Then, amid the tiny victories of the RTI Act and the accountability it is beginning to create, came the snippets about how the judicial system was refusing to be subject to it, and this struck a discordant note - after all, aren’t the custodians of accountability supposed to be the leaders of accountability? So why would the courts and the judges want to remain inscrutable and above accountability? The politicians and bureaucrats were trying to conceal their file-notings and not the actual files themselves, but the judiciary, it appeared were not even willing to show the file? This one refused to get rationalized away

All of the above was meant to serve as an explanation of sorts on why this story got me alarmed:

While it is important in any society that its judiciary inspire public confidence, such confidence cannot be engendered by using the threat of contempt action to deter exposure of any wrongdoing in the judiciary. Public confidence in the judiciary is created by the actions of the judiciary and any reckless allegations against it are quickly seen to be what they are. In a free society, such allegations do not stick, if they are incorrect or reckless. The use of the power of contempt to stifle allegations against judges would only increase public suspicion about the judiciary and indeed engender contempt for it. Public confidence in the judiciary cannot be maintained by silencing dissenting voices or exposure of wrongdoing. Such exposure of all institutions including the judiciary is also essential in public interest for corrective action to be taken. Expose of any wrong doing in any public institution and action against the wrong doing only enhances the prestige of that institution rather than lowering it. It suggests that self correcting mechanisms exist.

From the article ‘Sentence Us To The Same Punishment…’ in Outlook India Online

Trying to find out more about what this was all about led me to this piece by Arundhati Roy, also on Outlook India. While the tone and manner is classic A Roy, i.e. carrying a big bag-full of her view of matters, the questions posed seem extremely pertinent, and the response of the judiciary seems dangerous, whimsical, arbitrary, venal and unaccountable. Strong words, I agree, but considering that we’re talking about the custodians of our last recourse to redress in an increasingly corrupt and mercenary political system, I’d imagine that the judiciary above all others must truly exemplify the phrase ‘like Caesar’s wife, above and beyond reproach.’ So why would they require a weapon like this:

Until recently, under the Law of Contempt, even truth was not considered a valid defence. So suppose, for instance, we had prima facie evidence that a judge has assaulted or raped someone, or accepted a bribe in return for a favourable judgement, it would be a criminal offence to make the evidence public because that would “scandalise or tend to scandalise” or “lower or tend to lower” the authority of the court.

Yes, things have changed, but only a little. Last year, Parliament amended the Contempt of Court Act so that truth becomes a valid defence in a contempt of court charge. But in most cases (such as in the case of the Sabharwal…er… shall we say “affair”) in order to prove something it would have to be investigated. But obviously when you ask for an investigation you have to state your case, and when you state your case you will be imputing dishonourable motives to a judge for which you can be convicted for contempt. So: Nothing can be proved unless it is investigated and nothing can be investigated unless it has been proved.

Or why would they need to shield themselves in this manner?

The expansion of judicial powers has not been accompanied by an increase in its accountability. Far from it. The judiciary has managed to foil every attempt to put in place any system of checks and balances that other institutions in democracies are usually bound by.
It has opposed the suggestion by the Committee for Judicial Accountability that an independent disciplinary body be created to look into matters of judicial misconduct. It has decreed that an FIR cannot be registered against a sitting judge without the consent of the chief justice (which has never ever been given). It has so far successfully insulated itself against the Right to Information Act. The most effective weapon in its arsenal is, of course, the Contempt of Court Act which makes it a criminal offence to do or say anything that “scandalises” or “lowers the authority” of the court. Though the act is framed in arcane language more suited to medieval ideas of feminine modesty, it actually arms the judiciary with formidable, arbitrary powers to silence its critics and to imprison anyone who asks uncomfortable questions.

Both the above quotations are from the article Scandal In The Palace, on Outlook India Online.

Read the article, and sign the online petition at the end, if you find it appropriate. And I’d appreciate your views and comments here as well :o)

In the mean time, life, the universe and everything has been going along its lively pace. And there have been blips in the labyrinths of the mind that got thoroughly sqooshed by the laziness. Like for instance, Justice Patel’s remark on exploring the option of shifting the Siddhivinayak temple. And its only to be expected responses, including the predictable one from the Shiv Sena, the only unusual part being that the response came from the cub & not the tiger. Personally, I appreciate the judge’s willingness to state the unspeakable. I’m not so sure about shifting the temple, but I’m utterly convinced that the wall should be demolished and the nonsense about security should be completely trashed. The wall to me is a symbol of greedy, petty and power-hungry human beings who in their arrogance choose to believe that divinity needs police protection. Read some of the responses in the link above, you’ll find the whole gamut :o)

I happened to watch the T20 final between India and Pakistan - the alternative was to get drunk senseless, given the amount of noise from houses all around…. it was an almost-eerie contrast - empty roads, and waves of sound from practically every house! And found that I enjoyed the experience; most of all, it was great playing, with both sides playing as teams and not the usual ‘the stars fall and the rest of the team simply collapses’ style of the Indian side. The Indian captain took some fairly risky calls, some of which paid off brilliantly, while the others didn’t. So while I was certainly happy that India won, there was a point where it didn’t matter at all, and I was cheering Misbah’s batting skills… didn’t exactly make me popular with the crowd who was watching, I must confess :o)

I wonder what the Pakistan captain meant when he apologized to the ‘Muslims of the world’ for losing. Were the Pathan brothers, Shahrukh Khan and masses of other Indian Muslims who cheered for their country disappointed that Pakistan lost? The only thought that flickered in was a sense of pride that the Indian team composition is so secular. Its apparently the same with the English & Sri Lankan teams as well. Nuff said.

How about the hullabaloo over the Adam’s Bridge / Ram Setu? The CongI make asses of themselves, Karunanidhi behaves like a drunken gorilla in a Swarovski shop and the Hindu brigade…. nauseatingly disgusting as always. How about some discussion on the ecological impact of the proposed throughfare? Who benefits and how, and at what cost? All of that seems to get swept away in religious saber-rattling. My opinion of our political class continues its free-fall into subterrenean labyrinths…. and check out the excellent collection of articles on the issue on the Outlook India site.

I was on the highway yesterday morning and ran into the boys in blue….. quite literally. The traffic was jammed up for a kilometer towards Andheri, and god alone knows how long it was piled in the opposite direction. I’d thought that the pelting rain would make the reception committee change their plans, but it was unaltered, and I thought it was very sporting of the team to be on the open-top bus in the downpour, waving away to the incredible crowd that was waiting for them. Good show you chaps, keep up the sporting spirit.

Sharad Pawar and his loathsome party, and the rest of the political class have so much to learn that they probably never will. The posters on the highway hailed Pawar for the victory….. I even saw one where there was a small shot of the cricket team at the center (I’m guessing, it was too tiny to make out) and Pawar & Co. all over. Saw in the news that barring the captain, the team was relegated to the back rows at the reception organized - for the victors! The crowds must’ve been ecstatic to see the corpulent politicians lining the front-row…. after all, its because of them that the team won, wouldn’t you agree?

And an instance that establishes that the most serious dark cloud can have a tiny humorous silver lining:

Sycophants as OBC? Then most of India is backward, says apex court
Those present in the courtroom listening to serious arguments on the validity of the 27% OBC quota law were in splits on Wednesday after the Centre said traditional sycophants, who used to sing in praise of the kings, were also included in the backward class list. If sycophancy as a traditional occupation could make one qualify as a backward community, then the majority in India was backward and needed reservation, a bench headed by the CJI said.
“If there is an Olympics for sycophants, then no other country dare compete with India,” Justice Arijit Pasayat said.
An advocate said a community in Karnataka, who had expertise in circulating counterfeit coins, had also been given the backward class status. TNN

From ‘OBC quota law is like Caesar’s wife’; It Is Above Suspicion, Central Govt Tells SC, Brushing Aside Claims of Votebank Politics in Times Of India, Bombay Edition.

I was rolling around laughing when I saw the story headline, so the bit above was completely bonus! :o)

Anyway, the paper article also had a section on how to register, which hasn’t made it to the online article….. but you can check it out here. Don’t ask how. And let me know in case I need to take it off!

Anyway, as per the instructions, I proceeded to send DNDA to 30333333 from my RCom mobile. And received a delivery receipt, along with the following highly instructional reply:

Dear Customer, This SMS could not be delivered. Please enter the city STD code first, followed by the number and send the SMS again. Reliance

So then tried sending the same SMS to 333, where the result was even more encouraging - message sending failed, with the error message Recipient has no message service. Then sent the SMS to XXX30333333, and this time it seems to have gone into a black-hole - no delivery receipt, no acknowledgment, nothing at all!

During the search, I’d discovered that RCom now had an online Do Not Disturb form, titled Do Not call me, I’ll call you! And required you to provide your first-name, last-name, date of birth, location, billing address and mobile number. And all this, so that RCom wouldn’t contact you for any promotional stuff!!! How else would you interpret:

Reliance Communications may contact you from time to time, to inform you about new features, products and promotional offers that can give you benefits or effect significant savings.

However, if you do not wish to be informed about these benefits through telephone calls or by SMS, you can unsubscribe from such communication by filling up the form given below. Your request will be honoured within 30 days from the date of submission.

From the Reliance Infocomm DND form page.

Why not a DND by SMS (like with Hutch, and it worked!) And why 30-days?????

Then proceeded to send ACT to 111 as per the instructions for Hutch. And after a fair spell, got a reply from 111 saying: The message format is invalid…. with a lot of other things I could do like activating Planet Hutch, set up Basic Roaming, International Roaming, set a caller tune….. but no mention of activating the Do-Not-Call!!

A visit to the NDNC site is most instructional - in “Information for subscribers > How To request” you will find a link to a PDF file that’s corrupt or invalid! And pretty much nothing more that’s useful.

Leading me to wonder whether NDNC really stands for National Do-Not-Care registry!!

Let us ban cola advertising. Bow Barrack Blues. Showing people smoking in films. Teachers calling students stupid (what about parents doing the same?). Da Vinci Code. Books by Taslima Nasreen. Taslima Nasreen herself. FTV. Fanaa. The use of the word haute in newspaper headlines (sorry I was trying to sneak that one in).

We always had the religious orthodoxy and the alleged guardians of society telling us what to do and what not to. Now we have a new class of social terrorists who do the same while apparently coming from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. The list above illustrates that freedom of choice is anathema to both categories.

From Missing the Woods, Santosh Desai (The Last Word, The Week, 26-08-2007)

This was one of those things that left me wondering why I hadn’t thought of it! :o)

Read the complete piece.

The largest bottled-water factory in North America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of the plant stretches the staging area for finished product: 24 million bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters, liters, “Aquapods” for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the refrigerator.

Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off in plastic, extending across 6 acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced by another lake’s worth of bottles.

Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty.

From Message in a Bottle at FastCompany.com

A fascinating (and long…) article on the bottled water business in the US. And this is something that I’ve been noticing since some years in Shining India too…. the explosion of packaged water - brands, availability, advertising and promotion, just about every aspect of the business.

Take this factoid from the same article:

Today, for all the apparent variety on the shelf, bottled water is dominated in the United States and worldwide by four huge companies. Pepsi (NYSE:PEP) has the nation’s number-one-selling bottled water, Aquafina, with 13% of the market. Coke’s (NYSE:KO) Dasani is number two, with 11% of the market. Both are simply purified municipal water–so 24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi for our convenience. Evian is owned by Danone, the French food giant, and distributed in the United States by Coke.

And:

And for this healthy convenience, we’re paying what amounts to an unbelievable premium. You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35–17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren’t paying attention.

In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It’s so good the EPA doesn’t require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000.

Interesting isn’t it? I wonder what the comparable figures would be in India….. do we have a spring-water brand at all? Does mineral water really have to come from a natural spring? Have you wondered?

Read the full article. And you may find that it may just about make you change your behavior the next time you go to a restaurant and the waiter comes around and asks you ‘Bottled water or normal water’? :o)

Excerpt from the book The Argumentative Indian, by Amartya Sen.

History is an active field of intellectual engagement for the Hindutva movement, and parts of that movement have been very involved in the rewriting of history. Even though it is not surprising, given the nature of the Hindutva creed, that Indian history must play some part in the arguments presented by the movement, it is still worth enquiring precisely why these issues are taken to be so central, as a result of which Indian history has become such a battleground. What is its specific relevance in contemporary Indian politics, and why is Hindutva politics so keen on redescribing the past? I would argue that the answer lies in two specific features of contemporary Hindu politics.

The first is the need for the Hindutva movement to keep together its diverse components and to generate fresh loyalty from potential recruits. The Hindutva movement reaps considerable strategic benefit from the variety of styles and modes of operation that the diversity of organizations within the Parivar allows. As a modern political party in a multi-party functioning democracy, the BJP itself is committed to parliamentary rule, and does, by and large, listen to the views of others. But it can, at the same time, draw on support - sometimes violent support - from other members of the Hindutva family who can stray from the BJP’s cultivated urbanity and provide a harsher force. The ‘two nations’ theory, which - it must be emphasized - is not a part of the BJP doctrine, is championed quite crudely by several sections of the Parivar.

The solidarity of the diverse members of the Sangh Parivar is greatly helped by taking a united view of India’s history as essentially a ‘Hindu civilization’ (it is convenient for them that even a cultural theorist like Samuel Huntington has described India in exactly those terms, as was discussed earlier). The rewriting of Indian history in line with the message of Hindutva is extremely important for the cohesion of different elements in the Sangh Parivar. They can differ on political means and tactics - varying from soft-spoken advocacy to hard-headed violence - but still agree on a grand Hindu vision of India.

The second reason for focusing on India’s past is the large support for the Hindutva movement that comes from the Indian diaspora abroad, particularly in North America and Europe, for whom it is quite important to be able to retain their general Indian nationalist attachment while embracing any other loyalty they may be persuaded to have (such as Hindutva). The two can be harnessed together by a narrowly Hinduized view of Indian history, which fosters the congruence of Hindu identity with a more general Indian identity.

The rewriting of Indian history serves the dual purpose of playing a role in providing a common basis for the diverse membership of the Sangh Parivar, and of helping to get fresh recruits to Hindu political activism, especially from the diaspora. It has thus become a major priority in the politics of Hindutva in contemporary India. Following the electoral victory of coalitions led by the BJP in 1998 and 1999, various arms of the government of India were mobilized in the task of arranging ‘appropriate’ rewritings of Indian history. Even though this adventure of inventing a past is no longer ‘official’ (because of the defeat of the BJP-led coalition in the general elections in the spring of 2004), that highly charged episode is still worth recollecting both because of what it tells us about the abuse of temporal power and also because of the light it throws on the intellectual underpinnings of the Hindutva movement.

The rapidly reorganized National Centre for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) became busy, from shortly after the BJP’s assumption of office, not only in producing fresh textbooks for Indian school children, but also in deleting sections from books produced earlier by NCERT itself (under pre-BJP management), written by reputed Indian historians. The ‘reorganization’ of NCERT was accompanied by an ‘overhaul’ of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), with new officers being appointed and a new agenda being chosen for both, mainly in line with the priority of the Hindutva movement.

The speed of the attempted textbook revision had to be so fast that the newly reconstituted NCERT evidently had some difficulty in finding historians to do this task who would be both reasonably distinguished and adequately compliant. In the early school textbooks that emanated from the NCERT, there was not only the predictable sectarian bias in the direction of the politics of ‘Hindutva’, but also numerous factual mistakes of a fairly straightforward kind. School children were to be taught, in one of the textbooks, that Madagascar was ‘an island in the Arabian sea’ and that Lancashire had been ‘a fast-growing industrial town’. A newly devised history of India in the new textbooks prepared by the Government of India received sharp criticism in the media and in public discussions that followed. The reviews in the major newspapers were almost uniformly disparaging. ‘Bloomers galore in NCERT texts’, was the news headline in the Hindustan Times.

The BJP-led NCERT admitted some factual errors and promised to correct them (Madagascar, it was promised, would be returned to the Indian ocean). But there was no assurance on correcting the political slant imposed through selective omissions and chosen emphases to play up the Hindutva view of India. That, of course, belongs to the heart of the attempt to rewrite Indian history. The Hindu, a leading daily, put the gravity of the problem in perspective when it pointed to ‘the havoc that indifferent scholarship combined with a distorting ideology could cause in school education’.

Indeed, in addition to the plethora of innocuous confusions and silly mistakes, there were also serious omissions and lapses in the government-sponsored Indian history. For example, one of the textbooks that was meant to teach Indian school children about the events surrounding India’s independence failed to mention the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, the Hindu political fanatic who had links with the activist RSS (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) - an omission of very considerable moment. More generally, the accounts given in these textbooks of the fight for India’s independence were powerfully prejudiced in the direction of the politics of Hindutva.

Many Indians felt greatly alarmed at that time that the Hindutva movement would stop at nothing short of alienating India from its own past through their control over schools and textbooks. There was certainly a good case (based both on respect for history and on treasuring the inclusive character of Indian society) for taking the threat seriously, and the need to be alive to these issues remains strong today. There are many outstanding historians in India and they clearly have a protective role to play here; this is best done if the defence of history comes from a genuine commitment to history, not just from political opposition to the Hindutva view. As it happens, many well established and respected Indian historians did question, with reasoned justification, the accuracy and authenticity of the claims made by the Hindutva ideologues.

Now here’s something else that I saw in the newspaper, but simply doesn’t seem to have made its way online:

Drunken drivers headed for big trouble

The Mumbai police’s newly tough stand on drunken driving has just got tougher. The drive against the social menace will now be extended to weekend afternoons as well. What’s more, on weekdays the nakabandi will start from 7 pm instead of the usual 10 pm.
There’s more bad news for those accustomed to knocking back one for the road before getting into the driver’s seat. Even one drink could get them into trouble since anyone whose blood test reveals over 30 mg of pure alcohol in 100 ml of blood is considered an offender. Furthermore, the police have taken a conscious decision to plead for a punishment much harsher than a mere fine in court. “The judge decides on the quantum of punishment but we have decided to ask for strong deterrents from the court,” says Vijay Kamble, joint commissioner of police (traffic).
The maximum punishment for drunken driving is 6-months for the first offence and 3-years in case of a second offence. Officials say - without ascribing any motive to the court - that the judge’s decision may depend on a number of factors, including the offender’s attitude, which is why some offenders are left off with a fine while others are jailed.
On Thursday, ten more persons were sent to prison for driving after drinking, taking the number of persons in jail for drunken driving to 16. They are the first Mumbaikars to go to jail for this offence under section 185 of the Motor Vehicles Act, and will have to spend 3-days in prison.
From The Times of India, Bombay, August-3 2007

You can check out what different spirits do to the blood alcohol levels here.

But more than the mundane practicalities of how to beat the system, what’s troubling me is what I’m going to term - the growing intolerance. While I’m not about to make a case for drunken drivers, I’m struck by the non-discriminating nature of the response. Is there really no difference between having had 1 drink or 4? No answers, only questions. And in the mean time, more room for the cops to put some money in their pockets…… I imagine that they do have the judgment to be able to discern and discriminate among the numerous people who breath out 30-mg into the analyzer!

Within the normal range of perception, the behavior of objects can be measured and predicted. Ignoring the possibility that in the wrong hands almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial; ignoring, for the moment, the far more interesting possibility that every object might lead a secret life, it is still safe to say that objects, as we understand them, are relatively stable, whereas ideas are definitely unstable, they not only can be misused, they invite misuse - and the better the idea, the more volatile it is. That’s because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea into robot dogma that is deadly. In terms of hazardous vectors released, the transformation of ideas into dogma rivals the transformation of hydrogen into helium, uranium into lead, or innocence into corruption. And it is nearly as relentless.

The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.

There is a particularly unattractive and discouragingly common affliction called tunnel vision, which, for all the misery it causes, ought to top the job list at the World Health Organization. Tunnel vision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interest. Tunnel vision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego. It is complicated by exposure to politics. When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision, it not only comes out reduced in scale and value but in its new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it was originally intended.

This is how the loving ideas of Jesus Christ became the sinister cliches of Christianity. That is why virtually every revolution in history has failed: the oppressed, as soon as they seize power, turn into the oppressors, resorting to totalitarian tactics to “protect the revolution.” That is why minorities seeking the abolition of prejudice become intolerant, minorities seeking peace become militant, minorities seeking equality become self-righteous, and minorities seeking liberation become hostile (a tight asshole being the first symptom of self-repression).

The foregoing sermonette was brought to you by the Essential Insanities Dept. at Outlaw College.

[Reproduced without permission from From Still Life With Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins]

The long history of heterodoxy (in India) has a bearing not only on the development and survival of democracy in India, it has also richly contributed, I would argue, to the emergence of secularism in India, and even to the form Indian secularism takes, which is not exactly the same as the way secularism is defined in parts of the West. The tolerance of religious diversity is implicitly reflected in India’s having served as a shared home - in the chronology of history - for Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Jews, Christians, Parsees, Sikhs, Baha’is and others. The Vedas, which date back at least to the middle of the second millennium BCE, paved the way for what is now called Hinduism (that term was devised much later by Persians and Arabs, after the river Sindhu or Indus). Buddhism and Jainism had both emerged by the sixth century BCE. Buddhism, the practice of which is now rather sparse in India, was the dominant religion of the country for nearly a thousand years. Jainism, on the other hand, born at the same time as Buddhism, has survived as a powerful Indian religion over two and a half millennia.

Jews came to India, it appears, shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, though there are other theories as well (including the claim that the members of the Bene Israel community first arrived in the eighth century BCE, and, more plausibly, that they came in 175 BCE). Jewish arrivals continued in later waves, in the fifth and sixth centuries from southern Arabia and Persia until the last wave of Baghdadi Jews from Iraq and Syria, mostly to Bombay and Calcutta, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Christians, too, came very early, and by the fourth century there were large Christian communities in what is now Kerala. Parsees started arriving in the late seventh century, as soon as persecution of Zoroastrianism began in Persia. The Baha’is were among the last groups to seek refuge in India, in the last century. Over this long period there were other migrations, including the settlement of Muslim Arab traders, which began on India’s western coast in the eighth century, well before the invasions that came from other Muslim countries via the more warlike north-western routes. There were in addition many conversions, especially to Islam. Each religious community managed to retain its identity within India’s multi-religious spectrum.

The toleration of diversity has also been explicitly defended by strong arguments in favor of the richness of variation, including fulsome praise of the need to interact with each other, in mutual respect, through dialogue. In the last section, I discussed the contributions made to public reasoning by two of the grandest of Indian emperors, Ashoka and Akbar. How relevant are their ideas for the content and reach if Indian secularism?

Ashoka, as was mentioned earlier, wanted a general agreement on the need to conduct arguments with ‘restraint and regard to speech’: ‘a person must not do reverence to his own sect or disparage the beliefs of another without reason.’ He went on to argue: ‘Depreciation should be for specific reasons only, because the sects of other people all deserve reverence for one reason or another.’ Ashoka supplemented this general moral and political principle by a dialectical argument based on enlightened self-interest: ‘For he who does reverence to his own sect while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own sect, in reality inflicts, by such conduct, the severest injury on his own sect.’

Akbar not only made unequivocal pronouncements on the priority of tolerance, but also laid the foundations of a secular legal structure and of religious neutrality of the state, which included the duty to ensure that ‘no man should be interfered with on account of religion, and anyone is to be allowed to go over to a religion that pleases him.’ Despite his deep interest in other religions and his brief attempt to launch a new religion, Din-i-ilahi (God’s religion), based on a combination of good points chosen from different faiths, Akbar did remain a good Muslim himself. Indeed, when Akbar died in 1605, the Islamic theologian Abdul Haq, who had been quite critical of Akbar’s lapses from orthodoxy, concluded with some satisfaction that, despite his ‘innovations’, Akbar had remained a proper Muslim.

The meetings that Akbar arranged in the late sixteenth century for public dialogue involved members of different religious faiths (including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Jains, Jews, and even atheists). While the historical background of Indian secularism can be traced to the trend of thinking that had begun to take root well before Akbar, the politics of secularism received a tremendous boost from Akbar’s championing of pluralist ideas, along with his insistence that the state should be completely impartial between different religions. Akbar’s own political decisions reflected his pluralist commitments, well exemplified even by his insistence on filling his court with non-Muslim intellectuals and artists (including the great Hindu musician Tansen) in addition to Muslim ones, and, rather remarkably, by his trusting a Hindu former king (Raja Man Singh), who had been defeated earlier by Akbar, to serve as the general commander of his armed forces.

…….
This is an excellent and thought-provoking book, one that’s particularly timely given the culture of intolerance that’s growing and thriving in India and the world. While its certainly not light reading, I’d urge you to go through at least the first 100-pages. And then you may just want to continue! :o)

[Reproduced without permission from The Argumentative Indian, by Amartya Sen]