An Early Prediction For India's 2019 Election

In financial markets, two types of analysis are common. Fundamental Analysis goes into all the factors that affect markets, and attempts to predict them, and thereby their impact on the prices of assets. But Technical Analysis completely ignores fundamentals. Operating under the idea that "price discounts everything", Technical Analysis looks purely at the movements of prices, and attempts to discern patterns from time series data.

I've decided to do some Technical Analysis of the Indian Lok Sabha (parliamentary) elections. I'm going to look at vote shares and seat shares, without worrying about the fundamentals that impact them. We will see that this approach has some merit too.

The Indian parliamentary elections of 2019 are likely to be the biggest in the world, as usual

First off, I noticed a curious fact, i.e., that the sum of the seats of the two main parties, the Congress and the BJP, has been virtually the same in the last two elections, suggesting that the gains of one come mainly at the expense of the other and not any third party.

[In 2009, the Congress had 206 seats to the BJP's 116, for a total of 322. In 2014, the BJP had 282 seats to the Congress's 44, making a total of 326. The strength of the house is 543.]

I then plotted the correlation between the BJP's vote share and its number of seats between 2009 and 2014, interpolating for all the percentages in-between. A screenshot of the spreadsheet is below.

A straightforward analysis with some stark results

In interpreting this spreadsheet, I made two fundamental assumptions.

1. The BJP's vote share of 31% in 2014 is unsustainably high, since it represents a swing of 12% in a single election. It will have to drop in 2019.

2. However, the BJP's vote share is unlikely to drop below its 2009 level of 19%. That represents its core base.

Hence, we have to look at all the vote share percentages from 20% to 30% (inclusive) to assess the likely outcomes.

And two facts are immediately obvious from this analysis:

1. The BJP will not succeed in replicating its absolute majority in 2019. Even a 1% drop in vote share will take its seats tally to 268, which is below the 272 required for an absolute majority. Hence a coalition government is virtually guaranteed even if the BJP does return to power. It will have to be as part of the larger NDA coalition.

2. It is highly unlikely that the Congress-led UPA will return to power. The BJP's vote share will have to fall from 31% all the way down to 22% or less, for the UPA to have a chance at returning to power. In no case will the Congress get an absolute majority on its own.

In spite of these fairly certain outcomes, the power dynamics after the results are out are likely to be very interesting. A lot depends on the personal characteristics of Modi himself. His flexibility, humility and ability to reach out to different groups in a spirit of compromise will be on test. So far, he has shown discomfort in dealing from anything but a position of absolute power.

Those days now look numbered.

How To Govern And Misgovern A Diverse Country - The Akbar And Aurangzeb Models

A recent news article reported that the BJP, which has had a comfortable majority in India's lower house of parliament, had just emerged as the single largest party in the upper house. In time, as the upper house numbers begin to reflect the strength of the party in newly elected state legislatures, the BJP could acquire an outright majority there too. With a weak and divided opposition, the BJP is expected to continue its winning spree into the indefinite future, leading many to conjecture that it will only be a matter of time before the party has the wherewithal to amend the constitution itself, and begin to institute fundamental changes to the nation's very charter.

Indeed, the party's vision, as enunciated by its president Amit Shah, is to dominate every elected body "from parliament to panchayat (village council)". It is a winner-takes-all, take-no-prisoners philosophy that seems to be spectacularly successful at present.

What will a future under such a powerful ideological dispensation look like?

Numbers do not always tell the whole story, and I believe the BJP will fail to hold the country in its grip if it ignores some fundamental governing principles that have nothing to do with raw power.

A diverse country is governed by a combination of hardware and software. The hardware is the physical apparatus of government -- the organisational bodies at the union, state and local levels, the office-holders, the machinery of reporting and communication, the means of enforcement, etc. The software is the set of protocols governing the functioning and interaction of these hardware components. The constitution and the set of laws on the statute books spell out these protocols.

The system of elections is the most critical element of software, because it bestows all-important legitimacy on every other element of software and hardware.

It is my contention that next to regular elections which constitute the fundamental protocol of representative democracy, the protocol governing centre-state relations is the most important element of the software of governance. The constitution of India divides the portfolios of government between the centre and the states by defining a Union List, a State List and a Concurrent List, and this is the basis of a federal system of government. My contention is that only a federal system of government will work in a diverse country like India, and any attempt at over-centralisation will backfire. Attempts at centralisation are a form of misgovernance, and will be punished by the electorate.

To illustrate that these contrasting models of federalism and centralised authoritarianism are not new, I will go back into history.

Indian history is ancient, and there are possible examples like the Maurya and Gupta empires. However, I will use a more recent pair of examples from the Mughal empire. Not only is a more recent example likely to be more relevant than an ancient one, but having two models from the same dynasty provides a more effective contrast. Besides, as we shall see, the two were in existence for an almost identical duration, which makes the comparison between them more meaningful.

The two governance models I will use are those of Akbar and Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was the great-grandson of Akbar, and their reigns were almost exactly a century apart, aside from being of the same duration. Akbar ruled for 49 years from 1556 to 1605, and Aurangzeb ruled for 49 years from 1658 to 1707.

Here is my first exhibit - the extent of their respective empires when they died.

Akbar (top left) and Aurangzeb (top right), and the extent of their empires at the time of their deaths (click to expand). Aurangzeb's empire is nominally larger, but size doesn't tell the whole story.

A history of Akbar's reign reveals that the early years were characterised by tumult and challenges to his rule, but the latter half was remarkably stable and peaceful. A history of Aurangzeb's reign reveals that he was almost constantly at war throughout, not just conquering new territory but also putting down rebellions that seemed interminable. His empire was nominally larger than his great-grandfather's, but also far more fractious.

Perhaps the most striking difference between Akbar's empire and Aurangzeb's was in the area of durability. Akbar's empire lasted more than a century after his death. Aurangzeb's empire did not long survive his death. It broke into multiple parts a few years later.

It would appear that in spite of its smaller size, Akbar's empire was held together by much stronger software.

Much has been made of the difference in tolerance between Akbar and Aurangzeb. Akbar is widely believed to have been more tolerant of difference (especially religion), while Aurangzeb was believed to have been more hardline. However, the real difference between their regimes was the protocol that governed "centre-state relations", or in the language of the time, the relationship between the empire and its vassals.

Akbar instituted a remarkably far-sighted policy under which it was tremendously advantageous for rulers of smaller kingdoms to become his vassals. Not only did they continue to enjoy considerable autonomy in the running of their kingdoms, they were also protected from their external enemies by the formidable army of the empire. In return, all they had to contribute to the upkeep of that empire were monetary tributes and their own armies when the empire required them. It was a win-win system that kept all players vested in its success. No wonder Akbar's empire soon settled into a period of peace and stability after the initial wars he waged to establish his authority.

In contrast, Aurangzeb's need for centralised power alienated vassals and governors alike, and it is no wonder that he saw rebellions and revolts throughout his reign. The software of governance under Aurangzeb had become so flawed that it simply failed to function. It was the software of misgovernance. Sure enough, once his own forceful personality exited the stage, his successors were unable to keep his empire together, and it fell under the combined onslaught of its own internal schisms and external enemies.

The lesson is instructive, because it applies to this day. Only governments that respect federalism can govern a country of India's diversity effectively. Those that try to enforce centralised control will fail.

In the years since independence, India has seen many governments of different political hues. But remarkably, the Akbar and Aurangzeb models are not correlated with parties at all! They can both be discerned even within the same political party.

Consider these prime ministers from the Congress party.

(Click to expand.) Jawaharlal Nehru, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh (left) are remembered as nation-builders because they respected federalism. Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (right) are widely considered institution wreckers because they had an authoritarian streak that did not respect independent institutions or opposition-ruled states.

Jawaharlal Nehru could be said to have birthed several of the features of India's federal polity. The constituent assembly worked during his first term to write the constitution, which was adopted in 1950. It was during his time that the first of the linguistic states was created. And although he was initially loath to split the Bombay presidency into the linguistic states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, popular protests during his visit to Bombay convinced him otherwise. Both Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh were known as gentlemen and diplomats, who preferred negotiation and consensus to adversarial conduct.

In contrast, the mother-son duo of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi took the very existence of opposition parties as a personal affront. Opposition-ruled states received blatantly step-motherly treatment by their governments, violating key tenets of the federal protocol. They did a lot of damage and weakened India during their terms.

A very similar theme can be seen playing out with the BJP.

AB Vajpayee (left) was a consensus politician who gave and commanded respect across the aisle. Modi (right) is an authoritarian personality who centralises decision-making and brooks no opposition.

AB Vajpayee, who was India's first BJP prime minister, was in office for a five-year term between 1998 and 2004. Another gentleman and diplomat, he was well-respected even by the opposition parties, and he reciprocated that respect in his dealings with opposition-ruled states. He is widely remembered with respect and affection to this day.

Narendra Modi, India's current prime minister, is cast in the Aurangzeb mould. Federalism is not a virtue in his eyes. He and his party president Amit Shah are cut from the same ideological cloth, and they hate to share power. From parliament to panchayat, the duo aims to impose their party's writ on every elected body. Their attitude is redolent of Mike Maples, Microsoft's Executive VP of the Worldwide Products Group, who said, "My job is to get a fair share of the software applications market, and, to me, that's 100 percent."

It should be clear from these historical examples that Modi's is the software of misgovernance. There is no win-win system that gives other stakeholders an incentive to be vested in its success. Even within his own party, the Modi-Shah duo has emasculated everyone, including cabinet ministers and chief ministers. All decisions are taken by "two-and-a-half men" (with Arun Jaitley contributing the half). Modi's India increasingly resembles Aurangzeb's empire, crackling with a million mutinies waiting to erupt.

Much as Modi would hate to be compared to any Muslim ruler, let alone Aurangzeb, the cap fits, both literally and figuratively.

And so the raw numbers that seem to measure the BJP's strength in various legislative bodies may not indicate the true extent of the party's power. Under Modi, the software of India's governance has been tremendously weakened. The BJP itself will inevitably pay the price in electoral terms, but in the meantime, the country as a whole will pay a steep price too.

Movie Review - Bajirao Mastani (An Allegory For Modern Indian Society)

Bajirao Mastani - a period romance with a subliminal political message for modern India

Sanjay Leela Bhansali's blockbuster movie "Bajirao Mastani" starts with a grand and ambitious allegory. The candidate for the post of Peshwa (prime minister and de facto ruler) of the Marathas under the nominal emperor Shahu is the heroic and confident Bajirao. Challenged to display his worth by splitting a peacock feather in two, Bajirao fires an arrow and apparently fails - the feather remains standing. Bajirao then asks the Maratha court to examine the lower part of the feather that was anchored to the soil. His arrow has indeed cut it in half - not along its length, as his challenger had implied, but into two shorter lengths.

Bajirao demonstrates his political allegory with a peacock feather, just as Sanjay Leela Bhansali does with his film

Bajirao's allegory then follows. The soil is India, and the feather is the Mughal empire of the Muslim invaders that has entrenched itself in Indian soil. If one cuts off its supporting lower half (the stronghold of Delhi), the Mughal empire will crumble. If made Peshwa, he proposes to establish the power of the Marathas by conquering Delhi and deposing the Mughals.

Needless to say, Bajirao's soaring rhetoric and inspiring allegory, not to mention the display of his martial prowess, win over the emperor and the court, and he is duly crowned Peshwa.

But what follows in the rest of the 160 minute movie is itself a grand allegory, and if the box office returns are anything to go by, its intended lesson is being welcomed in India as enthusiastically as the Maratha court welcomed the feather analogy.

But first, let's dispense with the superficials.

The sheer splendour and opulence of the palace scenes fill a viewer with awe. I knew that the Marathas rose as a major power in India towards the end of the Mughal empire, and might have gone on to conquer all of India had the British not made their appearance. But seeing their glory in such exquisitely rich detail is something else altogether. If nothing else, Bajirao Mastani inspires me to read up on the Marathas in more detail.

The battle scenes are dramatic too, although the very last one where Bajirao single-handedly takes on the entire army of the Nizam is over-the-top and unrealistic.

An early battle scene - Bajirao takes on Muhammad Bangash in style

Bhansali has clearly pulled out all the stops in making this a larger-than-life period drama. If his intention was to evoke awe at the grandeur and tumult of early 18th century Indian history, he has clearly succeeded. The entire movie is a visual treat.

The opulence of the palace scenes is dazzling

Speaking of visual treats, the human elements of this drama are delectable eye-candy too. One finds it hard to look elsewhere when Priyanka Chopra as Bajirao's wife Kashibai appears in a scene.

Time and again, we are reminded why Priyanka Chopra was crowned Miss World 2000

Deepika Padukone as Mastani is not so much glamour girl as warrior princess, and she is magnificent.

Whether defending her kingdom Bundelkhand against a Mughal Nawab or defending herself and her child against Maratha would-be assassins, she fights like a tigress

And Ranveer Singh as the great Bajirao does justice to his role as a giant historical figure.

As I will argue, Bajirao's heroism extends beyond the battlefield to challenge society itself

My personal favourite bit of eye-candy is the bath scene with a buff Ranveer Singh and the ever-ravishing Priyanka Chopra.

Eroticism needn't be sexist - this sequence can do something to men and women alike

On to the more substantive part of this review, then!

The entire movie has a subliminal political message. It is Bollywood's allegorical exhortation to Indians to be inclusive, and is aimed mainly at Hindus.

In the style immortalised by the Four Word Film Review, I would summarise Bajirao Mastani as "Hindus, don't be hardhearted".

The Maratha empire stands for Hindu-majority India. In contrast to that other period romance Jodha-Akbar, Bajirao Mastani is a story of Hindu ascendency, not of Muslim triumph. The timing of the movie's release is significant. The mood in India in 2015 is palpably different from what it was just a couple of years earlier. The Hindu nationalist BJP won a decisive victory in the 2014 election, and the saffron flag now flutters everywhere in India, virtually unchallenged. There is a mood of triumphalism among Hindutva supporters. This mirrors the rise of the Hindu Maratha empire in the early 18th century and the resurgence of Hindu pride.

Nothing secular about this state - Bajirao on his temporal throne with the figurative backing of Ganesha 

Set against this larger trend as background, the character of Mastani is an allegory for the Muslim minority in India. As a matter of historical fact, Mastani was half-Hindu and half-Muslim, and she herself had developed a syncretic identity (as her father says in the movie,"She worships both Allah and Krishna"). Such syncretism is of course viewed as heresy by Muslim fundamentalists, who allow for only one "true" god. In contrast, Hindus claim to subscribe to a more liberal, many-paths-to-one-truth philosophy. Yet Mastani's bridging identity was never accepted as such by the Hindu Marathas, and she was seen as purely Muslim. Moreover, she was not even accepted as a royal since they considered her father's Muslim wife as only a concubine.

To this day, India's Muslims, who are Indian by blood but following a faith that is foreign by origin, are often treated as invaders and foreigners, not as natively Indian. It is a matter of record that Indian Muslims are the most integrated and least alienated of all Muslim communities worldwide, yet that seems to cut little ice. The constant attempts to position Mastani as a courtesan rather than a queen represent the RSS view of Muslims as nothing more than second-class citizens.

The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt Hindu culture and language, must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture ... In a word they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizens' rights. - "We, or Our Nationhood Defined" by MS Golwalkar (the second supreme leader of the RSS)

Mastani arrives in Pune and sends back the soldiers who accompanied her from her native Bundelkhand. This is enormously symbolic. She has surrendered all power, and relies on the goodwill of the Maratha court to accept her. The analogy is clear. After the fall of the Mughals and other petty Nawabs, Muslims in India are no longer the rulers of the country. In a democratic setup with a Hindu majority, they rely on the goodwill of that Hindu majority to be able to go about their business as equal citizens.

Alone and vulnerable - Mastani arrives at the Maratha court to a hostile reception

By portraying Mastani in a piteously sympathetic light, the movie is appealing to the sentiment of its predominantly Hindu audience to accept their Muslim brethren as their own.

What stands in the way are several mental blocks in the Hindu mind, each symbolised by a character in the movie.

Bajirao's loyal wife Kashibai is India's Hindu majority, the original and legitimate claimant to the affections of the Peshwa (the state). Accommodating another woman in her marriage is asking too much of a wife. Why should Muslim citizens be accommodated as equals in a secular republic when India has historically been a "Hindu Rashtra" and Muslims arrived as invaders, as unwelcome interlopers? How could her husband betray her and cost her her pride by bringing home another woman?

Kashibai's "How could you?!" look

Nevertheless, Kashibai is the fairest and most accommodating of all the members of the Maratha court. She can see Mastani as a fellow human being. She thus also represents the accommodating and tolerant aspect of Hindu society,

The murderous and hardline priest Krishna Bhatt represents Hindu religious orthodoxy. It is the sentiment that invokes scripture to deny humane treatment of human beings.

Krishna Bhatt - The face of villainous orthodoxy

Bajirao's unbending mother Radhabai represents rigid social mores. She can acknowledge with pride that her son respects women and that he is fighting to give Mastani the respect that is her due, but she cannot take the next step to grant Mastani that respect herself.

Radhabai - "You may be right, but I'm not budging!"

Bajirao's elder son by Kashibai, Nanasaheb (who later becomes Balaji Bajirao), represents resentment and hatred. He cannot see beyond the fact that his mother has been humiliated by an outsider, and repeatedly asks Mastani to go back to Bundelkhand. The fanatical Hindutva hordes who harbour an unthinking hatred of Muslims and only want them to "go to Pakistan" mirror this attitude exactly.

Nanasaheb - a chillingly unremitting hatred born of resentment over perceived injustice

Together, the priest, grandmother and grandson are a dangerous trio. They will attempt murder and imprison the unwanted one the instant the Peshwa's attention is elsewhere. When a government fails to do its "Rajdharm" (duty of governance) and turns a blind eye to intolerance, the mobs will take the cue and go on a communal rampage to harm and kill the hated "other".

The issue of bigamy poses its own interesting allegory. The social injunction against bigamy ("No man shall have more than one wife") is analogous to MA Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory ("Muslims and Hindus are separate nations and cannot share a state"). Mahatma Gandhi's idealistic belief that Hindus and Muslims can live together in peace in a secular country mirrors the unspoken hope of Bajirao Mastani's audience that the two women can somehow reconcile to being co-wives, that the Maratha court and society can somehow find it in themselves to accept Mastani, and that everyone will then live happily ever after.

The contradiction here is what we all need to resolve in our minds. The law against bigamy, after all, takes no note of the will of consenting adults to enter into polyamorous relationships. The Urdu saying, "Jab miya biwi raazi, to kya karega kaazi?" ("If husband and wife consent, what can the law do?") comes to mind.

Cohabitation is a choice. We can choose to be rigid and doctrinaire in our ways, insisting on separation or apartheid under the excuse of irreconcilable differences, or we can choose to melt those rigid rules by consciously deciding to welcome difference as diversity and to live harmoniously with other people. By demonstrating how easily audiences will overcome their prejudice against bigamy in their wish for Bajirao, Kashibai and Mastani to be happy together, the movie is showing us that our mental barriers are of our own making and can be dismantled at will.

They're all good people. Can't they get along somehow? Is tragedy inevitable?

A tragic ending puts the final seal on this argument. Sad movies tend to leave a stronger imprint on audiences than others, as I discovered for myself when I watched Roman Holiday. The movie's appeal for inclusiveness is likely to be especially effective because of its unsatisfactory ending. The unspoken message is, "If you could end this story differently by making the Marathas more softhearted, would you?" Of course we would!

Crucially though, what should we see represented by the character who accepts Mastani, who wants her to be treated as an equal, who can bring up one son (Raghunath Rao) as a Hindu and the other (Shamsher Bahadur) as a Muslim, who loves both his wives and wants to keep both of them happy?

In other words, who is Bajirao himself?

He is our conscience.

The Three PR Failures Of The Hindu Right

The BJP's General Secretary and RSS ideologue Ram Madhav recently appeared on Al Jazeera's Head to Head program, to face a tough interviewer and a fairly hostile guest panel and audience. His performance, which can be seen below, was nothing short of dismal, with a couple of needless gaffes thrown in.

It couldn't just be biased editing - the BJP spokesman was on the ropes or on the mat most of the time

While readers of this blog may watch the video themselves to draw their own conclusions, my analysis of Ram Madhav's failure is as follows.

1. On the topic of the interview itself, "Is Modi's India flirting with fascism?", he had the difficult job of convincing the audience that the situation on the ground was no worse than in the past, and that there was no climate of intolerance as the government's critics have often alleged.

2. On India-Pakistan relations, especially Kashmir, he had to sell non-Indians on the legitimacy of the decades-long Indian diplomatic position.

3. On the RSS/BJP's ideology, he had to make the case for "Hindu nationalism", explain what his organisation means by exhorting religious minorities to be "culturally Hindu", and to clarify related concepts such as "Akhand Bharat" (an "undivided India" that includes Pakistan and Bangladesh, on which I have written before), which could otherwise be construed as military expansionism.

At the end of the interview, it can be safely surmised that he utterly failed to communicate his party's point of view and to convince his audience on these three points. The angry buzz of right-wing sympathisers on social media, blaming everyone but him on the debacle (and indeed, blaming him only for being "too soft"), confirms my assessment that he got a shellacking.

What would I have done in his place?

On the first point, I believe there is little he could have done except engage in whataboutery. There is indisputable evidence that intolerance of criticism of the ruling party and its ideology has reached new depths. It would be dishonest of me to even attempt to formulate an argument for him to use, since I believe the allegation is spot-on.

On Kashmir, Ram Madhav had a wonderful opportunity to explain India's diplomatic stand, because a liberal audience such as the one he had is inherently favourable to an inclusive, as opposed to a parochial, philosophy. Madhav should have taken a step back from the Kashmir dispute to discuss its roots in the partition of British India into India and Pakistan.

He should have asked for a voice vote from the audience between Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of a secular state where all citizens would be treated equally regardless of religion, and MA Jinnah's Two-Nation Theory, under which Hindus were deemed incapable of living together with Muslims under a fair dispensation, and hence required to yield the Muslims their own state.

He should have pointed out how these two diametrically opposed philosophies predictably played out in real-life, since Pakistan's religious minorities decreased from about 23% of the population at independence to about 2% today, and the Muslim population in India increased from 10% in the 1951 census to 14% today.

Having won the voice vote, he should have proceeded to show how Pakistan's claim to Kashmir rested entirely on this parochial Two-Nation Theory, and was thus morally inferior to India's more enlightened and inclusive position.

Further, he should have pointed out that Pakistan made the first, pre-emptive and aggressive move in invading Kashmir in 1948 to take it by force, and that the line of control today dates back to when and where India stopped that aggression.

He should have ended with the hardline position that Pakistan has proven it cannot look after its minorities, and hence all of Kashmir should be with India.

On the Hindutva ideology, Ram Madhav would have faced a trickier challenge, since the Sangh's ideology is self-contradictory. It is true that there is an inherent liberalism of thought within the mainstream Hindu religion with regard to various schools of philosophy, yet the RSS itself has sought to make Hinduism less freewheeling and more rigidly doctrinaire in an effort to coalesce political support for itself. Nevertheless, if Madhav had downplayed the more recent Hindutva philosophy espoused by the RSS, and fallen back on the original pluralistic worldview of the religion that it claims to represent, he could have scored a few points.

From my own discussions with more moderate sympathisers of the Hindu Right, I can attempt to formulate a hypothetical line of argument for Ram Madhav, even if I don't agree with it myself.

The argument is that there are three broad approaches to religious belief:

The first is what can loosely be called the "Abrahamic philosophy" represented by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Although the three religions have irreconcilable differences among themselves, what they have in common is the exclusivist attitude that their view alone is the right one, and all others are wrong. Others must convert to their doctrine in order to be saved in a spiritual sense.

The second is what can be called "Western secularism", which operates by denying religion any legitimacy in the public sphere. Religion is deemed to be a private matter, which must not influence public policy. The state and church must remain separate, and the state must treat all citizens equally, regardless of the faith they may profess.

The third approach is the "Hindu" one, which neither denies the legitimacy of religious belief in the public sphere, nor claims exclusive validity for its own brand. This can be seen as positive rather than negative when contrasted with Western secularism, since it affirms rather than denies what is dear to a majority of the world's people. It is also inclusive in contrast to the Abrahamic religions, since it respects the beliefs of every individual as true and as a valid path to "the truth" and to their spiritual salvation.

Regardless of the factual merits of the above argument, it will undoubtedly appeal to many. This is the argument Ram Madhav should have used to justify his organisation's socio-religious position.

Flowing from this, he could have argued that an Indian belonging to a minority religion could be deemed to be "culturally Hindu" if they merely accorded others the respect that they expected for themselves. In other words, if they shed the intolerant and exclusivist aspect of their own religion's doctrine and adopted the Hindu approach of mutual respect, then they would be "culturally Hindu". I have no doubt that Madhav would have won over a sizeable proportion of his audience with that argument.

Further, he could have used this to explain Akhand Bharat (undivided India). He did do a half-decent job of explaining it in any case, by saying it was to be a voluntary coming together of the peoples of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at some point in the future, but it could have been an even more powerful argument had he linked it to the "Hindu" philosophy of mutual respect.

[As an atheist, I personally favour Western secularism, since I don't believe religion has any validity in either the public or private spheres, but we are talking here about what Ram Madhav could have said, not what I believe.]

To sum up, I think the Hindutva organisations need to do a much better job of explaining themselves to a worldwide audience, because they are losing the PR war pretty badly. To a large extent, they do deserve it, because their philosophy is intolerant, and their stormtroopers (both the street goons and the online trolls) have cemented that reputation. However, some of their main ideological opponents, i.e., Islamists and fundamentalist Christians, are no saints either. These latter groups deserve to face a strong intellectual challenge to their intolerance, and this is possible from a position that is rooted in the broader Hindu tradition (See Lisa Miller's Newsweek article "We are all Hindus now").

Unfortunately for the Hindu Right, the BJP/RSS is probably the last entity that can lay claim to that tolerant philosophy. Someone else needs to make that argument. Ram Madhav's comprehensive humiliation before an international audience should have made that amply clear.

How Conscience Made A Vegetarian Eat Beef

I had beef for lunch today.

This may not sound like a big deal to most people, but to me, it has been a very, very big deal.

You see, I have been a lifelong vegetarian. Meat of any kind has been alien to my diet.

So why did I eat meat today? And why did I choose beef of all things?

To answer that question, we need to dig a little into culture, and into what we ultimately hold most sacred.

I was born in India to a Hindu family. To Hindus, cows are sacred animals. Killing a cow is widely considered a sin, although there are many Hindus today who do eat beef.

My family belongs to the brahmin caste, which has a tradition of strict vegetarianism. Even eggs are considered taboo by most brahmins. Thanks to my upbringing, I have always been vegetarian. Call it cultural conditioning.

(For the record, I am against the caste system and I do NOT identify myself as a brahmin. I only bring up that historical fact because it is relevant. I want to illustrate the weight of tradition that I defied today, and why I did so.)

The May 2014 election in India brought to power a right-wing Hindu party (the BJP) that seeks to assert the Hindu nature of Indian society. This militant brand of political Hinduism is called Hindutva (just as Islamism is the militant political flavour of Islam). One of the explicit planks of Hindutva is a ban on cow slaughter. The state government of Maharashtra has since banned the sale and consumption of beef throughout the state. Other BJP-ruled states have begun to make moves in the same direction. In general, these pro-cow measures also have a covert anti-Muslim agenda, since Islam, unlike Hinduism, has no injunctions against the killing of cows.

Two days ago, on the outskirts of the national capital New Delhi, a Hindu mob gathered at a temple to a rallying call that claimed that a certain Muslim family had killed a cow and had stored its meat for food. The mob descended on the family dwelling, dragged out a 50 year old man and his 22 year old son, and beat them brutally. The older man died and the son was admitted to hospital in a critical condition. All this for the "crime" of eating beef. The gruesome incident is reported here, here and here.

In an ostensibly secular democracy, a twisted political version of Hinduism has taken hold of a large enough group of people that those who are going about their business eating the food they have always eaten are now in danger of losing their lives.

This incident has outraged me. It has outraged me so much that I have to do more than just write words against it. It finally occurred to me this morning what I needed to do.

As soon as I had the idea that I would have to symbolically eat beef, I at once knew both that it was the right thing to do, and that it would be one of the hardest things I have ever done. I confess I suffered trepidation as lunchtime approached, but I stayed firm. I reminded myself that courage is not the absence of fear but the quality of marching on in spite of fear.

I hunted about in the food court for a shop that sold beef. I then realised how unfamiliar this exercise was for me! Finally, I found a shop that sold beef baguettes, and I bought one.

 A single beef baguette, cut in half

I sat down at a secluded table and prepared to eat. I will not pretend that this was easy. I was afraid I might throw up at the first bite. Indeed, there were three or four moments when I almost gagged, but I fought the instinct and continued until I finished. My burning anger kept me going.

The first half being eaten... 

...and the second

And that was that. I was born Hindu and have been a lifelong vegetarian. But today, for the first time in my life, I ate beef. I may never eat beef again in my life, but it was terribly important to me that I do it at least once. My conscience demanded it. A secular democracy where people can do whatever they please as long as they don't harm others - that is something that is extremely sacred to me. It is my sacred cow, one might say.

I ate beef today in order to make a statement, and the statement is simply this:

F**K YOU, BLOODY HINDUTVA A***OLES! YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME, AND I WILL NOT STAND BY AND LET YOU DESTROY THE COUNTRY OF MY BIRTH!

Update: Less than an hour after my lunch, I saw the following regional Australian newspaper lying on a desk in my office (I work for a media company). It seems to support my theory that the entire universe is a simulation running on a computer somewhere, and that its operating system employs "locality of reference" to reuse recent patterns rather than create all-new ones.

A sports team called the Binalong Brahmans seems to have won a championship. What a name, and what a headline!

India In Danger Of Repeating Sri Lanka's Deadly Error

Pluralistic societies must beware of elevating one group above all others. The day Sri Lanka made Sinhala its state language and Buddhism its state religion was the day it sowed the seeds of its longstanding ethnic strife. The revolt of the Tamil linguistic minority has been put down at great cost. But the Sri Lankan government does not seem at all serious about pursuing genuine rapprochement or providing autonomy to the Tamils within a looser federation. Far from learning a lesson from those lost decades, elements of the country's political class and clergy now seem to have turned towards baiting the Muslim religious minority, and another round of bloodletting appears to be on the cards. As one who has visited that beautiful country and interacted with many of its smart and gentle people, I can only shake my head in sorrow. Sri Lanka's problems are needless ones of its own creation, all because of a fundamental lack of governing wisdom.

India has long escaped such a fate, thanks to the abundance of wisdom on the part of its founding fathers. The early tussle with the Muslim League on the one hand and the Hindu Mahasabha on the other must have convinced the leaders of the Congress of the desirability of establishing a secular state that treated all its religions equally. And while Nehru came perilously close to imposing a single language (Hindi) on a country where over 60% spoke another language, he wisely stepped back from the brink in the face of protests. India has enjoyed rare harmony in its public life because religion has largely remained a private matter, and its unique "three language formula" has given individuals, governments and private organisations pragmatic ways to communicate.

Over time, a remarkable sense of Indian nationhood has begun to develop (even if it has frayed slightly around the edges thanks to vote-bank politics). Free of heavy-handed imposition, Hindi has spread even to traditionally non-Hindi regions, often thanks to the subtle charms of Bollywood. At the same time, English has spread among the relative elite, forming a link language for the educated class. All wholesome developments, one would think.

The party, however, seems to have come to a rude and abrupt end with the election of Narendra Modi's BJP in May 2014. At first, the focus of the government seemed to be on economic development, and in that endeavour, the prime minister won quick support, including from many erstwhile critics. A potential sour note was religion. The BJP has always been known as a Hindu party, and most public attention has been on the likely relationship between a BJP government and its non-Hindu citizens. While Modi has been careful to project an inclusive image, there have been some disturbing incidents of violence carried out by radical fringe groups with a more hard-line Hindu agenda. The old fault-line of religion has therefore come under renewed strain.

Disturbingly, another old fault-line has been needlessly opened up.  Initially, Modi's preference for Hindi over English in his official communications was ascribed to his relative lack of fluency in English and his understandable preference for a language in which he was more at home. But continuing reports of the government's edicts in favour of Hindi over English have begun to raise eyebrows. The home minister, Rajnath Singh, who was noted for his past statements that the English language has destroyed India's culture, has begun to crack the whip to ensure that the sole language in which his ministry does business is Hindi.

It's clear where the Hindu right is coming from. They are aware that opposition to their Hindutva ideology comes primarily from two broad groups of people - religious minorities and the English-speaking urban middle class. Nothing less than a culture war is now on to undercut the power of these groups. In terms of religion, language and class, the Hindu right wing has identified its foes and begun its offensive.

The world has its eyes on India's old religious schisms, so the government will probably tread carefully there. But the other war (the linguistic/class war) is equally dangerous, and here the government has fewer checks on its actions. 

There are at least four problems with the Modi government's lurch to a majoritarian agenda:

1. The mandate that the BJP received in the recent election was for its plank of economic development. Starting a culture war when there are pressing economic problems to be solved is not just a betrayal of that mandate but a luxury the country cannot afford.

2. The purpose of language is communication. The existing three language formula has served India well, allowing people and organisations to negotiate a suitable common language to communicate in without coercion. There is no reason to ram a language down people's throats unless the motive is to disenfranchise a group of cultural enemies. In addition, insistence on an "official" Hindi, quite different in flavour from the everyday Hindi favoured by most speakers, is counter-productive. Official Hindi is often unintelligible even to Hindi speakers, and is an impediment rather than an aid to communication.

3. Then there is the whole hypocrisy angle. Politicians who rail against the English language, such as Rajnath Singh and Mulayam Yadav, see no contradiction between their public stand and giving their own offspring an English language education and sending them abroad to study. They obviously know which side of their bread is buttered (or if they so prefer, which side of their roti is makkhandaar), but will not acknowledge that English is an aspirational language for millions of their countrymen and could help to improve the career prospects and living standards of the next generation. It's one rule for them and another rule for the masses.

4. Finally, although English is in many ways a "foreign" language to India, its very foreignness makes it neutral. It does not belong more naturally to one group of Indians than to another. If English is to be replaced by Hindi, all Indians who speak a different Indian language automatically become second class citizens, because their own languages are relegated to secondary status behind Hindi. When one Indian is forced to speak to another in a language that is not their own but is native to the other, it creates a power asymmetry that will be deeply resented. It is no way to build a nation.

Those who point to countries like Japan, Korea and Germany to argue that India should have its own national language are missing an important distinction. All of these countries have a single language of their own, so it is natural for that language to be the national language. India has 22 official languages, all of them equally Indian. How can any one of them be termed the "national" language without making the others seem less national? In the same vein, wouldn't anointing India a "Hindu" country alienate citizens of other religions who are every bit as patriotic? It is for this reason that majoritarian politics is dangerous in pluralistic societies, and it is highly inadvisable for a country to create second-class citizens out of its religious and linguistic minorities. Sri Lanka is a warning to the world, but it appears that India cannot see what is, in a geographically literal sense, right beneath its nose.

The Modi government and its ideological fountainhead (the RSS) appear to have overreached themselves. They have turned the country's colourful diversity into ugly difference. And with their roughshod tactics, they have brought their government's honeymoon to an abrupt end.

In India, A Partial Expiation For An Archaeological Crime

It was heartening to read in the news recently that an archaeological treasure, the 450 year old tomb of Mughal emperor Humayun, has been restored.

The newly-restored Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi

It's a pity that priceless archaeological artifacts often get imbued with religious, and consequently political, significance. Islamists are the regular villains in archaeological vandalism around the world. They destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan and similar relics of a Buddhist past in the Maldives. In Egypt, they are even calling for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx. One can only shake one's head in hopeless sorrow at such mindless fanaticism.

Countries like the US, Canada, Australia and new Zealand, with barely 3 centuries of European history, have nevertheless done a splendid job of preserving and showcasing this heritage. [One could blame the early European settlers in these countries for the destruction of native communities and their culture, but in modern times, these countries have demonstrated enlightenment through their commendable efforts to retrieve and preserve native heritage as well.] Why do people with a heritage stretching back millennia not recognise and appreciate what a priceless set of treasures they have?

The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan - the "after" photo shows a clear improvement over the "before" (if you're an Islamist)

The Islamic conquerors of India from the 12th century onwards were largely of the same breed as Islamists everywhere. Many Hindu temples were destroyed by them and mosques erected in their place.

And therein lies a tale of two wrongs that do not make a right. The Mughal emperor Babar (father of Humayun, whose tomb was recently restored) is thought to have destroyed (among countless others) a temple to the Hindu god Rama at Ayodhya and built a mosque over its ruins. That mosque remained standing until the last decade of the 20th century. It was called the "Babri Masjid" (Babar's mosque).

For centuries, this structure remained. It saw the passing of 7 generations of the Mughals and the advent of the British, and then it saw the passing of the British Raj as well, as Indians finally wrested back the power to rule themselves after at least 6 centuries of foreign rule.

And thereafter, with the move to democracy, the mosque's days were numbered.

This is the way the Babri Masjid looked before electoral arithmetic spelled its doom

Somewhere along the way, the Hindu right wing party, the BJP, decided that the only way it could improve its hitherto dismal electoral performance was to tap into militant Hindu sentiment that it would itself whip up. The Babri Masjid became the symbol and the focal point of the BJP's campaign. The mosque that was built on the ruins of a desecrated Hindu temple was projected as a historical humiliation of India's Hindu majority by its Muslim rulers, a humiliation that could only be reversed by the destruction of the mosque and a resurrected temple to Lord Rama built on its ruins. It was to be the righting of a historical wrong. More importantly, the site of the original temple was claimed to be the very birthplace of Lord Rama, so having the temple built anywhere but on the ruins of the mosque was preemptively made impossible!

The Hindu parties' emotive poster calling for the construction of the temple at Ayodhya, with a suitably militant image of Rama to drive home the message

By polarising society along religious lines, the BJP and its various allied Hindu organisations reckoned they could attract a significant number of votes from Hindus. (This cynical calculation, sadly enough, turned out to be correct. In 1984, the BJP had won 2 seats in parliament. In 1991, after having successfully raised a storm over the Babri Masjid, the party won 120 seats.) More importantly, the BJP formed the government in the state of Uttar Pradesh (the state to which the city of Ayodhya belonged).

[Quite some blood has been shed since the time that plan was put into action, and more is going to be shed in future, since the hardening of Hindu opinion and the consequent rewards to militant Hindu parties have now attained a momentum of their own. My own view on this is simple. We only have one history. We can learn from it, but we cannot erase it, no matter how humiliating it may seem. Destroying our own national monuments for religio-political reasons is cutting off our nose to spite our face. But of course, such arguments fall on deaf ears, since in times of strident militancy, reason itself seems weak and effete.]

After the 1991 elections, with the machinery of the Uttar Pradesh state government in its hands, the BJP began plans to demolish the temple while at the same time issuing reassuring public statements to allay suspicion. On 6th December 1992, the BJP did what Islamists worldwide have always done - destroyed their own country's archaeological monuments to satisfy religious bloodlust, and their own political ambitions.

There is grim irony in the fact that an avowedly anti-Islamic popular movement demonstrated the same intolerance and religious bigotry of their enemies. They also proved that, despite two historic changes in management, the degree of enlightenment of India's rulers had not improved in 500 years.

The armies of Hinduism sallying forth to do their sacred duty, no doubt

It stood for 450 years, then came down in one hour

And this is what was left of the Babri Masjid

Woohoo! We've destroyed a 450 year old archaeological treasure of our own country! Who needs foreign invaders?

And that's what I thought of when I read the news of the restoration of Humayun's tomb. The mosque named for the father was destroyed, but the tomb of the son was restored. I guess I could see the latter restoration as a partial atonement for the former archaeological crime, but something in me is not satisfied. When I look around me and see so many educated Hindu friends who cheer the destruction of the Babri Masjid, some openly and some less openly, I begin to think I must myself be a relic.

[Postscript:
One of my friends on Facebook commented as follows:

"I dont think even the most ardent secularist would call the Babri Masjid an archeological treasure. Especially in a country where there are many other monuments that are older. It is provocative to say Hindus thought the structure was humiliating. The movement was an act of reclaiming. A temple was not just "thought" to have existed. The Allahabad high court judgment validated that last year and awarded one third of the land to Hindus. You are being selective when you talk about restoration only of the 450 yr old "treasure". What about restoration/rebuilding of the temple which lies below."

I replied:

"QED. You have furnished proof of my statement in the closing paragraph that this is indeed the attitude of many educated Hindus today.

1. Most people around the world would find it strange that a structure 400+ years old is NOT considered an archaeological treasure by some. In your opinion, how old does a structure have to be in order to be considered an archaeological treasure?

2. The presence of older monuments does not invalidate the value of structures 400+ years old. All of them are part of the country's great archaeological wealth. None of them is expendable.

3. A chequered history like India's can only be narrated by a chronologically matching set of artifacts reflecting the power structure, dominant culture and values of the time. Our value judgement today of whether any of that was "good" or "bad" is irrelevant. It's part of our history. We can look at some of those monuments and decide, "Never again!" That indeed is the point of learning history. But destroying one's own monuments to erase part of one's history that some people in the current generation disapprove of is immature and self-harming.

4. The temple can never be "rebuilt" in any case, only recreated. As such, why not build it a short distance away and provide information to visitors about the history of the temple and the mosque? That way, you have both structures and your history intact. And from the perspective of history study and tourism, it would be wonderful.

5. If belief systems are to take priority over pragmatism in the here-and-now, then only bloodshed and strife lie ahead, not prosperity, because belief systems are mutually incompatible. We need to be less precious about our beliefs and more concerned with the real country we live in.

6. There is nothing selective about my position. You are reading an anti-Hindu bias into what I have written. My entire piece was anti-vandalism. The Islamists have vandalised monuments globally, as my 3 examples show. The saffron Islam that passes for Hinduism nowadays is doing exactly the same thing."]

Progress Should Depend On Systems, Not Individuals

This post does not refer to India alone, although that's how I first thought about it. It's actually much more general and applies to any country at any time.

During a discussion on Facebook recently, one of my friends mentioned Narendra Modi, the Indian politician who looks likely to lead his party, the BJP, into the 2014 elections, and who quite probably will be India's next prime minister if the BJP wins.
[Update 13/09/2013: Narendra Modi has been officially named the BJP's prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 election.]

The comment was very interesting, because it offered a different viewpoint from what one normally hears.

I am not a BJP supporter per se. I am a Narendra Modi supporter, and that too because he is a capitalist. I am of the firm opinion [...] that India needs a strong dose of free-market capitalism, and if Modi does not come to power I don't know if anyone will administer the dose. I don't think anyone else has the vision, and I think it is DESPERATELY needed in India. I'd place that above all other priorities for India. To me, the BJP is a vehicle for NaMo to assume power. [...] he can do it. And he will. [...] in my opinion, Modi's economic policies are what India desperately needs.

Now, I share many of my friend's thoughts and ideas. I too believe India needs to unshackle itself from its innumerable rules and restrictions of socialistic vintage and embrace free-market capitalism. [By "free market", I mean neither crony capitalism (the unholy nexus between politicians and business interests) nor laissez-faire capitalism (the complete absence of regulation). My idea of a "free market" is a liquid, or highly competitive market. It is a market from which stifling bureacracy is eliminated but where antitrust legislation is aggressively enforced. See my blog entries on the economic philosophy I call "Liquidism".]

So I actually agreed wholeheartedly with my friend's comment on India's need for a strong dose of free-market capitalism.

However, I didn't agree with the corollary that Modi therefore deserved my support. Where I diverge from my friend's views are in two respects - the particular and the general.

In particular, I am convinced of the complicity of Mr Narendra Modi in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. His protestations of innocence and inability to act fast enough are unconvincing. After all, this is the man with an image of hands-on governance, who is said to have shown his dynamism and administrative superpowers when he rescued Gujarati pilgrims who were stranded after floods in the state of Uttarakhand. If he had wanted to stop the riots, he would have done it. The fact that the riots went on for 4 days and resulted in the deaths of over 2000 people strongly suggests that the rioters had his full support. I do not believe that this man should be trusted with the reins of an entire country, when a life term would be more appropriate.

In general, I do not believe in placing the destiny of a country in the hands of a single individual, however capable and promising they may be. The process is fraught with danger. But if every other politician and political party is incapable of ushering in the slew of changes that India badly needs, to whom can we turn?

I'm actually sanguine about the answer. India's move to free-market capitalism is inevitable, although it may not start as early as 2014. It will come about because power has been steadily slipping away from the central government to the states over the last two to three decades, and the process shows no signs of abating. Coalition governments have been the norm since 1989. The names used in political discourse have moved away from those of parties in the 1980s (Congress, Janata Dal) to those of coalitions today (UPA, NDA). Regional parties have become kingmakers and begun to wield disproportionate power. The states have never been stronger vis-à-vis the centre. India today is much more federal than it was at its birth. Indeed, with the creation of smaller states from larger ones (3 in 2000, 1 more due in 2014) and the increasing demand for statehood from minority groups, it looks like India will before very long be a federation of many small and semi-autonomous states.

[From a professional standpoint too, I wholeheartedly approve of India changing from a monolithic polity with a strong centre to a loose federation of small and internally cohesive states. In the IT industry where I work, high cohesion with low coupling is an architectural principle that leads to highly robust and flexible systems. Centralised systems, in contrast, are brittle and costly to maintain.]

I see India becoming stronger and more dynamic with increasing federalism. Smaller states with more cohesive and engaged electorates tend to have governments that are more responsive and focused on delivery. This is not peculiar to India. People everywhere have begun to demand governance and punish governments that don't deliver. Islamist governments that came to power in the wake of the Arab Spring are discovering to their cost that ideology may win elections but does not guarantee lasting power. The people of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt have signalled strongly to their rulers that what they want is good governance, and Islamic ideology is not an acceptable substitute. In India too, the worm has turned. Electorates are no longer docile and can no longer be taken for granted by the elected.

This is why I believe India will inexorably turn to free-market capitalism. It cannot but. States are going to be competing ferociously with each other to attract foreign investment and talent. Their people will demand higher living standards and punish governments that don't deliver. How else can state governments meet such rising expectations? Heavy inflows of investment will be required, and governments will have to work very hard to attract such investment. Providing an environment that is friendly to business will be imperative, because corporations looking to invest in India can shop around looking for the state offering the most favourable terms. [An early foretaste of this inter-state competition was provided when homegrown corporation Tata Motors shifted from an unfriendly West Bengal to a welcoming Gujarat to establish a factory for the world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano.]

I also foresee radical changes to Indian labour law. I have long believed that a "hire and fire" environment, rather paradoxically, offers the best protection to workers by enabling a dynamic job market with plenty of opportunities, because employers don't hesitate to hire when they know they can shed staff at short notice. Labour "protection" laws have in fact stifled economies and reduced employment opportunities where they have been strongest (e.g., the long communist-dominated Kerala and West Bengal).

In sum, while I share my friend's dream for India to become a free-market economy, I do not believe this can only be achieved by one person, much less that that person is Mr Narendra Modi. I am confident that the vehicle for India's progress is India itself.