Mahatma Gandhi Has Left The Country

Unknown to many in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, on March, 4th and 5th 2009, at the Antiquorum Gallery in New York, some of India’s most iconic heritage will go under the auctioneer’s hammer.

A Zenith pocket watch, spectacles, slippers, plate and bowl of Mahatma Gandhi – father of the Indian nation – are all up for auction. This heritage has till now, been locked away in the custody of unspecified individuals who had received them as gifts.

Decades before she became India’s Prime Minister, Indira Nehru presented the Zenith pocket watch to Mahatma Gandhi – a possession he cherished dearly. When it was stolen from him at Lucknow station during a train journey, he was so distraught by its loss that he published an appeal in the HARIJAN newspaper. Moved by his appeal, the thief eventually returned the watch to the Mahatma who characteristically forgave the man for reuniting him with his beloved possession.

Mahatma Gandhi enjoyed his last meal before he fell to assassin’s bullets on 30th January 1948, from the very plate and bowl to be auctioned off in New York City. The slippers, being parcelled off with equal equanimity at the same event, were the Mahatma’s token of appreciation to a British officer who had taken photographs during a transit stop in Aden, en route to the Round Table Conference in London.

The spectacles being sold off with élan, were in fact, presented by Mahatma Gandhi to the then Nawab of Junagadh with the memorable words that framed a vision of optimism for India’s future: “I have seen the dream of a free India where all will be equal with these glasses. I gift you my eyes, they may help you to see the India of my dreams.”

The spirit of Mahatma Gandhi would insist that same money be used to educate the deprived and under-privileged. If he did wear those spectacles again he would be disillusioned to see the equal India he dreamt off still a distant dream.

Ironically, given his anathema for materialism, Mahatma Gandhi would certainly have rebuked his great-grandson Tushar Gandhi for attempting to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-possess his personal belongings.

While it is certain that the Mahatma would have disapproved of such a purchase, it is unfortunate that the government of India has taken no initiative whatsoever, to purchase such priceless memorabilia at whatever cost, before it is subjected to the humiliation of the auctioneer’s hammer.

Each pound of the auction block - parcelling India’s history - hammers out the reality of our misplaced priorities. It is all the more shocking to consider the fact that more public money is probably wasted in a single day on a Parliament that shirks conducting business or, on the Z-security of peoples’ representatives being protected from the people.

It is even more demoralizing to discover banter amongst Indian and American buddies on Facebook about “bidding for the Mahatma’s loin cloth, or purchasing his pince nez glasses”, grinding the Dandian salt of his erstwhile status in the dust of ridicule from his own countrymen.

Irrespective of who eventually owns the Mahatma’s belongings or, in which distant corner of the world they enjoy safe custody, the iconic memorabilia and the memories attached to each artefact shall remain priceless.

Now more than ever India needs to walk in the Mahatma’s footsteps) see India the way he did, sup from his plate of spiritual plenty setting aside differences of caste, creed and community.

Return of such memorabilia to the mother land just might inspire and educate our youth to envisage the India of Mahatma’s dreams; at a particularly fraught time in our history when non-violence and frugality are embarrassing, even obsolete words.

If Tushar Gandhi’s efforts come to naught then it can only be said that the Mahatma will remain a genie trapped in a bank locker till a time when India views a future for itself through his spectacles.

There Is More To Recession Than Meets The Eye _ Chandrashekhar Hariharan

It is only recently that this column featured a set of reflections on how Thoreau is not perhaps relevant to this day and age with the dramatic change in our perception of needs and the big realization of what it means to the world in terms of the loss of ecology and threat to the planet.

A recent edition of a newspaper had the historian scholar Ramachandra Guha quoting Gandhiji, writing as far back as in 1928: “God forbid that India should take to industrialization after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny kingdom [Great Britain] is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million Indians took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts”. Guha has written for many years now of the anguish of consumerism and of the need for moving away to lifestyles that would leave a softer footprint on the planet.

The traditional values and emotional anchors that our houses provided or the city landscape offered is now quickly a thing of the past.

Globalization of some kind or the other is being experienced by each of us in our own little ways. It sometimes means you’re given the pink slip, the American euphemism for being unceremoniously dumped out of your job with no notice. It sometimes means you get very rich. Sometimes it means both. More often it means that you’ve got a job but you’re very, very poor. All this stems from a certain kind of globalization that has fed oru greed with complete disregard of social obligations or of environmental realities. There is only one narrow pursuit of the single bottom line for a human being or for an organization. [This writer heard recently of the sad plight of many pedigree dogs that have been packed off to CUPA by the rich young types from the IT industry who have been hit by the recession. Those poor dogs…]

These are very powerful forces that can’t but have the Armageddon of growth hurtling on with little that you can do but being a helpless bystander.

The sort of growth that we had in the last ten years was based on the promise of limitless economic growth. A feature carried in these same columns by this writer a few weeks ago reminded us, of how way back in the 1960s we carried the sanguine notion that the planet can continue to offer all that we need if only we know and are convinced of the ingenuity of man. To fulfill the promise of US lifestyles for all would need may be two planets’ worth of natural resources—some thing we can never have. We have already exceeded many limits. We have become too big for our ecological boots, is the start fact, and continue not to recognize it.

Of Carbon Debts

To support the profligate lifestyles enjoyed by the rich, the Earth’s biosphere needs at least one year and three months to simply regenerate the amount lost to human consumption in a year. So what can be the result but environmental decline of a kind that the planet has never seen before? Disproportionate use by the rich of the atmosphere’s limited ability to absorb pollution also means that countries and individuals are running up massive carbon debts. Unlike any debt that a country or an individual has to service, there is no mechanism to call in the ecological debts that the rich create. The other worrisome dimension is that with the sharp urbanizing that we have seen in the last 20 years, culture has suffered as diversity has been lost. Cultural diversity is important for personal identity and well-being; it also matters because local cultural production is an important part of any economy.

The trouble with big brands and the corporate biggies is that they suck out wealth from local economies, and repatriate their profits to shareholders across the world in most cases these days—take the example of any IT major today who has global shares participation and you know the story. Local producers usually encourage the creation of wealth where it matters, in the community. For example, a rupee spent in a supermarket on globally branded goods is worth only about half the same spent in a local shop selling local produce. But the catch is that packaging and branding usually claims the customer’s attention and desire. Look at what is happening to you and me, when it comes to buying: we prefer the food mall to the friendly kirana store!


More to the Recession

What we are seeing today as a recession is far beyond its current dimensions. The slew of horrendous news we are receiving on the business and economic fronts from nearly every country in a business world that is coming crashing down on all of us, is that this is not merely an economic downturn but will signify a complete redefinition of the future of consumption itself in the world—no more the insensitive adoption of pedigree dogs or building of megapools and houses that bespeak of obscene avarice.

A whole new sobered generation of youngsters will now want to see how they recalibrate their economic and career ambitions to get to the good old fashioned way of working hard to earn the day’s wage. What this recession is showing is that there will be a dramatic across-the-board drop in consumption over the next ten years. What this new sober economy of the future is saying is this: dependence on external markets beyond our own country, or our district, or our community, will reduce to the levels that prevailed in the middle of the last century. India still qualifies as the fastest growing economy in the world at over 7 per cent GDP growth. We only have Nehru and the legacy of self-sufficiency his 17-year regime created, and the hard-working, enterprising commonplace Indian of today for this growth and the assurance it offers in this world of turmoil. You only have to walk on busy street and watch Life as it passes you by, and you know that here is a country of people who have the ambition to succeed, the hunger to achieve, and the pride in succeeding.

The Kirana shop is dying

Globalization has devastated cultures and environments over the last 20 years. Capital has never shown as much or more appetite than it has done in the last few years. But it does not have enough stomach to digest all the people it pretends to control. While putting people on corporate payrolls, it closes the doors of the globalized market to millions of small producers and enterprises. All you have to do is to step out some morning and chat up the pushcart vendor who sells vegetables every day on your street to know how he is now reduced to making visits only twice a week, because no one buys.

The kirana shop, or the friendly neighborhood provision store that has been part of India’s invisible infrastructure for a 100 years, is slowly crumbling with the advent of the retail market. People simply don’t have the time to pause by, have a chat with the shop owner and give him the list of things that you will need for the month. We find it easier to walk the aisle of an anonymous shopping mall and pick up what we need without loss of time.

What this kind of globalization has meant is fundamentally that human beings are disposable. We have become prisoners of addiction or prisoners of envy that is stoked by the onslaught of advertising on television or the newspaper.

Inherent in all this is a tyranny of subdued violence that has inevitably led to what we are seeing around us today. The recession, and what will come as its aftermath, is going to rejuvenate the world even if it’s going to leave us a little staggered and chastened on our urban lifestyles. The nicer fallout of the recession over the next decade, with hope, would be that life will move at a gentler pace and people will enjoy a degree of leisure unknown to many of the younger generation in the urban India.

Chandrashekar Hariharan

The writer is from Biodiversity Conservation [India] Limited, a pioneering green homes organization based in Bangalore.

Pub Bharo Ya Bus Bharo, Minister Renuka Chowdhury?

On the winter’s day of December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42 year old seamstress and civil liberties worker boarded a bus to head home from work. Parks, secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) had recently familiarized herself with Gandhian non-violence at a workshop for racial equality at the Highlander Folk School.

“Tired of giving in”, Rosa Parks refused to obey the bus driver and offer her seat to a white passenger. This individual act of civil disobedience began the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted 381 days, crippling the economy of the local public transport system, eventually leading to the Supreme Court declaring segregation on buses as unconstitutional.ci

On December 5th, 1955, a young churchman named Martin Luther King Jr. assumed leadership of the campaign to defend Rosa Parks. Four years later, he visited India to imbibe Gandhi’s principles. February 19th 2009, will make 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. spent two days in a sparsely furnished room on the second floor of Mani Bhavan in Mumbai. Thereafter, he felt sufficiently empowered to motivate the Black Civil Rights movement with Gandhian principles of non-violence.

Marking the arrival of King Jr’s son in India, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his father’s pilgrimage, to the land of Mahatma Gandhi, on February 6th, 2009, Shruthi KS a student of St Aloysius College, Mangalore, was abducted from a bus along with her male companion Shabeeb; five hoodlums assaulted them to enforce their diktat of segregation of communities and faith.

Meanwhile, the Shree Ram Sena’s orchestrated efforts to ‘save’ the Indian woman from the evils of pub culture shall culminate in the following by Valentine’s Day; Mangalore’s Amnesia Lounge shall be endowed with Renuka Chowdhury’s defiant ministerial presence endorsing pub culture; the ‘pub bharo’ (fill the pubs) call will ensure roaring business in times of recession, pleasing pub owners and liquor barons; the sorority of ‘pub-going, loose and forward women’ marinated into the media establishment would have delighted their media bosses, with their sensational strategy selling more newspapers and Muthalik will contemplate an advantageous purpose for his knickers jackpot.

Within a week of its occurrence, the bus incident involving Shruthi and Shabeeb remains the concern of her parents, the police and the Human Rights Commission.

In a sinister refrain of events, on February 10th, fifteen year old Ashwini Moolya‘s bus was waylaid by a gang of youth. She was accused of “illegal activities” with Saleem a Muslim youth travelling on the same bus who was later arrested. Unable to bear the humiliation, Ashwini - a ninth standard student - committed suicide the next day.

Both incidents involve a woman and moral policing but ‘pub bharo’ remains the Valentine’s Day priority before the ogre of communal segregation can be addressed.

Though the incident involved a woman and moral policing, communalism is inconvenient with Valentine’s Day around the corner.

Amidst the thousands of accomplished pub-going women is there not a handful like seamstress Rosa Parks, ready to board a bus wearing ‘bindi’ or ‘burkha’ - with their male friends of other faiths - to defy the cultural and communal segregation of India?

On February 19th, when Martin Luther King Jr. III renews his conviction in Satyagraha at Mani Bhavan in Mumbai, would Minister Renuka Chowdhury lead a ‘Bus Bharo’ campaign in Mangalore, with the pub-going consortium and college students of various communities for company?

Would King Jr. III be able to take a message back to the United States of America that Gandhian strategies of civil disobedience still work on a bus decades later or, would he have to inform the world that in the India of 2009, “Gandhi’s non-violence is exported as parcels of packaged pink knickers?”

Madame Minister and the Consortium… your answer is awaited. February 19th is nigh

She'll Be Wearing Pink Chaddis When She Comes!

On February 9th 2009, Martin Luther King Jr’s son arrived to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his father’s visit to India. In 1959, King Jr. returned to the US infused with the Gandhian mantra of non-violence to resist the segregation of his people.

On the same day that King Jr III commenced his India visit, this writer’s mailbox was enthusiastically inundated by the ‘pink chaddi’ campaign, sponsored by the Consortium of Pub-Going Loose and Forward Women, resolutely resisting the segregation of their ilk by Pramod Muthalik and his saffron hued cultural crusaders - the Shree Ram Sena.

King had acknowledged his intellectual debt to Gandhi saying “Since being in India I am more convinced than ever before that the method of non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity”.

Fifty years later a gentleman from Chandigarh aptly christening himself ‘Ignoramus’ felt it necessary to recognise the Mahatma’s contribution to the ‘pink chaddi’ campaign with a blog comment saying “I would equate it to the Ahimsa movement by Gandhiji. The best revolution and inline with Baapuji's call for Ahimsa. Gandhigiri at its best” .

While the ‘pink chaddi’ campaign has captured the imagination of 14800 members on Facebook, securing the attention of the international press including the BBC, its myopic objective is restricted to elbowing Muthalik off the column centimetres with apparent and immediate success.

In a modus operandi of intolerance akin to their bête noire, the blog has been sanitized of critical comments, including those of this writer. Given, the association of the ‘pink chaddi’ campaign with champions of free expression - such as Tehelka in New Delhi and the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore - expunging comments that sit uncomfortably with the cause is certainly not cricket.

The ‘pink chaddi’ concept deserves acknowledgement but unfortunately the combative nature of the campaign is antithetical to the Gandhian spirit of non-violence. While the Consortium certainly comprises numerous accomplished women, their political immaturity is evidently reflected in mirroring Muthalik’s language of confrontation, through which they have opted to demean themselves. Perhaps, faculties diminished by ‘pub-going’ encouraged the adoption of such a sensationalist but challenged strategy?

Apart from their captivating media attention over the subsequent days let us forecast the balance sheet of this campaign’s accomplishments. Rather than being humiliated, Pramod Muthalik will probably discount pink knickers for an inaccurate saffron hue and distribute this as largesse to his constituency comprising female supporters of every endowment.

Otherwise, the Shree Ram Sena lumpen will make substantial amounts of money selling softer pink grease rags across Karnataka to fund further dastardly acts of hooliganism. In all probability, some of his sympathisers are already laughing their way to the bank selling thousands of pink knickers during a recession. Not least, the postman will receive a bonus delivering this dubious bounty!

The consortium has not considered the fact that the Shree Ram Sena has a substantial constituency amongst women who are equally disapproving of “pub culture”.

Furthermore, the women of an entire minority community - otherwise in solidarity by virtue of gender - would distance themselves from spiritual pursuits in the pub not prescribed in their religious doctrines.

Finally, while this consortium enjoyed the opportunity of providing leadership to women across India at the receiving end of relentless male chauvinism, it is disappointing that they opted to segregate themselves from such responsibility to assert the blinkered purpose of their looseness, forwardness and ‘pub bharo’ rights instead.

Segregated from ‘pub bharo’, the ‘pink chaddi’ is a singular idea but the combination has left its slip showing. Dispatching pink knickers in bulk to Muthalik would reinforce the resolve of his cadres to retaliate manifold and win him sympathy from fence sitters.

Adopting the Gandhian way would have transformed the campaign from the sensational to the substantial. Exploiting the colour pink that symbolised the segregation and systematic elimination of an entire race would have captivated world imagination and given this campaign stature.

Sending the ‘chaddis’ to Muthalik is a protest of convenience conducted in anonymity not commensurate with the courage shown by women of the Chipko Movement.

To achieve that transformation, it would have required the ‘pink chaddi’ to signify more than a ‘bubble gum and Barbie doll’ Valentine Day protest. The courage of wearing the ‘chaddi’ as an over-garment - symbolising the segregation of progressive women by a horde of saffron hued neo-fascists - would have earned “ world sympathy, in the battle of right against might” to quote the Mahatma.

Responding TO 'MISLEADING GANDHIGIRI' by S. Anand in TEHELKA, 30/01/09

The link below will lead you the story titled 'Misleading Gandhigiri' by S Anand, published in Tehelka dtd 31/01/09, which rubbished the Cellular Silence Day petition.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Op310109misleading_gandhigiri.asp

Please find my riposte below which Tehelka felt it unnecessary to publish:

RESPONDING TO 'MISLEADING GANDHIGIRI' by S. ANAND

G. D Birla bankrolled Mahatma Gandhi. The 'hits' to the Cellular Silence petition page online attracted ICICI Lombard to solicit insurance while Tehelka thought it prudent that S. Anand's article 'Misleading Gandhigiri' - rubbishing the aforesaid unintelligent petition – be bolstered by TATA AIG's personal injury plan advertisement. Corporate India continues to consort with the strangest of bedfellows, it seems!

Rather than lock horns in a constructive engagement on petition strategy and objectives, well-read Anand felt it more gratifying to grapple with an obscure part of the socially conservative bull's anatomy, totally losing the plot in the process.

S Anand found it appropriate to mischievously manoeuvre portions of the petition airbrushed with his preferred selections of history to rubbish Gandhi; question the secular credentials of the signatories, conveniently clubbing all into a socially conservative monolith, all sophistically tailored to justify his diatribe.

While I have the greatest respect and appreciation for leaders of our freedom movement – including Ambedkar, Nehru and Gandhi, I choose to remain only inspired but refuse to treat them as 'sacred cows' or, consider their writings as dogma. It is more important to learn lessons from their mistakes and set course corrections for ourselves rather than remain shackled by history.

What I find objectionable is Anand's propensity to select his 'sacred cow' -while rebuking other leaders - to celebrate the victimhood of his constituency in perpetuity.

Pakistani school books justify their enmity with India; the Hindutva vanguard leave no ruin unturned to establish the sub-continent as Aryan homeland and S. Anand completes this ménage a trios of historical selectivity to justify his blinkered raison d'être – of preserving his constituency of the underdog.

While drafting the Cellular Silence petition it was Mahatma Gandhi's strategy of non-violence that was the inspiration. Given, that two other greatest men of the 20th century, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela employed it with efficacy, it strikes me as the most appropriate 'operating system' with which to address the violence, iniquities and inequalities of the 21st century.

Fifteen days ago and for a few decades before that, I felt myself a voice in the wilderness falling upon deaf ears in the jungle of Indian democracy. Embraces and endorsements at the Vibrant Gujarat summit precipitated the tipping point.

The choice remained; an unvoiced angry reaction in silence or, a non-violent response with silence? It is with great trepidation that I placed the petition online, certain my call for cellular silence would receive a deafening silence in response or, worse still ridicule and censure.

To my surprise the petition was greeted with 50 signatures and hour! Ordinary Indian citizens from afar as Kashmir felt the petition gave them a voice they long sought. They felt empowered by what Anand dismisses as tokenism of the socially conservative. Theses voices originated from various corners of the country, from all walks of life and strata of society.

May I remind Anand that it was a fistful of salt – another token gesture - that precipitated the beginning of the end of British rule in India? While Anand remembers Martin Luther King's boycott, his convenient amnesia as to where King sought his inspiration to launch the Civil Rights movement is unfortunate.

For the average Indian, a boycott call a la Gandhi or Martin Luther King - as Anand suggests - from an unknown Indian would have crashed on 'take off'. A 'token' gesture permits the average Indian a vote of confidence; seeking reassurance in the comfort of numbers, before investing time, energy and self-sacrifice in a future boycott to ensure his 'return on investment'.

We are in different times when strategies of protest are not black and white as in the time of Martin Luther King or Gandhi. Boycotting the Nano, as Anand suggests hurts the ordinary factory worker – many of whom might be Dalit and Adivasi; it hurts the image of India and might incidentally hurt Tata Motors. Switching cell phones off inconveniences the subscriber for a day but sends the message to the captains of corporate India that we can stop consuming anytime we choose at the press of a button.

In rubbishing the petition and Gandhi with it, Anand in his efforts to champion Ambedkar inadvertently finds himself ensconced between Narendra Modi's fierce fan club who launch vitriolic tirades via email and the legal department of TATA Sons who also brook no criticism of their corporate captain.

Anand forgets that the Dalits, Adivasis and millions in the middle of India's pyramid are all on the same side of the fence bullied by corporate India that bolsters the political class - eating out of their palms – for a sop.

Wealth creation is not a bad thing Mr Anand. Economic mobility is probably the most efficacious way to debilitate the caste system over course of time. To achieve that wealth creation must be for the greatest good of all and not just for those at the top of the pyramid, looking down on the rest as mere consumers fuelling economic growth – not citizens of India.

May I suggest that in future Anand use his erudition constructively, not to alienate but to forge a bond with citizens who sign such petitions all of whom are trying to find a voice to create a more equitable civic society.

sd/- Ranjan Kamath

Cellular Silence Day_30th January 2009

Dear Friend

The collective amnesia of the captains of Indian industry with Ratan Tata embracing Narendra Modi and Messrs. Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani endorsing his candidature as future PM of India, disturbed me immensely.

This petition is my humble effort to engage the conscience of corporate India and make it known to them that the Indian citizen is not to be trifled with.

Just as we can vote for or against the politician, we can pinch the corporate bottom-line in order to engage their attention to mend their ways.

It is not an easy task for us to keep our cell phones and Blackberries switched off for an entire day on January 30th - the 61st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination.

However, it ought to be sufficient to get the message across to corporate India that we will not tolerate the endorsement of fascists as future Prime Ministers.

May I request you visit the link below to sign and thereafter circulate the petition, if you feel as strongly about this matter.

Remember, if we wish to" be the change we wish to see" we have to have a few million signatures on this petition by January 30th 2009

sincerely
Ranjan Kamath

PETITION

To: India Inc.

Dear Messrs, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani

I am one of a billion Indian citizens.

I am somewhere in the middle of that pyramid that you wish to give voice - from bottom to top - through wealth creation.

I am proud of the brands you represent that have made India proud.

I am one of the burgeoning Indian middle-class that share your aspirations of mutating India from indolent elephant to thundering tiger.

It ends there...

I have hitherto been accused of being indifferent and apathetic, simply because I am overawed and felt overwhelmed in a system replete with Goliaths.

But when I saw you embrace the fascist mastermind of state sponsored genocide as a future Prime Minister and endorse the Modi-fication of India, it was disappointingly apparent that the brands that aspire to make India rich shall continue to languish in ethical poverty.

While I am filled with revulsion at your endorsement of Narendra Modi, I must respect your right to do so as a fellow citizen.

In writing this petition I am a mere David amongst the mightiest corporate Goliaths but I feel empowered to address your collective amnesia - through recollection of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 - by the true Goliath among Gujaratis in particular and Indians in general - Mohandas Gandhi.

All those who sign this petition will switch off their Tata Indicomm, Airtel and Reliance cellular phone and broadband connections from midnight on January 30th 2009.

It is eminently possible that I might be the one voice in a billion who will observe the 61st death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on as Cellular Silence Day.

Then again, there might be close to a billion who could join me on January 30th, 2009 expressing their solidarity and silently insisting that the captains of India Inc adopt an ethical, compassionate path to wealth creation rather than the single-minded pursuit of the bottom-line.

We shall know that by the end of 30th January, 2009