Racism raises its ugly head

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A few incidents of attacks on African nationals in and around New Delhi, one of which resulted in the death of a young man from Congo, has turned the spotlight on the ugly face of racism. Though officials are in a state of denial, conscientious Indians accept that racialism is a reality.

Masunda Kitada Oliver, 23, a graduate student who supported himself working as a French tutor, was beaten to death by three men on May 20. Police said the attack followed a late-night quarrel over hiring of an auto-rickshaw. Two men were immediately taken into custody but 10 days later the third remains untraced.

The African embassies decided to stay away from the Africa Day celebrations by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) on May 25 in protest and to advise their governments not to send new students to India. There were retaliatory attacks on a few Indian grocery shops in Congo. All this forced External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to act.

She sent out tweets to assuage African feelings and depa Dayuted her junior colleague, VK Singh, to talk to the envoys. Singh offered to meet the envoys once in three months to discuss the problems African nationals experienced.

The envoys were assuaged enough to drop the planned Africa Day boycott. Officials said the minister of state would do an outreach event with African students, along with the embassies concerned, each quarter to reassure them of their safety. But African outrage did not subside. The Association of African Students (ASA) in India scheduled a demonstration in the capital today (May 31) to “get justice and help prevent more tears”.

The official response was too little and too late. Prime Minister Narendra Modi failed to deplore the violence. Sushma Swaraj erred in leaving it to VK Singh, who, as a former Army chief, is no credible guarantor of human rights, to interact with the African envoys. Singh used the opportunity to settle scores with his pet aversion, the non-complaisant media.

Last Thursday, six Africans were attacked with sticks and cricket bats in a Delhi suburb. The victims included a Nigerian priest attached to a local church, a Ugandan woman who runs a salon and a Cameroonian businessman who was in the city for a surgery.

The priest said this was the third time he was attacked. This suggests he may have been targeted on religious grounds.

However, some local residents said there was resentment over the Africans playing loud music.

The police met residents’ association members and asked them not to misbehave with foreigners living in the area. They also met representatives of the Africans and advised them not to play loud music at night.

The Delhi incidents are a manifestation of the deep-rooted prejudice in the society, which the authorities refuse to acknowledge. African nationals are stereotyped as fraudsters and drug addicts. Racist epithets are hurled at them.

Typical of the authorities’ insensitivity to racism is Tourism and Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma’s comment that the Delhi lynching was unfortunate but “even Africa is not safe”. To prove the point, he said when he went to South Africa he was not allowed to go for walks for reasons of security.

In February, a Tanzanian woman was attacked in the city of Bangalore following a road accident. One of the men held in connection with the incident was a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Two years ago Somnath Bharti, Minister in the Aam Admi Party government of Delhi state, personally led a raid on a house occupied by Ugandans accusing them of drug addiction and prostitution.

The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had instituted a scholarship scheme to enable young Africans to study in India. Graduates of Indian universities occupied important positions when their countries became free. Many of them had experienced discrimination on the campuses but did not encounter violence.

The ICCR still offers several hundred scholarships to African students. With private universities attracting paying students in large numbers, many cities now have hundreds of African students. Complaints of discrimination are common.

Racism in India is an extension of the centuries-old exclusionary caste system. The demand for fair brides in matrimonial advertisements bear out the ingrained colour prejudice. White foreigners rarely encounter hostility.

The current spurt in racist attacks coincides with the increasing incidence of violence against Dalits, Adivasis and minorities in the wake of the rise of the Hindutva ideology, predicated on the concept of Us and Them. People from the northeastern states, who constitute a racial minority, have come under attack in Delhi and Bangalore in the recent past.

Modi, who played host to 41 African heads of state and governments in New Delhi last year, is due to visit South Africa and Mozambique this year. He must think of some clean-up job at home before that. -- Gulf Today, May 31, 2016.

Shifting Sands of Kerala Politics

By BRP Bhaskar 

Kochi Post 

May 28, 2016

Is Kerala at the threshold of a new era of democratic governance? So it appears from the first pronouncements of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. He has pledged to provide a people’s government which functions in the interests of all, without partisan and sectarian considerations.

Kerala prides itself in its centuries-old secular traditions, which were strengthened by the Renaissance movement, the high point of which was Sri Narayana Guru’s ideal of a model state where all live together without caste differences and religious hatred. But scratch the skin, and often caste and religious identities surface not only in individuals but also political parties and media institutions.

Although political and sectarian loyalties run deep, a section of the people has been ensuring change of government at every election by switching from one combination to another. In this year’s election, besides the traditional rivals for power, the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance offered itself as a third alternative.

The electorate rebuffed the UDF, which had won in 2011 with a vote share of 45.83% and audaciously sought another term. Its vote share dropped to 38.86%. The LDF’s vote share too dropped but its loss was comparatively small — from 45.19% to 43.31%. It secured 91 seats in the 140-member Assembly against the UDF’s 47. The NDA mopped up 15.01% votes, and the BJP won its first seat in the State Assembly. The remaining seat went to an Independent.

Studies have shown that the change of government which takes place in every election is the result of a small number of voters in the southern districts unfailingly switching from the ruling front to the opposition front. Evidently they are unwilling to trust anyone in office for more than five years at a stretch. It happened this time too but the presence of the BJP front added a new dimension to the shift in the approach of voters belonging to different social groups.

If the findings of the post-poll study conducted by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies can be trusted, the UDF’s share of Nair votes fell from 43% in 2011 to 20%. The LDF’s share of Ezhava votes slid from 65% to 49%.

Vellappalli Natesan, General Secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, social organization of the Ezhavas, had formed a party named Bharath Dharma Jana Sena on the eve of the elections. It was the BJP’s main partner in the NDA and can be given credit for the rise in the BJP/NDA’s share of Ezhava votes from 7% in 2011 to 17% thi time.

The Nair Services Society, the organization of the second largest Hindu caste group, publicly stood by its policy of keeping equidistance from all the fronts. Without its help, the BJP/NDA could raise their share of Nair votes from 11% in 2011 to 33%. This can possibly be explained as indicative of a natural affinity towards the BJP, which is seen as an upper caste party.

The Muslim and Christian minorities remained the mainstay of the UDF but there was a small shift in their votes, mostly to the LDF. This suggests the Left’s appeal among these communities is growing. It can build on this base.

In opinion polls, Pinarayi Vijayan had trailed V.S. Achuthanandan, who had headed the last LDF government, but he was the state CPI (M) leadership’s fancied candidate for the Chief Minister’s post since he relinquished the post of state party secretary last year. The national leadership asked both the leaders to contest the election.

When the LDF registered a clear victory, General Secretary Sitaram Yechury and his predecessor Prakash Karat flew into Thiruvananthapuram to sort out the leadership issue. Achuthanandan expected Yechury to help him to get the top post if only for a short period. But Yechury decided to go with the state party and compensate Achuthanandan with a respectable-sounding title outside the Council of Ministers.

He declared the 93-year-old Achuthanandan Kerala’s Fidel Castro. The veteran was not pleased but did not demur.

In the party and outside, there are many who feel it was unjust to drop Achuthanandan after using him as a mascot in the election. If Pinarayi Vijayan, who is 72, was held back it would have been equally unjust as there would have been a wait of five or possibly 10 years before he got another chance.

First elected to the Assembly 46 years ago, after serving two terms, Pinarayi Vijayan withdrew to take up organisational responsibilities. He returned to the Assembly in 1991 and on re-election in 1996 was appointed Electricity Minister in E.K. Nayanar’s ministry. The party called him back after two years to become its state secretary.

During the brief spell as minister he had taken steps to boost power generation. A deal he struck with the Canadian company SNC Lavalin for renovation of an old hydel project led to graft charges which still haunt him, although the trial court threw out the CBI case citing lack of evidence.

Achuthanandan, who had favoured Pinarayi Vijayan for the party post in 1998, fell out as he took control of the party, leading to prolonged sectarian warfare. As Leader of the Opposition, Achuthanandan associated himself with people’s agitations across the state and transformed his image from that of a Stalinist to a man of the masses, Pinarayi Vijayan acquired the image of a quintessential apparatchik as he strengthened the party which was weakening elsewhere in the country.

Now Pinarayi Vijayan is recasting his image from that of a stern, unsmiling party boss to a people’s leader. He has asked his ministerial colleagues to limit the number of their personal staff, desist from spending money on renovating their official residences and remain in the capital for five days in the week. He has advised the people to guard against avatars claiming to be close to him.

He has also invited criticism for the heavy expenditure incurred by the state government on a national media campaign ahead of his assumption of office.
With the Left’s disastrous West Bengal experience in mind, Pinarayi Vijayan has to be mindful of the shifting sands. He has to safeguard the state’s secular fabric which is being pulled asunder by both majority and minority communalism.

How Hindutva Made a Breakthrough in Kerala

B.R.P.Bhaskar
Stance

Hindutva, which had experienced decades of electoral drought in Kerala, struck pay dirt when in last week's elections the Bharatiya Janata Party won a seat in the 140-member State Assembly for the first time, came close to snatching a second, and ended up as the first runner-up in six other constituencies.

Since the early 1980s, Kerala has been under a two-front system, with the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front alternating in power. No party which isn't in one of these fronts has been able to win a seat.

True to pattern, the LDF replaced the UDF in power this time, but the two fronts couldn't make a clean sweep. Apart from the BJP's old warhorse O. Rajagopal, who had earlier lost election after election, P.C. George, an independent who was not backed by either the UDF or the LDF, also won. George had won previous elections as a part of one front or the other.

The BJP's breakthrough doesn’t necessarily mean the two-front system has collapsed. But it does indicate that it can be brought down. Its fate now hinges on how the Congress and the CPI (M) respond to the emergence of the BJP as an electoral force.



Hindutva had been in electoral politics in Kerala since the Jana Sangh days. At an early stage, it set its eyes on the Ezhavas, an OBC community which is the largest Hindu caste group. The violent conflicts between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the CPI (M) in northern Kerala, which has taken a few hundred lives in the past half a century, are, in fact, part of a fight to dominate the community. The only portrait that adorned the dais when the Jana Sangh held its National Council meeting in Kozhikode in the 1970s was that of Sri Narayana Guru, the social reformer who had radicalized the community and placed before Kerala in the late 19th century the ideal of a society free from caste differences and religious hatred.

The strategy didn't succeed until recently, as the secular ethos created by the Guru's ideal proved a stumbling block.

Soon after becoming the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi visited the state at the invitation of the Sree Narayana Dharma Sangham, founded by the Guru, to inaugurate its annual pilgrimage. He paid another visit to attend a function organized by the Kerala Pulaya Maha Sabha, an organization of the largest Dalit community. Ahead of the elections, the RSS, which has the largest number of sakhas in the state, took direct control of the BJP. It made Kummanam Rajasekharan, who had headed the Hindu Aikyavedi for decades, as the state party chief.

For the first time, the BJP entered the electoral arena with an alliance. Its main partner in the National Democratic Alliance's state unit was the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena, formed, with Modi's blessings, by Vellappalli Natesan, general secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, founded by the Guru to propagate his ideals. It was allotted 36 seats to contest.

Although the BDJS claims to represent all Hindus and its candidates included leaders of the Yogakshema Sabha of the Namboodiris and the KPMS, most of its nominees were office-bearers of the Yogam. The other NDA partners included the P.C.Thomas faction of the Kerala Congress, a predominantly Christian party, and a new party floated by adivasi leader C.K. Janu. Thomas was a minister of state in the A.B. Vajpayee government. Janu has been leading the tribals' agitation for land.

Personal popularity seems to have played a part in Rajagopal's victory. The BJP had brought him into the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh and Vajpayee made him Minister of State in his government. Many in southern Kerala give him credit for improving railway facilities when he was minister. In 2011, he had lost to V. Sivankutty of the CPI (M). This time his vote share in the constituency rose from 37.5% to 47.7% while Sivankutty's declined from 43% to 41.6%. The UDF's candidates in both elections were from small parties and its vote dropped from 17.4% in 2011 to 9.8% this time.



The increasing appeal of the BJP among the members of the powerful Nair community must have also helped Rajagopal. The shift in the community's preference had manifested itself in last year's local body elections in which the BJP replaced the UDF as the main opposition in the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation.

As it happened, none of BJP's partners, including the BDJS, could win a seat or even claim the second position in any constituency.

Preliminary data indicate that the BJP/NDA raised its vote share from 6.06% in the 2011 elections to 15.01% – an increase of 8.95 percentage points.
The LDF secured a comfortable majority in the new Assembly, but its vote share actually declined, from 45.19% in 2011 to 43.31% -- a drop of 1.88 percentage points. It could still win because the UDF lost even more votes, its share falling from 45.83% to 38.86% -- a steep fall of 6.97 percentage points.

The combined loss of the LDF and the UDF corresponds to the gain of the BJP/NDA. One may therefore feel tempted to conclude that 1.88% of the voters switched from the LDF to the NDA and 6.97% from the UDF to the NDA. This line of thought will lead to the conclusion that the BJP is gaining ground at the cost of the UDF.

Within the UDF, the Congress is clearly the worst sufferer. Its main partner, the Muslim League, could get 18 of its 24 candidates elected -- a success rate of 75%. Its second largest partner got six of its 15 candidates elected – a success rate of 40%. However, the Congress could get only 22 of its 87 candidates elected -- an extremely low success rate of just about 25%.



Yet it's risky to conclude that the BJP has gained mainly at the expense of the Congress. The NDA’s vote share of 15.01% includes the BDJS's 3.9%. Since the Ezhavas form an estimated 23% of the state's population, this figure suggests the BJP's bid to piggy ride the Sree Narayana movement has met with only a modest success.

Religious minorities account for 45% of the state's population. But they form only about 20% of the CPI (M) membership. In this election, the Left continued the tactical line it has been following for some time of trying to broaden its base among the minorities. As part of this line, it outsourced more seats to them than ever before. The success of many of these candidates indicates that the LDF has been able to attract new voters from among the minorities.

According to the CSDS post-poll survey, details of which are not available yet, the LDF attracted one-third of the Christian votes this time. In the last two Assembly elections, its share of Christian votes was 27%. When the minority votes gained this time are worked in, the loss of Hindu votes to the BJP may amount to more than the straight drop of 1.88 percentage points cited above.

The BJP has finally been able to make some headway as Kerala's secular ethos has weakened. Both the Congress and the CPI (M) have contributed to this development by repeatedly compromising with caste and religious forces for electoral gains. How they assess their losses and plan to reverse the trend and how the BJP plots to build up on its gains will determine the course of Kerala's politics in the immediate future.

(Photo credit: jynxzero via Foter.com / CC BY-SA pangalactic gargleblaster and the heart of gold via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND Al Jazeera English via Foter.com / CC BY-SA gordontour via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND)

Kerala: No Paradigm Shift but a Warning Sign for the Congress

B.R.P.Bhaskar
wire.in 

Sticking to the tradition established after a two-front system emerged three and a half decades ago, Kerala’s voters threw out the ruling coalition and voted in the rival alliance, firmly rejecting the former’s plea for a second successive term and the newly formed third front’s call to dump both and plump for it.

Since the Congress-led United Democratic Front won the elections of 2011, it was now the turn of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front to win, and it comes back to power after a gap of five years with an impressive 91-47 victory.
While the voters rebuffed the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance’s bid for recognition as a third force, the BJP was able to win a seat. This is the first time that the Hindutva party has made it to the state assembly.

Bucking the trend of rejecting unattached independents, voters in Poonjar constituency re-elected P.C. George, a veteran legislator who had won in previous elections as part of either the UDF or the LDF but did not have the support of any front this time.
In the early days of the two-front system, the difference between the vote shares of the UDF and LDF was small. So was the difference in their strength in the assembly. In 1982, for instance, less than 100,000 votes separated them: the UDF polled 4,617,498 votes and the LDF 4,523,228. In the assembly the UDF had 77 seats and the LDF 63.  About 50,000 voters could have altered the fate of the contenders for power.

The parties which lead the two fronts and their major partners have committed voters who stick to them through thick and thin. The change of government in every election has been made possible by voters who keep switching from one front to the other. Their number gradually grew until 2001 when the UDF registered a 100-40 victory. In 2006, the LDF won with an identical margin.  Studies have shown that it is the southern districts that swing from one front to the other.

In 2011, there was a slight reversal of the trend. The UDF, led by Oommen Chandy, registered a narrow 72-68 victory over the LDF, led by outgoing chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan. The LDF lost a few seats by small margins. Many observers believe that what brought the LDF close to a second successive term was the expectation that if it was voted back to power Achuthanandan would remain the chief minister.

Factions in the Left

CPI(M) leader V.S. Achuthanandan. Credit: PTI

The state CPI (M) had denied a party ticket to Achuthanandan, who was involved in a bitter squabble with the then party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, in 2006 and 2011. On both occasions, street protests forced the politburo to overrule the state committee and permit him to contest. Since Vijayan, 72, who had led the state party ably from 1998 to 2015, stepped down he has been a hot favourite for the chief minister’s post. But there is nothing to indicate that Achuthanandan is ready to call it a day. At general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s instance, the Politburo intervened early and announced that both Achuthanandan and Vijayan would contest the elections and jointly lead the LDF campaign.

Recognising the 92-year-old Achuthanadan’s immense personal popularity, all LDF candidates, including Vijayan, flaunted his picture in their posters and banners. With both contenders elected to the assembly, the party could no longer postpone the question  of who will head the government.  The party has opted for Vijayan. Yechury, who has a better equation with Achuthanandan than his predecessor, Prakash Karat, will now have the onerous task of ensuring the veteran takes this decision in his stride and that whatever discord which follows in not allowed to spill into the streets.

One formula that was being talked about was to compensate within the party hierarchy. Achuthanandan – who was removed from the politburo in 2009 in the wake of his conflict with the state leadership and downgraded from a member of the central committee to a mere ‘special invitee’ last year – may be mollified by being accorded a better status in the party hierarchy. So far, however, there is no word on this.

Warning signs for Congress
The Congress has suffered a big rout which is not immediately apparent. Its share of the UDF’s bag of 47 seats is just 22. Three-fourths of the 87 candidates it put up lost. Actually, its decline is not a new development. Last time, too, it had fared poorly, winning only 38 of the 81 seats it contested but the UDF’s victory, made possible by the good performance of its major allies, especially the Indian Union Muslim League (which won 20 of the 23 seats it contested)  helped to hide its dismal performance.

Unless the Congress urgently addresses the issue of its continuous decline under the diarchy of ‘A’ group leader Oommen Chandy and ‘I’ group leader Ramesh Chennithala, it is bound to end up as a relic of history, as has happened in several other states already. Two years ago, the party’s central leadership appointed V.M. Sudheeran as the state Congress chief in a bold bid to break the hold of the group leaders. Chandy and Chennithala joined hands and scuttled his initiatives to end factionalism.

BJP: Debut and beyond
The Congress leaders apparently imagined that any gains the BJP makes will be at the expense of the LDF, especially the CPI (M). The BJP’s main ally in the NDA was the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), floated by the leadership of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, a social organisation of the Ezhavas, an OBC community. Although the BJDS was projected as a common platform of Hindus, from Namboodiri to Nayadi, it was viewed by many as an Ezhava outfit.

Ezhavas constitute the largest Hindu caste group. A study of the voting pattern in previous elections has shown that 65% of the members of the community traditionally vote for the Left.  The BJP allotted the BDJS 36 seats, thinking it will be able to attract the support of the community. But its calculation did not work out. The BDJS polled 3.9% of the popular vote, but could not win even one seat. Apparently it could not extend much help to the BJP also. The presence of BDJS candidates did more damage to the UDF than the LDF.
The BJP can pat itself on the back on its entry into the state assembly, which both the LDF and the UDF had vowed to block. The successful candidate, O. Rajagopal, is a former Union minister. The party had got him into the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh to facilitate his appointment as minister of state for railways in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA-1 government. He is regarded highly in the state for the services he rendered as minister of state. The comparatively poor performance of the UDF candidate in his constituency suggests that there was large scale defection from the UDF to BJP there.

The BJP was in the second place in seven constituencies. In one of them, its candidate lost by a small margin of 89 votes. Viewed in the light of the caste complexion of the constituencies there is reason to believe that its limited success was made possible by the support it received from the Hindu “upper caste” rather than the ‘backward’ communities which it specifically targeted.  Though it secured 10.5% of the votes polled across the state (and if we include the BJDS, the NDA’s vote share stands at 15.4%), the paradigm shift the BJP was hoping for is not in sight yet.

Moving from poll to poll

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been celebrating its modest gains in the recently concluded Assembly elections in three States and one Union Territory to dispel the popular impression that the Modi magic ended with last year’s setback in Bihar.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes two years in office, with development failing to create jobs, there is a pressing need to boost the morale of the rank and file which slumped following failure to bring Bihar under BJP’s control. Especially so since seven states, including Uttar Pradesh, the most populous one, and Modi’s own Gujarat, are due to go to the polls next year.

The states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam and the Union Territory of Puducherry, which figured in the election calendar, together account for 116 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the BJP could bag only 10 of them. It picked up half of Assam’s 14 seats but got only two out of West Bengal’s 42 and one out of Tamil Nadu’s 39. It drew a blank in Kerala, which has 20 seats. Its regional ally picked up Puducherry’s lone seat.

Modi attached great importance to the Assembly elections in these states, and drew up plans to boost the BJP’s prospects with the help of new allies. The services of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadres were requisitioned.

The plan succeeded only in Assam. This was the smallest of the four states and the only one where the BJP and the Congress were in a direct contest for power. The BJP was able to oust the Congress government headed by Tarun Gogoi, which had been in office for 15 years at a stretch, and seize power for the first time in an eastern state.

The BJP won by precipitating a sharp polarisation on religious lines in the state, which has an ethnically diverse population. The party’s Hindu vote share shot up from 43 per cent to 63 per cent, while the Congress’s declined from 30 per cent to 25 per cent.

Muslims constitute a third of Assam’s population. Their number has been rising at a higher rate than that of the Hindus from one census to the next. While the community’s higher birth rate accounts for this partly, the BJP has been attributing it mainly to illegal migration from Bangladesh. Sarbananda Sonowal, the new Chief Minister, has vowed to seal the borders to prevent infiltration.

Both the Congress and the BJP were small players in the large states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The regional parties ruling these states, led by charismatic women, won a second term.

Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress had stormed into power in West Bengal in 2011, putting an end to more than three decades of rule by the Left Front, headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Now in a debilitated state, the CPI (M) entered into an informal alliance with the even more debilitated Congress. They could not prevent Mamata Banerjee’s return with a bang.

The CPI (M) suffered a double defeat. It lost the status of the main opposition to the Congress, which had contested fewer seats but won more than it could.

Tamil Nadu has been ruled by two regional parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its breakaway group, the All India Anna DMK, since 1967. In recent elections the two parties had won in alternate elections. This time AIADMK Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa beat off the DMK’s challenge and secured a second successive term.

The Trinamool Congress and the AIADMK were both constituents of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, and Mamata Banerjee was a member of his Cabinet. But the two parties have stayed out of Modi’s NDA.

The Congress party forged an alliance with the DMK in Tamil Nadu. Failing to find an ally, the BJP went alone, and 230 of its 232 candidates forfeited their deposits as they got less than one-sixth of the valid votes polled in their constituencies.

In Kerala, where the Congress-led United Democratic Front and the CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front have been alternating in power for more than three decades, the BJP picked up an Assembly seat for the first time. A new Hindu party set up by the social organisation of the Ezhavas, the largest OBC community, with Modi’s blessings, was its main ally. While the alliance cut into the votes of the UDF and the LDF, it could not prevent the LDF’s assumption of power in keeping with the established pattern.

The Congress which lost power in Assam and Kerala received a consolation prize in Puduchcherry.

Modi, whose forte is electioneering, has already started making plans for next year’s big fights.-- Gulf Today, May 24, 2016.

Criminal defamation — No respite

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s Supreme Court, which has occasionally used its wide powers to improve upon outdated laws, last week let go an opportunity to revise the colonial defamation law in tune with democratic ideals.

Defamation is actionable under both civil and criminal law. The Indian Penal Code, which makes it a criminal offence, was drafted by legendary British historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay and came into force in 1860. Its relevant provisions are based on the law then prevailing in Britain, which aimed at protecting the reputations of the supporters of the Establishment.

The IPC underwent changes 40 times during 87 years of British rule and 36 times more in the 68 years since then. Its basic approach towards defamation, however, remains unchanged.

It prescribes a jail term of up to two years for criminal defamation.

Historically, law has recognised two kinds of defamation: slander, or defamation committed by the spoken word, and libel, or defamation committed by the written word. In the feudal era, slander of the nobility was an offence akin to treason in Europe and could invite the death penalty. After India gained freedom, political leaders virtually converted themselves into a new feudal ruling class and they have been unwilling to do away with the defamation provision of the colonial period.

Human rights organisations have been asking governments to abolish criminal defamation as it intimidates citizens and dissuades them from exposing wrongdoing by people in high places. UN bodies have endorsed the demand.

In the United States, a defamation case will stand only if the complainant is able to establish that the impugned statement is false and was made negligently or with malice and its publication has caused him material harm. If the complainant is a public figure, the standard of malice must be met strictly. Expression of an opinion is not considered defamation.

To circumvent the tough conditions set by the US law, influential Americans, especially corporates, started seeking legal remedy in Britain, leading to what was called ‘libel tourism’. The UK responded by revamping its defamation law. The new law, which came into force two years ago, requires complainants to show actual or probable serious harm.

Britain has now taken seditious, blasphemous and defamatory libel out of criminal law. In India all these forms of libel remain intact and are slapped on those who meet with the disapproval of powerful political or religious interests.

Gandhi and BG Tilak were among the nationalist leaders whom the British charged with sedition. Few cases of sedition have succeeded since Independence but governments take delight in flinging the charge to harass opponents. Some student leaders of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi are currently facing sedition charges.

The state, bound by the constitutional principle of secularism, has desisted from resort to the blasphemy provision of the law but religious elements have been invoking it to intimidate critics. The celebrated artist MF Hussain fled to Dubai and spent his last years there as Hindutva elements who felt offended by his depiction of some Hindu goddesses filed a few thousand cases all across the country even after the highest courts ruled that the paintings were artistic representations and should be judged as such.

Sanal Edamaruku, President of the Indian Rationalist Association, has been living in exile in Finland since 2012 as the Catholic Archdiocese of Mumbai, angered by his busting of a claimed miracle in a church, filed a blasphemy case against him.

The Supreme Court examined the issue of criminal defamation on the basis of petitions filed, among others, by Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Admi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy, all of whom are facing criminal defamation charges.

The Central government argued that criminal defamation must stay as cases took years to conclude and citizens would not be able to pay damages for civil defamation. Surely these problems can be overcome by speeding up trials and awarding affordable damages.

Yet the court endorsed the government’s arguments. It held the law did not have a chilling effect on free speech.

The court betrayed a confused approach in observing that freedom of speech and expression was the first condition of liberty and then declaring that free speech was not an absolute value under the Constitution. It glossed over the fact that the law, as it now stands, provides a shield to public servants facing serious allegations.

The judgment, given by a bench of two judges, is a big disappointment as it has failed to take defamation out of the feudal context. Considering the serious import of the issue, a Constitution Bench should examine it at the earliest opportunity. ---Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 17, 2016

How the law takes its own course

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A study on the working of the death penalty has lighted up the tortuous path the law takes and the impact it has on the lives of the poor who get caught in its tentacles.

The pioneering research project undertaken by a group at the National Law University, Delhi, led by Assistant Professor Anup Surendranath, has resulted in the mining of much valuable data on the social and economic aspects of the death penalty and the vagaries of the justice system.

It has also led to the establishment of a Centre on the Death Penalty, whose sphere of activity extends beyond research to litigation and advocacy. At present it represents 40 death row prisoners. Its public affairs team promotes discussion on the death penalty issue outside the realm of law.

Members of the group interviewed 373 of 385 persons in the death row. They also traced family members of the convicts and talked to them. They could not meet 12 condemned prisoners as the authorities denied access to them.

While collecting data, the group noticed several systemic problems that dog the process of criminal investigation and justice delivery. Torture to extort confession was common. Failure to ratify the UN Convention against Torture, which India signed in 1997, virtually sanctions continuance of the medieval practice.

The group found that social and economic factors were at play in the breeding of crime. More than two-fifths of the death row prisoners belonged to socially disadvantaged sections and three-fourths were economically vulnerable. While the Constitution promises equality before law the long and costly process involved effectively denies it to the poor.

Add to it the vagaries of the legal process. The study revealed a wide gap between the approaches of the lowest and highest levels of the judiciary to sentencing. In cases which attract the death penalty less than five per cent of the trial court convictions met with the apex court’s approval. The higher courts set aside the conviction and acquitted the convicts in about 30 per cent of the cases and gave reduced sentences in the remaining cases.

More than 40 years ago the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be awarded only in “the rarest of rare” cases. All too often courts have differed in their assessment of whether or not a case falls in the “rarest of rare” category.

Instances of the same court making conflicting assessments are also on record. A Supreme Court bench sent to the gallows a man who was found guilty of kidnapping a boy for ransom, saying it was a “rarest of rate” case. Earlier it had reduced the death penalty the lower court had awarded to a man who killed his wife and daughter while on parole after being convicted on a charge of raping the daughter, holding the case was not of the “rarest of rare” kind.

The most agonising part of the legal process is the prolonged period of uncertainty through which a death row inmate passes as he awaits the outcome of his plea for mercy. There have been occasions when this period extended beyond two decades. It is a period of acute mental stress as he remains trapped between hope and death.

While the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of the death penalty, the Law Commission, in a report last September, broke with past recommendations and proposed that the country move towards restricting its use to terrorism cases, where it was necessary for reasons of national security.

The growing national movement for abolition of the death penalty suffered a setback two years ago when the national outrage over a gang rape in Delhi prompted the government to toughen the law relating to grave sexual offences.

In justification of its new recommendation, the Law Commission pointed out that the murder rate had fallen from 4.6 per 100,000 people in 1992 to 2.7 per 100,000 in 2013. The rate of executions too had declined. National Crime Records Bureau’s figures indicated that the average number of persons sentenced to death now stood at 129 a year.

The police forces’ bias against the minorities is well-known. The rise of terrorism has led to the spread of prejudice to other sections too. In confirming the death penalty awarded to Afzal Guru, one of the accused in the Parliament attack case, the Supreme Court had observed that “the collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if the capital punishment is awarded to the offender”. Many have taken exception to this observation, viewing it as proof of deviation from the standard judicial approach.  -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 10, 2016.

Another scandal playing out

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

 

The raging controversy over the Agusta Westland bribery brings to mind the Bofors scandal which reverberated in India’s political space for a quarter century before petering out with the bribe-takers getting away unpunished.

The Bofors case related to a 1986 contract for the purchase of 410 field guns for the army from Sweden for $825 million. The Swedish radio reported that the company had bribed Indian politicians to get the contract.

The Agusta Westland case relates to a 2010 contract under which the British subsidiary of the Italy’s Finmeccanica was to supply 12 helicopters for the air force’s VVIP squadron for Rs35.46 billion. Italian investigators said the company had paid commissions to three middlemen and bribed the then Indian Air Force chief SK Tyagi through his cousins to clinch the deal.

The Bofors scandal brought down Rajiv Gandhi’s government. The Central Bureau of Investigation which probed the matter registered a case in which Rajiv Gandhi, Bofors chief executive Martin Ardbo and Ottavio Quattrochhi, an Italian businessman and friend of the Gandhi family, figured among the accused. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and the others died of natural causes without facing trial.

In the Agusta Westland corruption case, Italian prosecutors cited Air Chief Marshal Tyagi as an accused in a Milan court along with Finmeccanica chief executive Giuseppe Orsi, former AW head Bruno Spagnolini and three middlemen.

The trial court acquitted Tyagi, who was tried in absentia, of all charges. Orsi and Spagnolini were acquitted of charges of “international corruption” but were given two years in jail for “false invoicing”.

Last month the appeals court overturned that judgment. It held Orsi and Spagnolini guilty of bribery and indicted Tyagi as a beneficiary of corruption.

When word of the Italian prosecution came AK Antony, Defence Minister in the United Progressive Alliance government, ordered an Indian investigation. By then India had received three helicopters and paid Rs16.20 billion. Further payments were frozen and the money already paid was recovered by encashing the bank guarantees the company had provided.

In March 2013 the CBI filed a first information report and began investigation. The FIR named the Italian company, its UK subsidiary, two Indian companies which were believed to have been used as conduits for payment, Tyagi, who had retired by then, and three cousins of his, among others. Simultaneously the Enforcement Directorate started a probe under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

In May 2014 the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government under Narendra Modi took office. The two investigations made little progress even after the change of government.

Following the Milan appeal court verdict, the investigations have come to life again.

Seventeen cops headed the CBI while it probed the Bofors scandal. One of them claimed in his autobiography that Rajiv Gandhi had told him he wanted defence deal commissions to be used to meet the Congress party’s expenses.

Like the Bofors case, the Agusta Westland deal too has an Italian angle, and that comes in handy for political rivals to embarrass the Congress, which has an Italian-born president in Sonia Gandhi. Bits of information embarrassing to the Modi government and the Indian media have also come to light.

In a letter to an international tribunal James Christian Michel, one of the middlemen, alleged that Modi, in a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi during the last UN General Assembly session, offered to free the two Italian marines facing murder charges in India in exchange for evidence against Sonia Gandhi in the helicopter deal.

The External Affairs Ministry and the Information and Broadcasting Ministry rebutted the allegations in statements which are studies in prevarication. The former said there was no Modi-Renzi meeting “as part of bilateral meetings” during the UN session and the latter said Modi did not “cut any deal” with Renzi.

Michel had said the Prime Ministers had a “brush-by meeting”, not a scheduled bilateral meeting. He had said Modi had offered a deal, not that he had cut a deal.

According to a Milan court document, Agusta Westland had paid Euro 6 million to Michel to manage the Indian media. The beneficiaries of the pay-out remain unnamed.

The Congress party has alleged that Tyagi was associated with Modi’s Principal Secretary Nripendra Mishra and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in the Vivekananda International Foundation, a pro-Hindutva think tank.

Recalling the Bofors experience 25 years later, Chitra Subramaniam, a journalist who investigated clandestine payments in that case, said, “It showed us how every political party sought to protect its space without thinking of us as a nation.” That story is being played out again. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 3, 2016.