VEGETARIANISM AND COMMUNALISM

Is there a relation between vegetarianism and communalism? Vegetarianism is supposed to be related to non violence and communalism has often led to violence. So? ! Read on!

Vegetarians and Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is not same as being a vegetarian. From the beginning of human evolution man depended upon proteins from animals. It has remained an essential part of human diet till today. Vegetarian food can be defined as consisting of animal proteins derived from milk products alone. The logic being that there is no direct killing of animals. Using the same logic some people permit eggs as vegetarian food. There is even a concept of treating infertile eggs as vegetarian eggs!

Throughout history most people had less than 15 % non-vegetarian/animal protein, food in their diet. However it was a very important source of essential protein and was and has always been relished. Most of it was food from water - crabs, prawns and fish. Different ecological zones produced different sources of meat. For American Indians it was bison. Wild boar, rabbits, game birds etc. were and are common in many parts of the world. Regular meat became possible only when domestication of animals and agriculture became more important than hunting and gathering. This happened only about 10,000 years ago.

Domestication of animal made it possible to have milk and milk products as part of diet. And in some areas in India where agriculture was highly productive and domestic animals were more important as draught animals, beef eating was discouraged. That is the origin of taboo on beef in India. Religions like Buddhism and Jainism discouraged beef eating. However, most Buddhists all over the world are not vegetarians. Having animal proteins exclusively from milk products is relatively recent. It began about 2600 ago with Jainism and Jain community. Later some trading communities like the Bania caste (Gandhi was a Bania) and some Brahmin castes in the Western, central and Southern regions also became vegetarians. Historically only in India this concept seems to have taken some root. Even then, today more than 90% of Indians eat non-vegetarian food some time or the other. Vegetarianism, that is propagating and extolling it, was never an important issue.

Today, these vegetarian communities in India, that is the Jains, the trading castes of Banias and Marwaris, and the Brahmins of South India are socially and economically very powerful and therefore vegetarianism in India has become far more powerful than the numbers (5-10%) indicate. Prime situations in the market are taken by these so called ‘pure’ vegetarian eating places in Western and Southern India.

Outside India vegetarian food never took root. Although domestication of animals was widespread, use of milk and milk products was not. Historically, the American and the African continents never used milk. In Asia, the Chinese and the South East Asian countries did not use milk either. Even within India many tribal communities do not use milk. They use itrear cattle mainly for production of bullocks and use the dung for fuel and farming and don’t use the milk at all for themselves. The general logic appears to be that milk is produced by nature only, for offspring and not for other species. Only in the last three hundred years the European culture carried milk all over the world. Today there are probably 1-2 percent vegetarians, that is, people in whose diet the animal protein comes exclusively from milk and its products.

With the advent of Industrial revolution, production of meat, poultry and fish began to get commercialized. By twentieth century the consumption of meat in wealthier families and working class increased enormously. At the same time the scale of production made it highly unhygienic and unsafe. The butcheries were and still are extremely filthy and cruel to the slaughtered animals. Upton Sinclair in his book ‘The Jungle’ (1906) and more recently Robin Cook in his book ‘Toxin’ have documented it forcefully. Reading these books made many give up eating meat and poultry produced by the industry and some people began to propagate the virtues of vegetarian diet. This was the birth of vegetarianism in Europe and the USA. It was and still is a small movement and most people regard them as cranks. There is an even smaller trend called Vegans. These people do not use milk products either. Gandhi tried it once and had to give up. He settled for goat milk.

Vegetarianism in India

In his book ‘The Mahatma and the Ism’ EMS Namboodripad described Gandhi’s first visit to England. While all the progressives were talking about publication of Marx’s Capital, Gandhi, being a Vaishnava Bania, was searching for vegetarian hotels/boarding places in London. In that search he came across vegetarianism. These British people who were considered cranks in England were quite happy to discover a brown person who spoke good English and was actually a vegetarian! In my opinion, it was Gandhi who brought vegetarianism to India. In fact the term, vegetarian and non vegetarian, does not exist in Indian tradition. They have been created for translation purposes only. To repeat, vegetarianism is an ideology as against preference for vegetarian food which is a choice which one may exercise as an individual or group for short or long periods without adding a value judgment to it.

Gandhi made vegetarianism as an important component of his Non-violence movement. It became a must in the ashram life and almost all followers were under pressure to become vegetarians. It also became a part of upward mobility of many lower castes and in at least one case, among tribals (the Tana Bhagat movement among Oraons of Jharkhand). Vegetarianism came to be associated with a moral superiority, requiring moral courage similar to practicing non-violence in the freedom movement. However, the practice of vegetarianism did not become very popular. Lower castes and poor people could not stop eating the little protein that was available from home range poultry or pork. Most tribals could not afford not to eat some wild life food that was easily accessible. But vegetarianism did become associated with higher value system, an ideal, which while one could not achieve in one’s own life nevertheless was respected.

However, this was not so in areas like Bengal, Kerala, Goa and in most of the coastal regions. And it is not accidental that these areas are relatively free from communal violence. Communal violence is by and large a Hindi heartland or as it is called the cow belt phenomenon. The Muslims as a social group never accepted vegetarianism, although several Muslims, like Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and Maulana Azad were important followers of Gandhi. . This paved the way for vegetarianism to be used as a tool for communalism.

Communalism

Images of Muslim community as the other have been built around some facts that make them different from Hindus in India. Because they are different, poor and have less power therefore they are lower human beings. That has always been the logic of racism and communalism. The specific image here is that they are beef eaters, dirty, highly charged sexually (again associated with eating beef), have four wives, ready to seduce Hindu women, convert them and add to their harem, potential rapists and so on. Other innocent differences are added to make the picture complete. Like they shave their mustache and keep the beard, whereas the Hindus keep the mustache and shave the beard. After the partition of India, another addition is the charge of loyalty to Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

This image has been built over a period of last 150 years or so. The Hindu Muslim divide also has this long history. It has resulted in the partition of the country and a series of communal riots after independence. Riots and killing are possible because the communities on the whole believe in these images and end up endorsing the riots. Deconstructing these images and building saner understanding about these differences is part of the secular agenda. Here, we are dealing only with one part of it, namely vegetarianism.

A Sane Attitude

Vegetarianism, as we noted above, came as a reaction to capitalist production of meat and poultry in the West. It is, on the one hand, an extremely cruel and unhygienic process, it also led to over consumption of red meat.

Why can’t one have a moral attitude towards one’s choice of food? The problem with a moral attitude is that it has a tendency to become righteous and to impose  it upon others. Otherwise every one is free to have his one’s own opinion based on morality or reason or both. In this in instance the vegetarians feel that killing is morally wrong. On the other hand, several communities feel that stealing milk from other species is morally wrong.

Vegans agree with the both the above and reject both forms of animal protein.

There is also an ecological argument against red meat. Meat is produced by animals which eat grass and grain etc. The conversion ratio in terms of energy and nutrition is as high as eight1:8. So, where agriculture production is good it makes sense to avoid eating meat. In grass lands, where rearing domestic animals is the main activity, meat eating becomes natural. In coastal regions and in areas like Bengal fish and other food from water become naturally part of the nutrition.

Capitalist production of agriculture and, hence, vegetarian food is not innocent either. The use of pesticides makes it highly toxic. It is capitalist production of animal food like oil cakes that helps in production of beef and meat. The case of Soyabeen Soyabean production in India is illustrative. It reduced the acreage under Ddal thus increasing the price enormously and reducing the protein intake of vegetarians. The oil cake is exported to Europe where it is fed to cows and pigs. The export is probably handled by the vegetarian ‘oil kings’ of Gujarat. Thus, beef in Europe is supported at the cost of reduced intake of vegetarian protein by vegetarians themselves. Then, production of milk sweets is similar to beef production in terms of load on ecology. It requires a large quantity of milk to produce these ‘mawe ki mithai ‘and ‘chhene ki mithai’. So, as a part of sane policy we should reduce production of SoyabeenSoyabean, restore acreage for Dal dal and reduce production of milk.

As a naturalist or ecologist, one would see a lot of violence being carried out by all (vegetarians and non vegetarians) in the capitalist society. A large number of species are endangered and some have become extinct due to what the naturalists call haibtathabitat loss. Human society is taking over a large amount of space and resources from other living beings resulting in this environmental and ecological disaster. In the final analysis, global warming is essentially a violence done by human being on the planet earthEarth. It is this over exploitation of resources of the earth Earth and depriving other species their habitat - place to live, access to food - that is real violence and not eating so called non-vegetarian food by people.

And so, within the constraints of ecology, one still has choice of what to eat. A variety of balanced diet menus are available for different ecological regions of the world. There is absolutely no need to preach vegetarianism. In fact, one should stop using terms like vegetarian and non vegetarian which divide people unnecessarily. Passages from the Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book of Sikhs) say that only fools argue over this issue. Guru Nanak said that any consumption of food involves a drain on the Earth’s resources and thus on life.

Published in Frontier, August 31-September 6, 2008, Kolkata

PROLONGING DEATH Capitalism and Old Age

I.                    Who wants old people?

I’d like to be working up to 3 days before I die. But I am not likely to. I envied my father because he died at the age of 80 and still was managing his affairs on his own. On the other hand, my mother was incapacitated for many years and the last few months she developed bedsores and died in misery, and every one was happy to see her go! I am 62 year old and it scares me (like it does so many of us) that I may have the same fate as my mother had. From the age of 50, I have been on asthma medicine, from the age of 60 I am on blood pressure and cholesterol medicine and now my knees are getting really painful. What triggered this essay was the news coverage of deaths in France.

Deaths in France

Sometime back about 15,000 old people died in France during an unusually hot summer. France has a longevity figure of 84 years. Most of these old people lived in old age homes. Most doctors and relatives had gone for vacations to ‘hotter’ climates. The bodies stayed in morgues for weeks. Even after after their return, many relatives did not want to claim these bodies and let the state State arrange the funeral. Everybody blamed everybody including global warming. One unstated loud fact was that everyone was relieved that they died, perhaps including some of the old people themselves.

What happened in France is, of course, an extreme case. In most affluent countries the number of old people is increasing at an alarming rate. In developing countries, too, the rich and the middle class are living longer. India has an average longevity figure of 67 years. Communities are dying and so are the traditional support systems for the old people. There are not enough old-age homes and few of them are adequate.

II.                 Old age is a new phenomenon

Till the 19^th century most people died before they reached the age of 50. Even today most poor people in Asia, Africa and Latin America die early. Thus, the longevity figure of 67 years for India actually means that the affluent here are living much longer than 67 years and that the poor are still dying before they reach 50 or so. Today, in India, there are about 75 million old people above the age of 60 years, which is about 7.5 % of India’s population. In the ‘developed’ countries this percentage is higher and in the poorer countries it is lower.

These The phenomenon of old people age on the whole are is a burden on the earth.  (This includes the present author also.) Most of them the old people (this includes the present author also) are pure consumers. And since they are from affluent societies, their consumption levels are far above average. In the market it is the young who are sought after. Older people are forced to retire. They do not find any productive or meaningful work. But now the reverse is also true in the West – because of the pensions crisis people are being warned they will have to work till 70, like it or not! Possibly the pension fund managers want people to die before they can claim their pensions!

A few old people are of course very rich and powerful. Most of these are corrupt politicians and business people. At the other end, there are a few old people who are ‘nice’ people, that is, wise, caring, lovable and respected. But the overwhelming majority of old people are ordinary unwanted people!

III.               Old age is a racket!

The Medico-industrial complex

Old age is a racket created by the medico-industrial complex. This is the second largest business after the armament industry. Both control people and nations. The medico industrial complex controls people and nations by creating dependencies. Just as the military-industrial complex survives on small-scale continuous warfare, the medico-industrial complex also survives in rich people having prolonged illnesses, involving expensive treatment, but not dying. People above 60 years of age ideally suit this purpose and they pay nearly 70% of the medical bills.  This is a nexus of loot between the health care system, medical technology, drug industry, pension and insurance schemes and housing industry. Britain is an exception, where the National Health provides health services free at the point of delivery.

Capitalism survives on individualism and insecurity. A fear of old age is generated right from the day one starts work. Social security, pension and insurance scheme vultures arrive with one’s first paycheck. Credit cards, loans for consumer durables and housing loans follow. A big chunk of one’s paycheck vanishes into pension and insurance scams. Lovely media images are created as to how a wise old man is enjoying his old age with children and grandchildren! Now each of these is a well-known racket. Everyday somewhere or the other a pension or insurance scam is being exposed.

When old age actually arrives the problems show up. The house has to be repaired regularly because the construction is poor. With Eevery breakfast you are swallowing half a dozen pills to keep this or that symptom under control. And your pension is not enough.

And as we said above the old people are unwanted, lonely, unhealthy, depressed and unhappy. They are living in what the naturalists call ‘zoo conditions’. For example, in nature a sparrow lives about 3 years. In a cage, however, it can live upto 13 years! But a bird in a cage is also lonely, unhealthy, depressed and unhappy. Just like our old people.!

The abuse of medical ethics

Books have appeared about how rapacious the drug industry is. Irrational tests and surgical procedures take a big toll on money, health and sometime life too. However, it is in the interest of the industry to keep the patient ill but alive.

One of the worst abuses of the health care system is prolonging death. As Ivan Illich has said, death is defined as the stage when the patient is unable to pay. A new culture has come into being saying that life per se is precious and that a person has to be kept alive no matter how much he is suffering or whether he himself wants to live such a life. Some time, the converse can also be true. Recently, a man with incurable disease went to the Court of Human Rights to make sure that doctors don’t stop life support systems. In other words, he wants to go on existing, even in a vegetable state. In this, the religious organizations, and particularly the Catholic Church, have played a powerful role. This has led to an enormous amount of suffering to the patients and their families. In many cases it has also financially broken the families. On the other hand, millions of young people are dying all over the world from ‘curable’ diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera and diaorrheadiarrhea. But they cannot pay and hence they have to die!

IV. A ‘natural’ life!

What is a typical natural life? We just have to see a tribal family, which is not yet seriously affected by ‘modern’ life. Up to the age of five or so the child stays near mother and the family. Many children died at childbirth or a few years later if they were weaklings. Then, the child starts going out with the elders and helps in some activities that helps the family. This can be food gathering, carrying and fetching. It is also an apprenticeship. The child learns a lot. By twelve years s/he starts venturing alone or ‘gangs’ of children begin moving on their own, exploring, learning and getting to be self-sufficient. By eighteen, the young adults start their own families, by thirty all the children are born and by the time they are forty they are ready to go! Most ‘old’ people in their forties continue to work till a few days before they die. They usually die with very few days’ illness or none. The causes of death are more ‘natural’ and not ‘zoo condition’ deaths of contemporary old people. These can be hunger and famine, encounters with wild life, poisonous insects, reptiles, bacterial and viral disease and accidents.

Such a life does not face the diseases of our time, such as cancer, heart attack, backache, diabetes or even menopause. Most of these occur after 50 and are related to lifestyle patterns. Their life cycles are similar to other living beings in nature. Most people till the 19^th century lived this kind of life. Until 200 years ago, there was no population problem. In 10,000 B.C. the population of humans on earth was less than a million!

Lessons from the past

What was the basis of life in the past? One was that every one was working, although they worked much less than we do. This was so because there was no leisured class (which consumed enormous resources) to be supported, and the natural resource base available was much higher. Today there are huge wasteful industries such as armament, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol and so on, which guzzle natural resources. They also demand human labour and consumerism, all of which cause much of our problems today. Secondly, individualism and consumerism in modern society is breaking down communities. In the past, the family and community provided much of the caring needed in illnesses. Physical labour, reviving communities and reducing consumerism is the main lesson we can learn from the past.

IV.              Living with dignity

Reviving communities/ communities of a new type

To revive communities, first we have to understand why communities are breaking down. They are breaking down because the old society was unfree in many ways and curbed people’s aspirations. Now that cannot be reversed. Old type of communities havetypes of communities have to go.!

The driving forces are individualism and cash economy. If you have money in your pocket you are free to do what you want to do! Now, individualism has come to stay because people cannot give up the freedom they have achieved. But dependence on cash economy and consumerism can be reduced. The need for community will always be there because the human species is is a social species. What we need is a new type of community. A community not based on power and authority but on freedom. A free association of free people! In such a situation the insecurities will be less and one can avoid, to a large extent, the rapacious nexus of medical industrial complex, insurance scams and housing loans.

A rational health care

The rational health care will essentially be based on community care. It will be based on caring and not fleecing. It will be based on a healthy life style – a good mix of mental and manual outdoor work, a healthy diet and a stress-free, peaceful tranquil life! Illnesses and diseases can and will still occur but they can be more effectively dealt with in such a situation.

In health care there are three components – knowledge based reassurance, relief and cure – in decreasing order of importance. A well-trained and experienced doctor can indeed play a very important role. However, he will be much more effective in delivering health care in a community based health care system than in the present market based system.

VI. Dying with Dignity: Doctors and Death

Most classics in medical literature, in all systems of medicine, ask the doctor to respect people, reduce their sufferings and when death is inevitable, not to prolong the misery. However, as we have seen above, a new culture has come into being where prolonging life at all costs has become a lucrative business at the cost of the patients and their families. Often, doctors are helpless because of the pressure of this culture and the possibility of the patient’s families taking them to court. Family members, in turn, feel helpless lest their neighbours say that to save money these people let the patient die! We need to restore the concept of living and dying with dignity.

Euthanasia and the Living Will

There are many cases where it is no longer good to prolong life, which in fact amounts to prolonging death. In some countries medically assisted death is legal. However, in most countries it is not and many may not want it. For such cases, a ‘Living Will / Advance Directive’ is useful. It is made when the person is of sound mind and gives his/her directive to doctors, relatives and friends for such situations. Essentially, it asks them not prolong their death with medical intervention or treatment, not to put them on life support systems and manage their last hours with painkillers only, even if it shortens their life.

Cultural and Religious Traditions

In most societies there is a tradition and ritual of meeting death with dignity and peace. In essence it is similar to the living will. However, here it is not solely dependent on individual will but there is a community support. The Christian tradition of Hospice comes closest to the living will, where medical care is provided to reduce suffering but not to prolong death. Some Hindus build a cottage next to a holy river and spend their last days peacefully.  Jains have a tradition of systematic fasting to death with religious rituals. Some tribes in Fiji believe that after death they will live eternally at the age at which they died. So they prefer to die in their prime! In the polar region some communities send their old on a boat with provisions. It is possible to build secular traditions too. In Hyderabad, there is an old-age home run by the Communist Party!

ADD LIFE TO YOUR YEARS AND NOT YEARS TO YOUR LIFE!

Published in Calcutta, Frontier, June 26, 2005 also in Medico Friends

Circle Bulletin, October, 2005.

DUMPING ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Class, Caste and Gender

In the last decade, a new and disturbing trend has emerged in dealing with the contradictions involving class, caste and gender. They are no longer dealt directly. An easy way has been found, namely, to dump it on the environment.

Class Struggle verses Encroachment on Forest Lands

Let us take class first. For more than seventy years all left and centrist parties have talked of land to the tiller. There have been some glorious struggles and some notable victories. This has helped these parties to come to power one after another. But the problem largely remains unsolved. Majority of people working on land don’t own them, semi feudal/capitalist exploitation goes on and rural poverty and misery remains.

Today, in many parts of the country, this issue is being dealt with by encroaching on the forestland. Many political parties, NGOs and sometimes government too are involved in this. This is contributing to already decreasing forest cover to dangerous levels. These very organizations in other places cry hoarse about decreasing forest cover and related environmental issues such as water crisis. Environmentalists are split on the issue. Some oppose any encroachment on forests whereas some others take the stand that it is livelihood problem of the poor and should be resolved in a sustainable manner, whatever that means. Meanwhile, class struggle has taken a back seat and environment continues to get degraded.

The Glass War

In many parts of rural Andhra Pradesh a glass war has been going on. This refers to the struggle against keeping a separate glass outside a teashop for the scheduled caste customers. They are expected to wash it themselves and tea is poured into the glass from a distance. This is practicing untouchability, which is unconstitutional and unacceptable to the members of the scheduled castes as well as to many progressives including the Naxalites. There have been violent incidents and some victories. But the problem has remained. Recently this hasis sought to be resolved by the miracle of technology. You have guessed it right- by introducing use, destroy and throw plastic glasses! Its impact on environment need not be spelt out. Surprisingly, the environmentalists themselves have not created much noise. Maybe they think it is a small issue or maybe they themselves use a lot of plastic! Meanwhile, yet another ‘win-win’ solution has been achieved at the cost of environment.

Gender and Tap Water

In many villages in India tap water is introduced. This is done by pumping water from a village pond or river into an overhead tank and supplying to the village households through pipelines and taps. Sometimes some chlorination is also done.

This has replaced the earlier practice of villagers going to the village pond or riverfront. There they used bathe, wash clothes and utensils and carry some water back essentially for drinking and cooking. This also used to keep the pond/riverfront relatively clean.

With the introduction of tap water, the amount of water used in the rural household has increased at least fivefold. Obviously, only a very small portion of it goes back to the pond and over a period of time the pond starts drying up. The pond and the riverfront get filthy and the pumped water requires to be ‘purified’. The impact and load on environment is obvious. When this was articulated one feminist response was ‘But you males don’t think of the reduction in drudgery of women!’ Thus, a gender issue is sought to be resolved through dumping it on the environment rather than tackling it head on.

There is no denying that privacy for women in the use of bathroom and toilets is important particularly in the face of population pressure. However, this need not be done only through pumping water and supplying through tap water. Proper rainwater harvesting and a hand pump will meet the need in most difficult situations where the source of water is far. What is actually happening is that with the tap water easily available even wells –both private and community- are not in use and are getting filthy and unusable. We must remember that India is actually very rich in water resources and present water scarcity is a creation of the technology.

Rural Development

Rural development assumes that rural people need roads, schools, agricultural extension Programme, Green Revolution (HYV- High Yielding Variety seeds, Fertilizers, and Pesticides), irrigation, tap water, latrines, elimination of child labour, women’s development and so on. The underlying assumption is that rural people are backward and need to be developed. There is no appreciation of the fact that they have been living for a very long time in an environment friendly sustainable/subsistence existence. The aim seems to be that rural people should ‘enjoy’ all the benefits that urban people do.

The net results of most of these efforts are:

1.         The ‘wealth’ in rural area increases.

2.         The rich become richer and poor become poorer.

3.         There is an environmental disaster. The water table is falling every year.   Drought and failure of crops occur every second or third year.

In the long term, productivity falls and rural people migrate to urban areas. And who pays for all this? The environment and health and lives of poor people! Reports of farmers committing suicide are coming from all these rurally ‘developed’ areas!

What needs to be done is also well known. Water is scarce because it is being over used and its source, the forests, is getting denuded. So the forests need to be protected and the water guzzling green revolution technology should be replaced by organic farming. The rural economy can be sustainable only if it is close to a subsistence economy. This will eliminate most of these rural development programmes and villagers can live in peace.

But who will let them live in peace? It is the urban economy that is looting the forests and land resources. It is the urban people who need to change their outlook and life style. They and their life style are responsible for the degradation of the environment. They have to reduce the load on the environment. This can be done by reducing conspicuous consumption, reducing waste, productive waste management by recycling waste (metal and paper) composting the green waste, water conservation and improving and better utilization of public transport system. In fact, there is whole tradition of urban planning known as the ‘Garden City’ movement. A lot can be learnt from this movement. So what we need is urban ‘de-development’ like ‘de-schooling’.

The Environmentalists’ Response

Today probably there are more environmentalists than Marxists. In fact there are Eco-Marxists, Eco - Feminists and there are people who take trouble to show that Marx, Phule, Ambedkar and Gandhi were also environmentally conscious. Then there are people who will find environmental consciousness in Buddha, Vedanta, Islam, and Christianity and among Tribalstribals. So everybody is an environmentalist! Then why is there so little success?

I think most of these people are anthropocentric. So it is easy to dump the issues on environment.

There is much talk about sustainability. Well, capitalism or even anthropocentrism and sustainability don’t go together. Only a subsistence economy is sustainable economy. This implies that much of the way that the human society is organized today is not sustainable. This includes most of the ‘military- industrial complex’ most of the state organs such as police and jails, many industries and agri-business such as tobacco, alcohol, cosmetics, such bizarre industries as fortune telling, pornography and so on.

How to combine contemporary human sensibility and subsistence economy is the question. Obviously the answer has to be evolved by practice. This means learning from various ‘Anarchists’ kind of practices. These include Primitivists Anarchist Groups, Quakers, Tolostoy and Gandhian Groups and many Tribal tribal Groupsgroups. None may have a full answer. Maybe each group has to evolve its own answers. But some basic premises may be spelt out.

1.   The world belongs to all. Human beings have no primacy.

2.   Within human society no authoritarianism – State, Family, Gender etc.

3.   Human society has to be organised on the principle of ‘Free Association of Free People’.

4.   Technology has to be as primitive as possible. Appropriate technology-mainly to undo the damage caused by the last few thousand years of human history and to preserve, restore and celebrate the environment.

Published in Frontier, Kolkata, January, 2-8, 2005.

LANGUAGE AND BIOGEOGRAPHY

The Logic for a Separate Telengana State

Our Understanding

We would like to begin with some ideas about languages. We will first define the term language, standard language and link language. In the popular terminology, standard language is just called language and other languages are called dialects. We will use the example of Telugu to clarify. For us, Telugu represents a set of languages whose broad divisions are the four broad divisions of AP, namely – 1) North Coastal AP, 2) South Coastal AP or Kosta, 3) Telangana and 4) Rayalseema. The standard accent free Telugu is from somewhere between Khammam and Guntur. It also has full Sanskrit alphabet and many Sanskrit words. For example, in spoken language in Telangana, aspirants like kha, gha, etc., are often dropped. All these regions have been brought together somewhat artificially due to a political understanding of language and viable economic size of the state. Language (or dialect) is defined biogeographically. Thus, Telangana is a biogeographic region separated from the Coastal Andhra by the Eastern Ghats in the East and from Rayalseema by Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers in the south. Within this, broad region one can still detect smaller subdivision, both biographically and language wise. Also, language and accent change occur in a continuum and bilingualism exist across all borders.

Standard language on the other hand, is a political power entity. That is why; it is sometimes called language with a gun. It can stretch or be imposed on widely different regions. Such is the case of Standard Telugu, Official Hindi and English. Children in Telangana region fail in Telugu because they make ‘mistakes’ in the use of standard Telugu used in school. People from Telangana are looked down because they cannot speak ‘proper’ Telugu. Sometimes people from Telangana themselves say that they do not speak proper Telugu just as people from Bidar say that they do not speak proper Kannada!

Link language is a language, which spreads over a well defined large biogeographic region due to trade, travel, religious and cultural communication. We will consider Dakhni as an example. Dakhni is spread across Deccan. Deccan is a well-defined biogeographic region bounded by the Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats both of which almost meet near Nilgiri hills. In the North it is bounded by Satpura range (and the river Narmada) and in the West Vidarbha (Nagpur) or the river Mahanadi appears to be its border. Deccan Plateau as such is a bigger region. Here, we are also limiting it by the spread of Dakhni language.

Now Dakhni, linguistically is of the same origin (Khari boli of Meerut division) as are Hindi and Urdu. It came to South through Nirgunia wandering Sadhu, Sufis, armies of Allauddin Khilji, Malik Kafur, Tughlaq and Aurangazeb and traders, artisans who came along with them. Even some gypsy communities like Lambadas, Pardhis, etc., brought the language to the South. It acquired specific literary characters of its own from 12^th Century onward through the writing of Nirgunia and Sufi saints. Gulbarga, Bidar, Golconda, Bijapur and Aurangabad appeared as the major literacy centers between 14^th to 17^th Centuries. Today, it is the common lingua franca of all Muslims in this Deccan region, the language of Sufis and traders and understood by almost all people and spoken as a bilingual language by most urban dwellers.

Dakhni is significantly different language compared to its origin in Meerut region. It has borrowed vocabulary from Marathi, Kannada and Telugu in varying quantities in the different sub regions. These languages, in turn, have borrowed phrases and words from Dakhni in the Deccan region.

Another example of a link language is Nagpuria or Sadan spoken in Chhota Nagpur/ Jharkhand region. Although linguistically it is quite different from any of the tribal languages spoken in the region it is understood by all. And like Dakhni, there is a mutual exchange of vocabulary in different sub regions of the area.

The Logic for Separate Telangana State

Thus, there is a biogeographic logic for the demand for separate Telangana state. A biogeographic region defines its flora, fauna and human society. Thus, Telangana defines a people, a speech community or if you like a nation. They are defined in terms of the food they grow and eat, the kind of houses they live in, kind of dresses they wear, kind of religious/ local deity festivals they have. There are even festivals across religion such as pir panduga where the ancestors are brought alive and carried around to a common worship ground, fed and appeased with dances and songs! All communities take part in it.

The Federal Republic of  Deccan

Using the similar logic, we can propose a Federal Republic of Deccan. The region is linked together with a common language, Dakhni, and is comprised of Republics of Telangana, Rayalseema, Hyderabad Karnataka and Bombay Karnataka regions of Karnataka, Marathwada, Khandesh, and Vidarbh regions of Maharashtra. Let me hasten to add that this is just a general utopian proposal. There can be more or less regions or republics in it and of course, people of each region have to agree to it and have a right to secede. Generally again, it will be like the 1924 constitution of USSR (the later version strengthened the center under Stalin’s leadership), which is indeed a model federal document.

Concluding Remarks

The alternatives proposed here are not viable in today’s world. They are possible only in a non-capitalist and more egalitarian, peaceful world where love replaces power! The idea of proposing these alternatives is to answer question like, “Ok. Capitalism is bad. But what do you want?”

If Telangana is created today, it will go the same way as Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have gone. These mineral rich regions are attracting rapacious capitalist sharks. The ruling politicians in these states are not equipped to deal with them and will sell the resources cheap. Thus, the exploitation of natural and human resources will increase enormously. So the demands for these identities can give good results only if they are achieved along with socialist or libertarian demands of freedom from exploitation, equality and rational uses of resources.

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Published in Frontier, March 2-8, 2008, Kolkata

DAKHNI The Language in Which the Composite Culture of India was Born

Dakhni: Mother of Modern Urdu and Hindi

When Wali Dakhni (also known as Wali Aurangabadi and Wali Gujarati), a famous poet of Dakhni visited Delhi in 1700, he astonished the poets of Delhi with his ghazals. He drew wide applause from the Persian-speaking poets, some of who, after listening to Wali, also adopted the language of the people, ‘Urdu’, as the medium of their poetic expressions. Prominent poets—Shah Hatem, Shah Abro and Mir Taqi Mir—were among his admirers.

At that time in Delhi, the court poets were composing in Persian and Arabic.  For others, Braj and Awadhi were the languages of literary and religious expressions. The spoken language of all was Khari Boli. When the poets listened to Wali in Dakhni language (which is also a variant of Khari Boli) they were struck by the fact that the spoken language of the people was capable of such rich literary expression.

Wali Dakhni, born as Wali Muhammad (1667-1731 or 1743) was born in Aurangabad and went to Gujarat in search of a Guru. He became a disciple of Wajihuddin Gujarati and soon became famous. He came back and settled in Aurangabad but travelled twice to Delhi. His first trip produced the dramatic results mentioned above, and made him known as father of Urdu poetry. He died in Ahmedabad and Hindu fascists recently razed to ground his tomb in the aftermath of Godhra riots. Wali Dakhni composed 473 ghazals besides masnawis and qasidas. His ghazals are still sung by several singers including Abida Parveen.

Thus in the early eighteenth century, after Wali’s visit, Urdu as a literary language took birth. Both modern Hindi (written in Devnagari script) and Urdu (written in Perso-Arabic or Urdu script) are variants of Khari Boli spoken in Delhi and Meerut region. Court circles, Persian and Arabic scholars and especially the Muslims of Delhi adapted this language with much eagerness, and from the end of the 18^th century the Mughal house turned only to Urdu. For the first 60 years or so the influence of the Dakhni poets, Sufi thinking and an Indianness of diction prevailed over Urdu. The term Four Pillars of Urdu is attributed to the four early poets: Mirza Jan-i-Janan Mazhar (1699-1781) of Delhi, Mir Taqi (1720-1808) of Agra, Muhammad Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) and Mir Dard (1719-1785).

Although Amir Khusro (1253-1325) and Kabir (1398-1448) used Khari Boli in the 14^th and the 15^th century, ‘Hindi’ became a literary language only in the latter half of the 19^th century. Till then the authors were mainly writing in Braj and Awadhi. It was Raja Shiva Prasad ‘Sitare Hind’ (1824-1895) and Bharatendu Harishchandra (1849-1882) who first started writing in Khari Boli in Devnagari script. They were obviously influenced by the popularity of Urdu, which was written in Perso-Arabic or Urdu script. In the beginning the difference was mainly in the script   and the authors knew both the scripts.  In fact the famous Hindi author, Premchand (1880-1936) first wrote in Urdu under the name Nawabrai. Thus modern Hindi is only about 150 years old and like Urdu, has also been inspired by Dakhni.

A twentieth-century Kerala Hindi scholar, Dr. Muhammad Kunj Mettar, established Dakhni as source for modern Hindi. Dr. Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay also maintained that it was Deccan that established the use of Khari Boli replacing Braj in the North. In fact, even the name Hindi for the language originated in the South. A Tamilian, Kazi Mahamud Bahari in 17^th century used the word Hindi for Dakhni in his Sufi poetry called Man Lagan.

What is Dakhni?

Dakhni is the lingua franca of the Deccan. The Deccan is roughly the area between the Narmada and Tungabhadra or Krishna. On the east it is bounded by the Mahanadi and on the west by the Western Ghats. It is the great South Indian plateau. Politically it is comprised of Berar (present-day Vidarbha with Nagpur as its important city), ten Telangana districts of Andhra Pradesh, the Maharashtra districts of Latur, Nanded, Ahmednagar, Beed and Aurngabad, and the Karnataka districts of Bijapur, Bidar, Gulbarga, Raichur and Bellary.

However as a spoken language Dakhni is widely used even outside this region. It is the lingua franca of all the Muslims in South India and is understood by all those who have access to Hindi. In many Hindi films, Dakhni words and dialogues are used and in films like ‘Hero Hiralal’ and ‘Sushman’, Dakhni was the main language. Recent films like ‘Angrez’ and ‘Hyderabadi Nawab’ also use Dakhni profusely. There are no current census figures for speakers of Dakhni because no one reports Dakhni as a mother tongue. Still the estimates of Dakhni speakers will run into crores, because its variants are spoken in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamilnadu. As folk tradition, in the urs of Sufi saints, in the songs used by beggars and fakirs, Dakhni is still widely used.

Linguistically it is a variant of Khari Boli as spoken in the Meerat region in U. P. However it has some specific differences. For “no’ it uses nako instead of nahin, for the word ‘only’ as used in Indian English it uses cha instead of hee and for OK it uses hau instead of han. In terms of vocabulary, up to 30% is constituted of local words so that in Telangana it has Telugu words, in Karnataka Kannada words and in Maharashtra Marathi and so on. As a rule, it is the first language of the Muslims in the region but most people exhibits bilingualism.

The Origin of Dakhni

The standard understanding of the origin is as follows. Medieval Deccan, known as Al Hind in the Arab world, was extremely rich. It attracted adventurers, traders, scholars and saints from all over the world. Turks and later Mughals came from the north. But the sea route through Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala was equally flourishing. Egyptians, Abyssinians and Arabs came through this route. Afsani Nikitin a Russian traveller, who spent several months in Bidar, thought that it was the capital of India!

Allauddin Khilji after conquering northern India moved to the Deccan to attack Devagiri on February 1295. He again attacked the city during 1306 and 1307. Malik Kafur carried the third attack to defeat the last of the Yadav kings of Deccan. Muhammad Tugluq transferred the capital from Delhi to Devagiri in 1326. In its wake thousands of families shifted from Delhi to the Deccan. Thus in the 14^th century, soldiers and traders with their own dialects moved to the Deccan and settled among the Marathas, Kannadigas and Telugus. There were also many Hindus among them, such as Rajputs, Jats, Banias and Kayasthas. They brought dialects spoken in the Delhi region and these formed the basis of a literary speech, known as Dakhni.

In 1347 Hasan Bahamani became the ruler at Gulbarga. Soon the Bahamanis (1350-1525) became very powerful. Around 1489 the Bahamani state broke into four new states at Ahmednagar (1460-1633), Bijapur (1460-1686), Bidar (1487-1619) and Golconda (1512-1687). Aurangzeb defeated all of them one by one in the late 17^th century. One of Aurangzeb’s Subedar, Asifjah, established an independent state around Hyderabad in 1723, which comprised areas in present-day Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The Nizam’s rule lasted till it was overthrown by independent India’s ‘Police Action’. Dakhni flourished in all these courts. With the Bahamanis it was the official language.

Dakhni historians divide the history of the literature in four periods. The key figures of the period and their main works are also given below.

1.1300-1500: Khwaza Bande Nawaz Gesu Daraj (1332-1437): Mairajul Ashkin, Hidayatnama, Shikarnama etc; Nizam Bidri (1462-92): Kadamrao va Padamrao

2.1500-1700: Muhammad Kuli Kutub Shah (1571-1611): Kulyate Muhammad Kulukutubshah; Mulla Vajahi: Sabrag; Mulla Gawasi: Maina Satwanti; Kazi Mahamud Bahari: Manlagan.

3.1700-1850: Wali Dakhni (1668-1741); Shah Turab: Jahur Kulli, Ganjul Asrar.

4.1850- Present: Purushottam (32 Plays inspired by Parsi Theatre).

Wali Dakhni signifies the beginning of the end of the great period of Dakhni. After him Urdu began to gain prestige, and in the Deccan, too, Urdu became popular as a literary language. Thus Dakhni had a rich cultural and literary history for four hundred years (1350-1850).

Today Dakhni is no longer a significant literary language in the South. First, Urdu and, then, Hindi replaced it. Later with the formation of linguistic states, the major Dakhni area, namely Hyderabad Nizam’s state, was split up, with portions going to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Later the status of Urdu, Persian and Arabic declined rapidly. Since most of Dakhni was written in Perso-Arabic script, access to it also declined for the new generations in the linguistic states.

The Nirgunia-Sufi Link

There are some lacunae in the standard account of the origin of Dakhni. For example, if the language was born with the Muslim invasion in the 14^th century, how did such sophisticated poetry as that of Bande Nawaz emerge in so short a period? And why has Dakhni remained so popular?

Deccan, as we said above, is an area that can be defined as lying between the Narmada and the Tungabhadra rivers. The area south of the Deccan is called Dravid. The Deccan has been a meeting point of southern and northern cultures. This has given its culture a special quality. It does not keep its independent existence but spreads and accepts influences from north and south. It is a home for Kannada, Telugu and Marathi, and also has contributed to Hindi and Urdu.

So the contact with the north is far older than the Muslim invasion. Both Buddhists and Jain religions that were born in Bihar had significant presence in the South. The Jains even today have an important presence. After the decline of the Buddhists, it was the Shaivaite and Nathpanthis who inherited the Buddhist tradition. There was a lot of movement of Nathpanthis, Nirgunias, Sikhs and Sufis from Punjab to Gulbarga, through Gujarat and Maharashtra. In Maharashtra, Gyaneshwar and his elder brother Nivrutinath are in direct tradition of Gorakhnath. Hence we find Namdev (1270-1351), a saint from Maharashtra and a tailor by caste, writing in Dakhni. His son Gonda also composed in Dakhni. Some 50 of Namdev’s poems are included in the Granth Sahib. Eknath and Tukaram are the two other Marathi saints who wrote extensively in Dakhni.

However the bulk of Dakhni literature is in the Sufi tradition. Sufis too travelled from the North to the South, as did Nanak. Nanak reached up to Nanded and Bidar. Sufis spread all over the Deccan and every district has at least one important Sufi dargah. One should remember that all Muslims poets were not Sufis nor all Sufis were Muslim. For example Nizam Bidri’s Masanavi Kadam Rao va Padam Rao is a Jain Charit Kavya. Countless number of Hindus goes to the Sufi dargahs and many sing Sufi songs.

Distinction of Nirgunia Sadhana in Indian Tradition

Indian medieval sadhana is generally referred to as bhakti in English. This is a bit confusing because in Indian tradition, bhakti tends to mean the sagun sadhana or revering God with guna or qualities. Nirgunias, on the other hand, revere a formless God without qualities. This distinction has important social implications. Sagun sadhana means God with a form, which in turn means images of God and temples. It means a priest, a mediator between man and God, offerings and so on. Its manifestations in literary tradition have been Krishna Kavya and Ram Katha. Nirguna, on the other, hand implies no temples, offerings and so on.  Nirgunias used simpler spoken language, which was akin to Khari Boli. Thus Kabir used some Khari Boli and later it generally became the language of nirguna sadhana. It thus travelled with the Nathpanthis, Sikhs (Nanak visited Bidar and Nanded) to the South. In fact the Indian tradition maintains that Bhakti (saguna sadhana) travelled from South to North whereas the nirguna sadhana travelled from north to south! There is a tradition that Allamprabhu, the guru of Lingayats, had a meeting with Gorakhnath at Srisailam! They certainly had much in common and it was probably a historic turning point for the Lingayats.

The Sufi Context

The Sufis were quite close to the Nirgunias in terms of world view, language and geography (western India and the Deccan). They were also simple people wandering around. They used to meet each other very often since the places of rest and worship tended to be common. In Nanak’s travels known as udasian, three is constant reference to the Sufis many of whom became his disciples. The Sufi tombs known as dargah are places of worship for all communities. The famous ones in the north are those of Moiuddin Chishti in Ajmer, Salim Chishti in Agra and Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi. In the Deccan the most famous is that of Khwaza Bande Nawaz Gesu Daraz at Gulbarga. All over the Deccan, at the annual urs or anniversary at the local Sufi dargah they hold a festival where good Dakhni Sufi singing can be heard.

The Social Basis

By and large saguna had a peasant base, people who had a stable base and some wealth. The priests tended to be Brahmins. Many of the major saints, like Surdas, Tulsidas and Chaitanya etc. have been Brahmins. On the other hand, Nirgunias were wanderers and their followers were poorer people because it did not cost anything to be a Nirgunia or nirguna follower. Most of the nirguna saints came from artisan castes: weavers, potters, carpenters and cobblers. As a rule they had a greater social mobility as against the peasants who were tied to their lands or agricultural labourers who were generally bonded. The conversion to Islam, mainly due to the Sufis, also occurred among the artisans because of their mobility. To this day, a majority of the Muslims in India are workers, artisans and petty traders. Finally in the South there were Lingayats who had a very similar religious and social basis. Geographically, saguna sadhana centres/temples are located in relatively prosperous river valleys whereas the nirgunias move around the relatively dry Deccan plateau.

There is another ‘small’ tradition. It is the Lambada and Pardhi migration to the Deccan. Lambadas are the great Roma gypsies of the world who spread from north Rajasthan to most of western India and through Central Asia to Russia and Europe. They have retained their language to this day all over the world and thus also contributed to Dakhni. Pardhis are a bird-trapper community, also from Rajasthan, and are thinly spread all over the Deccan. They too retain their language.

So we get a picture that in the medieval India there was a great social and religious mobility among the artisans and traders comprising the Nathpanthis, Nirgunias, Nanakpanthis and Sufis. It is these people who also carried a common language from the north to the south, which went back to the north in the eighteenth century with Wali Dakhni!

The ‘Ugly’ North Indian

Visitors from north India’s Hindi belt are often puzzled by the contradictory signals they get about Hindi in South India. On the one hand, they feel that every one understands them in the street—rikshawalas, shopkeepers, bus conductors and so on. Some of these visitors, like the Ugly American, patronizingly approve that the natives are speaking a tolerably understandable Hindi!

On the other hand, they find strong anti-Hindi feelings among the middle-class educated people. They conclude that actually Hindi is understood and ‘accepted’ by the common man in the South but it is being opposed by the ‘vested‘ interests who want to keep English alive for a better edge in the job market. So English, and for the leftists among them ‘imperialism’, is the enemy and they try the ‘Angrezi Hatao’ movement. Of course none of these ‘movements’ make a dent in the non-Hindi regions.

The problem with these people is that they think that Hindi is ‘their’ language, which is inherently so good that the rest of India has accepted it as the national language. They endlessly quote Rajgopalachari or Acharya Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay for this purpose. In fact they are again puzzled that these stalwarts of Hindi later denounced Hindi chauvinism.

They fail to understand that the ‘Hindi’ that they hear in the South is actually Dakhni and that it has a much older literary history and in fact was the source of inspiration for modern Hindi to emerge as a literary language. The ‘lingua franca’ of India is not ‘their’ Hindi but the street Hindi that evolved from Dakhni and reached the Indian masses, through the Parsi theatre and the Bombay film industry. It is ‘their’ highly Sanskritised Hindi that is opposed all over the non-Hindi region. In fact, Acharya Suniti Kumar Chattopadhyay, in his article ‘Bharater Rashtra Bhasha Chalti Hindi’ even proposed Bombay Hindi as a national language whose ‘grammar can be written on a post card’!

The Inheritors of Dakhni Language and Cultural Tradition

In the final analysis, it is not the modern Urdu and Hindi that have inherited the tradition of Dakhni. As Dr. Veer Bharat Talwar has shown in his book ‘Rassakashi’, Muslim and Hindu upper-class people fought with each other for getting jobs in colonial India in western U.P. For this they used the struggle for use of Hindi (written in Devanagari script) in government work replacing Persian (written in Persian script). This resulted in the Hindu-Muslim divide with its tragic consequences. It also led to Urdu becoming a language of the Muslims with Persian and Arabic words, and Hindi as a language of Hindus with Sanskrit words replacing the commonly spoken words. Hindi and Urdu have become the standard language, and therefore the language of power or as some linguists call the standard language, the language with a gun! These standardized languages have carried power, sectarianism, hate and violence! This Hindi has grown at the cost of more than a dozen languages in the “Hindi Commonwealth” (a term used by Acharya Kishoridas Bajpai) making their speakers second-class citizens in their own land. How can such a language serve as a national language to unite Indians?

The true inheritor of Dakhni is the language of the common people, often called Hindustani, which the vast majority of the working people, particularly in urban India, understand. Its literary tradition continued in modern India through Parsi theatre, Hindi theatre in general, and the Bombay cinema and Hindi film lyrics. Some authors in Hindi still write in people’s language and the ‘chap’ literature (religious tracts like Kabir Ke Dohe) sold on the pavement and rural weekly markets and popular magazines still use this language. This language carries the common composite cultural tradition of India, a culture of love, assimilation and tolerance.

The Future: The Rich Potential of Dakhni Film and Theatre

Although Dakhni has been eclipsed by Urdu and Hindi in the ‘big’ tradition, it still has a lively presence in the ‘small’ tradition. Now that the protagonists of the small tradition are becoming vocal, they can tap the vast potential of Dakhni in their activities in the people’s movement. Dakhni songs and theatre have immense potential. I feel that a Dakhni theatre group will be as viable as the Jatras and Tamashas have been. Of course there are newer issues, particularly those of communalism and environment. Theatre activists have an interesting challenge before them. And if theatre succeeds, can video and cinema be left behind?

References

1.Bajpai, Kishoridas (1988): Hindi Shabdanushasna, Kashi, Kashi Nagari Pracharani Sabha.

2.Chattopadhya, Suniti Kumar (1977): Bharatiya Arya Bhasha aur Hindi, New Delhi, Rajkamal Prakashan.

3.Chattopadhyay, Suniti Kumar (1945): Bharater Bhasha o Bhasha Samasya, Calcutta, Rupa & co.

4.Dhage, Pandurang (1993): Dakhini Sahitya: Samanvit Sanskriti, Hyderabad, Hindi Prachar Sabha.

5.Sharma, Sriram (1954): Dakhini ka Padya aur Gadya, Hyderabad, Hindi Prachar Sabha.

6.Talwar, Veer Bharat (2002): Rassakashi, New Delhi, Saransh Prakashan Pvt. Ltd.

Published in Frontier, December 17-23,  2006,    Kolkata