A review of #NLHafta from Shirley, Aniket, P and Aditya

Hi NL team,

Law student and subscriber from Mumbai. A discussion of the recent Supreme Court judgments in the last Hafta prompted me to write this email. Both the decisions are, no doubt, important, and must be celebrated. Although one could very well argue that the Triple Talaq judgment was merely a logical application of the Shamim Ara decision given in 2002. What is concerning, however, is the sheer amount of praise lavished upon the Court after few such decisions. In a country where the government gets away with little to no accountability, relying upon the
judiciary to make things right may be considered a necessary evil. But for how long and to what extent? The fact is that Courts in India are not subjected to a high level of scrutiny and criticism except maybe in certain high profile cases that the media chooses to extensively cover. For example, in the Mehta case (assuming that is the case Mr. Abhinandan brought up) where the SC ordered that all public transport in Delhi should be converted to run on CNG, people employed in public transport were badly hit, especially drivers of auto rickshaws. Due to the freeze on the number of TSRs and the cost of fuel change, many autorickshaw drivers had to take up loans from private financiers while many others were forced to give up ownership of their vehicles and become wage labourers. Courts in Delhi, in exercise of its PIL jurisdiction, have also carried out slum demolition drives and have ordered the shutting down of polluting industries without ensuring worker compensation. The source for this is Anuj Bhuwania’s brilliant book ‘Courting the People’ where he discusses these cases in great detail. Is this not, as Ranga Uncle calls it, ‘social darwinism’?

The Bhopal gas case settlement, inconsistency in awarding death sentences, the recent national anthem judgment, initiation of contempt proceedings on allegations of corruption is enough proof that the Supreme Court is not exactly the ‘champion of human rights’ that we make it out be. Yet, the encouragement given to judicial activism through the use of PILs is allowing the Court to widen its powers and practically legislate from the Bench. Is it wise to allow
this to become the norm?

I would also like to weigh in on the debate over how to define the ‘left’. I find it hard to believe that journalistic or academic usage only refers to communists as the left since those that embrace the idea of egalitarianism across gender, caste, race, religion and especially economic status and are not opposed to state intervention in achieving these ideals are commonly referred to as leftists. Such state intervention is not dismissed by those on the left as – in words that probably sum up the entire right wing perspective – minority appeasement. Of course, there is disagreement among leftists as to the extent to which state interference must be permitted leading to factions within the left. And certainly not everyone on the left believes that it is acceptable for the state to violate civil liberties. That assumption, indeed, seems flawed.

Best,
Shirley

————————————————————————————

Dear Haftakhors,

Here is a 641-worded letter from a non-mufatkhor. Can I just say at the beginning for past 4 yrs NL Hafta has been my primary source of information and sometimes misinformation? However, I must admit those half-truths have always provided me an intellectual stimulation as I engage in reading more and more to see the whole picture.

I am working as a neuroscientist in the UK but I am not an expert on evolutionary biology or political science. However, like a true Indian, I often provide my unsolicited opinion. This is why I am writing this letter with a hope that it will find some readers. For the past few months, Mr. Ranganathan keeps mentioning about Social Darwinism (SD). He believes SD can explain complicated Left-Right divide. The panel seems to echo his view. If I may, I would like to offer my disagreement with the knowledgeable Hafta panel.

Herbert Spencer, a British evolutionary biologist (he coined the term “survival of the fittest”) from the 19th century was the first proponent of the SD theory although Oscar Schmidt coined the term in 1879 (Popular Science). SD attempts to justify social inequalities by focusing on biological traits (merit, laziness to work, etc.) and ignores the economic injustice. It promotes the theory that social injustice is nothing but the natural consequence of human evolution. SD suggests those who possess the economic and physical strength are destined to rule, and the
others are intended for the extinction. Hence, SD argues that the state-sponsored social welfare programs are contrary to nature and private charity is better suited to provide human needs than the state.

This idea first found appreciation in the European eugenics movement. The believers considered white European race is the most evolved superior race as a consequence of Darwin’s natural selection and should be kept pure from immigration mixing. Spencer unambiguously wrote about immigration “…supposing the immigration to be large, immense social mischief must arise, and eventually social disorganization. The same thing will happen if there should be any considerable mixture of European or American races with the Japanese” (Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation). Spencer considered the mixing of ethnic European with Asian population would produce a “bad hybrid.” Since then, various dictators from China, Japan and various other countries have used this idea as scientific justification for cleaning out the inferior race. Of course, the worst examples were Bengal Famine by Churchill and Final Solution by Hitler.

That is why many considered this theory as politically motivated and are far from the scientific theory of Darwin. Richard Hofstadter in his book Social Darwinism in American Thoughtdescribes Spencer as “the metaphysician of the homemade intellectual, and the prophet of the cracker-barrel agnostic.” No wonder “Veer” Savarkar was greatly influenced by the writing of Spencer and his SD theory.

In short, SD has been used to justify all sorts of things from free market to eugenics. I urge you to read a brilliantly argued article by Michael Page in New Scientist (2008), which wonderfully illustrates how SD theory can be used to justify the both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism depending upon the example that you cite.

I feel the public intellectuals from hafta team should shun away from reinterpreting this ghastly idea. Such mis/reinterpretation can grab some eyeballs but would not do any justice for human civilization. It would be like reinterpreting the meaning of Holocaust. As many of you may know, before Hitler approached his “final solution,” Holocaust meant a religious sacrifice of an animal by fire in ancient Greece. But in 21st-century, the usage of Holocaust can only have one meaning in public discourse.

Last but not the least, let me say that I am a great fan of hafta and keep continuing your good work, and I promise to continue being as non-mufatkhor.

Best wishes,
Aniket

————————————————————————————

Hi Abhinandan,

On nuclear bombing of Japan:
My reading is that the scholarship on this is more or less unanimous. Note that the value of N-Bomb in tempering Soviet ambitions post war was the only consideration leading up to the decision to employ the bomb. The discussions around how should Truman inform Stalin about the bomb, how much discussion/debate happened and on what points before the decision was taken to deploy the bomb, the fact that Japanese communications were being read by Americans and they knew that Japanese were only looking to save the monarchy, the fact that pre war Japan has been drilled that the main enemy was Russia that too communist, US evaluations of bomb’s destructive effect on Japanese decision (consider that more people died in firebombing of Tokyo and how will Japanese govt as an organization realize the extent of the bomb’s destructive capability), Soviet Manchurian offensive and rapid collapse of Japanese land army are all available for one’s scrutiny. Simply put Japanese knew that Soviet land invasion will mean end of Japanese monarchy and therefore the backbone of Japanese cultural system and
that is what told them that time has come to surrender to Americans. Americans did not fret over how effectively to make Japanese surrender through nuclear bomb (they were already reading Japanese cables and knew they were looking for a way to surrender) but how to send a message to the Soviet Union. So bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the first shot of cold war and the earliest example of nuclear blackmail and not the last shot of WW2.

On the elitist right to privacy:

The concept of universal adult franchise is also elitist and an equally effective argument can be made that it does not affect most people. All fundamental rights are subject to restrictions then why is there a distinction between them and statutory rights? And why was govt so keen on not regarding it as a fundamental right? That’s because the bar for restrictions is much higher and narrow for fundamental rights.

On what it means by left:
There was an argument that in ‘academic’ and ‘popular’ Indian discourse left means communist and therefore it is ironic that left is celebrating individual privacy. Well, first it is rare to say that ‘academic’ and ‘popular’ idea about any ‘term’ actually match up. It should be easy to find numerous popular Indian writings referring to JLN’s policy as those of left. There is no need to refer to John Locke to understand what is left. Such preciseness is only useful for formal terms like “entropy” or “prime number” and not useful to understand the meaning of left/right/liberal/socialist/Marxist etc. We have to just see what gets clubbed under what label in the writings of the day and in those terms esp in Indian context it is but natural for “left to celebrate right to privacy” Put it another way I think the following statement would sound strange in ‘popular’ Indian discourse – BJP govt’s leftist position that individuals have no right to privacy got defeated in supreme court – makes no sense to argue for.

-P
————————————————————————————

Hey NL Team,

I recently heard a podcast that reminded me of a conversation you had in an earlier Hafta- that most people don’t change their views once they have formed them. The podcast I heard is called The Daily (it’s by the New York Times). The episode I am referring to was aired on Tuesday, Aug 22, 2017.

The episode is an interview with Derek Black, a former white nationalist who was born into a prominent white nationalist family in the US. His father was the former grand wizard of the KKK. As a young man, Derek wrote for a popular white nationalist website and even had a radio show on the website. Once he went to college, he started to live two lives- he continued to write for the website but his friends around him didn’t know about it. I won’t give everything away because the interview is a great listen (or read), but slowly and steadily, his engagement with people of opposing views chipped away his racist leanings. He ultimately left the website and told his family about his change of heart.

If I remember correctly, most of the participants of that week’s Hafta agreed that people don’t change their views. Here is a man that was brought up, steeped in a specific world view and when those around him challenged it, he saw the other side held more merit. In light of this, do you feel that calling out people for having a change of heart over time as hypocrites are wrong?
Many of us (looking at you Anand), pull screenshots of tweets from years before and contrast them with views expressed in the present and label them as turncoats. Even Bapu changed his views about many things over the course of his life. I thought this would be an interesting discussion point.

I recently subscribed for another year (this is me tooting my own horn). Some feedback on the science podcasts- I feel they are presently too technically dense. There is just too much jargon to follow during a radio show. Also, Abhinandan, as a fellow Dosco, I was curious, were you part of the Doon School Weekly?

Keep up the good work at NL. My good wishes to the entire team.

With regard,

Aditya Shanker Prasad.