Idea of a Nation - ii

I think we are living in a time when many non-English speaking developed countries are reassessing their definition of nation. It may soon be an issue with English speaking countries eventually, however, considering English being the global communication lingo these countries are somewhat immune to idea of multicultural nation at present.

Incidentally, today* after reading German Chancellor Angela Merkel's denouncement of multiculturalism I came across this piece by the English author Aravind Adiga's call for action to Kannadigas.

Indian identity, for many, is India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's unqualified observation, "unity in diversity". This rhyming observation has been taken as some kind of unwritten rule. What was lost in this witticism was that the cultural dominance and influence of all diverse identities were not uniform and the diversity was never going to remain a status-quo. I'm sure Nehru might have known, with his vast knowledge of history, that diversity had always been uneven and a dominant unique identity had assimilated many diversities. And isolation have created too many linguistic identities.

Many people of course forget that, in India, linguistic identities have changed for multiple reasons. I would divide the linguistic history of India into two periods.

A. Pre-1950 India: 
In this period there was a lack of idea about nation state and linguistic identity.
1. Migrations:
    There could be two cases, individual migrations and community migrations. The shift in linguistic identity in the case of individuals  could happen in couple of generations. Migrations have changed the linguistic identities of many communities as a whole too.  Based on community strength this would take around 800-1000 years for a such shift in language to happen. I have come up with this number based on herders, artisans, merchants and priests' migration to South India and their migrations within South India.

2. Religion:
    The language of religion can spread through neo converts of different linguistic identity. Many Dravidian converts to Islam had renounced their Dravidian languages to an Indo-Aryan language(Urdu). But this requires a non-native ruling class with which the natives share the religious identity. This may be a quick transition taking around 200-300 years.

3. Sedentarism:
   As tribals make the transition from tribal way of life to sedentary life, they would take up the dominant sedentary language around them. In central India, nearly 50% of Dravidian Gond tribals have taken up surrounding Indo-Aryan languages.

4. Assimilation with caste or religion:
    Through intermarriages the migrant community would take up the native language eventually. However, the caste identity and religious identity may make linguistic identity stagnant (which probably is the dominant case in India).

5. Ruling class linguistic identity:
    The language of prestige is generally associated with the lingo of ruling classes. However, I'm not sure how strong these languages if they weren't represented at least in a section of masses. Even though Persian was the language of the court and that of the royal families during Islamic rule in parts of India, it never became a mass language.

B. Post Independence India
In this period linguistic identities have been legitimized.
6. Language of prestige and commerce:
    This would initiate shift in mobile educated masses. But stagnancy in mobile working class people who speak the language of commerce. English and Hindi are mostly doing that job in India respectively. Applicable to post independence India.

7. Sense of identity:
   This situation is applicable to post-independence India with linguistic states. This situation arises in regions where two linguistic population meet. In such border regions, the language of the province or state would be adopted by the communities quickly, within a generation or two,  if they don't have any strong sense of linguistic identity. However, would be resisted by other communities with a strong sense of linguistic identity. Few years back I read a pro-Kannada writer's (Patila Puttappa) article where the author lamented that in border regions of Maharashtra mostly traditional Kannada speaking communities have switched over to Marathi except for Brahmins. I'm not sure how universal is this case in India since in Andhra Pradesh I have observed many Kannada Brahmins have become Telugus. But if this is true in certain cases, I suppose that boils down to a sense of identity because of their historical literacy in that language.

As we have seen, in modern day India the situation is different from the past. Now the linguistic identities have been legitimized. But there are too many differences across the nation.
 - There is no equal sense of identity across all linguistic groups
 - Also, the cultural identity associated with that linguistic identity is not uniform in many regions
 - Because of numerical strength and reach Hindi has become a dominant language. Its film industry has become its imperial machine by attracting talents from across India (including non-Hindi speakers)
 - Southern states like Tamil Nadu and Kerala because of socio-economic mass movements, that used the movie media and literature respectively (Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu and Communism in Kerala), have given a strong sense of identity even to faceless working classes

With these background, let us consider linguistic regions without any socio-economic mass movements (eg. Karnataka). These regions have to face multiple issues.
- Lack of sense of identity among many groups
- Migration of groups to this region with a strong sense identity and migration of groups with linguistic stagnancy as they speak the language of commerce

According to Aravind Adiga the migrants should feel they own the cultural icons of the land(speaking in the case of Karnataka). Of course, owning cultural icons is something very critical for the development of sense of belonging. Though it wouldn't make sense for a person who wasn't born and brought up in that region, it would be tough for his/her next generation too to embrace the cultural icons. When we know that even stagnant(for few centuries) sons of the soil would embrace cultural icons that are in thing and global(giving a nominal respect to their own icons), it might be unjustified to force  migrant sons of the soil to own local cultural icons.

And there we see a ray of hope to states like Karnataka. Kannadigas should be like Scots and Irish before them or Gauls and Franks before them. Renounce your language. Take up a global language. Retain your ethnic identity. Kannada or Hindi would both limit their growth. Aravind Adiga has shown the way. English is the way to become globally relevant. That hasn't made him a lesser Kannadiga.

* I started writing this post on 17th Oct.

Idea of a Nation - i

"Multicultural society in Germany has utterly failed"
-German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Funny, she thinks multiculture includes only language and not religion. At present I have only one alternative for each, English and Atheism.

Movements and Ideologies - Overview

I was thinking about the causes for success or failure of any movement. I opened the Iranian Revolution page at Wikipedia. Well, that certainly was not the best revolution to understand the causes. The Iranian Revolution was supposedly an exception than a true case for any revolutions to succeed. Anyway, I consider the four causes given in the article as the basis for understanding other movements. According to that article one of these four causes have helped revolutionary movements.

1. Defeat at a war
2. A financial crisis
3. Peasant rebellion
4. Disgruntled military

But I'm more inclined at mass movements and I believe only second and thirds causes can be called genuine. However, considering the Iranian Revolution, I would say a third cause , Threat to identity, can be added for any mass movements. Then there is a fourth factor, a revolution driven by outside wave, should be added. Because sometimes other causes may be secondary. Here, I'm considering all kinds of mass movements revolutionary or otherwise. Also, I consider these causes responsible for both success and failure of a mass movement. My causes for the success or failure of any mass movement;

1. A financial crisis
2. Rebellion of the left behind
3. Threat to identity
4. Driven by outside wave

All these movements need intellectual leadership and ideology. At present I can only think of two such ideologies, Communism and Religion.

Let me look at various countries.
1. Russia
  Ideology: Communism
  Success: Rebellion of the left behind
  Failure: A financial crisis

2. Iran
 Ideology: Religion (Shia Islam)
  Success: Threat to identity

3. China
 Ideology: Communism
  Success: Rebellion of the left behind

4. India
  Ideology: Religion (Hindutva)
   Success: Threat to identity
Comment: It would have been a natural course of action for the caste system or Hinduism to become multiple entities as the middle and lower castes would have become enlightened and would have their own intellectual circle. However, by breaking the nation into two Muslims gave all the castes an anti-identity. This was further solidified by the Hindutvites by blowing up issues like Muslim breeding and Muslim men marrying Hindu women while keeping their own women closeted.

5. Afghanistan
  Ideology: Communism
   Success: No internal causes; driven by outside wave
   Failure: Threat to identity
Comment: In Afghanistan, Communism was driven by elites. We should note that a vast majority of the Afghan society is highly egalitarian (probably, nothing to do with Islam but because of its tribal and non-hereditary leadership structure). So, there was absolutely no room for Communism to make any kind of difference in their life. Thus religious fundamentalists could easily exploit these people.

6. Yugoslavia
  Ideology: Communism
    Success: No internal causes; driven by outside wave
    Failure: Threat to identity

I suppose any new ideology should align itself to one of the above four causes if it has to become a mass movement.

Notes on Dravidian Words - vi

Neuter plural in Kannada:
In Kannada, the neutral gender singluar is adu. The plural form is avu. However, people have generally felt comfortable using avugaLu as the plural form. -kaLu generally form plural of a word in Kannada. Even in places where people use 'avu' for plural, they prefer to add -kaLu in various cases (eg. avugaLige, avugaLannu etc..).

I think the problem arises because both adu and avu were initially neuter singulars. As declensions appeared in languages these took various forms. In many Dravidian languages, male and female third peson pronouns were built upon neuter avu. For example, in Kannada, avanu -> he, avaLu -> she. In some languages 'adu' is the base word. For example, in Pengo, adel -> she. Interestingly, Kannada also has masculine form of 'ad'. The word Ata or Atanu could be found in literature though I haven't come across its spoken usage. Its feminine form Ake's origin is mystery to me.

In Kannada, avu became plural for adu. However, this appears to be largely a semi-optimization and never really taken by native speakers. Kannada speakers still by and large use 'avu' in singular sense though never as a singular term.

Road to True Capitalism - iii

The profit sharing policy enacted by the Indian government again appears to be socialist stagnation than capitalist mobility. Get over the guilty feeling - that's all they are interested in doing.

In between, there was another proposal to bring the tribals to mainstream. An Indian minister, Kantilal Bhuria, a tribal himself, has advocated for tribal regiment in Indian army. I believe if this were to become true the transition would be tribalism->feudalism-> capitalism-> welfarism.

I think this mode is more practical than triabalism->capitalism->welfarism model. However, what we have to make sure is with warrior life, we can legally kill tribals' present way of life and replace it with another tribal way of life, generally known as the Western life. I believe in this case, tribals may not have to be derided for adopting a foreign way of life since the fundamentals of both societies are the same.  Western Europeans have always been (with brief interlude) more egalitarian and a communal society.  For them the ideology of individualism was an artificial way to accept individual freedom. In contrast, sedentary Indian caste society is highly individualistic within its caste communal identities. The individualism comes from the occupational identity and communality comes from the hereditary caste identities. Thus it requires two levels of emancipation;
- Individualism at the caste identities (thus no-caste identity)
- Communality within the occupational identity (thus team work across different ideas)

However, the Indian tribal society is more akin to erstwhile western European society. Of course, we surely don't think a Dravidian tribal wearing his Bison horn is similar to present day Scandinavian wearing his imagined Viking Horn or a Scot wearing his skirt.  But the overall social dynamics are still the same.

This brings another issue to the foreground. In a democratic system is it possible to make policies that may show results after a generation (say 30 years)? A number of governments with different ideologies can come to the power during this period. Therefore, we need to have a democratic system where a party can implement its generational policy. However, we also require a little flexibility that it doesn't affect all Indians as the social realities are different for different regions. Thus;

- A state government should have a constitutional authority to make generational policies
- A generational policy should remain unchanged for 30 years
- The policies should mainly concern with socio-economic life of people (which includes religion)
- The conspicuous failure of the generational policy should only result in its modifications and not in its complete removal until the period is over

Random Thoughts - i

All groups — Sindhi, Pakhtun, Baloch, Seraiki and Punjabi - should get an equal share in corruption

Abdul Qayum Jatoi, Former Pakistani minister for Defense Production

I cannot decide whether Mr. Jatoi was sarcastic or serious. It's a good farce anyway there. However, my understanding is that many middle class Indians sincerely believe if they are smart and practical about corruption then they can also benefit from the corruption or corruption can be egalitarianized.

Battle of the Sexes - vii

The stereotype has been confirmed. Women turn men corrupt. But it's unclear whether men from the corrupted generation then pass their corrupt outlook to the next generation or they reset themselves to their 'true man self' and teach altruism.

They found that because, historically, women moved about more than men, and so are less related to their neighbours, our paternal and maternal genes are in conflict over how we should behave -- with our paternal genes encouraging us to be altruistic whilst our maternal genes encourage us to be selfish.

'This leads to conflicts over social behaviour: the genes you receive from your father are telling you to be kind to your neighbours, whereas the genes you receive from your mother, like a demon sat on your shoulder, try to make you act selfishly.'

Via Science Daily 

I just remembered that there was a study that concluded mothers influence only their daughters and have no influence on their sons. That means selfishness is passed from mother to daughter but sons are immune or purely altruistic. So, even if we consider absent fathers where did all the selfish males come from?

Road to True Capitalism - ii

The Indian government probably doesn't have clear idea on how to set the tribals in the path of welfarism. I'm not sure what other reasons could be given for the rejection of a mining project in regions belonging to the tribals. This point I'm making in the background of recent government decision to give 23% in the mining profits to the local tribals.

It should be noted here that I'm totally in dark how the government would identity the number of tribal families that would get the share. Also, what would be the minimum amount. I believe the minimum amount is paramount in any of these. I have already argued how a limited land distribution even in regions with enough water resources has not helped the farmers. The limited land would keep them in the static financial status for generations as even though it can satisfy their needs but cannot guarantee disposable income for their social mobility. The government exercise in this regard looks as if passing the guilt feeling to people.

This would be the case with the tribals too. Even though giving some share in the profit may look a lot civilized than giving complete monopoly to mining companies or allowing the tribals to worship their hill gods, it may not necessarily bring them out of their tribal economy to capitalist economy.

Road to True Capitalism - i

A society can make a transition from tribal to feudal society (most of the sedentary societies) or from tribal to capitalist society (Kerala and Tulu regions). A typical mode of transition is tribal-> feudal-> capitalist-> welfare. However, I have already explained how Kerala has moved from tribal-> capitalist-> feudal-> corrective capitalist (socialist) society. I was discussing this in the background of Naxalism.

The Naxalism even though it calls itself 'Maoist' isn't so. However, Indian mainstream Marxism was essentially Maoism. I was wondering how Indian tribals would make the transition. It appears the Indian government would like to move them from tribalism to capitalism.

Government is planning to give a share in mining profits to tribals. So, it looks as if the path is tribalism->capitalism-> welfarism* for them.

* It should be noted here that welfarism* ideals fall short of my true capitalism.
* the four alternate options that Blogger's word processor gave me for this word were 'welfare', 'wearisome', 'secularism' and 'vulgarism'.

True Capitalist Society- i

There are only two economic models. Capitalism and Feudalism. Socialism is a correction to Capitalism. 

 In human history only Feudal economy has been practiced in its purity. Capitalism has always been bugged with feudal elements -which I'm going to discuss later. Socialism came up in regions where feudal power was in decline but the economy has not moved to true Capitalist self. Ironically, Socialism enforced state feudalism while rooting out family feudalism.

A true capitalism differs from feudalism in three aspects:
1. Inheritance of wealth
   Inheritance is everything in a feudal economy; it doesn't exist in a capitalist economy

2. Open competition

   Monopolization is the feudal mindset; whereas open competition is for true capitalism

3. Exploitation of earth resources and people

   Both are part of feudal economy; True capitalism only exploits earth resources

Generally, capitalism has shown feudal tendencies of (1).

The salient features of a true capitalist society are;
- Wealth (in the form of land, articles, businesses) can not be inherited. If a person dies his wealth goes to the state
- Every individual is free to make money by the exploitation of the resources. But his wealth will be distributed in the form of taxes and after his death - elaborated next;
      * In businesses, his share in the company goes to public and can be bought by anyone who is not part of his/her family
      * Land goes to the state which it can auction it and it can be brought by anyone who is not part of his/her family
      * Material possessions(house, jewellery) goes to the state which it can auction it and can be brought by anyone who is not part of his/her family
- Every male pays taxes. This part is explained in the subsequent part

But to create a true capitalist society the state needs to support children to grow into productive persons who can generate wealth.

However, since Homo Sapiens are sexual beings they are not really individuals and need at least one partner. Considering the case of heterosexuals only, the state needs to ensure that male and female are independent of each other. It is required to remove the cultural expectation of male-female bonding and create an environment for materialist bonding. In a true capitalist society, a productive -explained later- female is financially fully secure and a productive male is completely unsure of his future.  To achieve this it's required to:

- Provide education completely free. Thus create productive male and female.
- Social security to each and every female in the form of a house and unemployment benefit to live a life of middle-middle class standard
- Females are not to be taxed but males to be taxed 40-50% of their income. Male doesn't have any other materialist responsibility apart from his own self
- State has to take care of people in their old age contingent on their working years and tax payment history
- Voluntary childlessness should be taxed in the case of both males and females. Males may need to give additional 10% and females start paying tax rate of 50%