Editorial 1. A betrayal of the very idea of the Mahatma - By Shashi Tharoor
Context:
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination (January 30, 1948) by a Hindu fanatic who thought the Mahatma was too soft on Muslims. The momentous anniversary comes at a time when his legacy, the very idea of Gandhi, stands challenged by the prevailing ideological currents.
The last days of the Mahatma:
At a time when the standing of his historic detractors, whose descendants now form the ruling dispensation in the country, is at an all-time high, Gandhiji has been criticised for weakness, for having bent over too far to accommodate Muslim interests, and for his pacifism, which is seen by the jingoistic Hindutva movement as unmanly.
The Mahatma was killed for being too pro-Muslim; indeed, he had just come out of a fast he had conducted to coerce his own followers, the Ministers of the new Indian government, to transfer a larger share than they had intended of the assets of undivided India to the new state of Pakistan.
Gandhiji had also announced his intention to spurn the country he had failed to keep united and to spend the rest of his years in Pakistan, a prospect that had made the government of Pakistan collectively choke.
But that was the enigma of Gandhiji in a nutshell: idealistic, quirky and determined, a man who answered to the beat of no other drummer, but got everyone else to march to his tune.
Explaining a contradiction now
The contradiction is mirrored in the attitude of the Hindutva-inspired central government, who dislikes Mahatma Gandhi, whose message of tolerance and pluralism was emphatically rejected as minority appeasement by the Sangh Parivar, and whose credo of non-violence, or ahimsa, was seen as an admission of weakness unworthy of manly Hindus.
Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar had expressed contempt for Gandhiji’s ‘perverse doctrine of non-violence and truth’ and claimed it ‘was bound to destroy the power of the country’. But Prime Minister Modi, for all his Hindutva mindset, has embraced Gandhiji, hailing the Mahatma and even using his glasses as a symbol of the Swachh Bharat campaign, linking it to a call to revive Gandhiji’s idea of seva through the recent ‘Swachhata Hi Seva’ campaign.
But in recent years, many political leaders have been calling for replacing Gandhiji’s statues across the country with those of his assassin, Nathuram Godse. At the same time, there is also a tangible dissonance between the official governmental embrace of Gandhiji and the unofficial ideological distaste for this icon, that is privately promoted by members and supporters of the present ruling dispensation.
The vision of the Mahatma
It is a well understood reality that the vision of Gandhiji, an openly practising Hindu, differed greatly from that of Veer Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar, the principal ideologues of the Hindu Mahasabha and its more militarised alter ego in the post-Independence era, the RSS.
Gandhiji embodied the central approach of Advaita Vedanta, which preached an inclusive universal religion. Gandhiji saw Hinduism as a faith that respected and embraced all other faiths.
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Advaita Vedanta is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term Advaita refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the transient phenomenal world is an illusory appearance of Brahman. |
Religious tolerance and non-violence:
Gandhiji was profoundly influenced by the principles of ahimsa and satya and gave both a profound meaning when he applied them to the nationalist cause.
He was a synthesiser of cultural belief systems: his signature bhajan of ‘Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram’ had another line, ‘Ishwara Allah Tero naam’. This practice emerged from his Vedantic belief in the oneness of all human beings, who share the same atman and, therefore, should be treated equally.
Such behaviour did not endear him to every Hindu. In his treatise on ‘Gandhi’s Hinduism and Savarkar’s Hindutva’, the social scientist Rudolf C. Heredia places his two protagonists within an ongoing debate between heterogeneity versus homogeneity in the Hindu faith, pointing out that while Gandhi’s response is inclusive and ethical, Savarkar politicises Hinduism as a majoritarian creed.
But Gandhiji’s own understanding of religion, in Heredia’s words, “transcended religiosity, Hindu as well as that of any other tradition. It is essentially a spiritual quest for moksha but one rooted in the reality of service to the last and least in the world”.
Unlike Savarkar, who believed in conformity, Gandhiji was a synthesiser like no other who took care to include Indians of other faiths in his capacious and agglomerative understanding of religion. He took inspiration from not just Advaita Vedanta but also the Jain concept of ‘Anekantavada’ — the notion that truth and reality are perceived differently by different people from their own different points of view, and that, therefore, no single perception can constitute the complete truth. This led him to once declare that ‘I am a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Parsi, a Jew’.
Conclusion:
Shashi Tharoor says, “Hinduism and Hindutva represent two very distinct and contrasting ideas, with vitally different implications for nationalism and the role of the Hindu faith. The principles Gandhiji stood for and the way in which he asserted them are easier to admire than to follow. But they represented an ideal that is betrayed every day by those who distort Hinduism to promote a narrow, exclusionary bigotry.”
Editorial 2. What ails the Ken-Betwa river link project?
Context:
In 2023, the Steering Committee of the Ken-Betwa Link Project (KBLP) held its third meeting chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Water Resources, in the Ministry of Jal Shakti, who reiterated that KBLP was a “flagship” project of the national government and that it “is critical for the water security and socio-economic development of Bundelkhand region”.
In December 2021, the Union Cabinet approved KBLP at a total cost of Rs 44,605 crore. In this project, the national and the Madhya Pradesh governments will link the Ken river with the Betwa river so that the latter can water the Bundelkhand region in Uttar Pradesh.
What is the Ken-Betwa link?
The link will be in the form of a canal that will be fed by the new Daudhan Dam on the Ken, to be built within Panna Tiger Reserve. The national government has said that the dam will generate 103 MW of hydroelectric power. The linking canal will flow through Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh and Jhansi districts, with the project expected to irrigate 6.3 lakh hectares of land every year.
Hydrological and ecological experts aren’t convinced, however, mainly because the government’s plan is based on a ‘surplus and deficit’ model that they have said has little basis in science. They are also concerned that the project will endanger the water security of Panna.
Legal problems of the project:
“Approval by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife to the Ken-Betwa link Project has not been proved to be necessary for the improvement and better management of the wildlife therein as provided in Section 35(6) of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972…”
The Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court made this categorical observation vis-à-vis plans to create a high reservoir-dam on the Ken river in the Panna National Park and Tiger Reserve for the KBLP.
The Indian government catalysed this approval despite an expert body created by the Standing Committee of the NBWL itself saying that “an independent hydrological study of river Ken is necessary” and that “no developmental project should destroy the ecology of remnant fragile ecosystems and an important tiger habitat in the country”.
What clearances has the KBLP received?
In the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, there are provisions for setting aside areas of significance to wildlife as ‘sanctuaries’ and ‘national parks’. Sections 29 and 35(6) of the Act restrict human activities within them without prior approval.
Diversion of, stopping or enhancement of the flow or water into or outside of them is taboo unless doing so is deemed to be necessary to improve and better manage the wildlife within a sanctuary or a national park. And in the case of the Panna Tiger Reserve, the CEC has found such diversion to not be necessary to improve and better manage wildlife in the park.
Downstream of the national park lies the Ken Gharial Sanctuary, created to protect the critically endangered Gangetic gharial ( Gavialis gangeticus). The destructive impact of the proposed dam on the flow of water into and outside of this sanctuary should be immediately clear, as also its violation of the requirement under the Act for a sanctuary.
The project is also reportedly still to receive full forest clearance. A challenge to its environment approval is also pending before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), presumably because the tribunal believes the project must secure forest clearance first.
How will Panna’s tigers be affected?
Panna tiger reserve lost all its tigers by 2009, requiring a remarkable effort spanning almost a decade to reintroduce them. Panna is an exceptional tiger habitat because of its deep gorges, which will be drowned if the new dam is built. An illegal approval granted by a national board will bring to naught all the good, hard work of the past.
The government is also developing a larger ‘Panna Tiger Landscape’, but this is not the concession many believe it to be. This landscape should be created in any case for Panna’s tigers. Such landscape-level action is also required around most wildlife areas in light of a new global target to protect 30% of global terrestrial and marine areas by 2030, finalised at the COP15 biodiversity conference in December 2022.
The question is: Why should such plans be designed and deployed only because the heart of a tiger reserve is to be drowned and the park irreversibly fragmented?
In fact, there may not even be enough water in the Ken, a non-perennial river, to meet the projected needs of the Betwa – forget the needs of the Bundelkhand region. This is why the NBWL expert body mandated an “independent” hydrological investigation of the Ken. Older reports by state agencies had thrown up different, and hence unreliable, projections. Such an independent investigation remains pending.
Independent experts have also said that it will be more economical and faster if the governments restored Bunderlkhand’s erstwhile Chandel-period lakes and ponds and if they replicated the successful field-pond schemes on priority. The region is already blessed with adequate annual rainfall.
Conclusion:
Against this background, rushing the KBLP sans due diligence – both technical and legal – will intensify water conflicts between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh; dash locals’ long standing expectations of irrigation and drinking water; and cost a decade’s labour and funds. Government must therefore reexamine the project.