Swacch Bharat, Public Interest and Corruption

[Transcribed from Balu’s talk at World Hindu Congress Dec 2014 ]

Chairman Sir, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Morning.

Actually I’m the odd man out. We have success stories. We have spiritual leaders; we have an extraordinarily organizational leader in front of us. And now I have to do an exam. You see, normally I take exams in the university. Now I have to do an exam. The exam is this I must move you from these wonderful stories, success stories, good stories, to a rather depressing story. The question is how can I do it and still catch your attention. I don’t know. After the exam, tell me please whether I’ve succeeded or failed.

I want to talk about two dimensions, just dimensions, of problems that face us, our culture, our society, here in this country,  and outside. In a way you know these problems but in a way I don’t think you quite appreciate the depth of the problem. I just want to take two aspects. You see we have heard we are facing the problem of proselytization, conversion of people. And I’ll focus only on one religion which I have studied for the last 40 years: Christianity.  In some senses I would say that is not a serious problem at all, because this is important, there is a far more insidious problem, far more dangerous problem, far more poisonous problem which is the other face, the second face of the coin of proselytization, a conversion, and that is what I call secularization of Christianity.

Ever since the birth of Christianity, I won’t bother you with the history, there has been two faces to the expansion of Christianity: one is a well known conversion where people are converted into Christian religion, doctrine, and practices but there is the second which today is the dominant form of conversion, which is secularized translation of Christian ideas, which we all have accepted, I mean, every one of you has accepted in the name of science, modernity, rationality, and so on. This is secularization I will explain in the course of this talk with some examples.  This is the first problem that confronts us; the second problem which has to do with 1000 years of colonialism, both Islamic and British, because of which we suffer, we all of us suffer, from what I call colonial consciousness. Now these two together, or in some senses perhaps the greatest challenges, facing us especially our children in the 21st century world.

Let me take four examples and I’d like to say, when I give examples, I would be mentioning names but I have not been attacking the individuals. They are  just to illustrate, that’s all. They are not to give evidence of my claim but just to illustrate what it is. You see, the British had what they call the civilizing mission of India, civilizing mission in the world. They wanted to civilize us. Let me just take two dimensions from that or four dimensions, perhaps four aspects if you like. The first is this: they found that we were an immoral people; we were a corrupt people. That’s one aspect, ethical dimension if you like, and they found that we were uncivilized and dominated by superstition. You know all this, you say why talk about it today. And see this is where colonial consciousness comes in. Because today in the 21st century India, we are reproducing all these four aspects with real credible power, as though the British had never left us.

Let me take an example. The British found us extremely dirty people, unclean people. The civilizing mission was that the government should teach hygiene to Indians, the colonized subjects. Isn’t  Swachh  Bharat exactly that?  Government teaching people how to be hygienic. What is the difference, if any, between Swachh Bharat and what British tried for 200 years to teach us cleanliness. Of course, our public toilets are very dirty; of course, our public offices are badly kept. But I’ll come back to it in a minute. But the point is the idea that it is a task of a government to teach hygiene to its people, is one of the civilizing missions, which the British carried out in India for hundreds of years and we are doing it very proudly today. One dimension.

Second dimension: the British found us incapable of ruling ourselves. They found us corrupt; they found us immoral; they found that we did not deserve the independence that we got, even though they are forced to give under pressure. Have situations changed? Today we all believe, most of us at least, that most politicians are corrupt. Maybe they are; maybe they aren’t. We found a party, Aam Admi party, to remove corruption from Indian administration and Indian politics. A section of us vote for them and I’m told 20%. We are convinced, when you go to Patrol bunk that you will be cheated in the sense you won’t get a full patrol.  When you give a car for servicing or smartphones for repairing under warranty, we are afraid that they won’t do it properly and cheat us. We say, in the words of my brother,  ham sab log chor hain, ham sab log chor hain (trans. we are all thieves, we are all thieves). We talk that way in the streets, every day about ourselves. Tell me how are we today different from what the British thought about us. This is one aspect.

Second aspect. Francis Xavier, the famous patron saint of the Catholics, wrote to the Emperor of Portugal: your excellency, he said, the only thing needed today to make go up here is to kill all the brahmins.  The British and the Europeans came and told us that the Indian society, its religion ‘Hinduism’, is backed by the most corrupt system known to humankind  called ‘the caste system’.  Ambedkarites in Karnataka in 70’s—it went on for more than a decade—went to the University classrooms, picked up Brahmin  girls, raped them in the quadrangle and send them back to the class. Anybody who protests is beaten to death; today, the same Ambedkarites every week go to the university colleges and tell hundreds of children, the young people coming from the villages, that Brahmins have to be killed and the best thing is to rape their women. You go to Bishop Cottons High School in the streets of Bangalore [from 70’s], you’d find written on the walls, all brahmins must be killed and they find exactly what the British found us, what the European found us: the caste system and Brahminism destroying India.

How different are we from the British? Today, in fact, the extraordinary thing is none of these facts are untrue as I said; there is, so to speak, corruption, but the question is, what kind of corruption is it? We all say, politicians are corrupt, but do you know what it means to speak about corruption and why public officials should not be corrupt. We talk about ‘public interest’. They are not defending ‘the public interest’, but do we really know what ‘public interest’ means even if they put public interest litigation (PIL) in the court? Do we have words for it? ‘svaartha’ and ‘paraartha’ don’t translate it. ‘hitaasakti’ doesn’t translate  it. But we say, politicians should not be [corrupt] because they’re serving the ‘public interest’ and we don’t even know what ‘public interest’ means. As I said, it is true , our institutions, public institutions like toilets etc, are filthy and unkempt. But does that mean that Indians are dirty, we need Swachh Bharat?

It is true that one jaati oppresses another jaati in different parts of India, different parts of the society. Does it mean, therefore, we have caste system? You may say, ‘yes’, but then I wanted you to reflect on one thing: the Sun we see [is] moving on the horizon every day, does it, therefore, mean that the Sun is revolving around the earth? In exactly the same way and … It’s true, we face some facts, we see some facts, but the theories we are using to understand these facts, are secularized Christian variants which make our culture, our people, our society immoral, corrupt, backward, and primitive.

Chairman sir, ladies, and gentlemen, the challenge facing us is simply this: where is that independence that is supposed to have had?

[Chaitra’s clarification: The events that Balu was referring to occurred in Gulbarga in the middle 80s to early 90s. Initially, the Ambedkarite groups targeted brahmins and later Lingayat Girls. Then there was a huge retaliation and fight by Lingayat community around Gulbarga towards the perpetrators. For at least more than 5 years, there was violence in Gulbarga because of this issue. Media and Police did not respond to this at all. Even now when Balu refers to this story, most of the people outside Gulbarga think that it is an exaggerated story. When people(specifically Brahmin and Lingayat women who studied) in and around Gulbarga hear this story, they not alone agree with what he says, but add more details to the story on how it happened, who are the people involved etc.

I hope this gives some idea of what Balu was referring.]

• ← Evolution of ‘Supererogation’
• Government Control of Temples →