[Reader-list] When a Mutant Class Switches Off

[Navayana Publishing]

*Misleading Gandhigiri*

*Switching off mobile phones for a day will not stop India Inc from
endorsing Narendra Modi as PM*

Tehelka, 31 Jan 2009
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Op310109misleading_gandhigiri.asp

S ANAND
Publisher, Navayana

AN ONLINE petition to observe 30 January 2009 as Cellular Silence Day has
been doing the rounds. Drafted by Ranjan Kamath, a filmmaker, it is
addressed to Messrs Ratan Tata, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Anil Ambani —
prominent Indian industrialists with a global presence who need no
introduction. The petition seeks to give voice to the billion-plus Indian
Davids who are dismayed by the endorsement of Narendra Modi as future prime
minister by the three 'corporate Goliaths'. That Modi — who inspired and
abetted the massacre of over 2,000 Muslims in the 2002 pogrom — is the
darling of the unscrupulous corporate world, is not surprising.

Gujarat is a state where Kalinganagar-style shootings do not happen (12
dalits and adivasis were killed in police firing on 2 January, 2006 in
Orissa while protesting a Tata Steel project); where Singur-style protests
won't be witnessed even when 1,100 acres are given away for a song. Before
expressing "revulsion" at their "endorsement of Narendra Modi", the petition
of the Davids humours the Goliaths: "I am proud of the brands you represent
that have made India proud. I am one of the burgeoning Indian middle-class
that share your aspirations of mutating India from indolent elephant to
thundering tiger."

The petition has over 3,000 signatures featuring several prominent Indian
public intellectuals, academics, publishers, artists, writers, lawyers and
many who would call themselves 'secular' in that quaintly Indian, holdall
way. The petition is being promoted on Facebook pages, email lists, and
other social networking sites. To be counted as a 'progressive' person, one
had to sign up. On one page of the petition, ICICI Lombard solicits for
insurance. On another page, a Tata housing ad featuring Kapil Dev pops up.
Befitting.

There are two reasons why we should not sign the petition and join this
fellowship of the selectively righteous.

First, it assumes that the model of corporate growth that the Tatas, Ambanis
(the heirs of the Polyester Prince Dhirubhai) and Mittals stand for and
their brands make most Indians proud. The petition, despite being drafted
after the Satyam fraud unspooled, willingly overlooks corporate
irresponsibility on several counts. If Ratan Tata, Anil Ambani,
Kumaramangalam Birla and Sunil Mittal had not endorsed Narendra Modi, would
their style of corporate capitalism be any less culpable? What do we do with
Ratan Tata who was recently batting for Dow Chemicals — Dow, that had
purchased Union Carbide for $9.3 billion as a wholly-owned subsidiary; Union
Carbide that was responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak that left more
than 15,000 dead and 1,50,000 disabled? When Dow refused legal or moral
liability for the Bhopal disaster, Ratan Tata, as chairman of the
Industrialist and Investment Commission, wanted the $46- billion chemical
giant to be absolved of all liabilities. He even wrote letters to the then
Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the PMO, and Planning Commission
Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia pleading Dow's case. Protestors in
Bhopal sought to boycott all Tata products. This was not a
switch-off-yourmobiles- for-a-day kind of boycott.

If Ratan Tata could seek to absolve Dow of any culpability in the killing of
15,000 and the 'legacy issue' of the 1984 disaster, why would he remember
Gujarat 2002?

In the 1990s, conscientious consumers sought to boycott Eveready batteries
produced by Union Carbide. Eveready's retort was the 'Gimme Red' ad campaign
— celebrated for being ahead of its time. The brand has thrived, and Amitabh
Bachchan was roped in as brand ambassador in 2006. Eveready is said to hold
a 47 percent marketshare of the Rs 1,500 crore dry cell battery market.

Let's look at the material reasons for Ratan Tata's love for Narendra Modi.
Tata Motors gets a soft loan of Rs 9,570 crore at a negligible interest of
0.1 per cent to shift the Nano project to Gujarat. Repayment is deferred for
20 years. In all, the Modi Government has offered over Rs 30,000 crore in
sops to Tata Motors. So Ratan Tata says, "You are stupid if you are not in
Gujarat." Martin Macwan, a human rights campaigner in Gujarat, compares this
with the compensation offered to Dalits who have been forced to do manual
scavenging. To quit the profession and seek an alternative livelihood, the
state offers them a rehabilitation package — a bank loan of Rs 80,000 at 11
percent interest. Stigmatised Dalits, forced into a subhuman occupation for
generations, are asked to pay hundred times more interest for a pittance of
a loan. With which they sometimes open a tea stall. From which no one would
drink tea. India officially has 7,70,338 manual scavengers and the state is
the biggest employer.

The Ambanis have always loved Modi. Since Dhirubhai's days, they have
actively colluded with right-wing Hindu religious leaders in Gujarat such as
Ramesh Oza and Murari Bapu. Meera Nanda notes in her forthcoming book that
while Modi granted 85 acres of land close to the Porbandar airport to Oza's
Sandipani Vidyaniketan — a temple-'rishikul' complex, a school for rishis —
Dhirubhai Ambani provided the financial resources for raising the building.

The second reason to oppose this rather unintelligent petition endorsed by
the 'secular' intelligentsia owes to its poor understanding of ethics and
politics. The petition concludes with the plea that "India Inc adopt an
ethical, compassionate path to wealth creation rather than the single-minded
pursuit of the bottom-line." If only these industrialists had not endorsed
Modi as prime ministerial material, it appears the rest of their pursuits of
wealth are justifiable, for they "make Indians proud". Crucially, the
petition seeks inspiration from Mohandas Gandhi. The underlying assumption,
rather received knowledge, is that Gandhi stood for an ethical,
compassionate approach to wealth making. This erroneous perception owes to
mythmaking about Gandhi, the saint.

Celebrated today as an anti-imperialist icon owing to his role in the
anti-colonial struggle in India, and also for his critique of
industrialisation propounded in his Hind Swaraj (1908), Gandhi was
essentially a social conservative. This was BR Ambedkar's main charge
against Gandhi for his endorsement of caste and varnashrama dharma. But let
us focus here on Gandhi's swarajist economic policies and his collusion with
the conservative industrialists of his time. Gandhi's friendship with
Ghanshyam Das Birla (1894-1983) was a mutually beneficial affair. Birla was
a source of limitless finance for Gandhi. In a letter to Birla on 10 January
1927, Gandhi wrote, "My thirst for money is simply unquenchable. I need at
least Rs 2,00,000 — for khadi, untouchability and education. The dairy work
makes another Rs 50,000. Then there is the Ashram expenditure. No work
remains unfinished for want of funds, but God gives after severe trials.
This also satisfies me. You can give as you like for whatever work you have
faith in." As Sarojini Naidu sardonically noted, it cost a lot to keep
Gandhi poor.

IF THE local Congress office today arranges quilts when Rahul Gandhi and UK
Foreign Secretary David Milliband decide on some poverty tourism in a Dalit
ghetto, such window-dressing was the task of the Birlas when Mohandas Gandhi
decided to occasionally spend time in 'bhangi' bastis. Margaret
Bourke-White, the Life photojournalist who chronicled Gandhi, notes that
half the residents of the ghettos were moved out, and the huts prettified
before Gandhi's visit. Dinanath Tiang of the Birla Group rationalises the
improvements in the Dalit colony to White thus, "We have cared for
Gandhiji's comfort for the last 20 years." Cooked food for Gandhi would also
be sourced by the Birlas. Gandhi believed it was "the Brahmin's duty to look
after the sanitation of the soul, the Bhangi's that of the body of society."
It was such reasoning that made him describe scavenging as the "most
honourable occupation" and the bhangi "while deriving his livelihood from
his occupation, would approach it only as a sacred duty. In other words, he
would not dream of amassing wealth out of it." It was this patronising
attitude and hypocrisy that made Ambedkar fume, "The special feature of
Gandhism is to delude people into accepting their misfortunes by presenting
them as the best of good fortunes."

Since the petition calls for a token one-day boycott of telephone and
Internet services provided by Tata, Mittal and Ambani, we need to recall
Gandhi's call for the boycott of British products, especially the use of
cloth made in Britain's mills. While he propagated the use of hand-spun
cloth, he beat a retreat when this advocacy conflicted with Birla's
interests as an owner of mills.

In 1928, when Gandhi complained that people were buying mill-produced khadi
mistaking it for homespun, Birla read this as a veiled criticism of his
mills and riposted, "Do you not think that you are unnecessarily
exaggerating the results of the khadi propaganda? You could find this out
yourself if you send hawkers with mill-made as well as shuddha khadi who may
ask some villagers to select their choice after explaining the latter
properly about the quality as well as the price of the cloth, I have not the
least doubt that if you made the experiment you will find that 90 per cent
of the consumers will pick up the cheaper and more lasting of the two
stuffs. Mill khadi is popular because people find it cheap, durable besides
it being swadeshi make."

Leah Renold, an American scholar who has examined Gandhi's relationship with
GD Birla, says Gandhi did not wish to precipitate the issue for he was
financially dependent on Birla, his patron, in whose palatial Delhi home
Gandhi stayed for over 25 years. She says, "Gandhi never allowed the khadi
issue to become an object of contention between himself and Birla. Instead
he found a place for mills in the khadi movement." In 1930, Gandhi wrote to
Birla, "I am convinced that the boycott will be successful only through
khadi. This does not mean that the mills have no place in the scheme at all.
The mills can have their deserved place by recognising the worth of khadi.
The conception of God envelopes all Gods."

The swadeshi industrialists whom Gandhi blessed would conveniently betray
the 'nationalist' cause of the Congress when it suited them. Following the
Quit India movement of 1942, Indian business leaders, including JRD Tata and
GD Birla, submitted a memorandum to the Viceroy saying, "We are all
businessmen and therefore we need hardly point out that our interest lies in
peace, harmony, goodwill and order throughout the country."

Ambedkar's indictment of Gandhism was severe. Drawing our attention to
"Gandhian attitude to strikes, the Gandhian reverence for Caste and the
Gandhian doctrine of Trusteeship by the rich for the benefit of the poor,"
he characterises Gandhism as "the philosophy of the well-to-do and the
leisure class." It is not surprising that Gandhi, whose poverty was a costly
act sponsored by Birla, is someone the

conservative classes in India look up to time and again. Bourke-White's
investigations revealed that workers in Birla's mills had genuine grievances
— their demand for a cost of living bonus to meet rising prices was met with
gunfire and rifle butts. When the workers petitioned Gandhi in December
1947, he merely forwarded their letter to Birla. Bourke-White, on visiting
Birla's mills, found the conditions to be appalling and wonders in her book
Halfway to Freedom (1949) why Gandhi would not visit the mills and verify
for himself. The mightiest of Davids was sitting in the comfort of cushy
bolsters in the palace of a Goliath — Birla House. Thinking of which, the
petition insults our intelligence even with the myths it evokes, forcing us
to use the dangerous David (Israeli) versus Goliath (Palestinian) similie at
a time when Palestine has witnessed a brazen terror attack by Israel.

IN THIS SENSE, the online petition is a genuine tribute to Gandhi and his
endorsement of gestural politics — a guiltexpiation exercise that is
essentially Gandhian. The drafter of the petition says, "It is not an easy
task for us to keep our cell phones and Blackberries switched off for an
entire day on January 30, the 61st anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's
assassination. However, it ought to be sufficient to get the message across
to corporate India that we will not tolerate the endorsement of fascists as
future prime ministers."

This is a post-Munnabhai tokenism, no different from SMS polls or
candlelight vigils sponsored by television channels. Would this consumerist
class, proud of its Blackberries and broadbands, attempt a complete boycott
of Reliance/Tata/Mittal products? A true boycott is what the
African-Americans led by Martin Luther King effected for over a year, from
December 1955 to December 1956, known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott against
segregation in buses. This boycott seriously affected the profits of not
just the public transport system but the entire economy. In India, the
Dalits can barely dream of a similar boycott, for they are themselves
subjected to social and economic boycott by caste Hindus if they assert
their humanity.

Only a class that has some economic clout can effect a serious boycott.
Would the signatories to the petition be willing to create a Montgomery-like
crisis for our homegrown capitalists? How many would not buy a Nano since
its low price-tag is going to be heavily over-subsidised by Modi and perhaps
cross-subsidised by the 11 percent rate of interest that rehabilitated
manual scavengers are forced to pay? Corporate capitalism and religious
extremism ain't strange bedfellows. As they copulate, they produce a mutated
class that deludes itself into believing that observing cellular silence for
a day would be just enough sacrifice.

>From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 4, Dated Jan 31, 2009