Indian Judiciary: Courting Mythology

If The Times of India on May 22 is to be believed, a judge of the Punjab and Haryana high court has quietly re-written India’s millennia-old history. And, but for a solitary piece in the TOI, India is yet to take note of it.

Justice Rajive Bhalla, according to TOI On May 22, “recently” observed that “Maharishi Valmiki was not a dacoit before turning into a sage and writing the Ramayana”. The learned judge had no concrete proof – either a birth certificate or an ancient police FIR – so he based his observation on a research by a Punjab University scholar. Why was no proof submitted before him? The judge reportedly said that “actual facts appear to be lost in the mists of antiquity”.

The TOI correspondent also says about the nature of research by the scholar which became the judge’s basis for his observation: “The judge stated the salient features of the research, saying that “from Vedic literature up to 9th century AD, there is no reference as such that Maharishi Valmiki led a life of a dacoit or highwayman.” It was also stated that in his own work ‘Ramayana’, Valmiki is called Bhagwan, Muni, Rishi and Maharishi and no reference of his highwaymanship is available there.”

How did Valmiki’s past become the current topic for judicial discourse? The TOI tells us: “Justice Bhalla was hearing an appeal by a national television channel, asking the court to quash an FIR filed against it in Jalandhar for airing a serial that raised a question about Valmiki being a dacoit before he turned into a sage.” Understandably, I think, the protest was filed a member of the Valmiki community.

Here are two interesting reactions posted at the end of the TOI report:

Phadnis, Mumbai: “Courts have no business to pass Judgments on such issues. This is not a matter of Law. Whether the belief about Valmiki is correct or not is another matter. Many parts of the Ramayana or Mahabharata are controversial. Are the Courts going to Rule on such matters?”

M. Pankaj, New Delhi: “A mythology mixes facts, fiction, reality and divinity all to express the author's ideals and views. It cannot be ascertained or adjudged one way or another. Indeed media should be responsible, but religious believers should also not be over sensitive or angry since it shows the lack of their inner-confidence in their own belief. Focus on the substance…not on the superficial or what others say ...”

Since when has mythology come to be questioned in courts? Anything can happen in India. Remember, how the proposed Sethusamudram Project – envisaging a navigable sea route around the Indian peninsula passing through the Sri Lankan strait – was mired in controversy with the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party and dumb Hindu fanatics moving the courts saying the project would destroy a bridge – Rama Setu – apparently built by monkeys to help Rama – the protagonist of the Hindu epic Ramayana – to cross over into Sri Lanka to free his wife, Sita, from the clutches of the villain-king, Ravana.

That was in 2007. The then Congress government had submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court of India, with reports of the Archaeological Survey of India as appendices, that the existence of Rama was questionable and therefore not germane to the Sethusamudram Project. But imagine the power of the faithful! The government of India, foreseeing political oblivion if it did not bow before the protestors, subsequently withdrew that affidavit.

There are similarties in both cases:

1. In the Valmiki case, the defendants say they went by mythology while portraying Valmiki’s dacoit past. Justice Bhalla, despite his curt observation, leaves himself an escape valve by saying that “actual facts appear to be lost in the mists of antiquity”.
2. In the Sethusamudram case, the government says there is no “scientific” evidence of the fabled Ram Setu and yet withdraws its report. The Supreme Court order curtly asks for continuation of the Project in the interim, but orders that “the Ram Setu should not be touched”.

The similarity is that both the courts, despite their clear observations, seem hesitant to actually and directly challenge mythology and popular belief. What if?...the doubt lingers in their honourable minds.

These cases suggest that the mosaic of sanity covering the Indian judiciary, however thinly, is beginning to crack. This can only spell disaster for the country’s future for the following reasons:

1. The Indian judiciary’s sense of justice deems that heresay is no evidence. Now it becomes the judiciary’s responsibility whether mythology and belief fall under the category of heresay or not. If not, the above observations by the two courts are unjustified.
2. A judicial case is fought on the basis of facts. Facts, as I know them, are supposed to be tangible evidences which can be physically examined for verification. In the Valmiki case, the court ruling is based on a researcher’s evidence which contains no tangible proof other than claiming that there are no references of Valmiki’s dacoit past found in ancient Hindu/Indian literature. I do not know if the researcher has added a disclaimer that the literature she has gone through is all that exists and there is no possibility of other, yet unknown, literature existing. In short, there is no way of claiming that mere absence of the said reference in literature is clear, unequivocal proof that the reference never existed at all. There is a question of reasonable doubt here. So, is the researcher’s evidence an incontrovertible ‘fact’ in judicial terms? I think not. Similarly, in the Sethusamudram case, the court only asks the government not to disturb the Ram Setu, without giving any reasons. Does this mean that the court, as the case continues, thinks it will come across evidence that will prove the Hindus right and the Archaeological Survey of India wrong? The doubt lingers.

However, with the Indian courts not shying away from pronouncing on things mythological, I want ruling on the following:

It is generally believed – mind the word, ‘believed’ – that Valmiki belonged for the Kirata Bhil Adivasi, a tribal caste. It is this belief that brings together members of the caste and similar castes under the umbrella of the entire Valmiki community in India (and in Pakistan!)Now, there is another ‘belief’ that, as stated in Wikipedia, Valmiki re-incarnated himself as a Brahmin in the 15th century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsidas)

The Wikipedia says: “Tulsidas is regarded as an incarnation of the great sage Valmiki. In Bhavishyottar Purana, Lord Shiva tells Parvati how Valmiki got a boon from Hanuman to sing the glories of Lord Rama in vernacular language in the Kali Yuga. This prophecy of Lord Shiva materialised on the Shraavan Shukla Saptami, Vikrami Samvat 1554 when Valmiki reincarnated as Tulsidas.

“Valmikistulasidasaha Kalou Devi Bhavishayati; Ramachanadrakathaametaam Bhashabhadhdhaan Karishyatihi. (Bhavishyottar Purana, Pratisarga Parva, 4.20).

“Nabhadas, a contemporary of Tulsidas and a great devotee, also describes Tulsidas as incarnation of Valmiki in his work Bhaktmaal. Even the Ramanandi sect (Tulsidas belonged to this sect) firmly believes that it was Valmiki himself who incarnated as Tulsidas in the Kali Yuga.”

If I believe all this to be true, then I will come to certain conclusions:

1. Valmiki should no longer be considered a tribal, but a Brahmin.
2. This means the Valmiki caste grouping falls under the Brahmin category.
3. This means the community now has all rights to all Brahmin rites.
4. This means the community can no longer avail of benefits the government offers to tribal communities in terms of reservation and other social benefits.

Now, suppose I move the courts to certify these conclusions on the basis of evidence available in Wikipedia, will I win my case? Going by the precedents, I should.

If not, do I have the right to move the courts, again, to nullify every social, cultural and political custom that exists in the geographical region called India and which is based on the tenets of Hinduism on the ground that Hinduism is not a religion, is a collection of beliefs and there is no evidence, especially written, of its history?

Won’t I be taken for a fool?

I rest my case.

Note: No disrespect to the Valmikis

Caste in India is the real outcast

This blog is in response to an article by distinguished journalist, Mr. A.J. Philip, in the newspaper he edits, The Herald of India. Here is the link to the original article: http://www.heraldofindia.com/article.php?id=489

Dear Mr. Philip,
Your reference to Bihar brings back lots of memories of my own stint as a journalist in that state. A senior colleague of mine, the late Arvind Das, used to call Bihar the centre of the universe, given the state's social complexities. While I appreciate your views on caste, and do abhor discrimination of any kind, I would like to point out a couple of things. Discrimination is as Darwinian as oppression. The evolution of a society is studied through the many cycles of catharsis that it has experienced. Our sociologists and historians have been trying for centuries to simply understand what is India and why is India different from any other society in the world. I have not found a decent answer yet in my many readings. I feel a society has to be seen in its living past and living present. Ignoring or denying any variable of that society and then attempting to study its evolution is a backfiring proposition. We may abhor cateism, we may deny we are casteists, but that does not make casteism go away. For the simple reason that our actions of the present have their moorings not only in our geneology but also in our cultural past. These actions define our identity, our location in society, whether we believe or not. Our society has evolved over thousands of years, its culture influenced by societies from across the seas at frequent intervals of history, now more so and at faster intervals because of the factor of globalisation. Some of the best Sikhs I know, professionals all in various countries abroad, came from Khalsa College. I know of two youngsters currently at an IIT who proudly say they are the alumni of the Brahman-Bhumihar Collegiate in Muzaffarpur. I know of many families with liberal values subscribing to caste-based matrimony publications. And so forth. Are these people casteist? I'd say yes. And any other answer conveys self-denial. More than ever before I today feel the need for a full-fledged caste census in India. For, never before has our society seen siesmic social and cultural changes as like now, what with India in the vortex of globalisation. There are many who predict a homogenous mass of peoples in a few generations' time. That would be the time of a society, truly classless and casteless. That would also be a time to forget where this society came from because for the citizens of that future society, their past would be an alien, long-forgotten, un-understandable phenomenon. In short, the legacy of this society of our times and our past will not remain even a memory. Why? Because nobody in our times cares to write a true account of it in the first place. I challenge any sociologist or historian to refute that their research of the Indian society is based on half or quarter knowledge considering the singular fact that never in our history has an accurate data of the caste composition been made available. Furthermore, histories and social texts are contructed realities and mediated by the ideologies of their authors. For example, I want to recall the controversy created when social and history theoreticians of the Left and Right fought over the origins of Ayodhya in the 1990s. Secondly, histories are written by conquerors, whether Hindu, Pashto, Iranian, Persian or Christian. And we have never had any clear interest in the subaltern and native histories except some works which in any case have never become mainstream reading material. For example, how many Indians even know what Kamban Ramayan is? See, even our so-called national epics have not escaped the scalpel of a divided society. So, when I say I am a a Vaidi ki Velanati Brahmin from Vemuru village in the coastal Andhra region of south India, am I speaking the truth? I have no way of verifying it. None of us Indians have. The point is, when we talk of caste even if to deny it, we have no historical or cultural basis to do so. That is why I support the caste census. Let us at least know what is that multi-cultural society we are a part of? We have already lived quite long in a social oblivion, basing our identities and ideologies developed out of socio-cultural castles built merely on belief. What we need is a new sociology of our not-so-new past.

Dear Swapan, BJP no different from Labour

All that can be said of Swapan Dasgupta is that he writes good English. What he writes about is bunkum -- I am sorry to say that -- if you read his front-page piece in The Pioneer on Sunday. He is all out criticising British PM Brown for trying to cobble up a government with the help of Liberal Democrats. It is going against the wishes of the people, he says, Cameron style. He lambasts Brown for readily agreeing to reform the British electoral process in return for Clegg's support. This is not done, this is not justice, this is not democracy, he laments. Perhaps he thinks Indian readers are idiots. That is why he has conveniently brushed under the carpet what the dead and beaten BJP is doing to somehow remain in circulation. For example, the BJP's attempts to come to power in whatever way in Jharkhand. Or, for that matter, the so-called alliance based on compromises including the BJP's own position on Aydodhya, to cobble up an alliance governmetn at the Centre. He flays Brown for trying to undo a 60-year-old electoral law just to appease the LibDems and without the backup of the electorate. For one, he again conveniently forgets how the BJP thrust upon unsuspecting Indians a 5000-year-old lie or fantasy about Ayodhya. For another, Brown in the same breath said there would be referendum. For yet another, if Dasgupta thinks a mere change of law cannot make the budget deficit of Britain go away, he should be told in equally clear terms that a dumb mound of earth in a place called Ayodhya cannot make India's poverty go away. He looks quite ill wearing the collar of a pedagogue. Best he returns to what he is -- a good journalist -- for which he has always been respected.