. The leaders greeted Madhav Rao in the ceremony, blessed the couple, rejoiced and left after dinner. But extremely busy Madhav Rao saw quite late that all leaders had gone but it was Vajpayee who was sitting peacefully somewhere on a sofa and chatting with someone. Madhav Rao was surprised. He rushed respectfully to Vajpayee and asked him whether he had his dinner. Vajpayee would humbly say with a smile that a bride’s relatives never take dinner so soon. I am from the bride’s side, so I shall have dinner at the end along with you the hosts! Madhav Rao could really not help embracing this nationalistic opponent friend who valued even customs of society as much as the political customs!

Narasimha Rao found an excellent political friend in Vajpayee, irrespective of the latter’s being an opposition leader. When Benazir Bhutto, the then prime minister of Pakistan, had suddenly raised in the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the question of human rights- violation in Kashmir proposing a resolution against India on the subject, Vajpayee went to the UNHRC as leader of the Indian delegation. He made clear to the world at large, that the Indian political system was a cohesive one on matters of national integrity. Vajpayee firmly asked the world dignitaries at the UNHRC meet ‘Which is the country that takes more care of the minorities than India. Ours is the country that has had Presidents, Vice Presidents, Army Chiefs and Chief Justices belonging to the minorities. So there was no reason to panic on the question of human rights and minorities in India. Benazir had to bite the dust and her resolution was miserably defeated, with hardly one or two countries supporting it.


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As Prime Minister, Narasimha Rao proved to be more a man of governance than a mass leader. The dynasty was virtually absent from politics as Sonia had ensconced herself into family life. But to Advani, in spite of the ruling Congress’s gradual weakening as a political party, power didn’t seem to be like a cakewalk for him.

The Vajpayee faction virtually started hating Advani who miraculously saved himself from hooting at a BJP session in Mumbai in 1995. He came to know that a section of Vajpayee fans were preparing to hoot him when his turn to speak came. He went to the stage on announcement of his name, the hooters readying their throats for the purpose, but Advani deftly gave them a happy shock by announcing in the first sentences of his speech that in the elections of 1996, BJP would project Vajpayee as prime ministerial candidate! The hooters felt bowled! But interestingly, some sections of media later reported that Advani’s projection of Vajpayee was his momentary attempt to save humiliation for himself and he did not mean what he said; some even felt that he had started repenting.

In the elections of 1996, BJP got about 161 seats and this increase could clearly be attributed to the appearance of Vajpayee as the new blue boy of the BJP and also disappearance of Narasimha Rao from politics.

Somehow, Vajpayee became prime minister in the style of ‘Uncle Podder hangs a picture!’ All corners of the political system were cursing his minority government as the one led by a communal party which had done the sin of alienating the Muslims, creating bloodshed and thus partitioning the country from inside.

The word ‘communal’ became a pet abuse for the BJP. Advani gasped for breath and begged support from every this and that party but after 13 days, Vajpayee voluntarily proceeded to submit his resignation to the president in the midst of a very hostile debate of seeking vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha. Vajpayee resigned even before waiting for the voting. But did Vajpayee pass these 13 days comfortably? Perhaps no. He appointed Jaswant Singh as finance minister and was shouted at by the so-called big brother, the RSS who dictated to him that Jaswant Singh could not become finance minister just because they didn’t want him to be!

Today the BJP leaders talk of a remote control in Sonia’s UPA government and keep calling names to Manmohan Singh that she is the one to controls him remotely. But there could not have been a more brazen example of RSS’ subjugating a prime minister who was respected by all sections of peoples in the country.

Vajpayee, as prime minister, was always pulled in different directions. When he became prime minister third time after the 1999 elections, his power minister Suresh Prabhu was a Shiv Sena member. Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray constantly pulled Suresh Prabhu to do some favor to Maharashtra which the latter could not have done as he was now a minister at centre. Now Balasaheb wanted Suresh Prabhu’s head. Vajpayee told him that the minister was doing commendable work in the power sector, but Balasaheb won’t listen. Vajpayee didn’t have the freedom to retain even a minister for his merits.

Conscientious judgment can only condemn the fact that a prime minister is summoned whenever required by to the Delhi office of the RSS at Jhandewalan! A prime minister waiting at Jhandewalan to be called in by the RSS chief for instructions! In the later years, the RSS started seeking the head of Vajpayee’s foreign affairs advisor Brijesh Mishra because the latter would not permit the RSS dignitaries many a time to meet Vajpayee in the PMO.

Vajpayee had to seek support from politically un-sensible women like J Jayalalitha. Many felt that the nuclear tests by Vajpayee’s NDA government in 1998 were preceded by tensions from Jayalalitha and it could easily be judged that these tests were a hysterically conceived political urgency to prepare for elections if Jayalalitha toppled the government. Interestingly when the ‘Buddha was smiling’, a ballet based on a Vajpayee poem against nuclear weapons was being staged at Delhi’s Mandi House. Some lines of one of his poems Hiroshima kee peeda’ (‘The Agony of Hiroshima’) from the collection ‘Meri Ikyavan Kavitayen’ may not be out of context here:

Some night,
my sleep gets suddenly disturbed,
my eyes open,
and I start thinking,
how the scientists who invented the atomic weapons,
could sleep after hearing
the deadly news of the mass deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

One infers without mistake that the poet’s honest and innocuous heart felt broken even on re-living in imagination, the saga of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Vajpayee bequeathed an India in which, as prime minister he had to go to the Safdurjung Hospital of New Delhi to bless India’s billionth baby named Aastha. Holding the baby in his hands he had to express Aastha (hope) that the children of India would live a prosperous life. Once, during his initial years when he was beginning to be popular, some Welfare officers visited him for comments on family planning. Vajpayee laughed a hearty laugh and said, who could do better family planning than him. He never married!

Interestingly Vajpayee didn’t marry but when he became prime minister, unmarried women politicians like Uma Bharati, Jayalalitha, Mayawati and Mamta Bannerji always put him to some sort of challenge or discomfiture!

Maverick Uma would suddenly decide to change her constituency from Khajuraho where many had started hating her, to Ujjain. She would put excuses in TV interviews that the roads of Khajuraho were bumpy-jumpy and she could not travel in jeeps to campaign there, due to backache. Mayawati ditched Vajpayee most when in 1999, in the ‘No Confidence Motion’ debate against Vajpayee’s government, she informed the house in her speech that her party would vote for neither side but later exhibiting a lot of delight, said on TV that Vajpayee’s government fell because her five MPs voted against his government. One remembers painfully that Vajpayee’s government lost the vote by just one!

Vajpayee’s biggest moment of embarrassment came when Pakistan’s comparatively modernized dictator President and Army Chief Gen. Parvez Musharraf visited India in 2001.

The nation saw that on 14 July 2001, when Musharraf and Vajpayee were on the verge of making a workable agreement at Agra on Kashmir and other issues, sabotaging signals suddenly came from what we call the hawks in the Indian political system. It is not necessary even to point out who exactly triggered this last minute failure, but Musharraf says with agony in his autobiography ‘In The Line of Fire’ that a final draft was ready, he had just sought interval to change dress and come back to sign it during the dinner, but alas, when he came, his foreign minister informed him that now everything was destroyed. Musharraf clearly names Advani as the hawk to sabotage the deal. Subsequently Vajpayee once again said very spiritedly in the Lok Sabha that he would make the sincerest efforts of his life to solve the Kashmir tangle and at least that would be the last effort of his own life. But during his premiership that didn’t happen.

Come 2002. A new name Narendra Modi suddenly started lurking in the sky. Muslims of Gujarat were massacred brutally and even women were not spared. A pregnant woman was stabbed and burning clothes were forced into her stabbed belly. The massacres followed an incident at Godhra railway stations on 27 Feb 2002, where 58 Kar Sevaks (religious workers) returning from Ayodhya in the Sabarmati Express were burnt alive by setting on fire their compartment following some dispute at the station.

Narendra Modi the chief minister of Gujarat became an internationally hated name even in the UN Assembly and the US Congress. The nation was virtually dumbstruck as TV channels were showing furious scenes of burning houses and men-women, by mobs carrying lathis, petroleum, kerosene, and other weapons.

Vajpayee must have been hurt as much as Gandhi used to be on such occasions. He summoned an urgent meeting of important leaders and called for removing Narendra Modi. But Advani wont let it be. Narendra Modi, as Advani recently said was like a Hitler whom perhaps many ideologues of the RSS and BJP worship. Narendra Modi had perhaps, for Advani, reincarnated the Babri demolition days when he had suddenly hoped to tread the corridors of power as prime minister of India.

The Ayodhya episode had virtually lived its share and when the famous saint of Ayodhya, Ramchandra Das Paramhans died later, the VHP brazenly cursed Vajpayee that a 90-year old saint had died due to the prime minister’s ignoring the saint’s desire for building a temple at the Babri site. Perhaps for Advani the destruction of the Muslims in Gujarat was a repeat of the destruction of the Babri mosque and also that Narendra Modi was the new symbol who would extend the so called Hindu Laboratory of Gujarat to the whole of India.

One cannot forget a virtually broken prime minister standing helplessly and in a state of shock at the Shah Alam Camp of Gujarat where riot victims were made to camp. Vajpayee in tears, asked every one around, how do we burn a living human being? How does our conscience permit us to do so? His tragic face was the tragic face of India at the time; people watching TV channels must have shed helpless tears for the hapless Muslims of Gujarat.

Vajpayee had to see the tragic attack on the parliament during his tenure, the hijacking of the plane and the release of dreaded terrorists as cost of release of the hijacked passengers. The present scenario of the world doesn’t really permit us to feel astonished in disbelief over such ghastly incidents in any country, but Vajpayee must have felt like doing something in such situations. Problems like attack on parliament became now the vicissitude of any country after 9/11.

On the governance side, he once said honestly in a press interview that difficulties in ruling the country were emerging due to BJP’s lack of experience. He kept advising his party members to learn governance more than politics. But his party members kept learning filthy politics and blaming the Congress for faults committed and not committed by it. They felt that Sonia was their sole enemy in the country and started calling her names. Her foreign origin became their mantra, they would not heed to Vajpayee’s advice not to attack her personally. Narendra Modi would utter nonsense in the Lok Sabha elections of 2004. He would say that he asked many people in Gujarat if they needed a steno named Sonia, but everyone refused. That he asked many people whether they would appoint a boy Rahul as driver and every one refused. Vajpayee’s hurt would be of no concern for him.

Vajpayee respects Sonia like a true Indian and Sonia too is sober enough to maintain necessary mannerism, aplomb and decency in her political career. On 13 December 2001 when the parliament was attacked, Vajpayee was starting from his residence to go to the parliament and Sonia had reached home back from the parliament. On getting the shocking news, the two immediately spoke on phone expressing shock and concern on the event and also inquiring about each other’s safety.

Once Salman Khurshid, a prominent Congress leader in UP, smilingly said in a TV interview that Vajpayee is a man of Congress’s secular thinking. It may not therefore be wrong to conclude that his own party has all along estranged this nationalistic leader and one can take the liberty to imagine too, if he had formed a secular party of his own, or been a leader in the Congress. But that is an imagination only. At least, in that case he would not have to give statements like he is first a true ‘Swayamsewak’ or he would not have to say some times that Ayodhya was a national sentiment but after some days criticize Narendra Modi again from some holiday resort. He would never have faced humiliation by his party on return and eat his own words!

The nation salutes Vajpayee for his constant right thinking in the politics of the country and wishes him a happy prosperous and long life on his 83rd birthday on 25 December 2007.

Only freedom of expression can shelter Vibhuti Narain Rai

Only freedom of expression can shelter Vibhuti Narain Rai
Published in youthejournalist.com on August 14, 2010 By : Premchand Sahajwala

Newspapers of 2 Aug 2010 were hot with a news item that the HRD minister Kapil Sibal has taken exception to an interview by Vibhutinarayan Rai, Vice Chancellor of the Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University Wardha, in which the latter said that today’s women writers have started competing with one another to prove that there is no bigger ‘chhinal’ than them (this word has been wrongly translated as ‘prostitute’ by certain English journalists).

Women leaders like Brinda Karat and Girija Vyas approached the minister for stern action against the VC. Among writers too, as I personally verified through numerous phone calls, there is a wave of resentment over the VC’s statement. The first thing I did was to contact Vibhuti Narain Rai himself to know what he might have to say on the matter. He explained that this word he used w.r.t what we call ‘bewafa’ in Urdu language and he said that the word ‘chhinal’ is used more for men in his area rather than for women. However, it was more necessary for me to read the actual interview since VC’s answer was too brief and also the resentment expressed to me by writers was not consistent with the VC’s explanation.

The interview by Vibhuti Narain Rai appears on pp 31-33 in the journal ‘Naya Gyanoday’ edited by prominent Hindi writer Ravindra Kalia and published by India’s biggest publication, the Bharatiya Gyanpeeth which has honored legendary figures like Tarashankar Vandyopadhyaya, Ashapoorna Devi, Agyeya, and many others.

First, that the interview appears in a special issue entitled ‘Bewafai Super Visheshank -2’ of the journal! One could easily gauge the mindset of the editor Ravindra Kalia himself over the phrase ‘Bewafai’ which means unfaithfulness or it can be called ‘adultery’ w.r.t man-woman relation. Ravindra Kalia himself beyond 60 years age, couldn’t have thought of modern phrases like ‘extra-marital relationship’ just as in changing times we now find the TV channels and newspapers abuzz with phrases like ‘pre-marital sex’ or others. The word ‘bewafai’ is too old in this 21st century to discuss sexual relationship between men and women other than their spouses. Says celebrated Hindi novelist Pankaj Visht who had suddenly shot to fame with his novel ‘Lekin Darwaza…’ that naming a special issue as ‘bewafai special’ just shows how feudal is the mindset of the editor Ravindrfa Kalia and it points out to his under-developed personality.

He shouldn’t have been where he currently is’! A quite known Hindi poetess Archana Tripathy quipped that ‘bewafai’ is a generalized word which many people even use w.r.t. their children when they abandon them and friends who deceive them. It couldn’t be specifically related to husband-wife or lover couples. The special issue on this so called ‘bewafai’ looks like de ja vu and has mainly what the magazine says Kaboolnama (Confessions) by writers of yesteryears like Rajendra Yadav, Manu Bhandari, late Kamleshwar, etc. and short stories too of mainly forgotten writers like Gyanranjan, Chitra Mudgal, Abid Surti and others.

It can only be unfortunate that at present, the Hindi story and novel do not possess any specific shape and after the 9th decade, the Hindi literature became too much of an unguarded turf. There has been no specific identity of the short story like we had at one time: the Prem Chand story, the post-Prem Chand story (with luminaries like Jainendra, Agyeya, Renu, and many others), Nai Kahani or the ‘New Story’ (with fashionists or Indian Chekhvs like Mohan Rakesh, Kamleshwar, Rajendra Yadav and others), the post-60 story with literati like Ravindra Kalia himself, Gyanranjan, Govind Mishra, Mamta Kalia and others. There was some recognition of the 8th decade short story which focused on crime and politics. But thereafter the short story lost its space and became more or less a deserted one, rather free for all. The young generation couldn’t make any mark. Anyone who claimed to be writer could take any path to tread and pen down a story irrespective of the contemporary creative values or the technicalities.

Not many reviewers are left now and the tendencies or salient features of the contemporary story have never been underscored to a notable extent. Many poets too, still write poetry which simply laments the disappearance of the earlier scruples as they miserably fail to accept modern ones. Their lamentation for the dead social system does not really come as nostalgia but rather as a formula. The critical condition of Hindi literature of which the notable part is still being written mainly by established senior citizen writers of yesteryears and that too with outdated bents of mind is attributed to the disappearance of Hindi magazines like Dharmayug, Saptahik Hindustan once edited by legendaries like Dr. Dharmaveer Bharati and Manohar Shyam Joshi. But companies like the Bonnet Colman and the Hindustan Times which owned these magazines attribute the death of these magazines to the disappearance of readers. It was said that there are no readers now left to read a story in Dharmayug, Ravivar, Sarika or Saptahik Hindustan. Many (may be rightly) point out that the horizontal story was actually devoured by the vertical one through TV serials.

Under the same outdated mindset is set the interview by Vibhuti Narain Rai to Rakesh Mishra in the just quoted ‘bewafai special’ (read Adultery Special) of Naya Gyanoday.

Vibhuti Narain Rai wants us to understand ‘bewafai’ in the light of the birth of modern religions. On p 32 he says that religions are based on patriarchal power and as such, in every religion the God is a man! He says that the woman is especially treated as ‘bewafa’ by the male chauvinist society. While the desire for sincerity from the spouse can be in both man and woman, the tendency to deceive and acquire the ‘other’ can also exist in both. Man still possesses the tendency to treat woman as property or an object of pleasure and he can buy her, make her his keep or concubine etc.

But under the same feudal mindset of a religious origin, Vibhuti Narain Rai quips at women writers saying that off late the women writers have started racing against one another to prove that there is no one more ‘chhinal’ than them. The word ‘chhinal’ according to Hindi dictionaries is vaguely defined as ‘bad character’ or ‘bad woman’. In actual society, the word is used in the sense of the one who maintains relationship with men other than her husband. It doesn’t have any technical sense but rather comes as an insulting and accusing phrase similar to calling names. Munshi Prem Chand used it more as a dialogue in which some woman character of a story is accused by someone of being ‘chhinaal’. However, it doesn’t mean ‘prostitute’ as some misguiding journalists/women activists fed to the minster.

When we read between lines, the whole interview by Vibhuti Narain Rai to Rakesh Mishra, we find that questions as well as answers do not show any tendency to make an in-depth analysis of the extramarital relationship. There is a latent blame-game over the situation and some sort of idealism, which at times has been used sarcastically and like taking potshots. The whole approach is therefore superficial (off the field too) and at places, light as well. For instance in answer to a question, Vibhuti Narain says that at present any deliberation on women comes like a festival of ‘bewafai’! He quips at some, (in his words) ‘over-rated much-promoted female writer’ and says that her autobiography had better be entitled ‘kitne bistaron mein kitni baar’ (how many times in how many beds!). In the same answer only he asserts that women writers are currently racing to prove that there is no woman as bad as they.

May be, the autobiography of a female writer took many a reader unawares since the first part of the autobiography is dedicated to her mother and she says that her mother was a lesbian! Another such writer would inform the readers that her son is not from her husband but from some comrade! She proudly states that she could never not maintain any account of how many men around her she spoiled. But on this, I got very typical answers from some writers. While Dr. Dharamveer and Archana Tripathy are critical of such writings, some told me what Vibhuti Narain himself also says in other words.

Vibhuti Narain, as already said, referred to the possessive & bright nature of male due to which he can just ‘own’ her. But he agrees that some women from upper middle or rich classes are financially independent and as such, under a power equation, they have the guts in them to disclose (nay declare) what they have done (remember ‘Sach ka Samna’!). However, if we go through such autobiographies, we find more of a crispness and desire to draw attention rather than the Gandhian style of the offer of Truth! No Jesus, no Gandhi… simply self exposure motivated by desire to draw attention. This may have some sort of analogy to models who are happy to pose nude or in bikinis. A septuagenarian journalist would explain such a tendency in his puritan way by saying that if you walk on two feet, nobody notices it, but if you start moving on head, the whole world starts looking at you. So, are such autobiographies like a ‘movie masala’ or sexual acrobats to tempt the male reader! May be or may not be, but any commentary on them should come as a part of review or evaluation and not in the language that touches sarcasm or comes like a potshot.

Dr. Sumitra Varun, a doctorate in English literature and retd. Financial Advisor from Indian Railways defends these writers by saying – ‘When male writers brazenly describe their affairs in novels and autobiographies, they sometimes have prize catches of prestigious literary awards. Why then question women who too have equal right to describe these human happenings in their novels and autobiographies? Do the men suffer from female phobia and feel that women too would get prestigious awards that way or emulate them and take their spaces? Dr. Varun takes exception to Vibhuti Narain Rai’s language and asserts that such a language should not come from a person of his stature especially because he himself is a writer and a social thinker. Some people would go to the extent of attributing his language to his earlier profession as Indian Police Services officer. They feel that from the cops, such a language is just natural.

To me, however, such persons seriously miss the point. The question here could be more of a mindset rather than incompatibility with stature or suitability to some earlier profession. Once the JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav irritated women MPs when during a debate on ‘Women’s Reservation Bill’ in the Lok Sabha, he said that this house is not for the ‘baal katis’ (women with cut hair). But Sharad Yadav could be treated as a person with illiterate bent of mind while Dr. Vibhuti Narain Rai is a learned person with propensity towards culture and religion too. He can therefore be understood only through his sacraments rather than professional lifestyle.

Dr. Vibhuti Narain Rai can only be questioned through the spectacles of ‘Changing Times’. These are times when many a celebrity is known for enjoying ‘Live in Relationships’. Sometimes we read Supreme Court judgments which would reject the conjugal rights petitions by men whose wives have deserted them and are enjoying ‘Live in Relationships’ with other male friends. A recent judgment by Supreme Court led a TV channel to hysterically launch a hot debate within a few hours of the judgment over whether pre-marital sex should be permitted or not. This was because w.r.t some petition, the Supreme Court gave a judgment in favour of pre-marital sex by boys and girls. How much tangential was Supreme Court’s approach to that specific petition was not the concern of the channel but it simply occurred that this is a subject over which the modern thinkers must have brainstormed often.

In the world which shamelessly possesses the other extremes too where adulteress women (say in Iran) are stoned to death, it can only be a source of light that the urban Indian woman is sufficiently enlightened and has blessed India with women presidents as well as women space scientists! We are unfortunately living in a world order in which some hapless girls are still being circumcised in continuation of some pre-Judaic traditions irrespective of the mental or physical pains they suffer. Among them are also those even more hapless ones whose vaginas are fully stitched leaving a tiny hole for urination so that when they grow up and marry, they are offered as ‘pure girls’ to their bridegrooms!

Living amidst these extremely barbaric (in) human civilizations, can Indians not take pride over an ‘all women crew’ flight from Mumbai to New York covering 11 countries, on the International Women’s Day (8 Mar. 2010)? Will this not become a source of light for the hapless girls who are honor-killed for marrying in the same gotra or off -caste in the Hindu caste hierarchy? Dr. Vibhuti Narain Rai simultaneously calls the extra-marital relationships of some male writers as ‘ku-kritya’ (bad deed) and the women narrating their affairs as ‘chhinaals’! Even a few decades ago, the social philosophers had ample consideration of the divorced woman, or woman who has become widow at young age or those who never marry due to some cause.

There has to be some space for consideration of the peculiarity of circumstances in which some women live. In this very ‘bewafai special’ of the ‘Naya Gyanoday’, there is a passionate story which is a part of Nayantara Sehgal’s famous book ‘Relationship’ which is a long series of love letters between her and EN Mangat Rai (her 2nd husband) while she was living with her first husband Gautam. Nayantara Sehgal says that she landed herself into seemingly unending troubles after she disclosed to her first fiancée Gautam that before engagement to him, she, had a relationship (which she herself never understood fully being a teenager), with a man much elder than her! She simply invited miseries in her first marriage by disclosing such a personal secret to her fiancée. Alas, she did so! But then came the moments when she revolted though again inviting mess. But the translator of this piece ‘yeh mera sach’ (This, my truth) of the book ‘Relationship’ honestly calls the act of mud-slinging by society on the extramarital Nayantara-Mangat Rai relationship as ‘sins’ and rather offers to apologize for these ‘sins’ of the society since he himself is a part of that society!

To this we have to add the 21st century situation wherein an infinite number of women work with an infinite number of men at odd places and hours like performing night duties or working in riot hit areas etc. The Supreme Court has used the phrase ‘Changing Times’ in many a petition. The culture of a country is not the one defined by founders of its religions or the holy books, but by the contemporary societies on the equation of ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Dr. Vibhuti Narain Rai’s interview therefore falls apart as an outdated document with use of feudal age phrases and cannot be accepted at a moment when a section of women are even gasping for freedom to be lesbians! His comments unfortunately have an accidental similarity to the medieval culture in which if a girl dared to inadvertently walk a distance away from her house, she was turned out as ‘chhinaal’!

However, to be fair to him, one must not forget to add that in spite of the above critique of the interview, Dr. Vibhuti Narain Rai doesn’t attract any stern action against him. At this moment interestingly, a news item comes to my memory which I cannot help describing here. About a year or so ago a married young woman in Junagadh Distt (Gujarat) stunned the passersby in a bazaar when she just walked through the bazaar in bikini in order to protest against her in laws’ excesses. This was a novel way. But a week later, I read an interesting assertion by Soli Sorabjee that we should not criticize her since this was a question of freedom of expression for her! So just as we have to read frank and financially independent women writers on the turf of evaluation and review, we must also do the same to Dr. Vibhuti Narain and read his ‘approach’ to women writers who describe sex-life openly, as male chauvinist rather than read any cheapness in his words.

Hindi papers later informed that he has personally met the minister and taken his words back. But that is not what the situation warranted. Dr. Vibhuti Narain Rai stands safe on the turf of ‘freedom of expression’ and on this, a leading Hindi author Ganga Prasad Vimal has to say that: ‘There should not have been any uproar or feeling of outrage over this issue at all’. He also took serious note of the journalists who translated the word ‘chhinal’ as ‘prostitute’ and even said that such journalists who lack etiquettes of translating words should be immediately dismissed by their bosses. He further said that it is by virtue of the ‘freedom of expression’ that today there is so much frankness in the writing world. Could it, as such, be said that women activists like Brinda Karat and Girija Vyas had no need of going to the minister!

An open letter to the Khap leaders

An open letter to the Khap leaders
by Premchand Sahajwala
(published in Youthejournalist.com on 10 June 2010.

Dear learned leaders of the Khap,

Your Khap panchayats came vigorously into news once again when on 25 Mar. 2010, a Haryana court convicted Khap leader Ganga Raj and six others for killing a young couple Manoj and Babli on 15 Jun. 2007 in Karnal Distt because the hapless couple dared to marry though the two belonged to the same gotra (clan). Calling for a new law to curb these heinous killings, the Addl. Dist. & Sessions Judge Vani Gopal Sharma said “The present case is a classic example and reflects a long standing tradition of oppression against women. It has to be curbed by legislation categorizing such honor killing as a separate offence, giving a clear message to the public.”

While Five of Babli’s family members - her brother Suresh, uncles Rajender and Baru Ram and cousins Satish and Gurdev — were ordered to hang until death for killing the hapless couple, the Khap leader Ganga Raj was served life imprisonment. Equally painful are some more stories like that of Ved Pa Mor of village Singhwal in Jind, who was killed by a mob of villagers while he was proceeding to take back his wife Sonia on orders from High Court (HC).

A few years ago, TV channels had shown the sad story of annulment of Sonia’s marriage to Ved by a Khap Panchayat because they too belonged to the same gotra. The Khap Panchayat even overlooked the fact that the couple had a two year old son and declared that from then onwards the two were brother-sister. Sonia was made homeless overnight and some social organisation took her case to the HC which in 2009 ordered Ved to proceed to Sonia’s village and bring her back and that the two could live as a married couple with their son. A police security officer was provided to Ved but alas, the mob lynched Ved while the helpless lone security officer fled the scene.

I wonder what this gotra is. There are several theories regarding the origin of gotra. Taking one of them at random, Baba Saheb Ambedkar who said that the in charges of various go-shalas (cow crèches) were the originators of gotra which means that each head of a go-shala began a new gotra. Now at the time of origin, the head had a few relatives who were mutually cousins, uncles, aunts and brothers, sisters as in any family of today and all these relatives treated one another as brothers and sisters. Even today, young boys and girls normally move with their first cousins as brothers and sisters. But those original cousins of the birth of gotra days must have now descended into thousands of generations and how frivolous it is of you all to label all these young boys and girls as brothers and sisters? The question is who authorizes you to name various boys’ or girls’ relationships with their friends, with whom they study or serve in an office or play or perform any activity? Are you all out to oppress these youngsters who want just space enough to live their lives their own way and curb their very existence?

In fact, things do not seem to be so simple for you all. Some learned ones among you gathered at the Centre for Study of Developing Sciences (CSDS) 29, Rajpura Road Delhi on 26 May 2010 to explain your stand in a conference called by Madhu Kishwar, India’s most famous feminist who too ironically wants that a law must be made in favour of the Khaps and they be allowed their own way of banning intra-gotra marriages! It was a painful experience of my life to be present at such a gathering where you were brazenly defending your bizarre ways. First, on the screen, a discourse was given differentiating between the central government and these Khaps. The Khaps were being described as democratic which looked very ironical and anyone present there could think that one was being hypnotized! Is it democratic that a few self-styled self-righteous team of old men of a community decide the relationships between people whose own views they never take into account? In the same discourse, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 was being termed as dictatorial since only a few learned people passed it in the parliament!

The ‘Hindu Code Bill’ when initially presented by Baba Saheb Ambedkar the then Law Minister was first rejected by many a parliamentarian as also criticized by the president of India. Baba Saheb felt hurt at the immutability of the Hindu theocrats who were against a divorce system for quarrelling couples or a separated wife’s demand for maintenance allowance from her husband, who were against ending bigamy or who were also against giving any concessions to the Hindu woman. Hurt badly, Baba Saheb gave up his cabinet post as Law Minister but subsequently with the wise mobilization by Pandit Nehru and some other equally wise persons, the bill saw the light of the day and is what we know as the ‘Hindu Marriage Act, 1955’.

The original ‘Hindu Code Bill’ had to be split into some parts and each part separately passed as Act. One Khap leader claimed that the Khaps never ordered the killing of any violator of the ‘no intra-gotra marriage’ rule. But the conference attended by many learned writers and journalists of Delhi and surroundings, saw many of them grilling these self-styled myrmidons of justice and question them that if they don’t order killings, do they even condemn killings or support the punishments given to these killers by Indian courts? Instead, the whole community stands united in defence of the killers and declares that those convicted and punished would be defended! I put a question there that if in the case of Sonia and Ved, you can dare give the verdict that they are brother-sister from the day of judgment onwards, then do we have the right to declare a Muslim Panchayat wrong which ordered a Muslim woman raped by her father-in-law to live then onwards as her father-in-law’s wife and husband’s mother?

You all, Col. M.S. Dahiya, Hawa Singh Sangwan (Author and Researcher), Om Prakash Malik ( Sarvakhap Swarup Samiti- an initiative towards modernization of Khaps), Master Rampal Dahiya (Head of Dahiya Khap), Ch. Ranjit Singh (Secretary, Dalal Khap), Capt. J.S.Dalal (Dalal Khap), Narender Kharab (social activist from Hissar), Dr. O.P. Dhankar (Dhankar Khap), Diwan Singh (social activist and, environmentalist) - the learned sages present at the CSDS conference, claimed that the Khaps never sit themselves, but like courts, are requested to sit on any person’s/community’s request.

Dear sages, the same is the case of Deoband’s Dar-ul-uloom. When the Dar-ul-uloom gives fatwa that Muslim women should not go and work anywhere to earn money, they do so when only a Muslim petition asks them for a right answer. The Dar-ul-Uloom throws the fatwa that investing in stock exchanges is un-Islamic only on query by some Muslim. And on a query only the Dar-ul-Uloom would pass a fatwa that earning simple or compound interest from banks is un-Islamic. How do we cope up with such strange phenomenon? Do the Muslim women who work even as judges in the Supreme Court or women like Shabana Azmi who are actresses par excellence, care for the Dar-ul-Uloom? Does Sania Mirza care for the Muslim fanatics when they question her low skirt which she wears as a compulsion while playing a tennis match? The day may not be far when a Muslim woman becomes India’s Chief Justice or say, even president or prime minister. The progressive part of the Muslim community takes pride in the fact that MS Fatima was the first Muslim woman to be a judge in the Supreme Court. The question of real democracy lies here only. The norms followed by the people are the laws and not those dictated by the Dar-ul-Ulooms or the Khaps.

Dear so called fathers of the constitutions of your communities, you all want the parliament to pass a special Act which disallows intra-gotra marriages. For this you have grilled politicians like Naveen Jindal whose case is the most unfortunate one as he is known to be an icon of the India’s young generation and the one who is a proud member of the Rahul brigade to which other proud young spirits like Sachin Pilot, Jiten Prasada, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Agatha Sangma too belong and who shines as the future hope of the country that will lead India to a superpower status.
You have all cleverly held the politicians by their weak nerves since you know that the only weakness of a politician lies in his votes. The politicians would stoop to the lowest ebb for gaining power and for the same reason, leaders like Om Prakash Chautala too are singing psalms in favor of what Chetan Bhagat calls the ‘no same gotra marriage T-shirt’. A party like the BJP which had brazenly taken avtar only to target the Muslims and for that reason, has been clamoring for a Uniform Civil Code is also lured by your good selves and on this subject, it now takes refrain on the necessity of a consensus!

Today one reads with agony, the so called ‘personal view’ of Bhupinder Singh Huda, the Haryana CM who too says that he is against the ‘sa-gotra’ marriages! Such tactics of netting politicians is in reality tantamount to blackmailing!

If a law is passed in favor of the Khap panchayats, then why should we continuously curse Rajiv Gandhi for a legislation in back date in the case of a poor woman Shah Bano? In that case too, it was the low-rung Muslim politician like Shahab-ud-din who held the parliament to ransom and held demonstrations/rallies everywhere. Under him, the Muslim community organised a ‘Shariah Bachao Week’ to save the Muslim Shariah. This country’s right thinking intellectuals never forgave the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for snatching a petty maintenance allowance of Rs. 179.20 per month from a hapless 75 years old woman. She died unprotected in 1991 while the Muslim fundamentalists had their way by keeping their Shariah close to heart. If a law is passed in your favor then dear Sirs, one wonders how many young couples will suffer the agony of suppression of their freedoms. If a law is passed in your favour, do you all who were present at the conference and the ones who were not there, think that that would be the end of the matter? Will the people from Rajasthan then not organise dharnas for legitimizing child marriages? Unfortunately some of them had the tactics of sitting on dharnas on railway tracks and didn’t even allow the cremation of those who died in a hunger strike for the purpose of reservations?

Imagine, that the uneducated though so called erudite leaders of village panchayats of Rajasthan hold the governments to ransom in a similar way for the passage of a law in favour of child marriages! The matter doesn’t stop there. Some communities of Rajasthan are also known to be true worshippers of the Sati temples if not the Sati tradition itself in this 21st century. They would continue to think that the Sati is a symbol of woman power and devotion to her husband and would completely turn a blind eye towards the fact that these hapless Satis died for no fault by sitting on the funeral fires of their deceased husbands, leaving their children as orphans. Their properties went into mischievous hands of mischievous relatives who left the children to live a wretched life of hungry and orphans. These communities would also coerce the governments to make a law which permits women to become Satis and also which permits the worship of Satis in the Sati temples.

Today in this modern era, wherein India is proud to be a close friend of the US and is a global market in itself, we are unfortunate enough to witness cases where social reformer’s both hands are cut by villagers when she goes to stop a child marriage. In one case, a woman died, may be accidentally at the funeral fire of her deceased husband but even before it could be ascertained whether it was accident or Sati, the people of the concerned village were seen lying horizontally on the ground to prostrate before the ashes of the so believed Sati of their village! So dear gotra lovers, your campaign may open a hornet’s nest and a myriad of Indian communities may make a queue outside the parliament for the passages of laws in their favor. Blackmailing politicians for votes, they would make them dance to their tunes and have their way.

It was also funny to witness that in the said conference some learned speakers made a fine misuse of Mahatma Gandhi’s conviction in the village panchayats. Gandhi was against adult franchise and he believed in village republics. He believed that only elected members of the panchayats should be the voters for assemblies and parliament while a bulk of the local decisions should be left to the panchayats. The speakers saw virtue in Gandhi’s vision for the sake of their own frivolous principles. Did Gandhi visualise these panchayats which give bizarre verdicts in cases of marriages like declaring a husband-wife as brother-sister? One proud member of a khap panchayat said that the khap in his village does not order killing but it orders the parents of the erring couple to sell their land property and leave the village! This too is a deprivation of the fundamental right of a citizen to own property anywhere in this democratic nation.

One of the opponents of these leaders rightly asked the khap leaders whether they ever contemplated on other issues like the environment, poverty or development or they had simply a one point programme of asserting their authorities regarding the gotra? Are these so called ‘informal social organisations’ as Bhupinder Singh Huda prefers to call them, concerned about the education system of their villages? One really feels miffed at the wisdom of the social leaders of Indian villages.

While concluding this article, I suddenly happen to remember a date 4 Nov. 1948 when Baba Saheb Ambedkar introduced India’s draft constitution in the Constituent Assembly. A part of his long speech also dealt with Indian villages. He said that many honorable members of the Assembly lamented that the new constitution was not built upon Village Panchayats and District Panchayats. But Baba Saheb simply poo poohed the objections of these tear-shedders who had pointed out to Metcalf’s theory that the ‘village communities lasted where nothing else lasts’. Baba Saheb just questioned this survival by saying – ‘The question is, on what plane they have survived. Surely, on a low, on a selfish level… What is a village, but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft constitution has discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit’ (The Essential Writings of BR Ambedkar edited by Valerian Rodrigues pp 485-486).

One of Baba Saheb’s own agonies was that the villages never moved ahead of where they were and were never a part of the progressive march of the nation. This may further be elaborated by the fact that the self-styled self-righteous rightists and the so called owners of the legacy of this great nation have always cursed Bobington Macaulay for bringing the English education and hence civilization in this country. The miserable state of affairs in the villages of our country is a fitting answer to such Macaulay baiters whose education system educated the woman of India and emulated her to man. It is the Macaulay-educated urban woman who reached the space, who occupied positions as big as the president or the Prime Minister of India and the CM of many a state. One of the erudite speakers in this conference was clearly saying that the khap panchayats do not allow women as members of the panchayats. One question is therefore clear – ‘Are the villages of India and the village communities walking with the nation or as Baba Saheb said, they are, just sinks of localism, dens of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? One prays that you are all able to answer this question to your good selves.