Stephen King:
We may avoid a 1930s Depression but the best we can hope for may be a 1990s Japan
Monday, 2 March 2009
"Modern bourgeois society ... a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."
Those of you with revolutionary zeal will immediately recognise these words. Penned by Karl Marx in 1848, they form part of the Communist Manifesto. Marx, like Adam Smith before him, had a historical view of society's development. Capitalism, with its bourgeoisie, had replaced feudalism, but capitalism, according to Marx, would be replaced by communism. Capitalism was inherently unstable, as Marx noted later in the same paragraph:
".....the commercial crises... by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production."
Whatever else one thinks of Marx, he certainly knew a thing or two about the business cycle. Were he alive now, he would surely claim his theories were being vindicated. We are, after all, witnessing the most remarkable collapse in economic activity around the world. Take Japan. In November, industrial production fell 8 per cent. That was bad enough. In December, production dropped another 9 per cent. That was even more remarkable. January's production figures, though, are simply eye-wateringly awful, showing a further 10 per cent decline. Production, then, is down almost 30 per cent in just three months, a pace of decline unprecedented in Japanese post-war economic history.
Or how about the US, where we discovered last week that national income contracted in the final quarter of last year at an annual rate of more than 6 per cent, the biggest drop since the early 1980s. Then there's Taiwan, where exports have been in freefall in recent months. Not to mention dear old Blighty, where the economy might end up shrinking by approaching 4 per cent this year.
The pace of decline in global economic output is extraordinary. On virtually any metric, we are seeing the worst global downturn in decades: worse than the aftermath of the first oil shock in the mid-1970s and worse than the early-1980s downswing, when the world economy had to cope with a doubling of the oil price, the tough love of monetarism and the onset of the Latin American debt crisis. Moreover, this time we cannot use the resurgence of inflation as an excuse for lost output: the credit crunch in all its many guises has seen to that. Instead, we have a world of collapsing output combined with falling prices: a world, then, of depression.
For many years, Marxist ideas appeared to be totally irrelevant. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought to an end the era of Marxist-Leninist Communism, while China's decision to join the modern world at the beginning of the 1980s drew a line under its earlier Maoist ideology. In western economies, Marxist ideas were at their most potent after the First Word War when the likes of Rosa Luxemburg could smell revol-ution in the air and as the Roaring Twenties gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s. I'm not suggesting we're entering revolutionary times. However, it seems increasingly likely that the economic landscape in the years ahead will be fundamentally different from the landscape that has dominated the working lives of people like me who entered the workforce in the 1980s. We've lived through decades of plenty, where incomes have risen rapidly, where credit has been all too easily available and where recessions have been mostly modest affairs. Suddenly, we're facing a collapse in activity on a truly Marxist scale. It's difficult to imagine the world's love affair with free markets being sustained under this onslaught. The extreme nature of this downswing will change our lives for decades to come.
The first change relates to the allocation of capital. Increasingly, policymakers are accepting that market forces, left to their own devices, will lead to a race to the bottom. The dangers are becoming greater by the day. Interest rates are close to zero while prices and wages are in danger of declining. If deflation takes hold, real interest rates on cash will start to rise, creating perverse incentives in capital markets. Why bother to buy equities or corporate bonds if you are nicely rewarded for hanging on to an entirely risk-free piece of paper?
The efforts to stop this vicious circle are increasingly focused on bypassing the banking and financial system. As central banks widen the assets they are prepared to purchase to maintain the flow of credit to the economy at large, they are increasingly getting into the capital allocation game. They, and not the market, will at the margin decide whether companies and households are creditworthy. And as governments increase their spending plans to ward off a catastrophic loss of demand, they, rather than companies, will decide on how our savings should be allocated.
The second change relates to an increased national bias in the allocation of capital. As Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, pushes to offer government funding to French car companies on condition they don't outsource French jobs abroad, as US Congress signs off a stimulus package with more than a hint of a "Buy American" policy, and as the UK Government pushes to encourage bailed-out banks to lend domestically as opposed to internationally, we appear to be turning our backs on the previous world of heightened cross-border trade and capital flows. While these flows have undoubtedly been volatile, they have nevertheless allowed emerging economies, in particular, to gain a foothold on the development ladder. Are we about to cast these countries asunder in our desperate attempt to fix our domestic problems?
The third change relates to interference in the price mechanism. When it comes to Sir Fred Goodwin's pension, this isn't so surprising, but the price mechanism extends far and wide. At the microeconomic level, we'll enter a world of subsidised loans with murky political undertones. At the macroeconomic level, countries may take the opportunity to manipulate their exchange rates in an attempt either to gain a competitive advantage or to "default" to foreign creditors.
Some of these changes may be absolutely necessary to prevent an outright collapse in global economic activity (although the rise in protect-ionist pressures is surely a retrograde step). They also suggest, though, that there will be no return to "business as usual" for market forces. The cost of avoiding depression is a heightened level of state intervention on a scale unimaginable for those who believe in the virtues of free markets. While such intervention may help prevent the worst ravages of economic collapse, it will ultimately do little to foster the entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking behaviour which have, in the past, contributed so much to rising living standards. We may avoid a 1930s Depression but, increasingly, we may find the best we can hope for is a 1990s Japan. Not quite a Marxist revolution, then, but certainly a lasting sea-change in economic performance.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Management metaphors are out for the count
By Lucy Kellaway
Published: March 1 2009 20:09 | Last updated: March 1 2009 20:09
Published: March 1 2009 20:09 | Last updated: March 1 2009 20:09
The gloves are off. The creators of business metaphors have been pulling their punches for more than a decade but have now come out swinging. There is a new metaphor in the management ring and, just in case you are too punch-drunk after so many idioms to have guessed what it is, here's the knockout blow: it's boxing.
The latest Harvard Business Review contains an 11-page article telling us that the best way to survive financial meltdown and global recession is to be like Muhammad Ali when he met George Foreman for their Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire.
What the renowned boxer's performance teaches us about thriving in turbulent markets is that we must all be agile and we have to absorb blows. The point is helpfully summarised by various charts, diagrams and a two-by-two matrix with agility up one side and absorption along the other.
Curiously, the HBR doesn't mention any of the things about boxing that immediately come to my mind when I think of it. In boxing, you get beaten to a pulp – which must ring a bell with anyone who is now working on the economic front line. In boxing, you are quite likely to wind up with brain damage if you go on doing it for long enough – and, if things get much worse in the economy, this too may come to ring a bell.
Recently, I read that this bloody sport has become newly fashionable as an activity doled out by the authorities to young delinquents to distract them from drug-taking and knife crime. However, to discover that boxing is now the very latest fashion for management theorists is more surprising still.
The HBR article brings to an end 15 years of peace, love and political correctness by the purveyors of management metaphor. It is the first evidence I have seen from the management guff industry that "soft" is finally on its way out and "hard" is on its way in. Since I started following these things in the early 1990s, there have been three different sorts of metaphors wheeled out by gurus to help explain and prescribe business behaviour, all benign. The first were musical metaphors. There was the idea of a company as an orchestra, with the chief executive as the conductor. Each knowledge worker scraped away at her fiddle or blew his horn, and the maestro waved a thin stick to bring them together in perfect time and harmony.
This metaphor was popular for a while but, as the internet grew, gurus got groovier and decided that classical was out and jazz was in. The great leader must not tell his players how to play but let them jam, be creative and let it all hang out. Presently, even this seemed too square, and in 2002 a Swedish writer said that the CEO should be like a DJ, mixing records to match the mood on the dance floor.
Even more popular than music as a metaphor has been sport. Most of these have been based on the idea that business is a team effort (which we know it isn't, really). Football, rugby, rowing, cricket and baseball have all taken their turn as trendy management theories. For one crazy moment, even the downbeat Sven-Göran Eriksson was rebranded as a management guru.
The only team sports I have never seen a theory based on are synchronised swimming and lacrosse, but I dare say such theories exist somewhere. Sports without teams also get a look-in in the metaphor market, in particular golf, and a weird sled race with huskies that came into vogue a few years ago.
The third, and daftest, seam of management metaphor comes from science. The idea of a business as a stream of DNA always struck me as moronic. The point about a person's DNA is that it does not change. The point about companies and business conditions is that they do. It may be more plausible for gurus to talk the language of evolution and describe companies as complex adaptive systems – or it might be helpful if I could understand what they were driving at. A metaphor is meant to simplify, not to obfuscate.
Finally, there have been some outliers that fit none of the three categories: management as akin to being a top chef in a big kitchen, and management likened to animal behaviour. There have been ape theories, geese theories and even frog theories. The softest – and most famous – was the wretched mouse with the wretched cheese in the parable, Who Moved My Cheese?.
All of these metaphors have one thing in common: they are perfectly useless. I defy anyone to show how any of them has helped us understand how businesses behave or help us get better at running them.
Metaphors can be helpful in grasping something when the thing is terribly complicated. So, when Einstein was explaining relativity, he used a train and a clock to help us understand something that would otherwise have been beyond most of us.
By comparison, business – or the theory of business – is terribly simple. We know what we need to survive in troubled times, and it does not take 11 pages of boxing parallels to tell us. We need to cut costs. We need to take fewer risks. We need to conserve cash. We need to pull out of markets in which we are not successful. We need to fly economy – or not at all. There are two things that we don't need to do: float like a butterfly or sting like a bee.
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Sunday, 1 March 2009
Slumdog: Dilemma of a new India
| 1 Mar 2009, 0151 hrs IST, Deepak Chopra |
| After its sweeping win at the Oscars last Sunday, Slumdog Millionaire seems like the movie everyone wants, and perhaps needs. It has all the ingredients of escapist fare from the Great Depression — a populist hero who overcomes all odds to get the girl and the money. There's an added element of self-congratulation for the West: by seeing this movie, you can see India without getting your hands dirty or offending your nose, and cheer it on. Cinderella didn't walk through tenements and sectarian violence to reach her prince. But in this fairy tale, a concession must be made to modern realities. Dev Patel is symbolic of India here and now, fulfilling its wildest economic aspirations while being conscious of the darkest aspects of social decay and despair. If we follow the metaphor to its logical conclusion, India will get the money and the girl by rising above its slums. Perhaps that's why Slumdog has created an uneasy reaction in Mumbai and the rest of India. Rising above isn't the same as solving. Many well-born educated Indians have looked westward for a long time, which is easier than looking inward. They know more about the streets of London and New York than the teeming lanes of the ghettos in their own city. This is true, of course, among rich elites everywhere, not just in South Asia. Watching Dev cross the social line is triumphant, but it reminds you that there is a line. (Obama crossed the racial line in triumph, also, but notice how much heat his Attorney General, Eric Holder, took when he suggested in less than polite terms that America needs to be more honest and courageous about the whole problem of race.) Like fairy tales, symbols can pacify deep anxieties. India dreams of being a millionaire, but it lives with the anxiety that it's really a slumdog. Or, that the slumdogs will one day rise up against the millionaires. You can read the tea leaves any way you like. Another uncertainty attends the film. Having been made on a shoestring budget, Slumdog managed to outgross any number of big-budget Hollywood films. Last week, it ranked fifth on the US box office while its nearest Oscar rival, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was no longer in the top ten. Brad Pitt, being a megastar, has pulled his film to $122 million, compared to Slumdog's $98 million, but is that really competitive? Ten movies on the scale of Slumdog can be made for the cost of one blockbuster that has yet to pay back its cost. The whole movie industry is watching closely, and the developing world is watching back even more closely. After two decades of action flicks with move-your-lips scripts that were primitive enough to appeal to immature male psyches, here is Asia — via the UK — sending back something sophisticated, poignant, and universal. It's like the ultimate retort to colonialism: the coolie and the wallah have more smarts than the sahib. Indians feel uneasy about that, too. Will the sahib turn his back and shut them out? Do South Asians have enough self-respect and stature in the world to at last forget that the sahib ever existed? We may know the answers in the near future. Bollywood didn't conceive Slumdog. It still purveys mindless entertainment, for the most part, interspersed with small independent films that challenge the West for thoughtfulness and freshness. It's not for lack of talent that India didn't produce Slumdog. But questions of vision and courage do arise. Past history and ingrained inhibitions make it hard for Indian artists in any field to be as frank and true to life as they should be. They have yet to seize freedom. If Slumdog is a viable symbol, the future it points to is just being born. An out-of-the-way picture can dare to be universal, which means that India may dare to be universal one day. The dispossessed people of Asia are suddenly aware that they have a place at the table where previously only the rich dined. Both developments are encouraging. Meanwhile, one can marvel at the bald fact that a Bollywood-style anthem, 'Jai Ho,' won the Oscar for Best Song, while Bruce Springsteen wasn't even nominated. The first Academy Awards of the recession turned out to be, as one headline proclaimed, the first outsourced Oscars of all time. The writer is a bestselling spiritual writer |
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Saturday, 28 February 2009
How Credit Unions Survived The Crash
By Ralph Nader
27 February, 2009
Countercurrents.org
While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.
Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford.
Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks.
They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses? stock options as do the commercial banks.
Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers.
There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or are not provided services by commercial banks.
According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks.
Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those loans."
Mr. Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences," he asserted.
His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way insurance and bank mutuals have done.
The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other sector of the economy,does best when the owner-cooperators are active in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices.
The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions involved.
So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the commercial banks.
Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of imprudence on the credit union subeconomy.
There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this catastrophe.
There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate.
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Friday, 27 February 2009
The world's strangest laws
Did you know it's illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon? Or that in Ohio you're not allowed to get a fish drunk? Alex Wade celebrates the spirit of the silly season with a list of the world's most ridiculous laws
(Kham/Reuters)
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Thursday, 26 February 2009
Priyadarshan the Malayalam film maker on Slumdog Millionaire quoted in the Financial Times
Priyadarshan Nair, an India film-maker, complained strongly that the film makes a mockery of India. "It's nothing but a mediocre Bollywood film, which has used references from several Hindi films very smartly," he wrote in the newspaper India Today at the weekend.
"India is not Somalia. We are one of the foremost nuclear powers in the world, our satellites are roaming the universe. Our police commissioners' offices don't look like shacks and there are no blind children begging in the streets of Mumbai."
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"India is not Somalia. We are one of the foremost nuclear powers in the world, our satellites are roaming the universe. Our police commissioners' offices don't look like shacks and there are no blind children begging in the streets of Mumbai."
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Sunday, 22 February 2009
Babri Mosque Demolition: Why On December 6?
By Ashok Yadav
21 February, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Was it a mere coincidence that the Babri mosque was demolished on December 6? Of course, there are strong reasons to believe that the event was not an act of spontaneous mob frenzy but rather an outcome of a high-level conspiracy. No wonder the issue was utilised by the Sangha Parivar to generate communal euphoria across the length and breadth of the country. Moreover, this euphoria was manufactured and nourished sequentially and saw its logical culmination in the ultimate levelling of the mosque. However, the pertinent question is: what drove the saffron forces to chose this particular date for their heinous act? What was so exceptional about this particular date that it overrode all other options in the 366 days of that year (1992 being a leap year)? A scrutiny of this question, I posit, would unveil the true character of Hindu communalism or Hindutva.
As we are all aware the class struggle between the exploiters and exploited sections continues unceasingly in all human societies. Though at certain critical junctures in history this struggle manifests itself in violent forms most of the time it is fought unabated at the psychological level. This psychological war is fought between the collective/folk memory of the people and the institutionalised memory by the oppressed. The strategy of the ruling classes everywhere and at all times has been to efface this folk memory of the people which is nothing but an historical record of the resistance offered by the people and their heroes to the powers that be. Of course, the oppressors are aware that the oppressed sections get more agitated listening to the tyranny meted out to their ancestors than the fact of actual oppression that they face themselves. Hence the powerful use all the instruments at their disposal to erase this collective memory—from the organs of the state to all the institutions of indoctrination (education) and propaganda (media/cinema). They are also often successful at that.
On the other hand the subject classes strive to eternalise this collective memory by bequeathing it to the successive generations through its own literature, culture, art and folk traditions. In our own times the autobiographies being penned by Dalit authors exemplify this best. They also celebrate and observe the decisive dates in their history or those associated with their leaders (their birth and death anniversaries for instance) to keep the flame of their cause alive. How this memory of tyranny unleashed against their ancestors inspires the oppressed to do something remarkable can be glimpsed in one of the statements by Vivian Richards, a renowned Black cricketer from Antigua in West Indies. Vivian Richards, as we all know, was not only a sportsman par excellence but also a vocal crusader against racial injustice. He once said: Every member of my team is haunted by the memory of white oppression faced by our ancestors for centuries. When we do lethal fast bowling or bat explosively against them it is as if we are extracting revenge from them for those misdeeds and consequently restoring prestige for our race.(Source: Student Federation of India's journal Student Struggle's issue published sometime in 1984-85. Independent translation based on recall of the quotation. )
Hence, we can see how this collective memory often acts as the chief weapon in the armory of the oppressed sections. However, there are certain memories which the powerful can never erase despite their best efforts. In such cases they take recourse to adulterating this memory and channelising it for their own nefarious ends. I contend that on December 6, 1992 when the Babri mosque was razed to the ground similar efforts were made. But I will come back to it later. First a few words on the true character of Hindutva.
The paramount feature of the Hindu faith is the caste system. Moreover, the ideology of Hindutva only nurtures and sustains this system. In Gita, which is accorded the highest place in the corpus of Hindu scriptures, God animated as Krishna states that the varna system is His creation. Besides, all the scriptures of Hindu faith unequivocally support the caste system. It can be further asserted that those sitting pretty at the top of the varna hierarchy have their dominance, superiority, privileges, heaven, salvation, or for that matter everything, secure so far as the varna system operates. How the superiority of the twice-born and their social, political, economic and cultural hegemony can be perennially maintained seems to be the primary concern of the sanatana dharma. Otherwise why do proponents of Hindutva go berserk on the question of 27% reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBC's)?
The real history of India is yet to be written. The central role of the struggle against the caste system in the historical development of this land has not yet been rigorously investigated. This will only become a reality once the Dalit-Bahujan masses undergo a process of Cultural Revolution or, dialectically speaking, it is the very writing of this history that will inaugurate the Cultural Revolution for Dalit-Bahujan masses.
The history of India is an account of the struggles against the caste system. The emergence of Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism or the influx of Islamic and Christian faiths and their acceptability would not have been possible but for the caste system. One may also propose that it is this very exploitative system which is responsible for the historical stagnation of the productive forces and development of knowledge and science in this country. This historical stagnation was however, consciously or otherwise, arrested by the advent of the British colonial state. In this respect the formulations of Karl Marx, Raja Rammohun Roy and Jotiba Phule bear remarkable similarity. In the mediaeval ages many a dalit-bahujan took a sigh of relief at the demolition of the Hindu temples by the Muslim invaders as these temples were also centres of social monopoly power which was no less oppressive and exploitative than the state power. In these temples the entry of shudra-atishudra was prohibited quite unlike the mosques, churches. gurudwaras or monasteries which were more or less open to general masses and they could pray there collectively without a thought of high and low pervading caste society. Even during the heydays of the struggle against British colonialism the banner of revolt against social imperialism was hurled high by people like Jotiba Phule, Narayana Guru, Periyar, Shahuji Maharaj and Babasaheb Ambedkar. Organisations like Bihar's Triveni Sangha multiplied in all parts of the country.
The developments since Independence also narrate the story of this struggle—the protagonists being Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, Karpuri Thakur, Kanshiram, Annadurai, BP Mandal and VP Singh.
The anti-caste proclivities received a great boost when VP Singh government announced its decision to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. In the wake of this move by VP Singh the challenge posed by Dalit-Bahujan masses to the caste elite multiplied many times. Thus they unleashed the genie of kamandal to counter the politics of Mandal. Advani subsequently stormed the nation on his 'Ram-rath' leaving behind a trail of blood wherever the rath crossed. When Laloo Prasad finally arrested him BJP withdrew support from the VP Singh government thereby 'chastising' him for attempting the unpardonable. Communal polarisation and galvanisation by the Hindutva forces gained momentum resulting in the ultimate demolition of the Babri mosque. No wonder, the 'Brahmin' and Brahminist Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao kept himself busy with an afternoon siesta on a wintry day and by the time he woke up the mosque had been razed to the ground.
There seem to be many reasons behind the demolition of the mosque. First, to counter the influence of Mandal by the velour of demolition. Second, to transform the feeling of defeatism plaguing the Hindu psyche due to repeated defeats at the hands of invaders (a consequence of the divisive caste system one may add) into a feeling of glory. Third, to dilute the social contradictions and caste struggle arising out of the assertion of the dalit-bahujan masses by a wider Hindu resurgence and unity. Fourth, the consolidation of the Hindu vote bank by arousing communal passions for BJP in order to achieve the ideal of the so-called Hindu Rashtra and so on. However, when we investigate the reason behind a particular choice of date (December 6) we are informed of at least one more reason.
In the twentieth century the major challenge to Hindutva has been indisputably presented by Dr. BR Ambedkar. This challenge is more ideological than political. Along with Dr Ambedkar two other names can be shortlisted for having contested Hindutva effectively—namely, E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (or Periyar) and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. It is unfortunate that Periyar's influence remained restricted to South India only. Dr Lohia's slogan pichda pawe sau mein sath (let the backward bag sixty out of hundred) effectively challenged the political power of the proponents of Hindutva. The process of social change and consciousness that we witness in North India today, especially in UP and Bihar, would have been scarcely possible without the contribution of Lohiaite ideology. However, one can surely find grounds to critique the contradictions and inconsistencies in his thought regarding Hindu religion, philosophy and tradition. Despite his powerful slogans this lacuna in his thought severely hampers the march of the caravan of social justice towards any meaningful destination. A harmonious integration of Lohiaite and Ambedkarite ideology is therefore imperative to give the much required edge to the politics of social justice.
The Saffron brigade trembles when it hears the names of Ambedkar or Periyar. Afterall, it is they who have bitterly exposed the reality of Hindu faith and have established beyond doubt that this faith is nothing but Brahmanism or the varna system. Both urged their followers not to stop before the complete destruction of this religion. While Periyar swithched to atheism for this purpose Ambedkar advocated disowning of Hinduism and adoption of Buddhism respectively. It is another matter that even Buddhism is silent on the concept of God.
Despite being a constitutionalist Dr. Ambedkar often finds a pride of place in the league of the world's greatest revolutionaries. He stood up to combat a system that had been reigning undeterred in this country for the last three thousand years. He could not have urged the voiceless and powerless untouchables leading a life worse than animals for attempting an armed insurrection. That is why he was a constitutionalist. By investigating meticulously the Hindu religious scriptures and authoring powerful tracts (like Riddles in Hinduism, Annihilation of Caste and Revolution and CounterRevolution in Ancient India), and, also by such powerful symbolic gestures like setting Manusmriti on fire and articulating and voicing the concerns and demands of the untouchables in round table conferences and such forums, he laid bare the hypocrisy, contradictions and inhumanity of the Hindu religion and society in front of the whole world. He did not even deter from engaging in a vitriolic polemic and conflict with a personality like Gandhi in order to secure an independent identity and place for Dalits in the Indian political landscape. On the one hand he managed to pocket a few concessions for the dalits by making his way into the Constituent assembly, on the other he also criticised the Indian Constitution on various counts in no uncertain terms. When he became the first law minister in independent India, he strived and struggled to ameliorate the condition of Hindu society, and especially the pitiable condition of its women, by drafting the 'Hindu Code Bill' and making efforts to get it passed in the Parliament. However, his efforts came a cropper due to the influence of fanatic Hindus in the Congress party and government which were against modern and radical reforms. Now he saw no point in continuing as a member of Hindu society. During all these years he had been postponing the actualisation of his call to leave Hindu religion that he gave twenty years back. All this time he had been genuinely working at reconciliation with his adversaries. But now he could take it no longer. He converted to Buddhism with lakhs of his followers and reestablished the faith that had been exiled from the country of its origin some fifteen centuries back due to the inexcusable crime of challenging the caste system. In other words, Dr. BR Ambedkar now donned the mantle of a modern Buddha.
Until the day the Indian society liberates itself from the tentacles of the caste system his legacy shall continue to inspire the dalit-bahujan masses. It would be a parochial stance if we recognise Ambedkar only as a champion of shudras-atishudras. He is the leader of all Hindus because his primary concern was to liberate the entire Hindu society by breaking innumerable divisive caste walls. The path of liberation, for a Brahmin as well as a scavenger, from this inhumane caste system is ingrained in the theoretical insights of Ambedkar.
This is the only reason why Dr. Ambedkar's life, actions, thoughts and struggle pose such a great challenge for Hindutva. His ideology is a guide to action for the dalit-bahujan masses. However, the efforts to destroy his legacy continue to proliferate. It is to meet such sinister objectives that books like Worshipping False Gods are written by Saffron theoreticians like Arun Shourie. Surely, for them a memory which cannot be erased, a legacy which cannot be vanished, can be surely mitigated by aduleration, illusions and sleight of hand pure and simple.
On December 6, 1992 when the dalit bahujan of the nation was observing the death anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar, remembering his struggle against the brahminical system for establishment of a society based on equality, fraternity and liberty and taking pledge in his name to carry forward the struggle that Dr Ambedkar waged, at that very moment, quite simultaneously, the Sangha Parivar was engaged in demolishing the Babri mosque with the aid of thousands of its cadres and supporters. A countervailing 'Hindu glory' was being forged opposed to Dr. Ambedkar's memory and legacy. Hindutva was making unholy inroads into the dalit-bahujan psyche generally permeated with Dr Ambedkar's legacy till then. By demolishing Babri mosque an attempt was being made to violate and pollute the great memory of Dr Ambedkar. A conspiracy was being enacted to erect a symbol of Hindutva pride, inherent in the demolition of Babri mosque, parallel to Dr Ambedkar's memory, so that every year when on December 06 the dalit bahujan would assemble to commemorate Dr Ambedkar's life and struggle, the anniversary of Babri mosque demolition would also be there as a parallel force to counter Dr Ambedkar's legacy. The demolition of Babri mosque on the same date as the death anniversary of Dr Ambedkar would never leave the commemoration of Dr Ambedkar's death anniversary as uncontaminated. The demolition of Babri mosque on December 06 was an intense psychological war against the dalit-bahujan which was no less lethal or violent than the organised and frequent pogroms against dalits and Muslims.
One may well ask why was Ambedkar's birth anniversary (14 April) not chosen as a date for demolition? The answer is simple. In comparison to his death anniversary his birth anniversary is widely celebrated with much vitality and grandeur. It would have been a risky proposition because then their anti-Ambedkar ideology would have been brought out into broad daylight. They could not have afforded such a big risk at that time. Babri mosque is after all not the last mosque to be levelled. There are other mosques on their hit-list as well. Whenever they find themselves powerful enough to take such a risk they will show the temerity to do so. Why only Ambedkar there are many other icons that give sleepless nights to the Hundutva forces.
In the end, the explanation rendered above is purely theoretical. No concrete proof was available for this assumption. However, later I happened to discover a somewhat similar proof in some extracts of Malay Krishna Dhar's book Open Secrets: India's Intelligence Unveiled published in Outlook (Hindi, 7 Feb 2005):
" On 25th December K. N. Govindacharya called me on phone and expressed his desire to come over for dinner to my house along with two of his friends…After dinner the conversation continued till midnight. I shivered from what I got to learn from my friends. They gave me sufficient indications that the Sangha Parivar was not obverse to the demolition of the mosque and putting in its place a temple-like structure…Why in December only? I asked. Gurumurthy promptly replied that I should read history once again. Did not Mahmud Gaznavi destroy Somnath temple in December 1025?"
It is strange that the author did not ask why only on a particular day in December. It is also possible that the author may have asked the question and would have been promptly replied back that because it is the death anniversary of Dr. Ambedkar, and that he did not share this part of the conversation with his readers for the fear of completely unmasking the mindset of the saffron brigade. Who knows?
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