Indian Press on Madrasas and Sanskrit Tols, Karl Marx and Facebook: New Age Islam's Selection, 17 December 2020
By
New Age Islam Edit Desk
17 December
2020
• All The Same: Madrasa, Sanskrit Tols
The Telegraph Editorial
• 49 Years On, India, Bangladesh Should Deal With
Unresolved Issues
By Syed Munir Khasru
• What Did Karl Marx Say About Religion
17th December 2020
• Facebook ‘Committed’ To India’s Growth. What About
‘Hate Speech’?
By Sarada Mahesh
----
All the
Same: Madrasa, Sanskrit Tols
The
Telegraph Editorial
17.12.20
The
multiple connotations of the word ‘secularism’ sometimes contradict one another
— in effect even if not semantically. The Assam government has decided to
repeal the laws regarding state-run madrasas and Sanskrit tols and turn
madrasas into regular high schools. Theological subjects will be withdrawn;
only Arabic will continue to be taught as a language. Tols, however, will pass
to the Kumar Bhaskar Varma Sanskrit and Ancient Studies University as research
centres for Indian civilization, culture and nationalism.
The reason
announced for the decision is secularism. The Assam government cannot be
faulted: in the S.R. Bommai versus Union of India case of 1994, the Supreme
Court had pronounced that state-owned educational institutions were prohibited
from imparting religious instruction. But it has to be asked why there were
state laws permitting madrasas under the government’s auspices that must be
repealed now. Were they constitutional? Or does the definition of secularism
chosen by Assam’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government now wish to ignore
Articles 28, 29 and 30 of the Constitution that permit — however confusingly —
government aid for minority education?
Since
privately-run madrasas have so far escaped the state government’s passion for
its favoured secularism, it may be a stretch to criticize its decision as
communally biased. What cannot be denied is differential treatment.
Even if it
is possible to overlook the assumption that tols impart religious education —
the BJP may be unaware of Sanskrit literature, aesthetics and philosophy — it
seems strange that they should graduate into centres for Indian civilizational
studies. Assam promises to be the first to have degrees on this subject.
Sceptics
may see in the government’s desire to appear even-handed a deeper purpose:
propagating one-sided views of Indian culture and nationalism. The education
minister clarified there would be no history. Naturally: history would overturn
BJP-directed ideas of civilization. In the S.R. Bommai case, the Supreme Court
had also said that politics and religion cannot be mixed. More pointedly, it
said that when the Constitution requires the State to be secular in thought and
action, it applies to political parties as well. Indian secularism is far from
simple. That is indicated by the constitutional provisions for the education of
religious and linguistic minorities. But it is no surprise that a BJP-led
government would decide to be secular in its chosen way.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/all-the-same-madrasa-sanskrit-tols/cid/1800733
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49 Years On, India, Bangladesh Should Deal
With Unresolved Issues
By
Syed Munir Khasru
Dec 16,
2020
As
Bangladesh marks its liberation war victory day on December 16, it is a good
time to look at a crucial question that was both central to that era and is
relevant even in the present day: where do Delhi-Dhaka ties stand now?
Vikram
Doraiswami, the Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, said in his first press
briefing in Dhaka, “There is not, and will never be, a diminution of the
highest level of importance that Bangladesh holds in India.” The leaders of the
two nations, Prime Ministers (PMs) Narendra Modi and Sheikh Hasina, meet
virtually on December 17, and it is clear that relations need a serious reboot.
On the
economic front, Bangladesh is India’s largest trading partner in South Asia.
Between 2009-10 and 2015-16, the trade deficit grew in India’s favour at a
staggering 164.4%. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from India to Bangladesh is
$3.11 billion, including Reliance’s $642-million 745 MW gas-fired project and
Adani’s $400 million in Mirsarai Economic Zone. Despite India-Bangladesh relations
being referred to as a “role model”, the irony is that in India’s Consolidated
FDI policy 2017, Bangladesh is put in the same category as Pakistan. The FDI
policy’s para 3.1.1 says, “A non-resident entity can invest in India…However, a
citizen of Bangladesh/Pakistan or an entity incorporated in Bangladesh/Pakistan
can invest only under the Government route.”
But there
is good news too. Today, India and Bangladesh are better connected and goods
are transported by road, rail and river routes using Bangladeshi vessels,
trucks and railway. Recent agreements allow India to ship goods through Mongla
port road, rail, and water routes.
The border
remains sensitive. In spite of Section 11 (11) of the India-Bangladesh
Coordinated Border Management Plan --- which says, “Neither side will resort to
the use of lethal weapons except in self-defence against terrorists or
smugglers” --- at least 25 Bangladeshi civilians were killed by the Border
Security Force (BSF) in the first six months of this year. On the United States
(US)-Mexico border, infamous for the narcotics trade, 111 were killed by the US
border patrol force since 2010. In that period, 294 Bangladeshis were killed on
the Indo-Bangla border.
Water
remains another difficult issue. Bangladeshis have observed the tug-of-war on
the Teesta water-sharing issue between the Centre and state. Indian PMs are
sometimes accompanied by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee during
state visits to Dhaka; sometimes the CM has visited on her own. But all that
has transpired are empty promises, as rivers run dry and farmers are cut off
from their livelihood. However, during PM Sheikh Hasina’s India tour, an MoU
was signed allowing India 1.82 cusecs of water from the Feni River.
India’s
controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and National Register of
Citizens (NRC) have created a negative impression in Bangladesh of India’s
intent, which the Bangladesh Prime Minister termed “unnecessary”. Syed Muazzem
Ali, the late Bangladesh high commissioner to India and recipient of the Padma
Bhushan, once said, “Bangladeshis are not interested to migrate to India; they
would rather go to Italy.” The CAA excludes Muslims from being granted
citizenship as persecuted minorities, while the NRC in Assam excluded 1.9
million people, majority of them Muslims. The NRC and CAA can’t be brushed
aside as “internal matters” when they have ramifications across the border.
The China
factor also adds another dimension to the ties. Bangladesh is China’s
second-largest arms export destination. Chinese firms have been outbidding
their Indian counterparts in infrastructure projects. Bangladesh is deftly
navigating relations with its two biggest neighbours in a neighbourhood in
flux. Nepal is increasingly becoming closer to China; Bhutan has withdrawn from
the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) initiative, Sri Lanka and the
Maldives are playing a balancing act, both rooted in Chinese investments;
Afghanistan is increasingly under the Taliban’s sphere of influence as the US
withdraws troops. In a thaw in relations, Pakistan’s high commissioner to
Bangladesh recently met the Bangladesh PM as both sides pledged to improve
bilateral relations.
If
Indo-Bangla relations are to move to “newer heights”, then unresolved issues
have to be dealt with soon. Any dithering on this, with the region’s only
trusted partner, may prove costly for India if it wants to avoid the kind of
catch-up diplomacy it has been doing in the neighbourhood in the wake of the
growing Chinese threat and Beijing’s widening influence in South Asia.
----
Syed
Munir Khasru is chairman of the international think tank, The Institute for
Policy, Advocacy, and Governance (IPAG) with a presence in Dhaka, Delhi,
Melbourne, Vienna, and Dubai. The views expressed are personal.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/49-years-on-india-bangladesh-should-deal-with-unresolved-issues/story-U89UhWKCvatR08Og1YjvPP.html
----
What Did
Karl Marx Say About Religion
By
Paul Zacharia
17th
December 2020
It’s a fact
that no one reads Karl Marx, except a few determined souls. Most people go by
hearsay. The reason is simple: You can’t read him for fun; he is demanding. One
of the most circulated hearsays about Marx is what he said about religion. His
extraordinary, original vision of man’s helpless entrapment in religion has
been reduced by opponents and proponents both into the one short, shabby
cliché: “religion is the opium of the people”.
When Marx
wrote the introduction to A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in 1843—the
year of his marriage to Jenny von Westphalen—he was 25, a young man impatient
with the philosophies and politics of his times. It is in this work of
hardcore, abstruse polemics—unpublished during his lifetime—that Marx presents,
in the space of a couple of short paragraphs, an examination of religion that
is surpassed by little else before or after him.
It is also
the translation of Marx’s text by Joseph O’Malley, the most profoundly poetic
vision of all his massive body of work—except the few lyrical flights in the
Communist Manifesto. References to religion are so scant in the pages of his
theoretical work that it seems he accorded no importance to it except in its
role as a lackey of the oppressor and a deluder of the oppressed.
About
Christianity, the then dominant religion of Europe, he said: “The social
principles of Christianity declare all the vile acts of the oppressors to be
either a just punishment for original sin and other sins, or trials which the
Lord, in his infinite wisdom, ordains for the redeemed.” True, the Marxian
scenario of a proletarian revolution did not play out in Europe. Instead it was
a bourgeoisie-driven capitalist upsurge that created Europe’s economic (read
colonial) domination of the world—as also its post-Second World War
democracies.
The often
neglected fact is that the grassroots energy that spurred this transformation
was the boundless power released by the secular deconstruction of Christianity
that set millions of minds free. European societies who chose to get rid of the
religious delusion, to firmly separate state from religion and governance from
faith, raced to the top of the ladder of material and cultural progress. The
portrait of religion unfurled by Marx in the introduction to his critique of
Hegel is nothing less than stunning. He does it with a deft and sure hand, with
bold, broad sweeps. It takes him only a few sentences to create this definitive
summary of man’s religious reality.
After a
quick reference to the situation of religion in Germany, he declares: “...the
criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism”. Religion
disappoints because it offers man only a heavenly reflection of himself, not
his true reality. He states: “The foundation of irreligious criticism is: man
makes religion, religion does not make man.” Because, “religion is the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to
himself, or has already lost himself again.” Religion is an alter ego created
by man. “Man,” he clarifies, “is no
abstract being squatting outside the world.
Man is the
world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion,
which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted
world.” It is the topsy-turvy world of the state and society that creates
religion and its topsy-turvy world view. “Religion,” he continues, “is the
general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in
popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its solemn
compliment, and its universal basis of consolation and justification.” It is, he says, a fantastic realisation of
the human essence in place of a true realisation.
The
struggle against religion therefore is a struggle against a world whose spirit
is consumed by religion. But there’s a contradiction because religious
suffering is the expression of real suffering and at the same time a protest
against suffering. Now, in a few—startlingly moving—words, Marx goes to the
heart of the matter. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart
of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of
the people.” Religion, he continues, therefore is the illusory happiness of the
people.
To ask them
to give up the illusion is to ask them to give up the condition that requires
illusions. It is asking them, in effect, to change the conditions that addicts
them to the opium that is religion. “The criticism of religion is, therefore,”
he writes, “the embryonic criticism of this vale of tears of which religion is
the halo.” He argues that religion is like a chain of imaginary flowers man
wears. Criticism plucks away those flowers and enables man to throw off the
chain and pluck the living flower.
It empowers
him to discard his illusions and regain his senses “so that he will move around
himself as his own Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around
man as long as he does not revolve around himself”. He continues with a
statement that is dazzling in its unerring understanding of the primary tasks
of history and philosophy. “It is therefore, the task of history,” Marx writes,
“once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this
world.
It is the
immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask
self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of self-estrangement
has been unmasked.” History and philosophy must help people behold the truth
about the real world they live in and to recognise their true alienation, which
is of this world and not of an illusory heaven.
“Thus,”
Marx concludes, “the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the
criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology
into the criticism of politics.” One wonders if this young 25-year-old knew he
had uttered the last word on the charade that religion and politics,
masquerading as each other, use to enslave nations.
-----
(Thanks to
Oxford University Press for the extracts used here from Marx’s Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843), 1970, translated by Joseph O’Malley)
Paul
Zacharia is an Award-winning fiction
writer
https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2020/dec/17/what-did-karlmarx-say-about-religion-2237307.html
-----
Facebook
‘Committed’ To India’s Growth. What about ‘Hate Speech’?
By
Sarada Mahesh
16 Dec 2020
On 13
December 2020, the Wall Street Journal released a report, the findings of which
should not have really surprised anyone. According to this, Facebook was
reluctant to remove posts or ban groups belonging to the Bajrang Dal. They
feared actual physical retaliation from the Hindu nationalist group and members
of the Bajrang Dal, a group they classified as ‘dangerous’. The Bajrang Dal
shrugged this off as being an ‘irrational fear’ as “its members don’t take part
in illegal activities” and “it doesn’t have conflicts with other religious
groups”.
Two days
later, on 15 December, Mark Zuckerberg gushed at the thought of his company
investing in the Indian economy.
It is hard
not to see how contradictory the two situations are.
The past
couple of years, and more so, the last few months has seen India descend from a
democracy to a mobocracy. Undoubtedly, Facebook has been one of the active
contributors to this transition.
Facebook’s
Hold In India
It would be
unfair to say that Indian legislations are unprepared for instances of hate
speech. The Indian Penal Code (IPC) is armed with provisions that cover almost
every type of speech that attempts to disrupt communal harmony in India. Some
examples include Section 124 A (Sedition), Section 153 A (Promoting enmity between
different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence,
language, etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), Section
295 A (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of
any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), Section 298
(Uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings
of any person).
But as
constitutional law scholars have pointed out, outcomes of judgments now depend
more on the judge who hears the matter, and less on the judicial philosophy.
The same
judicial system that gave a 128 page judgment on hate speech, warning those in
powerful positions to be mindful of the impact of their words, turned a blind
eye to the submission by the Delhi Police of the absence of evidence to prove
the role of three ministers in the 2020 northeast Delhi communal violence.
Facebook’s
‘Selective’ ‘Community Standards’
Facebook is
no stranger to controversy – the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 being the
best evidence of this.
The Indian
offices of Facebook have constantly been under the radar for failing to curb
mis and disinformation on the platform. In his book ‘How to Win an Indian
Election’, Shivam Shankar Singh minces no words in his explanation about how
the social media teams of political parties make full use of social media
platforms to assert fake news and propaganda.
This issue
extends beyond election season, leading to deaths of numerous people in India.
Internationally, the company has even admitted to being used to incite violence
like the atrocities against minorities in Myanmar.
The ‘Ankhi
Das’ Facebook Controversy
In 2020 it
was revealed that Ms Ankhi Das, the now former public policy head of Facebook
India, chose to prioritise her loyalty to the current government over the
interests of vulnerable communities. Not surprisingly, this revelation was met
with standard responses like “there will be scrutiny on what really went down.”
The government as usual chose to keep a stoic silence, refusing to comment on
the issue. And of course, Ms Das “stepped down” to “pursue her interest in
public service”.
Ironically,
around the same time, Facebook received a strongly-worded letter from the Union
Minister, accusing it of making ‘concerted efforts’ to ‘reduce the reach of
people supportive of right-of-centre ideology’. A clear case of the pot calling
the kettle black.
Why Is
Zuckerberg Interested In Investing In Indian Economy?
In an
environment as uncertain as this, it becomes difficult to demand accountability
from an international social media giant. Unlike India however, other
jurisdictions are going on record to voice their concerns against Facebook. In
the US for instance, there have been demands of breaking up the company.
Hearings were set up where US senators questioned Facebook’s content moderation
policies. Europe’s strict GDPR policy regulates the company’s data collection
and use practices. The Courts in the EU are also issuing landmark rulings that
force the company to take a step back and think before making any decision.
The active
participation by the government through its deafening silence makes it a
conducive space for the company to work in.
Civil
society activists in the other jurisdictions have it easier because to some
extent, they have the backing of the State. Even if the State has its own
vested interests in the entire situation, of course. Already, authorities are
openly violating rulings of the judiciary – research has shown that section 66A
is still being used despite the highest Court of the land declaring it
unconstitutional.
In a
utilitarian world, companies like Facebook would be ideologically neutral. But
2020 has shown us that we are far from this sort of a world.
Well-drafted
and thought-out judgments and legislations are useless in the face of a society
that is being controlled by religious groups. The faces running these platforms
are prejudiced, and this reflects in their decision-making process.
The
judiciary should consider diverting its energy from the innumerable contempt
petitions, and instead reprimand authorities for not following the law of the
land. To use Mukesh Ambani’s words: “a crisis is too precious to be wasted” –
we have to use this crisis to fight for systemic changes.
-----
Sarada
Mahesh is a lawyer based in Bangalore. She works as a legal researcher and aims
to make the law more simple and accessible.
https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/facebook-bajrang-dal-right-wing-hate-speech-selective-community-standards-indian-economy-investment-mukesh-ambani#read-more
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