Privacy After Aadhaar
While the Aadhaar itself has great potential, the fact that it was treated as a money bill should be a matter of great concern, writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in The Indian Express. The Aadhaar bill has far-reaching implications and if it counts as a money bill, then nearly any legislation can be treated as a money bill as well, he writes. Also, it does not adequately address the issues of privacy in the age of technology.
On that score, the bill is an exercise in bad faith. The first reason is architectural. The national security exceptions in the bill are too broad. It negates all protections the bill seemingly provides. But, more importantly, let us say you do want a national security exception. Should the determination of this be left entirely to the bureaucracy and executive when they themselves will not be under any system of accountability? Admittedly, even our current safeguards are very weak. But as the risks of surveillance grow, we need to strengthen them rather than rely on specious arguments about the past.
Why I’m Happy to Say Sunny Leone Ki Jai
In suspending MLA Waris Pathan from the Maharashtra assembly for refusing to say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’, both the BJP and the Congress have shown that “free speech must be overruled by forced speech in the holy name of nationalism”, writes Swaminathan Aiyar in his weekly column in The Times of India. He writes that citizens of India can refuse forced speech and that Bharat Mata is a concept that evolved only in recent history.
During the Independence Movement, ‘Jai Hind’ was the standard slogan. Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Indian National Army to overthrow the British Raj. Its local name was basically Urdu, ‘Azad Hind Fauj’. It was not ‘Swatantra Bharat Sena’, as the RSS would have liked. Bose used Urdu, the language of a composite India, for a multi-religious army with Hindu, Muslim and Sikh commanders. One memorial celebrating the INA’s entry into British India in 1944 is substantially in Urdu. I dare Amit Shah, or anyone else in the BJP, to call Bose anti-national for using the national language of Pakistan.
Narendra Modi’s Ghar Wapsi and the Return of Vikas
The Congress lost hugely because it continued to address the poor even though the number of people below the poverty line has shrunk and the BJP won big precisely because it targeted the growing middle class population, writes Surjit S Bhalla in The Indian Express. Now, the Congress has chosen issues like “ghar wapsi” and “love jihad” as well as student movements to discredit the BJP which has up till now not responded intelligently to the provocations. But the BJP seems to be wisening up to Congress’ moves and is making smarter calls, he writes.
Over the last six weeks or so, the top leadership of the BJP has enforced much-needed restraint on lumpen Tea Party elements. When, via utter and extreme stupidity, the BJP top brass came in with a sledgehammer to dislodge Kanhaiya, the old-style Tea Party demanded through its agent, Kuldeep Varshney, a member of the BJP’s youth wing: “I will award Rs 5 lakh to the person who [will] cut off Kanhaiya’s tongue.” Hours after he said this, he was expelled for six years.
We Need Rules to Rule Out Political Interference
Institutions require autonomy from political interference, writes Mark Tully in Hindustan Times. This does not mean excluding the government from activities like banking, education or medicine, but it simply means laying down rules so that an institution does not compromise its professionalism because of interference from the political elite.
Of course there always have been and always will be many people in government and other organisations who do not end their careers spineless. In broadcasting PC Chatterji, director general of All India Radio during the Emergency, had the courage to tell Indira Gandhi that her government’s interference in the news was robbing the organisation of all credibility. Rajiv Gandhi did realise that Doordarshan needed autonomy if it was to be credible and then removed the director general, Bhaskar Ghose, for exercising that autonomy. In the army Sam Manekshaw insisted that he, not Indira Gandhi, should decide when India was ready to go to war in 1971.
If the Kashmiris Cheer for Afridi’s Team, Can We Blame Them?
If the people of Kashmir are cheering for the Pakistan cricket team, it’s probably because India has given them reason to do so, writes Aakar Patel in The Times of India. He asks what incentives the Kashmiris have to support India and what the country is doing to make them feel less isolated and more a part of the nation. Answering his own questions, he says India is not doing nearly enough.
Last year, the killing law called AFSPA completed 25 years in Kashmir. Readers may not know that the law allows the Indian government to lift immunity for those personnel against whom Kashmir’s police have evidence of rape, murder, torture and kidnap. These individuals may then be tried in a civilian court. Do you know the number of cases for which the government of India has allowed this to happen? Zero. If you are a Kashmiri victim, sorry. India’s justice is not for you. Forget the great words of our Constitution.
Don’t Force Us to Join the India Loyalty Programme
Why should anybody be asked to prove their patriotism and who are the examiners who pass judgement on them, asks Shobhaa De in The Times of India. She points out that patriotism is hard to define and chanting a few slogans does not prove or disprove anything as anybody can participate in political posturing regardless of their loyalties.
And who are these hyper-patriots trying to browbeat citizens into complying with new-fangled ‘India Loyalty Programmes’? The ugly truth is several netas strutting their patriotic plumes and baying for the blood of those not joining the chorus, have criminal records and serious charges pending in courts. Do lusty cries of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ absolve them of all the muck? If for any reason, rational or irrational, someone does not raise a politically approved slogan, does it suddenly debilitate the state? Does India totter because a few citizens refuse to mouth salutations on demand? Let’s get a few things clear: hoisting flags, singing anthems, shouting slogans do not make a nation great. Progress does.
Espousing Freedom of Speech, and Practising Censorship
Karan Thapar looks back, in Hindustan Times, at his interaction with human rights lawyer Amal Clooney and writes about his disappointment at learning that while she publicly fights for free speech, she chose to rigidly restricting what was broadcast of her speech afterwards.
Alas, how different is the reality hidden under the surface which the audience was unaware of. Amal Clooney, though speaking to a television channel Conclave, had forbidden the live broadcast of her speech as well as the question and answer session that followed. She also insisted that nothing could be broadcast afterwards without her clearance. That includes the right to edit whatever she was asked or said. In the end nothing of her speech was broadcast and only approximately six minutes of her 30-minute Q&A was permitted to be shown.
A Government Of, By and For the Slogan
The BJP national executive’s claim that not shouting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ is tantamount to disrespecting the Constitution is untenable, writes Ramachandra Guha in Hindustan Times. The BJP’s stress on the ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ slogan is most likely a tactical call to distract from the lack of implementation of several of its promises and to set the stage of the patriotism debate before the Uttar Pradesh elections, he argues.
The BJP national executive’s claim is legally untenable. It is also historically incomplete. It is true that ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ was a slogan shouted by many freedom fighters. But there were others too. A popular slogan, especially among atheistic socialists such as Bhagat Singh and his comrades, was ‘Inquilab Zindabad’. A third was ‘Jai Hind’, which was used by Subhas Bose and his Indian National Army.
How Free is ‘Azad Kashmir’?
One of the most interesting aspects of the debate on legal governance of Kashmir in India and Pakistan is the usage of the word ‘azad’ to refer to PoK, writes Khaled Ahmed in The Indian Express. While ‘Azad Kashmir’ across the border is supposed to evoke the image of a ‘non-Azad’ Kashmir under Indian control, scutinising the constitution of Azad Kashmir shows that it’s more or less entirely subordinate to Islamabad.
Both countries have tried to deal with their ill-digested annexations, at least once agreeing to “provincialise” them. India gave its part a “special status” under Article 370 of its Constitution but since 1953 has gradually reduced this status through amendments. Pakistan has done it through Article 21 of the 1974 Interim Constitution Act. Was this done separately or by mutual understanding?
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