Guru Purnima Has Its Roots in Buddhism and Jainism, Not Hinduism

Guru Purnima Has Its Roots in Buddhism and Jainism, Not Hinduism

By Jawhar Sircar

(The Wire 28 July,2018)

Though gurus have been an integral part of the ancient Hindu tradition, the celebration of a specific day purnima in their honour in the month of Ashadha has its roots in Buddhism and Jainism. Gurus no doubt got respectful mentions in the Rig Veda (hymn 4.5.6) and in the Upanishads (chapter 4.4 of the Chhandogya) and in chapter 3 of the Taittiriya or in chapter 6 of the Shvetashvatara. Even so, there was no mandate under ‘Hinduism’ to set aside any particular date for guru-worship. Ashramas or pathshalas were the ‘boarding schools’ usually for the entire period of a student’s childhood and early youth, i.e the brahmacharyya phase.

There is no evidence of any fixed date or month on which the student joined – and the only criterion was that they had to be Brahmans. There were, of course, some gurus like Dronacharya, who taught specific skills to other select upper-caste boys from Kshatriya families such as the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The sheer caste bias of education in ancient India is best exemplified by the story of Eklavya, a tribal youth, who had to chop off his right thumb for mastering mastered archery, which was considered ‘illicit’ as he did not belong to the upper caste.

Buddhists, however, considered Guru Purnima the beginning of the season of Varsha, or Vassa as it is called in Pali, when monks, both young and old, had to leave human habitations and seek refuge in distant caves and monasteries. Popularly known as the ‘rains retreat’, this full moon was the definitive day for the monsoons to have reached all parts of India, even though the coastal areas surely receive their rains much earlier. This small but significant practice indicates that the entire subcontinent followed certain common protocols and that there was a definite recognition of the ‘idea of one India’. It also speaks of the principles of ‘adjustment’ and ‘accommodation’ that united far-flung people, separated by vastly differing agro-climatic zones. Where Buddhism and Jainism were concerned, some of the courses were open to other devotees who were interested in pursuing religious studies or select scholastic disciplines or were just keen to meditate.

In a manner of speaking, Guru Purnima marked the beginning of the mandatory 36-week ‘trimester courses’ under the guidance of Buddhist experts. Contemporary Jainism also began their Chaturmaas or four-month period of piety, which some strict Jains continue even today. Jains believe that it was on this very purnima that Tirthankara Mahavira ordained Gautama Swami of Gandhara as his first discipline. There is an equally strong Buddhist belief that a month after receiving his ‘enlightenment’, Buddha delivered his first sermon – called the Dhamma-Cakkappavattana Sutta – to his five former companions on the full moon day of Ashadh at Sarnath and that he spent the first four-month Vassa at Mulagandhakuti. The Sinhalese Buddhists still practise Vas or ‘rains retreat’ though their calendar is adjusted to their monsoons, while the Thais call the period from July to October as Phansa and observe it rather religiously. Other Theravada Buddhists like the Burmese also observe Vassa, and Mahayana Buddhists like the Vietnamese Thiens and the Korean Seons fix themselves to one location, just as the Tibetans are supposed to.

Hindus have been rather adept in adapting the best practices of the other two better-organised religions. After all, these two monastic religions had the benefit of subsided, resident intellectuals – to debate regularly on sacred texts and on social issues. Hinduism was less organised as a religion and lacked a proper definitive structure before Shankaracharya and other great acharyas arrived more than a millennium later. The story of Vyasa Muni came in much later, along with the Guru Gita, a 216-verse ode to gurus. We also have Adi Shankara’s Upadeshas, but historians date it to almost a millennium and a half after Buddha and Mahavira. Other texts that glorify Guru Purnima, like the VarahaPurana, seem to have come even later. But even if Hinduism caught up later, there is enough evidence that Guru Purnima as a festival was in vogue at least three centuries before the arrival of the Christian or present era.

Monastic Buddhism and Jainism realised that it was best that non-producing classes and peripatetic monks stay away from unnecessarily venturing into wet, snake-infested fields and forests during monsoons. The four months of Shravana, Bhadrapada, Ashvina and Kartika could even be trimmed to three months depending on the regional character of the rains and local needs.

The gurus also required economic sustenance for their very existence; the emphasis on the practice of daana or gifts was, therefore, essential. Notably, the Bhakti movement, which was at its peak in north India between the 14th and the 16th centuries, was also led by gurus of all castes. The gurus helped in endearing popular ‘non-Brahmanical’ Hinduism to the masses, and this also led to reinforcing Guru Purnima as a universal festival.

Another utility of the gurukul system was that it nurtured music and dance to a degree that no other educational arrangement could ever achieve. There is no doubt that for almost eight centuries, the differences between Hinduism and Islam were narrowed down as far as dance and music were concerned. Sufi silsilas in India followed systems akin to gurukuls, and their khanqahs, where teachers (Murshids or Sheikhs) taught generations of Mureeds in theology and culture, were often better-organised than gurukuls and less personalised structures. In culture, as distinct from education, the term Ustad is usually the Muslim counterpart of the Hindu Guru or Pandit. This guru-shishya tradition was really instrumental in sustaining and nourishing our musical and performing art traditions – through the vagaries of political and social upheavals. The democratisation of culture that took place in the 20th century after the patronage of nawabs and kings ceased could also never have been achieved without the highly personalised system of gurukuls. It is, therefore, not surprising that while educational institutions have switched to ‘Teachers’ Day’ to honour the teaching community, Guru Purnima is celebrated with greater enthusiasm in gurukuls.

We need to understand the real India that is personified by these gurukuls when on Guru Purnima no difference is made between Muslim Ustads and Hindu Pandits. Both are deeply revered and respected with equal sincerity by their students, who consider them as almost divine.

Another interesting fact to note in the context of gurus is that Indian history is replete with examples of how rakshasas and asuras have periodically disturbed the tapovanas and gurukuls of sages and their students, prompting brave Arya-putras to kill them and, of course, expand their civilisation. Why they needed to court danger is not the point; what is fascinating is how the indigenous people were systematically dominated through such conflicts that usually resulted in the victory of so-called Aryandom. Without gurus and sages venturing deeper into unknown terrains, the kshetras of Sanskritic way of life could not replace the vana-based cultures, in such a determined manner, over several centuries and millennia.

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Subservience over Efficiency: The Prime Minister & Civil Service 'Reforms'

Subservience over Efficiency: The Prime Minister & Civil Service 'Reforms'

By Jawhar Sircar

(The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, 20.07.2018)

In 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office he could have—and should have—pushed through urgently required structural reforms to improve India’s conservative bureaucracy¹. He had an unprecedented mandate and had charmed voters into believing that he would cleanse Indian governance as none before him ever had².  In reality, however, he appeared quite comfortable with the creaky bureaucratic apparatus that he had inherited, for he had assumed that his first-hand experience in running it at the State level for over a dozen years would suffice. But the fact is that the two sets of administration in our federal set-up, the Union and the State, are actually as different as chalk is from cheese³. This is not only in terms of scale: what distinguishes the two bureaucracies are their totally different world-views and consequentially, their approaches to governance. In a State, a Chief Minister can operate through select bureaucrats who swear personal loyalty to him—or her—rather than to democracy, and may do wonders⁴—though many of these Gujarat myths⁵ are now being busted on closer scrutiny⁶.

But this personal fiefdom model clearly does not work in the national capital of 1.35 billion people. In a rather impersonal Delhi, systems matter more than rustic loyalties, and experience, not just genuflecting, counts. Prime Minister Modi is finally realising this, after his disastrous demonetisation botch-up, the several hit-wickets over the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and his failure to move the economy upwards even when blessed with the lowest-ever international petroleum prices. This partly explains why he has chosen the last of his very secure five-year term to tinker around with the bureaucracy. After four years of relative peace, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in particular, and the civil services in general, are suddenly being targeted for overhauling. Not a week passes without some bright idea being floated or an order being issued. A spate of recent announcements, however, call for a closer look and the moot point is: will these usher in revolutionary improvements in the functioning of either the bureaucracy or democracy or will the proposed measures help consolidate the iron grip of one person or a party?

But why did Modi decide to lean so heavily on the bureaucracy from the day he took over as Prime Minister? The reply is simple: he needed a set of people who could carry out his commands without question. The Secretaries to the Government of India were his points-persons, and Cabinet Ministers were told this quite unambiguously. For widely differing reasons, he behaved as if his Ministers, save a couple of lucky exceptions, were hardly worth relying upon.

This is not a sweeping generalisation: I can cite many instances to substantiate this observation, from my experience of running Prasar Bharati, a mammoth public institution, for two and half years in the Modi regime.  For example, the sudden, unwarranted and controversial decision in October 2014 to broadcast on Doordarshan the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat’s traditional Dussehra Day speech to his cadres was obviously taken by the Prime Minister himself⁷. No one was consulted in an 'autonomous organisation' and it was thrust upon all, including the protesting CEO of the public broadcaster. The Information and Broadcasting Minister appeared to have been left out of the loop, and incidentally, this is the same Minister who was ordered by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to return home to change from the jeans he was wearing to some more appropriate dress, before boarding his plane for his foreign tour.

It was made clear to everyone in Delhi that Modi's ministers were not his colleagues—they were his subordinates. He was much more than primus inter pares or first among equals. After all, it was he who had ensured that his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), almost single-handedly, had won an absolute majority in Parliament in 2014. In one sweeping order, he abolished the 68 Groups of Ministers (GoMs) though which the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government operated, deciding all inter-Ministerial issues and problems through consensus. It signalled that the Prime Minister would take the call after consulting the Secretary of the concerned Ministry and if required, the Minister—but the last was rare.

In a theatrical gesture, he had kissed the steps of Parliament for countless cameras to capture the moment when he entered its portals for the first time, but none of his subsequent actions revealed any fondness for parliamentary democracy. Not surprisingly, his cohorts took their cue from him and sang the virtues of the American presidential system. The otherwise communicative Prime Minister chose not to be present in Parliament most of the time and when he did attend, he very rarely participated in the debates. But more important is the fact that even though he wielded enormous, unprecedented power, Modi did not utilise it to abolish the feudal habits of the bureaucracy, and re-invent it for the 21st century.

After all, the same machinery had served avaricious post-Mughal rulers. More or less the same bureaucracy was taken over by Warren Hastings and Cornwallis in the latter half of the 18^thcentury, once they snatched the reins of power. The colonial duo did place a few white men on top but they also manipulated this feudal bureaucracy for their own purposes of extortion and repression and to facilitate their own unjust enrichment. The new 'nabobs', as the British overlords were called, set up hundreds of 'circuit houses' to hold peripatetic revenue courts (on their 'circuits') in the interior and built countless inspection bungalows to strengthen their control and bring rural India to heel. 

As Prime Minister, Modi was given the opportunity to surgically cut through the ailing parts of this vast bureaucracy, this colossal pyramid. But he chose not to. Instead, he used technology to seek explanations directly from District Magistrates in this 'federal polity', bypassing the constitutionally approved layers. Over the next few months, it became increasingly clear that he was an unabashed centraliser who did not believe in 'cooperative federalism', one of the many catchy phrases he popularised, only for effect.

Indeed, his centralising⁸ of all decisions, postings, and transfers was not only unprecedented, but it often resulted in deadlocks. Critical posts of heads of national-level institutions were kept vacant for several months and years—even as they went to seed—and all important boards and committees took even longer to fill up. Decisions had to await his personal attention but he was forever on tour—bestowing embarrassing bear-hugs on every foreign leader he met. He did introduce a new and subjective '360 degree assessment system', but this was to ensure that those he did not want were not promoted as Secretaries or Additional Secretaries. He also brandished a weapon called 'repatriation' that had been used very rarely in the past. In the last four years, more IAS, Indian Police Service (IPS), and Central service officers have been sent back to their States or cadres from the central government than in the preceding four decades put together. Cabinet reshuffles have been infrequent, but reshuffling of Secretaries, Additional Secretaries, and Joint Secretaries are so regular and unpredictable that it has started to demoralise the bureaucracy. But these tactics do not qualify as structural changes.

On its part, the bureaucracy soon mastered the art of survival. Many bent backwards, in contorted yoga postures, to applaud every 'scheme' that the leader announced. Most of these schemes were just rehashes of earlier or existing schemes, renamed with much fanfare by the Prime Minister and his coterie. Total personal loyalty and unusual subordination could just not ensure efficiency and delivery. No advice was either sought from (or given by) 'professional administrators' who had spent a lifetime in drafting and implementing complex schemes and projects. Else, an administrative disaster like the demonetisation of currency notes could not have either been conceived or rammed through. It also explains why no senior official was held responsible for this Himalayan blunder. Modi and his protege from Gujarat, Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, decided everything in total secrecy. The chatteratti of Delhi spoke of how the Finance Minister himself was not kept informed of its details and the Banking Secretary was never in the loop—which explains why the banks floundered for want of a determined line of command. More recently, Arvind Subramaniam, the government's senior most economist, submitted his resignation to go back to the U.S., just as Arvind Panagariya, the former vice chairman of Niti Aayog, did a while back. But then, these economists have already gathered enough material to write their best-sellers.

Subverting the UPSC's methods 

It is against this backdrop that the Prime Minister's proposal of May 20, addressed to all the Ministries, is alarming. It suggested that the Department of Personnel and Training, which Modi heads, should finally determine the fate of candidates who successfully clear the extremely difficult civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). He wants the allocation of the three All India Services, the IAS, the IPS, and the Indian Forest Service as well as the 17 to 20 Central Services to be done by the training institutes that successful civil service candidates report to for the first 100 days, rather than the UPSC.

Currently, the UPSC uses its time-tested 'rank cum option' system to allocate the service for successful candidates. But if the new system is enforced, a successful candidate who qualifies for the three All India Services, where a 'State cadre' has also to be determined, will have his—or her—fate determined by the training academies, not the UPSC alone. This, is even though the current system has worked well for seven decades.

All officer-trainees undergo their common training, known as the Foundation Course (F.C.) at the training academies, of which the 'mother' training institute is the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie. Unfortunately, as the LBSNAA can no longer accommodate all the successful candidates, who now number around 1,000 to 1,200, some officer-trainees do their F.C. at new training centres located in other cities. This is a pity because the F.C. period is the only time civil servants from different services stay together and acquire life-long friends, beyond their own service or cadre. 

Apart from the fact that it is not clear how these multiple training institutes will standardise their assessment grades in just three months, what is causing concern is that successful candidates may spend the entire F.C. period currying favour with their trainers to ensure they move upwards to more coveted services or careers. Or that open political jockeying will be the order of the day to help enterprising candidates jump from the middle of the list to the top—as Modi's department will then matter more than the UPSC. 

However, the Prime Minister's 'decision' may not pass the test of judicial scrutiny if it is carried out as Article 320 of the Indian Constitution empowers only the UPSC to recommend and decide the postings of officers to different services and State-cadres. But if this case goes to a 'considerate bench' in the Supreme Court, anything can happen. Indira Gandhi bullied the judiciary and encouraged some judges to crawl and be rewarded. The key point, however, is that Modi chose to impress upon all civil servants, once again, that he is the boss, and he will decide their fate and future, even if the first experiment is likely to be after the next general elections.

For the last 70 years, the UPSC has been following a very rigorous, transparent process, inviting applications from some hundreds of thousands of aspirants. In 2016, some 11,35,943 candidates applied for the UPSC's 'Preliminary' examination and 4,59,659 actually took the examination. Only 15,445 were selected to take the next very tough series of 'Final' examinations. After that, the UPSC constituted interview boards with highly qualified experts — vice chancellors, retired civil servants, top scientists, army generals and other specialists — to grill the cream of the candidates that emerged through these two stages. In 2016, only 2,961 were called for the interviews, and 1,209 were finally recommended by the UPSC for appointment to the civil services. Thus, only one out of every 940 aspirants made it to some service, with just one out of every 4,000 or so 'general category' aspirants qualifying for the IAS. It is important to note that there are four categories of 'posts' in each service, reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC), the Scheduled Tribes (ST), the Other Backward Castes (OBC) and the residual 'General' lot. 

The UPSC also scrutinises the 'options' submitted by individual candidates for specific services of their choice, in terms of vacancies available for each service under these four categories. For those who opt for and also qualify for the three All India Services, there is the additional option for the State cadres they prefer, and these choices have to be done precisely in conjunction with the limited number of posts available under each category (SC,ST, OBC, General) for each of the 23 services. Even the UPSC does not claim that its system is perfect, but it has earned credibility and is the best we can get. The fact that the UPSC selected less than 200 for the IAS and the Indian Foreign Service out of the 4.6 lakh aspirants who appeared for the preliminary examination does not mean they are 'superior' — it just means that they scored better in a specific set of tests. 

Joint Secretaries as lateral entrants

The second 'bouncer' was lobbed on June 19: ten 'professionals' would be inducted from the open market at the 'cutting edge' level of Joint Secretaries in the Union government. By declaring these 10 posts to be contractual in nature and not on the permanent rolls, the government conveyed its intention to bypass the constitutionally laid down imperative of getting the selection done only by the UPSC. Earlier governments had brought in professionals from outside like Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Vijay Kelkar, and Jairam Ramesh, but without such fanfare. They were all highly qualified individuals with impressive educational and work experience, just as the post of Chief Economic Advisor is usually filled by foreign-based economists, even after 70 years of Independence.

The civil services were not alarmed at their entry or even when these economists did not return to their universities in the U.S., like ex-Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu or former Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan did. They hardly noticed the trickle of such contract-based employees who often bypassed the UPSC rules and took no note when their terms were extended under various provisions, or they moved from job to job, within government. It was only when some of these 'professionals' reached ministerial status and rose even higher, that the regular bureaucrats woke up. But then, these 'professionals' were well qualified and so very few in number. Moreover, they were not 'regular Joint Secretaries or Secretaries' who replaced officers from the IAS or other services — they were just 'special adjuncts'.

This time, however, hackles have been raised because the advertisement is for 'regular Joint Secretaries' and is quite vague about their qualifications. Indeed, it looks like a case of testing the waters before the real reason emerges. It is worth noting that many of the earlier crop of professionals subsequently joined politics, which is one of the several concerns expressed after the present advertisement was issued.

To appreciate better why 10 Joint Secretary-level market recruits have become the subject of so much discussion, let us try to understand what this is all about. The highest official in the Government of India is the Secretary in charge of a Ministry: there are usually around 70 to 80 such posts for a total of 50,000 civil servants. They, in turn, control some 60 lakh government employees of other grades. Eight or so of these Secretary-level posts are usually occupied by scientists and other specialists, such as the Secretaries in charge of Atomic Energy, Space, Science and Technology, and Statistics. The real cutting edge of the central government is, however, at a notch or two below, as the Secretary is usually busy with meetings, briefings, parliamentary demands, important policy decisions and ceaseless fire-fighting or attending to ministers. Thus, the ubiquitous Joint Secretaries — roughly 470 of them — actually run each critical vertical in the Union government.

Ten lateral level entry Joint Secretaries may be too small a number to worry about, but it is also too small a number to make a difference, if that is what Modi desires. Of course, it is not clear, how much power they will be given because Modi has an established record of showering disproportionate favours on those members of Delhi’s establishment who swore undying loyalty to him before he became Prime Minister. He, however, would certainly crush any civil servant or economist if he or she began to develop links with the Opposition now, in the manner in which certain high flying individuals had done.  The best known case perhaps is that of Bibek Debroy (now Chairman of the reconstituted Economic Advisory Council reporting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Niti Aayog Member)⁹  who, as a member of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (1997-2005), had written what became a game-changing report for Modi: he had written a research paper, along with Laveesh Bhandari) that was published by the RGICS. That paper created a controversy as it rated Gujarat as the number one State in India in terms of providing economic freedom. The paper's findings were used by Modi,  who was then Chief Minister, to come out with a full-page advertisement extolling his government. Many people see it as the beginning of talk of the Gujarat model that helped Chief Minister Modi power his way to Delhi as Prime Minister Modi. There are also civil servants who were favourites with the previous regime, who have now shifted their "loyalties" to the Modi government. That is the fear: are we heading for a situation in which individuals who are willing to insinuate themselves into any administration will be recruited in one shot to carry out ‘special tasks’ that even the most ‘accommodative’ of most serving bureaucrats would baulk at?

The media is, however, not fully correct when it says that the IAS is threatened by the possibility of 10 external professionals coming in laterally at the Joint Secretary level. The IAS no longer dominates the Joint Secretary-level appointments, as the other services have secured their rightful positions. Moreover, most States (like Gujarat, when Modi was its Chief Minister) are unwilling to let their officers go on deputation to the 'Centre'.

The Opposition, instinctively, has smelt a rat, seeing in this move (of lateral entry into the service) yet another attempt to 'saffronise' the administration with these 10 lateral entrants, with more to follow.The CEO of Niti Aayog, Amitabh Kant, who has emerged as a spokesperson for this government on administrative issues, has pronounced that we need to be “flexible” and "transparent" in selection, without elaborating on either of the words¹⁰. The Secretary of the concerned department and authorised officials of the PMO, however, have maintained silence on the subject, which has fuelled more concerns. The Niti Aayog's CEO also announced that more lateral recruits would be taken in, at the level of Deputy Secretary or Director in the central ministries. An occasional breath of fresh air is surely desirable, if one is sure of the quality of 'professionals', not just their loyalty. But what is critical is that safeguards need to be put in place to ensure that a 'lateral entry' Joint Secretary is not a stooge of a business house who will be adequately rewarded by the house for extending favours to it, once this low-paid term is over.

Senior civil servants — even of the regular variety — have been known to alter government policies to suit certain business interests, even if this causes losses to the exchequer. A disturbing piece of news that one hopes is not true is of a just-retired Secretary of the Human Resources Development ministry, who drafted the controversial rules to accord the 'centre of excellence' tag to even unborn universities. It is reported that he is currently employed by the same business leviathan that stands to benefit from this rather illogical rule. The media says that the government has been unduly kind in granting special permission to this favoured bureaucrat to serve his new employer before the quarantine period was over¹¹. Orwell's dictum comes to mind, that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". After all, the business house is so close to the centre of power.

These 'breaches' of conduct are rare among regular civil servants who get a pension. But what of those who come from the private sector and will return to it after three years? There are many other areas that need clarity and the pronouncement made about more such recruitments to follow, needs to be spelt out in greater detail and placed in the public domain or before Parliament

It is almost certain that the UPSC is out of the selection, as these 10 are supposed to come in for three-year contracts, in which case it is not mandatory. Even so, entrusting the UPSC with the selection may be less controversial, and it could conduct special but transparent examinations, as it has done earlier. Transparency in selection is critical, because the maximum salary of some $3,000 a month and the usual "car and a flat" (even in south Delhi) is unlikely to excite the interest of professionals settled abroad. Incidentally, only three of the 70 to 80 Secretaries in the Government of India occupy the much-envied bungalows in Lutyens' Delhi and Joint Secretaries are allotted modest flats, compared with what private sector honchos are accustomed to. We are not even discussing the utter humiliation that many public servants have to go through at the hands of elected politicians and their acolytes — in the name of democracy.

In addition, given that thousands of senior posts are lying unfilled because of the constitutional compulsion to reserve almost half the number only for eligible SC, ST, and OBC candidates, the present regime must clarify whether the recruitment of these 10 lateral entrants will follow reservation norms. Or else, 'contract employment' may well be misused to defeat the reserved quotas, as the Dalits have pointed out.

No one says that the government does not require lateral entrants at each level to bring in special skills: we already have two Secretaries selected from the open market. At the same time, IAS and other officers — many of whom are toppers from the IITs and IIMs or qualified doctors, lawyers, or economists — also need to be encouraged to specialise, after their district phase is over. But professional specialisation of IAS officers has not been encouraged by Modi’s own tightly-controlled personnel department or by State governments. As a result, these highly-qualified professionals and university toppers are usually made to move from atomic energy to gobar gas — without being allowed to acquire the desired degree of 'specialisation'. This is where Modi could have made the historic difference: he could have encouraged specialisation and professionalisation among the highly-qualified existing officers who, additionally, have 20 or more years of 'hands on' experience in administration from the village level upwards, before being selected as Joint Secretaries — through a tough process of weeding out.

Repeating an old order

And, most recently, the Union government wrote to the States asking them to ensure that IAS officers at the level of Secretary and Additional Secretary are henceforth assessed on their attitude towards the weaker sections of society. This is quite superfluous as this provision was  embedded in the All India Services Conduct Rules a long time ago, and has since been one of the major criteria on which 'performance' is judged.

If the Prime Minister needed to send placatory signals to the weaker sections of society — that are quite disappointed with him and his government — he could very well do so on his weekly radio broadcast, Mann Ki Baat. It is doubtful whether former Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani's scandalously insensitive handling of Rohith Vemula's suicide or the repression let loose on Dalits after the clash at their Bhima Koregaon anniversary or even the attacks and murder of carcass flayers will be forgotten, because such a legal provision is being reiterated. But the high-handed manner in which State partners in our federal set-up were literally ordered to agree immediately to this order or face political humiliation is characteristic of Modi’s regime. The shots were, sadly, fired from the shoulders of the IAS.

Equally important is the mention that Secretaries and Additional Secretaries would be assessed on both "financial integrity" and "moral integrity". But this is not only not a new provision, a small but viscous number have always managed to prosper under corrupt political masters. There are exactly 5,004 IAS officers in India, of whom some 65 to 70 make it as Secretaries in the Union government — and Modi has certainly failed "to improve their efficiency". Even though civil servants are constantly under multiple surveillance, the vexatious existing procedures for convicting any government official (not only those in the IAS, IPS or IFS) are self-defeating. Thoroughly upright seniors cannot punish their corrupt juniors at present, because of processes that take decades and exonerates most. The 'dreaded 3 Cs', the CBI, the CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) and the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General), can hardly function effectively as they are hamstrung by the same dilatory procedures. Yet, the 'the 3 Cs’ are either a reason for serving officers refusing to take risks or for really injecting terror — without, in fact, being able to check corruption so rampant in the bureaucracy. 

Modi would have been better served if he took a break from his 'loyalists' and consulted the very few 'reformist Secretaries' who are beyond fear or favour. The creaking bureaucratic system, a product of our 'Soviet' period that preceded economic liberalisation, is screaming out for reforms. For instance, a simple 'out of the box' solution is to hold secret ballots periodically in every government office, to create a reliable database of 'marked officials' — those whose financial or moral integrity is in question. Everyone in the office knows who they are, but the honest majority suffer in silence as these nefarious elements are favoured by every regime. Many of them are also the most litigant ones and some also lead employees' unions. They can make life miserable for their colleagues or superiors by manufacturing spurious complaints against them.

Once such a database is created through a series of 'secret ballots', the government would have evidence that even the courts would accept and would not have to wait for the bribe to be taken or a woman to be actually molested. It could direct the attention of the investigating agencies to the leads provided by this data and go hammer and tongs after the 'marked officials' — and not plod on as at present only after formal complaints are lodged. Instead, in Modi's regime, an officer like former Coal Secretary H.C. Gupta was convicted and awarded a jail sentence, even though all his colleagues swear that he was an honest officer who may just have slipped up.

If we agree that the UPSC's highly competitive examinations still select the best candidates possible, we need to examine what happens thereafter. Young officers are thrown into a system where they are brutalised by the political class and unscrupulous seniors, resulting in many among them becoming corrupt, callous, inefficient or simply lazy. Every government since Independence — including this most hyped one — is equally guilty of permitting the political class to bully civil servants and traumatised them into inactivity, connivance or even cash partnerships. The vast majority has simply been numbed into compliance. Modi really did not need to curry favour with the dirtiest layer of the political class, as he could make or break anyone. He missed his tryst with destiny by mesmerising himself with his unreal oratory¹² and in dressing up unapologetic narcissism as state policy¹³. Modi could have used his electoral mandate to institute permanent civil service reforms. Instead, he allowed himself to be distracted by other preoccupations and then scrambled in his last year, to tighten a screw here and a nut there — only to ensure that his personal power and glory increased, at any cost.

Consequentially, the corrupt tax officer extorts even more and the slothful sleep during office hours. He has bludgeoned the top layer of the bureaucracy but has failed to elicit their confidence in rebuilding India, shoulder to shoulder. His crudely communal approach to governance may not have elicited horror from serving officers, most of whom are terrified of 'Big Brother' watching them all the time, but retired officials rose up against a Prime Minister and his regime's impropriety as never before in India's history. His government will surely go down in history as one which spread fear amongst insecure civil servants for no productive reason, but one where sycophants achieved dizzying heights, while upright, imaginative and innovative officials went unconsulted, unwanted and unrewarded.

References:

[All URLs last accessed on July 19, 2018.]

1. Veerappa Moily, Union Minister and author was entrusted in 2005 to head the Second Administrative Reforms Commission and after four years, he has produced 15 volumes of report and recommendations — that were not acted upon by either the UPA or the NDA governments. Return to text.

2. India Today. 2014. Full text of Narendra Modi's speech in Delhi on Jan 5, 2014, January 5. [https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/bjp-pm-nominee-narendra-modi-speech-baba-ramdev-161259-2014-01-05].

Excerpts from Mr. Narendra Modi's speech at Baba Ramdev's rally in Delhi, reported in IndiaToday online on 5 Jan 2014. (1) "Bureaucracy's hold is getting strong and the BJP is working hard on this". (2) "We were not born for posts but to do something in life." (3) "Most governments come and work day and night on how to win the next elections. But with Gujarat's example, I say everything is possible." Return to Text.

3. Maheswari, S. 1992. Problems and Issues in Administrative Federalism, Allied Publishers. Return to Text.

4. Shah, G. 2013. Politics of Governance: A Study of Gujarat. Studies in Indian Politics. June 1. Vol. 1, Issue. 1, pp. 65–77. [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2321023013482788]. Return to Text.

5. Leading the Modi fan brigade are Bibek Debroy's Gujarat; Governance for Growth & Development (2012, Rediff Books) and Uday Mahurkar's Centrestage: Inside Narendra Modi Model of Governance (2014, Random House). While the first hagiography earned the economist a permanent seat on Modi's high table, the latter was a calculated primer for Modi's style of governance, meant for Delhi analysts, media persons, middle men and bureaucrats. Return to Text.

6. Ghatak, M, and Roy, S. 2014. Did Gujarat's Growth Rate Accelerate under Modi?, Economic and Political Weekly. April 12, Vol. 49 (15): pp. 12–15. The Economist of London has exposed several other claims. [http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/mghatak/EPWModi.pdf]. Return to Text.

7. Anuja. 2014. RSS chief’s speech shown on Doordarshan, stirring controversy, Live Mint, October 3. [https://www.livemint.com/Politics/vAvPYrSC6P4mYMazJy87BI/Doordarshan-telecasts-RSS-chief-Mohan-Bhagwats-annual-speec.html]. Return to Text.

8. The Indian Express. 2014. Full Text: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on 68th Independence Day,  August 16. [https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/full-text-prime-minister-narendra-modis-speech-on-68th-independence-day/].

Mr. Modi justifies his centralisation in his first Independence Day speech from Delhi’s historic Red Fort in August 2014 thus "I have started making efforts at making the government, not an assembled entity, but an organic unity, an organic entity, a harmonious whole - with one aim, one mind, one direction, one energy." The Indian Express, August 16, 2014. Full text of PM’s speech. Return to Text.

9. Bibek Debroy had earlier been Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies, and given a glowing report on Gujarat. Return to Text.

10. Razdan, N. 2018. Lateral Entry Will Be For Finest People In The World: NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, NDTV, June 11. [https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/niti-aayog-ceo-amitabh-kant-lateral-entry-will-be-for-finest-people-in-the-world-1865876]. Return to Text.

11. The Times of India. 2018. Ex-secretary not in conflict over Jio institute, says HRD ministry, July 12. [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ex-secretary-not-in-conflict-over-jio-institute-says-hrd-ministry/articleshow/64954109.cms]. Return to Text.

12. It is painful to compare his negligible achievements  in administrative reforms with what he promised, say at Varanasi on December 22, 2013 : “we want to bring development, it can happen - brothers-sisters, the biggest problem before the country is good governance - we got 'Swarajya' but we didn't get 'Surajya'; didn't get 'Susashan' - from this very land of Maharashtra, Lokmanya Tilak had given a Mantra, "Swarajya Mera Janmasiddh Adhikar Hai" - brothers-sisters, the nation fought with "Swarajya Mera Janmasiddh Adhikar Hai" - and we got 'Swarajya' - today, the need of the time is - that we all demand that 'Surajya Mera Janmasiddh Adhikar Hai' - before Independence, 'Swarajya' was our birthright, after Independence, 'Surajya' is our birthright” India Today, December 23, 2013. Return to Text.

13. Gupta, A. 2012. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India, Duke University Press. July. [https://www.dukeupress.edu/red-tape]. An excellent example of corruption and the bureaucracy may be seen in Gupta’s Red Tape, especially in chapter 3 on ‘Corruption, Politics and the Imagined State’ pp. 75-110. Return to Text.

(Please Click Here to read thearticle on The Hindu’s Website)

The Jagannath Rath Yatra Is a Reminder of How Inclusive Hinduism Can Be

The Jagannath Rath Yatra Is a Reminder of How Inclusive Hinduism Can Be

By Jawhar Sircar

(22.07.2018, The Wire)

This year, the July 14-22 period has been dedicated to Jagannath and to his annual Ratha Yatra, which has been described somewhat inadequately as the ‘Chariot Festival’. The rites associated with the journey of Jagannath and his two companions from the great temple and their return nine days later has been recalled.

But can we look beyond the trappings and festivities of this annual ritual of the Hindus, and grasp the essence of an eternal Indian tradition of accommodation? Once we succeed in extricating ourselves from the ‘hold’ of these very attractive tourist and television packages around both the deity and his festival, and, of course, observe matters other the the overwhelming religiosity of the masses, we may be able to see more clearly the real plural nature of Hinduism. This accommodative aspect of Hinduism needs to reassert itself, without the further loss of time, and overrule the strange intolerant brand that is currently marketed by some terribly locked minds – primarily and shamelessly for votes.

To begin with, let us note how the roughly chiseled stump of wood called Jagannath keeps flaunting a historic right to differ — by remaining proudly aniconic in the midst of a Brahmanically-approved pantheon of anthropometric deities. No hands, no feet — the deity reminds us that the religion of our forefathers was not a closed club, but that it was forever open to all forms of gods, cults, beliefs, rites and even remarkable oddities. It is remarkable how millions jostle each year just to get a touch of the holy cables that tug the impossibly-heavy ‘wooden buildings on wheels’ of Jagannath and his two companions. This act of piety was deliberately misinterpreted by the white colonists as ‘mass suicide’ by pagan Hindus who threw themselves under their murderous heathen god, the unstoppable Juggernaut. It is sad but true that such grotesque imageries, conjured by the ill-informed, usually reach people faster and go deeper into unsuspecting believers — whether in the past or at present — and they continue to stoke the desired repulsion and dread.

In a way, the mythology of Jagannath that unified the lowest and the highest strata in medieval Odisha, centuries before the Bhakti movement began in northern India, represents the spirit of Hinduism. We can surely trace the core of this cult and the deity to the Savara or Saura tribes of Odisha that worshiped wooden stumps with no human features — the sthambeshwar or khambeshwari. More so, after Heidelberg University’s impartial research led to the same conclusion, though there are some who claim that it was the Khonds, not the Savaras, who were actually the original worshippers. But even today, we come across a special class of non-Brahman priests of Jagannath in Puri, called Daita and Soaro, who claim to be the descendants of the original Savara ritual practitioners who were absorbed into the expanded version of the ancient cult.

The moot point is that by accepting the deified wooden stump of tribal Odisha and elevating it to the regal pantheon of ‘high Hinduism’, sometime around the 12th century – as Jagannath or the lord of the universe – India’s classic tradition of assimilation scored a historic victory over those who sought to confront the ‘other’ and to crush ‘adversaries’. Like other major Hindu rites, festivals and pilgrimages, Puri’s Ratha Yatra also reveals both the adroit skills and the subtle mechanics of how divergent demands on the idea of India were harmonised. But then, we must also remember that there always exists a conservative core in all religions, even Hinduism, that bemoans the easy access to the almighty that its democracy confers on the masses and even in Puri, some social groups still suffer restrictions. Even so, this open, mass-based religion stands in stark contrast to the obscurantist casteism that reared its head, in the name of ‘pure’ Hinduism, recently in western UP or in Bhima Koregaon.

Unlike most other famous religious sites that claim that their deities are ageless antiquities, just too ancient or pracheen to be dated, Puri never made such exaggerated assertions. After all, everyone knows that the stumps of neem trees that represent Jagganath and his two companions are changed every 10-20 years. In fact, they celebrate it through a rather ornate ritual called Nabakalebara – literally, leaving the old body and the consecration of a new one. It begins with an elaborate search for the ‘holy tree’ that is conducted by a large team consisting of different types of priests. In olden days, it was led by two inspectors and some 30 police officers and even now, police and other government officials consider it an honour to be of some service to Jagannath. Once the right tree is located and a yagna is performed, the tree  is felled and carted to the temple. Traditional hereditary sculptors work in secret for 21 days and nights and the old idols are buried in secret again.

Hindus deities come in both human form and in non-human representations like the Shiva linga. Jagannath stands somewhere halfway between this anthropomorphic and aniconic forms. Though tribal worshipers did not insist on it, later Hindu traditions carved two outstretched arms so as to lend some human touch. The huge eyes that stand out in the three divinities are, of course, painted on the logs.

One of the reasons for the immense popularity of the cult is its democratic nature and the historic practice of taking the deities out of their sanctum sanctorum, and directly to the masses. The Puri temple is one of rarest among the major Hindu temples that takes the original deities out of the sanctum-sanctorum, as other temples usually bring out in public processions only iconic representations of their deities called Utsava-murtis.

As is well known, the three idols are mounted on extravagantly decorated chariots and taken out in the bright fortnight of Ashadh. They travel some two kilometres away to the Gundicha temple, stopping on the way at their ‘aunt’ for Jagannath’s favourite Poda Pithaa. It is interesting to note how religious rituals like these re-enact historic agreements between different socio-economic groups and these halts and the return journey a week later appear fascinating to researchers. Jagannath’s open public procession strengthens mass participation, irrespective of caste and class, and this is right from the medieval period – marking it rather unusual in a hierarchical religion like Hinduism.

Incidentally, the three rathas are constructed afresh every year from the wood of some special trees that are brought all the way from Dasapalla, a former kingdom. Historically, the heavy logs were set afloat on the Mahanadi river and collected at Puri – to be crafted by hereditary carpenters. Every part of the exercise is planned and executed in such an elaborate manner that it defies the normal ad hoc nature of Indians. It is clear that the apportionment of rights, duties and privileges in such religious festivals represent critical aspects of the great and complex treaty among so many sets of people and profession – a social treaty called Hinduism

Incidentally, though numerous tribal worships were absorbed all over India throughout history, we hardly ever come across any direct record, as Brahmanism obliterates the trail of evidence and is careful enough not be caught with the ‘smoking gun’. In Jagannath, however, we have a rare but irrefutable record or proof of what anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose described as ‘the Hindu method of tribal absorption’. This is how ethnic and linguistic groups actually rose above their own inherited beliefs, deities and worships and ‘accommodated’ the other, by accepting what they treasured the most – their gods. After all, without these ‘local treaties’ and ‘acceptances’, divergent groups could hardly share the common water and till the same earth – or live in harmony under the same sky.

This inexorable process of getting together oceans of humanity was basically the task of a religion that was stamped as Hinduism much, much later. The crux is that this religion essentially offered a common platform to different and often conflicting sets of values and beliefs. There is no doubt that the cult of Jagannath combined practices, beliefs and contributions from Buddhism, Jainism, tribal religion, Tantric worship,  residues from Saiva and Sakthi cults, within the paramountcy of Vaishnavism.

The tale of Jagannath has always attracted a lot of attention, as his metamorphosis and gradual assimilation of several religious traditions has been far better documented than other major cults and pilgrimages. Amorphous myth and hard history do meet at frequent intervals as inscriptions and recorded narratives substantiate quite a lot of the claimed timeline – which accords considerable comfort to the scientific researcher, who is otherwise so ill at ease in other worships. Several fascinating origin tales abound – like the Skanda Purana that mentions one King Indrayumna of Avanti who dreamt of the great deity called Nila Madhava or the blue Krishna who was worshipped at the Nilachal or blue mountain. Many of us who are distressed with the dominant trend of obliterating  borders between fact and fiction in India can surely do more than just bemoan the unscientific temper and tone down our acquired abhorrence for messing around with nebulous religious subjects – because after all, it is we who left the domain wide open to fanciful speculators like P.N. Oak and to those who made a fantastic living from selling untruths.

We need to take a relook at the unofficial academic taboo observed mainly by anthropologists and historians against delving seriously into those subjects that matter the most to Indians – epics, puranas, myths, gods, heroes, heroines and other characters. Too long have disciplines like philosophy, literature and ‘oriental studies’ dealt with them and too long have we heard the raptures of those who are more religiously-inclined as they discover and rediscover gems from their ‘real’ or ‘hidden’ meanings – as they reinforce the unreal with so much passion. We need value-free researchers to connect the many hazy dots that lie all over the landscape – to link and refute or accept the assertions of myths with their plausible historical interpretations – as we do in the case of Puri.

We can surely now transcend the Western view that Hindu festivals like Puri’s Ratha Yatra were too heathen to be considered, for these are positions that are used by the present Hindu Right to inflame passions. We may recall, for instance, that William Bruton, the first Englishman to visit Puri in 1633 declared it as “the mirror of wickedness and idolatry”. Thus began the European tirade against the deity and even in 1900, we come across W.J. Wilkins condemning the Ratha Yatra as a “disgusting and demoralising exhibition”. At the same time, we must commend the serious studies by Heidelberg University’s Sud Asian Institut in the 1970s and 1980s under its ‘Orissa Research Project’. It involved field  studies conducted by several German scholars that examined the cult – quite scientifically but with empathy – that came up with very interesting evidence and interpretation of this syncretic tradition. The point is that these historical and anthropological models of research could very well be done by Indians, or else we would be forever captive to ‘pride and prejudice’.

An enlightened chief minister like Harekrishna Mahtab did open a debate by declaring in 1948 that the Jagannath cult had really originated from Buddhism. There was a hue and cry but light followed heat. Historian and Odisha specialist Rajendralal Mitra had said the same thing much earlier, as did British scholars and historians like W.W. Hunter, Alexander Cunningham and Monier Monier-Williams. Faxien, the Chinese pilgrim, had mentioned in the early fifth century that Odisha and the Puri region were strong bastions of Buddhism and that there was a famous festival in Dantapur where a relic – a tooth of Lord Buddha – was carried in a great public procession every year. There are not only strong Buddhist links but Jain influences as well, and historian Kedar Nath Mahapatra declared that the Jaina Tri-Ratna tradition had influenced the worship of three deities in Puri – Jagannath, Balabhadrananda or Balram and Subhadra. But there were historians on the other side who had equally powerful arguments against giving too much credit to Buddhism and Jainism. The issue was finally settled, stating that the cult was not fully Buddhist in its origins, but that it was surely subjected to profound Buddhist influence. The three deities, they claimed, actually embodied the Triguna of the Gita – sattva, rajas and tamas.

Puri features as one of the four legendary dhams or centres of Hinduism that are believed to have been set up by Adi Shankaracharya. It also has an iconic mutt or monastery constructed in the 12th century by the Vaishnavite saint, Acharya Ramanuja. The temple chronicles of Puri, the Madala-panji, say that Raja Ananga Bhima of the eastern Gangas constructed the existing temple in the first half of the 13th century. But the Dasgopas inscription mentions that it was Choda-ganga who set it up two centuries before. The German scholars, on the other hand, mention that Yayati the First started building the temple 100 years before this. The early inscriptions refer to the deity as Purushottam, and he must have taken at least a couple of centuries to get fully absorbed into Hinduism and bring his two companions into the temple. The Purushotham-Kshetra Mahatmya has interesting stories of Vidyapati meeting the chief of the Savaras for a glimpse of the original deity, Neelamadhava.

Though we are not sure about the exact historical dates, there is no doubt that the Jagannath cult was responsible in uniting the Odia people of all classes and castes under one common worship, at least from the 13th century. This hardly happened anywhere else in India, as caste and class still dominate and it explains why Odisha offered united resistance to successive invasions by the Turks and Pathans, for almost 400 years after the 12th century. Neighbouring Bengal has a different history altogether – as the 12th century Sena dynasty of Kannada Brahmins suddenly tried to turn a rather flexible society towards orthodox casteism and other forms of religious rigidity. This was resented and for about two-thirds of the Bengali-speaking people who reside currently in West Bengal, Bangladesh, Tripura and Assam, their forefathers forsook this closed, hierarchical version of Hinduism for a more accommodative Sufi-led Islam.

In the 16th century, we see how Sri Chaitanya left Bengal for good and moved to Puri as he believed that Jagannath was the real fountain of all inspiration. Not too many modern Indians remember that for several centuries, priests and propagators from Puri visited numerous families in their homes all over India to sing praises of Jagannath and to exhort people to make a pilgrimage to Puri. Ratha Yatras were copied in many states, and in south Bengal, the one at Mahesh is said to be six centuries old. Local variations abound, and the ratha of Mahisadal in West Bengal is welcomed with gunshots. But behind religion stands economics – it is essential in all religions everywhere. Ratha Yatras usually come with colourful fairs – the Ratha Melas – where piety and commerce combine with a lot of fun, frolic and food.

At the end, we must remember that it is neither wood nor stone that determine the phenomenal popularity of any worship, but it is its universal appeal and exceptional traits that really stand the test of several millennia and thrive. It is accommodation that characterises Hinduism and we need to repeat this repeatedly to fanatics who are trying to hold it captive and are exhorting Hindus to be intolerant. Authentic Hinduism can, after all, never seek to bludgeon others into submission – to some imagined ‘Indian culture’ – nor does it legitimise xenophobia. Puri’s Jagannath proves, for instance, that Hinduism excels in the wondrous management of contradictions and is a vibrant example of how the religion reaffirms through ritual the essential plurality and accommodative character of Hinduism.

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