Month: September 2022

A mildly edited version of this post, written jointly with Akshita Bhadauria, appeared on News18 here.

Earlier this week, the residents of Varanasi found themselves facing massive restrictions as they prepared to go about their daily lives. The state government had imposed Section 144, and tightened security everywhere. A local court was scheduled to announce its judgment in the controversial and highly awaited Gyanvapi case. The administration did not want to take any chances. Eventually, with some 250 police personnel guarding its premises, the court pronounced its decision, which went in favor of the Hindu side. 

So what did the Hindu side win? Did they get the right to worship inside the Gyanvapi complex, as the five Hindu petitioners had requested? Not exactly. The court merely ruled that their suit was maintainable, and not subject to dismissal under the 1991 Places of Worship Act. In other words, the Hindu side did not win anything, just the right to present their arguments before the court. 

So this is going to take a while. Separate court cases on whether to  allow videography of the premises, whether to admit the videography as evidence, and so on. Each case may be judged and appealed at multiple levels, from the local court to the High Court, and most certainly the Supreme Court. Note that the remnants of the temple which was demolished to build the mosque are still clearly visible to all, and the case could be decided at a glance. But one has to trust the “system.” The first suit in the Ram Janmabhoomi case was filed in 1855. The case was finally decided in 2019. Because the state must be “secular.” And so, the Hindus must wait.

On the flip side, here is what also happened last week. The largely Hindu residents of Thiruchendurai village in Tiruchirapalli district of Tamil Nadu woke up to find that all their ancestral land now belonged to the Waqf Board. Not just some specks of land here and there, but the entire village. Because it now belongs to the Waqf, the villagers can no longer own nor sell their land. From now onwards, the land can only be used for Muslim religious purposes. 

The homes and lands of some 7000 mostly Hindu families. All gone. Along with a temple which is said to be 1500 years old, and thus would predate Islam itself. How can this happen in a constitutional republic with rule of law, a country with legally recognized property rights? How can this happen in India, where land acquisition is always the biggest hurdle for any new project? Because in the secular state, all religions are equal, but some religions are more equal than others.

How the Waqf Board can take away your land

Under Section 40 of the Waqf Board Act of 1995, the board can take away any property, anywhere in India, that the board has “reason to believe” might be Waqf property. First of all, what is a Waqf? Roughly speaking, it means a property that has been donated for Muslim religious charities. Unlike most property, it is inalienable, meaning that its ownership cannot be transferred or changed, including by the Waqf Board itself. This is how those unfortunate villagers in Tamil Nadu came to discover their plight. Someone tried to sell their land, which is when the local authorities informed them that they no longer owned it. The Waqf Board now owned it all. 

Now here is where it gets really scary. Who decides whether a piece of land belongs to the Waqf? The Waqf Board does. Once they decide it is theirs, the ownership of the property is instantly transferred to them. They may or may not even inform you. Usually, the Waqf Board writes directly to the local authorities, informing them that some piece of land is now Waqf property. If you receive a notice, be aware that the land already belongs to them legally. 

No, you are not entitled to compensation. On the other hand, you are now an encroacher, and the Waqf Board may impose financial penalties on you. In fact, the Waqf Board even has the power to impose penalties on civil servants for failing to prevent encroachment of whatever the board believes is Waqf property. From time to time, the Waqf board carries out surveys of the state to find out what land and property they might wish to take away. The cost of these surveys must be borne by the state government. That is the law.

Surely there must be some curbs on the sweeping powers of the Waqf Board, right? Well, before the Waqf Board takes away property, there has to be an “investigation.” Who will conduct this investigation? The Waqf Board itself. Could you appeal against their decision? Yes, but only before a tribunal of Islamic religious scholars constituted by the state government. Again, the law is clear that there is no right to appeal against the decision of this tribunal, even before a High Court. 

In short, could the Waqf Board take away your land or your house tomorrow if they wanted? Yes, they probably could. And there is basically nothing you can do about it.

In the 1990s, a wave of legislation took away rights of Hindus

In popular imagination, the story of Ram Janmabhoomi at Ayodhya is usually seen as a situation where the Hindu side prevailed. The mosque no longer stands there, and a grand Ram Temple is scheduled to come up at the spot. For most common Hindus, it is a triumph of faith. For anti-Hindu elements around the world, it is proof of the rise of  “fascism.”

But something is missing from this picture. In the period leading up to and the aftermath of the demolition of the mosque built over Ram Janmabhoomi, there was a wave of panic legislation that took away rights of Hindus. The first of these is the Places of Worship Act of 1991. The act provided that the religious character of any place in India (with the possible exception of the mosque at Ram Janmabhoomi) cannot be changed from what it used to be on Aug 15, 1947. In other words, Hindus would not have any right to negotiate about their religious sites ever since the day Indians first got to have their own representative government. If the British left things a certain way, Hindus would have to accept that for the rest of time. How is that fair?

The Waqf Board Act of 1995 is in the same spirit, only even more outrageous. Let alone places of worship, the Waqf now received sweeping powers to seize the homes and lands of people anywhere in India.

A disturbing historical parallel with separate electorates

In 1916, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League came together to present a joint proposal to the British for a form of self-government in India once World War 1 ended. One of the compromises reached between the Congress and the Muslim League was to provide for separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims. This came to be known as the Lucknow pact.  Later, the British went back on the promises made to Indian leaders during the war. But separate legal statuses based on religion were here to stay.

How are the members of the Waqf Boards, which own over 7.5 lakh immovable properties across India selected?  They have to be chosen from Muslim members of Parliament, state Assemblies and Bar Councils. There are other members too, nominated or selected in various ways, but they have to be Muslims. The separate electorate mentality haunts us even today. 

An undeclared partition?

Compare the sweeping powers of the Waqf Board to the condition of the Hindu side which will likely still wait untold centuries for a real verdict in the Gyanvapi case. An obvious double standard emerges here. One group can just take whatever it wants at any time. Another group must file a case even to argue its case before a local court. 

The detractors of modern India like to complain about something they call “undeclared emergency.” But this looks more like an “undeclared partition.” Hindus and Muslims both living in India, but effectively under two separate legal systems. It is actually worse than that. While laws governing the majority community are made by the secular state, the minority community makes its own laws. This means that the minority religion is state-sponsored, while the majority religion is state-controlled.

The undeclared partition applies not just to our property rights and places of worship. It covers every aspect of our personal life: marriage, divorce, inheritance and even our bodily autonomy. And the system hurts those who are the most vulnerable among us. A recent Delhi High Court judgement, made according to religious law, ruled that a minor Muslim girl can “choose” to live with her “husband” if she wants. We are in the year 2022. India can certainly do better than this.

A lightly edited version of this article (written with Akshita Bhadauria) appeared in Firstpost here.

Let us begin with three representative examples. Since 2016, the central government has embarked on the Char Dham highway project. This is an ambitious design to expand 900 kilometers of roads into an all weather highway in the mountains of Uttarakhand. Besides the benefits for tourism and industry, the government argued that it needed the roads to be at least 10 meters wide for army vehicles to pass, in the event of war with China. But environmental groups got into the act. And in 2020, they got the Supreme Court to pass an order restricting the width of the road to just 5.5 meters. 

After a long court battle, the government finally won the right to expand the road in Dec 2021. But think of the years lost in between. And what about the superpower on the other side? Do you think China is waiting for an environmental clearance to build roads and railways that can rush PLA troops to the Indian border? So who benefitted from this delay?

What if we asked the same question about the protests by environmental and church groups that shut down the Sterlite Copper plant in Tamil Nadu in 2018? Some 20,000 people who were employed, directly or indirectly, by this massive manufacturing unit lost their livelihood. Within 2 years, India went from being a net exporter to an importer of copper. Now we are hit with a copper import bill of around $2 billion each year. This money mostly goes to Chinese companies. 

In the most recent instance, there are now widespread protests against the construction of Vizhinjam deep sea port in Kerala. If the port had been completed, it would have given serious competition to Colombo port and Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean. But apparently, the project is leading to coastal erosion, and environmental groups say we can’t have that. Also, the church shares this concern for our coastline, and has thrown its full weight behind these protests. Again, China is so lucky.

We could go on and on with more examples, but the common features between them are already clear. First, India loses out on jobs, economic growth and suffers threats to its national security. Second, there is not much of a BJP vs Congress domestic angle to these protests. The only beneficiaries appear to be foreign interests, generally China. Remember that every delay comes at a cost. Even if protests and litigation are not ultimately successful, they have taken away time, money and resources that could have been used elsewhere. Even when they lose, they win.

How come environmental groups never threaten Western interests?

Now compare this to what is happening in Europe, and much of the western world in general. Ever since the war in Ukraine sparked an energy crisis, they moved swiftly to start their coal fired power plants back again. In an Orwellian move, the European Parliament voted to declare nuclear power and natural gas as forms of “green energy.” The EU also became the top investor in the world’s tallest dam, located in Tajikistan. But farmers in Gujarat cannot have a few meters added to the height of Sardar Sarovar Dam. Isn’t that right?

Where were the environmental groups? They pretended to make some noise. But they fell in line quickly. They tweeted against it, but did nothing on the ground. None of the European moves got bogged down in decades of protests and litigation as it happens here. The so-called civil society knows better than to go against the interests of the countries which fund their activities around the world. Instead, they unleashed a vocal campaign to shame India for increasing its oil imports from Russia!

That is a lot of hypocrisy, you might say. Yes, there is probably some of that. But what if I told you that the truth is much darker? 

The environmental movement was born out of racism

In 1916, a very influential book appeared, titled “The Passing of the Great Race,” written by one Madison Grant. The book theorized that white people, specifically northern Europeans with the lightest skin and blue eyes, were the superior race. With passage of time, the book warned, the dominance of the Nordic peoples would be threatened by an increase in population of other, inferior races. 

But Madison Grant, the author of the book, was no fringe element. Indeed, he was one of the pioneers of the conservation movement, chairman of the New York Zoological Society, and a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History. Back in the day, anyone could hunt or fish or pollute, and there were no rules. Madison Grant and his contemporaries pushed for the US government to set up more national parks, where nature would be protected. They led the earliest conservation efforts, such as bringing back the American bison from near extinction. 

There were others, such as Berkeley professor Joseph LeConte, Henry Fairfield Osborn of Columbia University, or David Starr Jordan, the founding president of Stanford. These were people who made environmental protection part of the public consciousness for the first time ever. In the early 1900s, they ran the Sierra Club, which lobbied against the construction of a dam that would provide drinking water to the city of San Francisco. Sound familiar?

Grant and Osborn and Jordan were among the leading thinkers of the Progressive Era in American politics. During this time, the idea of the government regulating big business, and protecting workers rights and the environment, was born. 

The problem? These thinkers also believed that the government had a duty to regulate the population itself, and get rid of the “inferior races” and “undesirables.” Their reasoning was simple, and chilling. The resources of the earth are finite. As the environmentalist groups say today, there is no Planet B. And so, these finite resources should belong to the “superior races.” For instance, Osborn was also a founder of the American Eugenics Society, which argued that Jews and non-whites did not deserve the same treatment as the Nordic peoples. David Starr Jordan was among the patrons of the Human Betterment Foundation. The aim of this latter organization, quite literally, was to “improve” humanity through compulsory sterilization of those deemed unfit. Other heroes of the modern progressive left, such as Margaret Sanger, dedicated their lives to reducing the population by getting rid of “undesirables,” including poor people, the physically or mentally impaired, and people of color.

It did not take long for these ideas to make their way to the Nazis. The young Hitler wrote a touching letter to Madison Grant, referring to Grant’s book as “My Bible.” Decades later, during the Nuremberg trials, Nazi doctors would cite this book as the “scientific” basis for their efforts to get rid of people and races considered not worthy of survival. No, the environmental movement was not about saving the unicorns and admiring the rainbows. 

Involvement of the church in protests is a form of imperialism

The most curious feature of these environmentalist protests in India is the involvement of the church. Both in the case of Sterlite Copper and now Vizhinjam port, the church played its hand quite openly. But why? From the era of Mussolini in Italy to that of Duvalier in Haiti, the church does not have a great track record of standing up for the rights of common people. From Galileo to Darwin, they do not have much of a track record of standing up for science either. All across the world, but especially in the United States, the Christian conservatives consistently deny the science of climate change. Could they care that much about environmental degradation in Tamil Nadu or coastal erosion in Kerala? 

We tend to forget that the Church is more than just a religious organization. It is also a sovereign state with significant influence in world affairs. It issues its own passports, and has embassies around the world which enjoy full diplomatic immunity. It has its own banks which own large assets, all of which lie outside our jurisdiction. Its bishops and archbishops in India, as in any other country, are not appointed by the local population, but directly by the Vatican. Would we let officers of any other foreign government, be it the United States or Russia or Pakistan, involve themselves so directly in political activity in India?

We have to discuss conversions, which are the stated objective of the Church. Or as the Pope himself put it during his 1999 visit to India, a “harvest of faith on this vast and vital continent.” What does it mean when someone, especially a ruler from Europe, refers to Indians in terms of a harvest? The Church divides India into its own administrative units, called dioceses, and appoints an officer to oversee each one of them, known as a bishop. The job of every such officer is to ‘save’ the local population, by securing their loyalty towards a ruler in Europe. This is just ‘white man’s burden’ all over again. How is this not imperialism?

Hinduism is an indigenous faith tradition, rather a collection of traditions that is thousands of years old. 

The geography of India, its mountains and forests, play an essential role within the faith. The waters of the Ganga, Narmada and Kaveri all play an essential role within the faith. Even our seasons, the crops we grow, the trees and the animals that we have here. A mango leaf would mean nothing to someone in America, for instance. Mangoes don’t even grow there. Hinduism is tied to our land, to Bharat itself.

Once upon a time, the world was full of such faith traditions, from ancient Greece to North America to Australia. One by one, they fell to the influence of Abrahamic faiths, and Communism. In this regard, the Hindu civilization of India stands out, perhaps as a last remaining outpost. As such, political activity by the church, whether under the guise of environmentalism or anything else, must be viewed as a threat to our sovereignty. A form of colonialism, I would say.

And in this respect, one must also question the modern progressive left. The environmental movement in particular, is supposed to be full of ‘woke’ individuals. You say that you are sensitive to past injustices, especially those against people of color. How come you have made common cause with missionaries who intend to strip away an indigenous culture, take away our stories and traditions, even our names until we are all called Jack, John and Mary?

India is a trailblazer when it comes to setting and achieving  climate goals

Do you know which is the only major nation that managed to meet its 2020 emission reduction targets under the 2015 Paris agreement? Ask the United Nations Environment Program, or UNEP. It is India. While developed nations such as the US or Canada and most of Europe lag behind, India forges ahead. By 2030, India has pledged to meet a full 50 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources. India’s installed solar power capacity has grown nearly 10 times since 2014. By 2070, India aims to achieve net zero. 

Anyone who sees the hundreds of shiny new electric buses on the streets of India’s major cities will know that this is a nation that is serious about saving the environment. And why is that? Not because of environmental groups, but because of the values inherent in our civilization. We worship this land, remember? It was given to us by our ancestors. We hold it in sacred trust for our future generations. We want to save this land, not an afterlife.

But instead of being lauded for our climate achievements, India finds itself bullied by environmental pressure groups and the church. They want us to give up our cultural identity, cripple our economy and sacrifice our national security interests. In return, they offer to save our souls.

Or they give us globalist, feel good rhetoric about how we are all in this together. Perhaps we are not. If we were, maybe developed nations would not be lagging behind India in meeting their climate goals. So any time an environmental activist says that we humans are polluting too much, do not let them off so easily. Yes, it is unsustainable, but let us dissect that “we.” Which particular group of people do you have in mind? Who do you think is taking too much? And who do you think is not entitled to the resources of the earth? If you dig into the history of the environmental movement and the incentives of those who run it today, the answers might surprise you.