Secularism and Humanism – Any Takers?

Facebook is a social networking site carrying millions of people under its wings. A lot of groups, dealing with anything under the sun are available and people flock to them in droves to take membership in these groups. As long as it is free, why keep away from it, particularly if that group interests you even remotely? One such community is ‘Global Secular Humanist Movement’ and the name itself says it all.

Whatever be the thing about the title, does it cater to the lofty ideals it professes, namely secularism and humanism? One look at the posts indicate that it doesn’t bother much about practicing what they preach. One glance at the page and we come to the conclusion that secular humanism is all about gay rights. The page is littered with exhortations of all kinds to force the society to legalize gay marriage. It is as if you’ve to support the perverted whims of these creatures (hard words, I know, but forgive me) calling themselves gays, in order to be a liberal. Such an attitude is against nature and science (not the two journals, but what they mean!). What evolutionary advantage these people possess? Evolution is all about propagating your genes if they provide you with any advantage to survival. Being a gay confers nothing – it is not conducive to survival and the genes are not going to spread further through offspring. Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end, a cul-de-sac. Why should liberals support them?

Indians do a lot of irrelevant offerings to numerous deities

Anyway, that’s not what I meant to say. This Global Secular Humanist Movement recently published a country-wise total of their members, and it proves interesting. They have 5563 members from India and 1993 from Pakistan (on 28 March 2013). These numbers assume significance as a percentage of the respective countries’ total populations. As per Census 2011, India has 1241 million and Pakistan has 177 million people. So, if we take the Indian percentage of members to the total population as the representative figure, there should have been only 792 members from Pakistan whereas there are 1993. And, if Pakistani members are taken as the benchmark ratio, there should have been 14000 Indian members while there is only 5563. What is clear is that more Pakistanis join secular humanist group than do Indians. Isn’t it somewhat odd in a constitutionally secular country as against an Islamic republic alleged to be run by mullahs and religious fanatics? Or, do we accede that even though our country is secular in name, most of its citizens don’t share the ideal?

It is not at all odd, if we look into the antecedents of some of the ‘well educated’ and ‘scientifically minded’ people of this country. Take the case of Shri. K Radhakrishnan, the current chief of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). His organization is entrusted with making and launching space vehicles and satellites – a thoroughly scientific job. Yet, what did its Chief do? He visited a renowned temple at Guruvayur, Kerala just around the time when intimation of elevating him as the Chief was about to arrive, so that he could receive the good news in the divine precincts! Also, he regularly visits shrines to pray for the successful launch of satellites. It was only last month that he rushed to Tirupati in connection with the launch of PSLC-C20 which had on board ‘Saral’, an Indo-French satellite. What feeble chance science possesses to get rid of the clutches of religion from people like him? Not only Radhakrishnan, but many of the educated people won’t even think of starting a new venture or inaugurate a shop or production plant without performing a puja on the premises.

So much for secularism and humanism.

Aranmula and Nedumbassery – A Case of Double Standards

Kerala’s mortal aversion to privately funded capital is notorious. I have myself posted some notes in this blog earlier, highlighting issues like Endosulfan – Who is the real culprit in Kerala?, KSFE – State-sponsored daylight robbery, and National pastime - Strikes. So, this is not another attempt to expose this mindset which is sapping the entrepreneurial vitality of the state from within, like a cancer. What caught me as another striking example of this double standard is the recent issue with the proposed airport at Aranmula in Southern Kerala.

KGS Group, a Chennai-based industrial house with infrastructural and engineering expertise has proposed an international airport at Aranmula with state of the art facilities. The three promoters of the group, Shri K Kumaran, Gigi George and P V Shanmugam, whose first letters of their names forms the title of the group are technocracts and a chartered accountant. Reliance ADA Group led by Anil Ambani has a 15% stake in KGS. Out of the 700 acres of land estimated for the project, 240 acres have been acquired by the company until it fell into a quagmire created by some politicians and environmentalists. The 2000-crore rupee project was scheduled to be commissioned by December 2014, but all work is stalled at present. The bone of contention is that most of the earmarked area is agricultural land. Though nobody denies that many of the small plots are not cultivated at all, it doesn’t prevent them from raising a hue and cry about converting paddy fields for industrial use.

Now, go back twenty years in time to 1993, when the idea of a greenfield airport at Kochi first germinated in the mind of a young, talented IAS officer who was also the District Collector of Ernakulam. Shri. V J Kurian, who matches in caliber his namesake Varghese Kurian of Amul, proposed Nedumbassery as the site of a new airport as the existing naval airstrip at Willingdon Island was proving a bottleneck to the city’s growth as a metropolis. He acquired 1300 acres of prime agricultural land at Nedumbassery and within three years built a superb airport, the first in India employing private-public partnership (PPP) model. In a deal finely balancing incentives with coercion, Kurian worked a miracle in Nedumbassery’s fertile brown soil, by resettling 2300 landowners and 872 families amicably by Kerala standards. The government has only 33.36% of the stake, but controls the management and the airport functions effectively as a public sector undertaking (PSU). The project hadn’t had to face such severe opposition as KGS is experiencing at Aranmula precisely because it was a government-controlled entity.

Now, come back to the present again. This time we go to Amballur, near Piravom in Ernakulam district where an Electronics and Hardware Park is envisaged by the state-run KSIDC over 390 acres of agricultural land. Surprisingly, there is no agitation, no protest and no legal tussles over converting agricultural land! In fact, the cabinet has exempted the land from the purview of Kerala Conservation of Paddy Fields and Wet Lands Act, thereby smoothing the way for earthmoving equipment to quickly level the paddy fields for construction work to start.

Why this unashamed double standard? What makes Aranmula different from Nedumbassery or Amballur? Is it because a private company is involved in the project? If the project is not economically viable, let KGS face the consequences as it is their money. When will our stupid brethren realise that private enterprises are also the bread winners of the nation?

Mumtaz and Shah Jehan - Some Facts

Every now and then, some silly comments are seen in Internet. The following is one of them.

This attack on Shah Jehan is false, misleading and maligning the monument which is the pride of India and needs to be countered point by point.

1. Mumtaz was Shah Jehan’s third wife out of very many. Probably the emperor himself couldn’t have kept count. But she was undoubtedly his principal queen and there was genuine love. In fact, she became No. 3 only because the astrologers set a date five years later for the marriage. In the intervening period, he married twice, but even their names are not recorded in history. We should not match the family life of medieval kings against the moral enlightenment of a future era.

2. The second point is totally false. Probably the writer is confused with the case of Nur Jahan and Jahangir where it is alleged that Jahangir plotted the killing of Nur Jahan’s husband. Mumtaz was Nur Jahan’s niece (daughter of Asaf Khan, who was Nur’s brother) and her marriage with Shah Jehan was arranged by their parents.

3. Mumtaz indeed died during her 14^th delivery out of 19 years of living together. What other avenues existed in those days to express love? She accompanied him even in battles and her death after 30 hours of painful labour in a case of post-partum haemorrhage occurred at far away Burhanpur, while Shah Jehan’s Deccan campaign was on. Out of the 14 children, only 7 reached adulthood. All the four male offsprings who fought for the throne - Dara Shukoh, Aurangzeb, Murad Baksh and Shah Shuja - were Mumtaz’s children, emphasizing the point that she was his favourite queen.

4. After Mumtaz’s death, Shah Jehan married but there is no evidence that Mumtaz’s sister was one of them.

Big Fish Slipping Through Mathrubhumi’s Net

Kerala is a small state on the south-western coast of India which can boast of a social awareness incommensurate with its size. It always provided a fertile bed for foreign ideas to be tested. Socialist ideals arrived at the right time during the second quarter of the 20^th century, when Kerala was on the cusp of a great social reformation. Though no one realized it at the time, nor they do it now, socialism painted the collective mind a deep red hue and shifted public opinion to the left. All political parties in Kerala display leftist objectives and at least pay lip service to them. Political observers could laugh their hearts out when they see the captains of Kerala Congress, which is a communal party of rich landlords and industrialists, waxes eloquent on social control of industry through state-owned enterprises. Such a heightened awareness of socio-political issues has resulted in the state having the largest per-capita share of newspapers and other journals. Television was a new entrant with at least six full-time news channels in Malayalam catering to 32 million people. All of them are leftist in nature, and the irony that all of these privately owned channels came into being after the Indian government’s liberalization drive which began in 1991 is lost on society. Where else in the world can you see a private industrialist making a movie on a storyline extolling the virtues of communism and reaped a huge profit out of it? Anyone tending to dispute this may do better watching films like Ningalenne Communistakki, Lal Salaam, or numerous other films.

Unfortunate for the horde of news channels, Kerala is not a ‘happening’ place. Marginalized on the industrial front due to excessive politicization and militant trade unionism, its industrial landscape is stagnant. The media makes a feast out of an occasional political scoop, a gruesome traffic mishap or a sensational sexual escapade. The channels have teething troubles and need an incredible story to get itself established on the imagination of society. Mathrubhumi, a venerable news paper company with nearly a century of exemplary service behind it started a full-time news channel barely a month ago in a bid to ape its main competitor Malayala Manorama. Mathrubhumi’s television incarnation was scouting for something to turn viewers’ heads and make a mark for itself.

Their right moment came on March 5^th. Weaving out a sting operation on the model of Tehelka, they targeted and successfully trapped three middle-ranking officials of the Commercial Taxes department. Accepting the baits of Rs. 10,000 in cash and a liquor bottle, the officials walked into the net, boasting of their powers. All of them were immediately suspended pending enquiry.

So far, so good. There need to be no sympathy to the corrupt officials. But there appears to be a glaring omission in Mathrubhumi’s operation. The journalists were led to other officials based on hints from those already in the net. One such person is seen to comment that anything could be carried through the Finance minister’s office, if the minister’s son and M.P, Shri. Jose K Mani could be made to support their case. The official clearly indicated that corruption prevails at all offices, including the minister’s. We sit back and gaze with incredulity that Mathrubhumi didn’t follow through the lead. If they practiced what they professed, they would’ve carried the sting operation to Jose K Mani’s office too, who stoutly denied the allegations, and in fact praised the channel for exposing the unscrupulous elements in government.

Frankly, we don’t know whether Jose K Mani would or would not have fallen before the camera. If they had the willpower to carry the operation to its logical conclusion, the episode with the minister’s son would’ve created wonders for the channel and a glorious lesson on how a responsible media should respond to corruption.

But, expecting Mathrubhumi to stay the course would be pure naivete. The channel and newspaper is controlled by Shri. M P Veerendra Kumar, who is a prominent leader in the ruling coalition of which Jose K Mani is also a part. What more can we expect from a paper or channel controlled by a politician against another politician who is his own colleague? In the end, the three officials will be charged for corruption, but as it is sure that the channel won’t follow up the case, they’ll most probably be returned to office with full wages for the period under suspension.

When will this country open its eyes?