The Shape of Things to Come: An Impassioned View

By Markandey Katju

India is in the throes of transition--from a primarily feudal agrarian society to a modern, industrial one. For the transition to be successful, however, Markandey Katju says that the country needs to rid itself of the ills of the feudal days. But perturbed by the growing incidents of communalism, racial and lingual strife, corruption and persisting issues of poverty, casteism and unemployment, he is sceptical of the change arriving anytime soon. He argues that this turbulent transition might last for another twenty-odd years. In this timely collection of his views, Katju suggests that influential politicians and their governance are not enough, but a scientific mission for national reconstruction is the need of the hour to bring India into its own as a developed and egalitarian society.In his trademark no-holds-barred approach, the author holds up a mirror to the citizens of India and where they could be headed--so that from the dark times emerges a shining vision of the nation its people deserve. His forthright and unreserved views in The Shape of Things to Come give an important perspective to judge India's future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Jul 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9789353029487

Markandey Katju

Justice Markandey Katju has been one of the most prominent figures in the Indian judiciary. He is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India and a former chairman of the Press Council of India. He has also held office as the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and the Madras High Court, and as the acting Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court. Known for his outspoken views and unconventional opinions, he is popularly referred to as a 'maverick judge'.A well-read and erudite person, he is highly respected for his vast knowledge across a wide range of subjects like law, literature, Sanskrit, Urdu, philosophy, jurisprudence, social science and history. Markandey Katju believes that Indians must follow the scientific path to solve their problems of poverty, unemployment, and so on and eschew casteism, communalism and superstition.

Book preview

PART 1

WHAT IS INDIA

What Is India?

WHAT is India? This needs to be understood. According to me, four ideas summarize what India is:

One, India is broadly a country of immigrants, like America. Most Indians are not the original inhabitants¹ of the land. Their ancestors came from outside, mainly from the north-west, but also to some extent from the north-east.

The difference between the US and India is that the former is a country of new immigrants, where people came mainly from Europe over the last 400 to 500 years, whereas India is a country of old immigrants where people have been coming in over the last 10,000 years or so.

Why have people been coming into India? Another fact is that there are very few instances in history of people leaving India. There are three exceptions: the first, (and here the Indians did not actually leave, but were sent away) in the nineteenth century when, under British rule, poor Indian peasants were sent to Fiji², Mauritius, Suriname and the West Indies as indentured labour for plantations; the second, when Indian businessmen settled in East Africa and South Africa, mainly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the third, the Indian diaspora of the last fifty years or so, consisting of highly qualified engineers, scientists, doctors and other professionals. Except for these emigrations, nobody left India. Rather, people started migrating to it instead. Why?

The reason is obvious. People migrate from uncomfortable areas to comfortable ones because, clearly, everybody looks for comfort. Before the Industrial Revolution, which started in western Europe in the eighteenth century and then spread to many other agrarian countries such as the US, Germany, Japan etc., agriculture was the man source of economy. Now, what does agriculture require? It requires level land, fertile soil and plenty of water for irrigation. All this was in abundance in the Indian subcontinent. From Rawalpindi to Bangladesh and down to the deep south to Kanyakumari, everywhere in India one finds level land, fertile soil, plenty of rivers, forests and other bounties of nature. Why then would anybody migrate from India to, say, Afghanistan, most parts of which are cold, rocky and mountainous, and therefore an uncomfortable habitat for man? For an agrarian society, India was really a paradise, hence, everybody kept rolling into it, mainly from the north-west and to a much lesser extent from the north-east, as mentioned before.

Who were the original inhabitants of India? At one time it was believed that the Dravidians were it, but now that theory has been questioned. It is now believed that even the Dravidians came from outside of the land. There are proofs for the same, one of which is the existence of a Dravidian language called Brahui, which is spoken in western Pakistan even today by about four million people. The original inhabitants of India, as it is believed now, were the pre-Dravidian tribal people, who are called adivasis or the scheduled tribes, e.g., the Bhils, the Santhals, the Gonds, the Todas, etc. They are speakers of the Austric pre-Dravidian languages like Munda, Gondvi, and so on. They constitute a very minor percentage of the Indian population today. They were pushed into the forests by the immigrants, who treated them very badly. Except for these tribals, all other Indians are descendants of immigrants who came mainly from the north-west of India.

Two, because it is a country of immigrants, there is, much like in the US, tremendous diversity in India. Our country has many ethnic groups, religions, castes and languages coexisting within its boundaries. Some Indians are tall, some short, some fair-skinned, some dark-skinned, some brown, and many of other shades in between. There are innumerable differences in the food habits and dressing style of Indians, and in the traditional festivals they celebrate.

We may compare India with China. India’s population is about 1,300 million, somewhat equal to China’s. However, there is broad (though not absolute) homogeneity in China. All Chinese have Far Eastern features; they have one common written script called Mandarin Chinese (although there are different spoken dialects); and reportedly more than 90 per cent of the population belongs to one ethnic group called the Han. In India, on the other hand, there is tremendous diversity, because every group of immigrants that came into India brought in its own culture, religion, language and other traditions.

Three, there was tremendous interaction and intermingling among the immigrants who came into India. It has been asked whether India a nation at all. Is it simply a grouping of hundreds of different kinds of immigrants? Is there anything common among the people of India? The answer is, there was tremendous intermixing among the different immigrants, since they had to, perforce, live together.

Among the educated class (mostly Brahmins), interaction was through the Sanskrit language. For instance, Adi Shankaracharya, who was from Kerala, went to north India, where he could debate with scholars in Sanskrit, which was the link language. Later on, in large parts of north India, Urdu and its simpler form, Hindustani, also resulted in a great deal of interaction among people from different regions.

Ultimately it was the British who, unintentionally, created the political unity of India, through their Indian empire with its centralized government and administration. Industrialization has also contributed to the unity of India, as a factory owner in one part of the country has to sell his goods in many other parts too if he is to have a large market.

However, it must be added that this very diversity is also a weakness, because it is easier for vested interests to create strife between the different communities in India (as is still happening). This possiblity is comparatively less in the case of a country like China.

Four, because of its tremendous diversity, the only policy which can work and hold India together is secularism and the accordance of equal respect to all communities. Otherwise, India cannot survive as a united country and will break up into pieces.

SECULARISM

For peace and prosperity in the country, there must be religious tolerance and secularism.

Secularism does not mean that one cannot practise one’s religion. It means that religion is one’s private affair, unconnected with the State, which will have no religion, and everyone will be free to practise and profess whatever faith one wants. This is particularly important in the Indian subcontinent, given its immense diversity. This was also the policy of ‘Sulh-i-Kul’ (universal toleration of all religions and sects) of Emperor Akbar, who gave respect to all communities. And this is the only policy which will lead India to peace and prosperity.

Protection to Minorities

ARTICLE 25(1) of the Indian Constitution states: ‘Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.’

I have always been a supporter of the rights of religious minorities in India because I firmly believe that the mark of a civilized society is in its minorities living with dignity and respect.

According to the census report of 2001, Christians constituted only about 2.3 per cent of the population of 1,300 million in India.¹ In January 2009, a case came up before a bench of the Supreme Court of which I was a member. The allegations were that Christians in Orissa were being persecuted by right-wing Hindu groups; that about 50,000 Christians had fled their homes, some had been killed, some had their houses burnt and were living in camps or in the jungle.

During the hearing of the case I remarked, ‘We will not tolerate persecution of minorities. If the State government is unable to protect them, it should resign. Article 25 of the Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion to all.’

These oral observations had their effect; the persecution of Christians in the State stopped, and compensation was awarded to those whose properties had been destroyed or damaged.

When I was a judge at the Allahabad High Court, in the late 1990s, a case came up before me pertaining to a village in Uttar Pradesh where the majority consisted of Muslims, and the minority of Hindu Harijans. A Harijan girl was gangraped by some Muslim boys, who were prosecuted. I awarded the accused harsh punishment, holding that since the Muslims were in the majority in that village it was their duty to ensure that the Hindus there could live with dignity and respect, but the accused had done just the opposite.

In India, Hindus make for the majority of the total population, but they may be a minority in a specific area. It is the duty of the majority in every region to ensure that the minority in their area lives with dignity and respect.

ECRASEZ L’INFAME

Thomas Jefferson, in his book Notes on the State of Virginia, writes: ‘It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’

The spirit of tolerance is particularly important in the Indian subcontinent, which has such tremendous diversity, as I have said before.

The ill treatment by many of us of Indians from the north-east is a disgrace. The atrocities committed against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 and against Sikhs in 1984 were also as much of a disgrace. Similarly, the mistreatment of minorities in Pakistan (whether Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Ahmadi, Shia or any other minority) is no less, and invites Voltaire’s famous comment: ‘Ecrasez L’ infame’ (Crush the infamy).

As the great Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri wrote:

Sar Zameen-e-Hind par aqwaam-e-Alam ke Firaq

Qafile guzarte gaye, Hindustan banta gaya.

In the land of India, the caravans of the people of the world kept coming, and India kept evolving.

The only policy which can work in our subcontinent is that of secularism and the accordance of equal respect to all communities—religious, lingual, regional or racial.

Secularism does not mean that one cannot practise one’s religion. It means that religion is a private affair, unconnected with the State (which will have no religion) and everyone has the freedom to practise one’s own religion without harassment or coercion from anyone.

In my opinion, secularism means something more than merely accepting the right of others to practise their own religion. It also means that minorities will be entitled to lead a life of dignity and respect, and it is the duty of the majority to ensure this. Hence, every incident of ill-treatment of minorities, whether in India or in Pakistan, is a disgrace to the majority who have failed in their solemn duty of protecting their minorities.

THE ‘SONS OF THE SOIL’ THEORY

In Maharashtra, some people, propounding the ‘sons of the soil’ (‘bhumiputra’) theory had assaulted people from other states from time to time and vandalized their property. When such a case came up before a bench of the Supreme Court, of which I was a member from 2006 to 2011, I orally observed in court that we cannot permit balkanization of the country.

Article 19(1)(e) of the Indian Constitution states:

‘All citizens shall have the right – (e) to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India.’

It is within the fundamental right of a person who is a native of State A to be able to migrate to State B in India. People in State B cannot say that since the person is not a bhumiputra of their state, the immigrant is an ‘infiltrator’ and should be driven out. In practically every state in India there are people who are natives of other states but have come there for trade or job opportunities, or for some other reason. By virtue of Article 19(1)(e) they have the fundamental right to migrate to and settle down in any other state. It would be unconstitutional to prevent them from doing so, vide 1997 (3) Guj L R 1998 (2012) SC. The only exceptions are Kashmir and the north-east, because of special historical reasons.

India is one country with one nationality—Indian—and the bhumiputra theory is totally unacceptable. Those who regard Maharashtra as a separate nation are misguided. In view of Article 19(1)(e) of the Constitution, it is within the fundamental right of non-Maharashtrians to settle in Maharashtra, just as it is a fundamental right for Maharashtrians to migrate to and settle in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab or any other state. Of course, if a non-Maharashtrian has done something illegal in Maharashtra, he can be penalized, in the same way any Maharashtrian would be for the same offence. But how can all Biharis be branded ‘infiltrators’ for the wrong done by one or two Biharis in Maharashtra?

The ‘son of the soil’ theory would balkanize the country and must be condemned. Those who have propounded it are not really concerned about the welfare of the people of Maharashtra; they are only concerned about their vote bank.

Going by that theory, most of the Maharashtrians would also have to leave Maharashtra, because they are also not original inhabitants of the state. The only sons of the soil there are the Bhils and other tribals living in the state. This shows that the theory may be fine for capturing votes, but would lead to chaos and disaster if any serious attempt were made to implement it.

Also, the unity of India is necessary if the country is to prosper economically. Article 301 of the Constitution states that trade and commerce can be practised freely throughout the territory of India. This provision guarantees the economic unity of India; and political unity depends on economic unity. Thus, a factory in Tamil Nadu is entitled to sell its goods in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab, Bengal and other states.

Modern industry requires a large market. Only the emergence of modern industry can make India a prosperous nation, because agriculture alone cannot generate the wealth required for our people’s education, health, employment and other basic needs. And only a united India can provide a large market for modern industry to be viable. Any attempt to break up our country will therefore doom the Indian people to poverty.

It could also be said that the son-of-the-soil theory offends Section 2 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971. Being disrespectful of or bringing into contempt the Constitution of India is a criminal offence, punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine, or both. The ‘son of the soil’ theory not just disrespects and brings into contempt Article 19(1)(e) of the Constitution—hence becoming a crime—it is also an offence under section 153A of the IPC as it amounts to inciting enmity among different communities.

Assuming that one particular Bihari did something wrong, does it justify branding all Biharis in Maharashtra as infiltrators? Two wrongs do not make a right. The remedy, if indeed some illegality has been committed by a