Desicritics Category: Politics: United Kingdom

Can Only Whites be Racist?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:31:34 EDT

I talked about how Indians in South Africa can be seen to be racist. But here is something curious and not much has been discussed about this aspect. I quote some worrying findings. (More factoids from here and here)

Some 29 per cent of people surveyed think public sector workers discriminate against them in favour of other ethnic groups.
And many believe they have been passed over for promotion or a job because of the colour of their skin.
Seven per cent of white people questioned thought they had failed to win a promotion because of their race, up from three per cent in 2003.
And the study reveals that ethnic groups living in the UK feel stronger ties to the country than native whites.
Researchers found that whites also felt less able that other ethnic groups to influence decisions affecting the country or their local area. And many believe racial prejudice is on the rise, in stark contrast with other races.
The survey found that 29 per cent of white people expect to be treated worse than other groups by at least eight of the public services including police, prisons, courts, Crown Prosecution Service and local housing organisations.
One in six white Britons feel only a slight sense of belonging to the nation. Whites also now feel less able than other ethnic groups to influence decisions affecting their local area and the country as a whole.
Forty one per cent of black African, 36 per cent of Bangladeshi and 35 per cent of Indian people feel they have a say in decisions affecting Britain, compared to 19 per cent of white people.
The proportion of members of ethnic minority groups who expected to face discrimination from one of the eight bodies fell from 38 per cent in 2001 to 34 per cent. But it remains higher than for white people in many categories, particularly the police.
Whites identified council housing departments or housing associations as the most likely to discriminate against them.
Overall, 84 per cent of people felt they belonged strongly to the country, including 45 per cent who said they belonged very strongly. However, nine out of ten Pakistani and Indian people said they felt a strong sense of belonging, compared to 84 per cent of whites.

Each and every statistic is worrying. If the criterion was replaced, for example, white with black or brown, the headlines would be screaming. But in this case they are not. Curiously, this story was buried and not much discussion about it has happened. But I think that is wrong. The white population of this country is saying something to the grand political parties and senior intelligentsia and they are not listening. Read the comments on this site to see what some people are saying.

See the commonality? In the South African case, the Indian intelligentsia in charge of the schools wanted more cohesion and integration, but the parents do not want to integrate. However, nobody is screaming about racism to them. But here whites are complaining about reverse discrimination and again nobody is talking about it.

People are not talking about this and they are not considering why this is the case. Why are immigrants being given privileges that local citizens are not receiving ? And even if that is not the actual case, people do think so and perceive it as such. So there is a communications problem. Mind you, knowing the spectacular idiots who are in the government, I very much doubt that they will be able to do anything about this. Despite that silly minister Hazel Blears commissioning this survey, I very much doubt anything will come out of it. I mean, it is not even on her own site.

I find this deeply worrying. Perhaps more transparency in hiring, housing allocation and other aspects will help remove this deep seated fear amongst the " whites" of the country. The fear exists, it needs to be addressed quickly.

Technorati Tags: Affirmative Action,Racism,United Kingdom

Public Services and the Public Sector

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:11:28 EDT

There seems to be an inherent assumption that public services such as hospitals, police, roads, infrastructure, garbage collection and so on and so forth have to be provided by the public sector as well, soup to nuts. And this is what bugs the heck out of me.

Recently, at a club for technology, public sector and business executives, a minister came in to talk to us about how the public sector is responding to globalisation. Incidentally, this is a great club, you get to hear some great people and meet even better people. Quite a lot of my knowledge of the public sector provision and senior government workings comes from this wonderful institution, but this time it was a bit of a rambling speech.

What it boiled down to was that globalisation was hitting public services with change on a very dramatic basis while the public sector delivery model was clearly not up to the mark to keep on supporting this. So what he is pushing the public sector to be more risk taking, more entrepreneurial in public service provisioning.

Now, nobody actually objects to public service provision, not if they do not understand what a nation - state is all about. It is about common values, language, culture, geography, history and yes, even public service provision. The fact that there is just one currency note type across the country and everywhere that note is accepted and that it needs public service to make sure that it is fine means that public services are required.

Same with the concept of universal public provision with the post office. In other words, this is a provision which means that the state has to make sure that a letter posted in one part of the country will get to another part of the country, irrespective of the distance travelled, deliveries will be made on regular intervals and so on and so forth. What is actually required is different from country to country. But it is there. Here's a fascinating discussion over what to do with this provision and how to standardise it across Europe. But most importantly is that how do you fund it?

And this is my problem, if the government run public sector does not know how to handle it or provide that public service provision, then instead of trying to get all risk takers and corporatist about it, just put in a regulatory model overseeing the service provision and farm that out to the private sector. Why press the public sector to get excited about this?

Now this is at variance with what is actually happening on the ground. See here for a fascinating story. The private and voluntary sectors are providing a stonking £80 billion of puiblic services, 6% of GDP and I quote:

A government-sponsored study by DeAnne Julius, the economist, revealed on Thursday that those sectors supply a third of public services – everything from National Health Service treatments to bin emptying, IT, back-office functions and RAF pilot training. The market is worth £79bn, employs almost as many people as the NHS and accounts for 6 per cent of gross domestic product, making it a larger industrial sector than pharmaceuticals, automotive or electricity, gas and water. It also has considerable potential for further growth both at home and abroad, the study is expected to conclude.

So the minister and the actual situation on the ground are totally different. And something that I like. Now you might quibble over whether or not the garbage collection is a public service or not but hey, the British public has agreed to do so (and I agree with that) and has outsourced it to private provision while making sure that the service delivery is purchased by government. Neat, no? and as you can see from the article, they are trying to sell this model across the world. Shame the minister did not know about this.

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, United Kingdom, Public Sector

The Benefits of Joblessness

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:56:40 EDT

Now here's a surprise for you. I quote:

The proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds without a job is higher than when Labour came to power in spite of government efforts to reduce unemployment among the young.......blamed the rise on the failure to raise the skills of many youngsters. The New Deal scheme to reduce youth unemployment by providing training, subsidised employment and voluntary work had also failed to maintain its initial success.

What are the solutions? And this is where I disagree:

The OECD said policies such as raising the age to which youngsters must remain training to 18 needed “fine tuning”. It called for increased support for free nursery education; a three-month limit for 16- and 17-year-olds to find work with part-time learning, after which they must return to full-time education or training; more involvement for trade unions in development of apprenticeship schemes; and an expectation that youngsters working under New Deal stay in a job for at least 26 weeks.

See, this is an issue of taking a horse to water but cannot or being unable to make it drink. And here's the actual problem, and I further quote:

One in five youngsters who found work under New Deal held a job for less than 13 weeks, leading to “short employment spells with benefit dependency”.

What these gits do not understand is that for entry level jobs and basic jobs, the difference between the salary and benefits enjoyed is marginal, and in many cases, negative. So what's the point of me dressing up, going to work for a boss who treats me like a coprolite, doing soul destroying work and then ending up after working 10 hours with an amount which is lesser than what my friends earned by sitting at home smoking and drinking and bonking?

Benefit dependency is the issue, link the continued employment to the continued benefit and you will see that economic incentives do work. If you do not work, you do not get the money. And all the kings horses and men, like this whiney article, says, will not make humpty dumpty go back to work again.

Take a look at what Polly is celebrating. She is looking at an estate of 7300 people, and I quote: This vast estate, in much disrepair, had 7,300 residents but virtually no community life, voluntary or council-run. It did have crack houses, prostitution, rubbish tips and violent crime. It did have exceptional numbers of the old, the sick and single mothers.

This is the problem, it was the state's mistakes, the centralised planning, the benefit dependency, the bad public service delivery and the like which landed the estate of Clapham Park in this mess. So Polly is basically saying that the state mucked up, and then the state tried to fix it, and then it again failed. Erm. yes, obviously it will fail, you silly girl, because it was not done by the residents, but to and for the residents by people who never stayed in there. And she is asking for more public money to fix it, keep it going and worse of all, to extend it to other estates and counties where the state has spectacularly failed. Dont you think you should stand back and let the citizens do it themselves?

But here is the problem which goes back to the benefits issue. This state has made a vast swathe of the populace dependent upon benefits and is therefore unable to shift them off it. Take a look at this by-election coming up in Glasgow East. Trace the history of the constituency back and you will see that it has been managed by Labour going back to 1922. Ok? Now let me bring some interesting statistics to bear.

1. From the Spectator:

Nick Clegg drew gasps at a reception in Westminster by observing that there are parts of Glasgow where life expectancy is the same as the Gaza Strip and North Korea. If only this were so. Glasgow City, as a whole, has a male life expectancy of 71 years which is actually lower than the 72 years of both Gaza and Pyongyang. But this includes its lush suburbs. Those in the welfare ghettoes of Glasgow East can only dream of such longevity. The life expectancy of its sink estates is worth recording here. A boy born in Camlachie is expected to live to 64.5 — the same as in Uzbekistan. In Parkhead it is 62, the same as Bangladesh. Just outside its boundaries lies Dalmarnock where the figure is 58 — lower than Sudan, Cambodia or Ghana. The lowest is Carlton, where the figure of 54 is lower than even Gambia’s equivalent.

2. BBC:

Figures for unemployment are also higher, with the rate for men over 25 about 10%, rising to 25% for women.

This year, NHS statistics showed that the east end of Glasgow had Scotland's highest rate of alcohol-related hospital admissions.

3. Blog:

Look beneath the lies, damned lies and statistics, and factor in the number of people on incapacity benefits, and we discover that around 50% of the adult 'working' population is unemployed.

4. Spectator again:

When you look at Scotland on any statistical dataset, it is one big horror story. Welfarism, health deprivation, drugs, drink – there are reams of data about what a socioeconomic nightmare the country is.

5. Financial Times:

Male life expectancy is 63, which is 14 years below the UK average. Unemployment runs at 25 per cent and about 40 per cent of the constituents live on benefits. About 40 per cent of the children live in workless households. Sadly, "household" is not always the most appropriate term. The teenage pregnancy rate is 40 per cent above the national average.

And this is from a city which, and I quote: Yet just a few generations ago Glasgow was the greatest industrial city of the British empire. At one time it produced half the world's ships and a third of its railway locomotives. It could be argued that many people in the UK enjoyed a prosperity that was in part built on the gargantuan efforts of industrial Glasgow.

6. The Times: male life expectancy is 14 years below the national average, 38% of constituents are welfare-dependent, 46% live in social housing, 60% of households have no access to a car, and deaths from heart disease among the under 75s are 83% above the national average.

Now yes, I agree that you cannot be up all the time, just look at Detroit, but hey, look at California, it reinvented it. And it did not do it by handing out benefits by the ton. The problem is that people are now accustomed to living by the state. So now why would you be surprised that the people will keep on voting Labour? As the quote goes, a government which promises to rob peter to pay Paul will always count on the support of Paul.

If you want to get people employed and productive members of the staff, you need to help them but just like pain killers, do not make them addicted to it, otherwise you will end up with estates like Clapham or Glasgow East. (Incidentally, the SNP and the Labour party are both the same, whosoever wins in this by election will do sweet sod all. Here's a prediction, 5 years time and the statistics will be worse! and I am very happy to be proven wrong).

Technorati Tags: Unemployment, United Kingdom, Welfare, Scotland

Book Review : Speaking of Empire and Resistance by Tariq Ali

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:07:11 EDT

Tariq Ali is one of the most articulate leftist and secularist thinkers to have come out of Pakistan and has been living in exile in London since the 1960s when he began to speak out against the country’s first military dictators. Nearly fifty years later, he has lost none of his fire and has consistently spoken out against imperialism, colonialism, religious fundamentalism. In his book Speaking of Empire and Resistance conducted as a series of interviews with dissident thinker, David Barsamanian, the focus is on Anglo – American engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab world.

In this extremely readable and extremely articulate book, Tariq Ali, reaches way back into history to recreate the history of imperialist involvement in the world- both the overt, in your face British imperialism, and the comparatively overt American imperialism. For instance Tariq talks about the nature of British imperialism – viceroys and governors ET all all imported from the mother country – and the American version where they simply bought off purchasable allies willing to do their bidding. King Hussein of Jordan, Suharto, the Pakistani generals, the Shah of Iran, the several Gulf Sheikhs Emirs is cited as examples.

There are also examples from India too – Tariq for instance mentions that except for World War II, when the country served as a transit point for Allied troops headed East, at no point did the British ever have more than 36,000 troops of their own in the huge territory of undivided India; yet they were able to retain control, by buying off the allegiance of the rulers of the princely states as well as the landed gentry and aristocracy. The Americans refined the process and bought off the leadership of countries en masse.

Some observations in the book are quite poignant. Citing numerous instances, Tariq Ali establishes how during the cold war era, in the name of suppressing communism, the secular elements of the polity of many nations were either weakened or completely eliminated. Indonesia which once had the world’s largest communist party outside the socialist countries is one example where Suharto’s brutal repression wiped the nation of a secular, non sectarian voiced. Afghanistan is another example cited where a secular government was first destabilized prompting Soviet intervention and then once the Red Army moved in, reactionary Islamic fundamentalists were intentionally marshaled, trained and then coaxed to fight the godless infidels. The vacuum left by the destruction of these secular forces has now been filled by the rabidly religious, for which the US and its allies alone are to blame.

The book has been written in the context of 9/11 and the subsequent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and has that anti war focus, but surprisingly enough does not appear to be biased. Tariq Ali traces out the many failings in the early communist states – particularly the Soviet Union and points out that their own failings were also largely responsible for socialism losing popular support and subsequently collapsing.

Tariq Ali’s consistently anti American stand may not be popular with those who support the American foreign policy and the actions of the current Bush Administration in particular; but so potent and well researched are his arguments going far back into history and tracing many of today’s burning issues to their very roots, that it would take back breaking research to counter his extremely logically argued point of view. And ultimately of one thing we can be sure; no matter what view point we hold- this book will make the reader sit up and take note that there is another way to go- even if it is a path hardly ever trodden.

Why is Argentina Boosting Air Force Spending?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 6 May 2008 00:36:37 EDT

Argentina has been in a spot of economic trouble, well, for many years now. This week's Economist had this to say:

Argentina is worse off on all three counts ... provoked a tax revolt by farmers ... lost its most important new face when Martín Lousteau resigned as economy minister over a policy disagreement. ... The price of Argentina's bonds has plunged as investors show little confidence in the government. ... According to unofficial calculations, inflation has reached 25% (officially, it is 9%). ... But overheating and inflation are already bringing Argentines some of these woes. ... The statistics agency has stopped releasing poverty figures. Using an independent estimate of inflation, the poverty rate has risen from 27% in 2006 to 30%, with 1.3m Argentines descending into poverty last year. ...

Pretty much standard for a Latin American country, and I did not worry about it that much. But this raised serious worries for me when I got to read about the fact that more budget and aircraft were promised for the Argentine Air Force (Hat tip: DefenceTalk).

You know that the United Kingdom is not going to be able to mount another Falklands-style campaign, not with most of our troops tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bosnia and other places. (Graphic). Those 1,300 soldiers in the Falklands will not be able to stop the Argentines if they attack. At the most, they are supposed to provide a speed bump till reinforcements arrive. How will they arrive? Our main heavy-lift aircraft, Hercules, is up on the blocks because it has cracks. Our naval aviator Harrier pilots are no longer fully trained or up to date on carrier landings. Our political system is currently undergoing massive upheaval and the economy is whimpering. If the Argentines wanted to pick a time to attack the Falklands, then they couldn't have picked a better one. Am I crying wolf? I might be biased because my supervising professor is the official historian of the previous campaign and wrote about it in two volumes, here and here. But remember what happened the first time around? They went to war because the country had economic difficulties and the military government tried to divert attention by launching into a war. That nebulous link with neighbours, as mentioned in the Uruguayan newspaper, is worrying. Is that a reference to Venezuela? If not that, why or which other neighbour will have Air Force links with Argentina?

Dont know, but not getting a good feeling about this.

Technorati Tags: Argentina, United Kingdom, War

The British Government and Corrupt Practices

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:11:39 EDT

It has been days since the Court said that the Serious Fraud Office has "seriously" erred in stopping the fraud and corruption case against BAE for allegedly bribing various Saudi people. Now, who from the government have you heard saying anything about this case?

This government is very quick to pronounce on everything and everybody under the sun, but not on this. So what gives? (besides the fact that Gordon Brown usually hides and bottles out whenever there is a problem, and wakes up months after the problem is screaming for attention. He met with the British banks months after the wholesale markets problem was identified)

I will tell you what gives! It means that the government knows there is something wrong in this bargain. I have been tracking this for some time now and I am positive that BAE has indeed paid bribes. Why do I think that? Well, see here. The American Justice Department is on the case and I quote:

Another US official said the justice department had concerns that approval could hamper an investigation into whether BAE violated US laws by allegedly bribing Saudi officials over a previous arms deal known as Al-Yamamah. BAE has denied any wrongdoing.

If everything was tickety boo and overboard, why on earth would the Justice Department express concerns about it? It is, after all, not just a banana republic and a tin pot dictator we are talking about. We are talking about, oh!, sorry, a banana republic after all.

What people do not realise is the damage this step has done to the country's internal political and social consistency. For a political government in the form of ministers to interfere with an independent body - which is answerable only to Parliament - is critically insane. This has violated the basic structure of the checks and balances built into our society. Between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, this finely balanced and widely admired system of checks and balances has been tampered with.

For those who think that this is a problem for another country and is just the normal cost of doing business in those countries, no, it is not. Bribing a corrupt Saudi Prince means that each and every Saudi and Saudi Arabian resident is paying that bit more for those planes, because that excess money could have been used to build some roads, fund some scholarships, pay for some nurses...

It also means that the Saudis think that the Brits agree and accept corruption and bribery. So if they think so and bribe one of the incorruptible British Member of Parliaments, I suppose that would be fine, no? After all, if its acceptable for the Brits to bribe a member of the Saudi Government, it should be also acceptable for the Saudis to do the same, no?

When will these people in government understand that corruption drives away good money and ruins the governance of a country resulting in decaying the country from inside? Perhaps never, because if they wink and nudge at the BAE corruption, then they are also corrupt. For further details, see Transparency International and the OECD Anti Bribery Convention which the OECD have signed AND ratified.

Shameful!

Technorati Tags: BAE, United Kingdom, Corruption, Bribery, Saudi Arabia.

Student Suspended For University Criticism on YouTube

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:54:15 EDT

A student was suspended after criticizing an Anglia Ruskin University Course on YouTube. Is this going to be related to a freedom of speech case or a defamation case? Well, this step by the university is frankly silly. Here's the video. Take a look at the comments, what defamatory comments?

On the other hand, students demanding to be like consumers? Absolutely, why ever not? They have paid good money for it and if the offering does not match what was given, then they have a perfectly good right to complain. I would complain as well. If a student has not learnt, a teacher has not taught. And after having had an MBA, having taught in business schools across the world, recruited from several across the world and having been on advisory boards, I firmly believe that business schools should practice what they preach. And Universities should realise that they are running a business.

But why on earth is the university not listening? I will tell you why, because business schools are almost always looked upon as cash cows by the university. They take the money from the business school and use it to pay for the salaries of people who are investigating the Mongolian cultural significance of the Argentinean blue bean. I am joking, of course, but this is fairly typical of what I have seen.

But again, if you are a business (and lets get this very clear, universities are businesses now), this is your customer complaining. What are you doing about it? Threatening your customer with legal action is NOT a great way to improve reputation or getting additional customers.

Also, what the university has forgotten (or is perhaps stuck in the 18th century) that removal of comments does not mean that comments are removed. This episode has now created an internet electronic footprint which will be available every time anybody searches for Anglia Ruskin University. Not good, their internet, student and media management leaves much to be desired (even if their education and teaching management is perfect).

Technorati Tags: Universities,United Kingdom,Freedom of Speech

Paradigm-Changing Events and Legal Systems

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:28:54 EDT

Countries faced with terrorism are currently struggling with how to establish legal precedents, so that they can handle terrorists. Because there is no clear-cut answer, you get situations which range from outright human right abuses of legal systems, such as Guantanamo Bay all the way to situations where terrorists are released only to commit terrorism acts again right after they have been let loose.

This is not unusual. Legal systems down the ages have had major systemic shocks, such as this and the power of a liberal democracy lies in the fact that it is able to incorporate these shocks and re-emerge stronger. If you do not believe me, see how the British Indian Legal System reacted when it was faced with the "Thugs."

The Thugs were a group of criminals who ran rampant in India and killed an estimated 50,000 to two million Indians from 1250 to 1850. The number actually does not matter, just like Stalin said, the death of a million is just a statistic. But in this particular case, the situation was very bad indeed. Gangs of thugs ranged far and wide, from current Pakistan down to South India, to the foothills of the Himalayas next to Nepal to due east into Bangladesh, a very wide area indeed.

Over the many centuries their area of operation covered hundreds of native states, and the decaying Mughal Empire as well as the rapidly up and coming East India Company-ruled areas. All this is before 1857, the great War of Independence (or the Great Mutiny, take your pick).

These Thugs were professional murderers, with techniques and training passed around in special villages and in certain hereditary families. They would be protected, trained and funded in many cases by the local ruler/landlord in return for a significant cut of the proceeds.

Gangs had specialised roles, some would be the confidence boosters, others would be the grave diggers, some would specialise in the actual murder etc. They had strong rituals surrounding their equipment (especially the pick used to dig the grave), religious rituals to the goddess, etc.

Their modus operandi, while difficult to generalise, would roughly go like this: They would befriend fellow travellers, who they knew were carrying valuables (they picked up the information from the market places or from guardsmen, etc.) and then traveled for extraordinary distances with the victims, sometimes up to 100s of kilometres. And then, at a carefully selected time and place, they would generally strangle the entire party, strip them completely, mutilate the bodies and cut them open (so that the bodily gases do not expose the body after being dumped in a well), and then hide them down a gorge, a grave, well or ditch. Then the monies and goods would be divided amongst the gang (and the sponsor) and off they go to get the next victim(s) for hundreds of years.

How on earth did they manage to get away with it all? Well, there were many reasons.

First was the fact that they had local protection, so nobody could get to them as the only "authority" in that locality was that local zamindar (landowner) and if he himself had given protection, then there was no way you could get to the thugs.

Second, given the fact that many bodies were hidden, nobody knew where the victims were. Given the very bad roads, lack of communication, insular population, fragmented country, that is not a surprise. Further to that, given the frequent incidents of fatal illnesses, it was not surprising that people would assume that their loved ones had died on the road and had been buried by someone else or were eaten by wild animals. So no victim, no crime!

Third, the legal system in force in India was an interesting one. It was not designed for punishment and deterrence, but more around compensation. So even in the remote instance that you were caught and sentenced, you would not be locked up (very few prisons existed) for long (you could get away by paying blood money or bribes). And, according to one set of Islamic laws (Hanafi), you wouldn’t get the death penalty as you did not kill using a sword or implement, you used a rumal (handkerchief or scarf). I will not go too deep into the details of this, but suffice to say, that is one of the major reasons why the Thugs would strangle their victims rather than kill them with other weapons. After all a scarf is totally innocent!

But from the 17th century onwards, the British started making deep inroads into India and began creating their own states as well as having rights over many native states. They also built their own standing armies staffed with native soldiers, generally based in cantonment towns far away from their native villages and towns. These soldiers would travel long distances to go back (carrying arrears of pay, jewellery, gifts, etc.) and were therefore frequent targets for the Thugs.

Between these two major reasons, the British got quite excited about the Thugs and went after them with a vengeance and with great vigour. They used political power, approvers, military and police force, new and improved ways of communications, and so on and so forth. But they had a problem - they could not simply hang their suspects, they had to go through due legal process (never forget the power of bureaucracy).

The problem with using local law (variants of Muslim and Hindu law) was huge for a Britisher. First of all, there was no consistency at all. From ruler to ruler, jurist to jurist, country to country, town to town, time to time, the same crime could get wildly different punishments. Nobody wrote down the records in a systematic sense, although there were some court records in the bigger cities and towns. But even with records, there was no way to refer back to them. The appeals system was non-existent. Judges were frequently very badly trained. Lawyers and specialist legal personnel were rare or missing, a police system as we know it also did not exist.

Actually, in most of the times and in most of the country, police did not exist. There were state functionaries, but usually, policing would be ad-hoc and based upon appeals to the local rulers (another reason why you couldn’t catch the Thugs, which ruler do you appeal to – the ruler where the crime was committed or where the thug was from or where the victim(s) were from?

And how would evidence be collected? And presented? And who has time and money to follow this?). To further complicate matters, each person could have effectively gone after a different corpus of knowledge and laws in terms of legal coverage. So if a group of say three thugs were captured, each one could have appealed to three different legal systems (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh). And the punishment could well be totally different, depending upon who the ruler was. And incidentally, there was nothing as Hindu or Sikh Law, not as we understand it. It appealed to a series of philosophical statements, guidelines of behaviour and well, what the judge thought at that very moment. So, more often than not, the thug would be let off under native law. The liberal scientific heart of a British Corporate officer could not deal with such inconsistencies, and uncertainties.

But here an even bigger problem! The United Kingdom, at that time did not have a codified set of laws either. So the British courts could not simply take up the “home country” laws and apply them to British India. Also, because the East India Company preferred to keep a very light hand on the various states and natives, they had to use local laws, but needed to codify them, so that a British officer in Peshawar or in Madras could use the same law, be consistent, be uniform but also be sufficiently diverse to cater for local circumstances. So, what we find is an astonishing push to codify laws. Perhaps it is the first seeds of a modern Anglo-Saxon legal systems which were implanted here. The codification of British Indian law brought a bewildering variety of laws ranging from British Parliamentary Charters and Acts, East India Company Regulations and gazette notifications, English common law, Hindu law, Muslim law, to local instances of law and precedents.

Courts following these codified systems were established way back in 1726 and over the next many decades, a legal system was established to take care of law in India. One of the primary drivers for the criminal law segment was due to the British attempts to prosecute these Thugs.

This was not just criminal law, but also related to family law in many cases, such as disposal of assets and inheritance from victims, etc. A police system was established and in addition to that also laws and processes for forensic evidence, taking evidence from approvers, multiple corroboration requirements, etc. etc. You could really draw the origins of current Police Intelligence Departments across the world (as opposed to military intelligence) from this department.

Nobody said that the British Legal implementation was 100% perfect and that there were no miscarriages of justice. Sometimes reading about the court hearings (for example in Mike Dash’s excellent book, Thug ) makes for a hair-raising read, but then when you compare what must have gone on before and what happened after, then you can see how the British legal system was such a huge improvement.

This is the power of democracies, which come up with legal systems and laws. Though they might not be a 100% fit for purpose, but over time, they evolve and keep on improving. Similarly, for those who get excited about the miscarriages of justice today, think back to the Thugs and their victims of two centuries ago. That new legal system also committed some miscarriages of justice, but now has become the standard against which we judge others.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: Legal System, India, United Kingdom, Terrorism

Muhammad Abduh - A Reformer Who Died Too Soon

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:46:45 EST

Once upon a time, when Muslims were restive, worried about having been left very far behind the West in terms of scientific, political, economic and educational levels, when the west was overpoweringly overwhelming the Muslim world politically, a polyglot man arose who talked, wrote, taught and convinced a generation with a new way of looking at Islam. Muhammad Abduh, who died about a hundred years ago (1905), can be said to have influenced a generation of Muslim students and thinkers about how to take Islam forward to face the modern age. And now, a century later, we are again in almost the same situation. Who was Muhammad Abduh?

I previously wrote about reformers, especially about those who are in the eye of the beholder, like Muhammad Ibn Abdel Wahhab, who in his own way was trying to affect a reform and ended up being labelled the father of terror and fundamentalism. Wahhab was the originator of the removal of bida' (innovation) and advocated going back to the basics and the practice of the salaf (forefathers), but Muhammad Abduh was someone else who used the same approach, but with very different results and inputs.

Sadly he was tragically taken away from us when he was only 59 years of age. Sometimes, when you are lying on your back outside and observing the sky, you see a shooting star which dies away too soon. This is what he was. His early death robbed the world of an amazing genius who could have reached great heights which we can scarcely imagine. And in the world of Islam, Mohammad Abduh’s comparatively early death robbed us of a brilliant personage. His work and ideas were dazzling, but he died just when he had started to spread his work and word around the world. This is really worse, so close but still so far. Another decade or two of Abduh’s work and Islam as we know it today could have been very different.

He lived in a time of great change. Abduh, born of a Middle Class family in the Nile Delta, which ended up being poor but very proud and yet humble, was marked out for great educational achievements from the beginning. It was not surprising that he ended up in Al Azhar University in Cairo to study logic, philosophy and mysticism. He became a disciple of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, another reformer who advocated Pan Islamism as a way to fight European imperialism and colonisation. After graduation, Abduh’s talents flowered and he got heavily involved in politics, as a journalist and also as a very honoured and respected teacher.

At this time, English and European colonization was in full swing. The British Empire, on which the sun never set, was in its greatest power and flow and the Ottoman Empire was in its last breaths and decline. The Ottomans were sick, rotten and decaying to the core, while the European powers were squabbling over the carcass of the Empire. Egypt was ruled by a Khedive nominally reporting to the Ottoman Caliph, but also reporting and catering to the European business and political interests. Egypt at that time was a cesspool of corruption, incompetence, imperialism, back breaking taxes, huge revolutionary ideas and the Urabi revolt took place around the time of 1879-1882, during Khedive Abbas Helmy II's rule. Abduh was a huge influence in this revolt and knowing this, the English exiled him. As an aside, this revolutionary thought is still impacting Egypt, the Arab countries, the Middle East and the world. Just shows the long life of ideas.

This was actually good, because he then went to Lebanon to establish a path breaking Islamic educational system, then afterwards he went to Paris where he founded a journal, "The Firmest Bond", which is still cited and referred to. Brilliant Islamic and anti-colonial intellectual thinking can be seen in that journal, which he published in conjunction with Afghani, but which unfortunately did not last very long, only till 1884. His work was so well received that the new Khedive pressed the British to let him back into Egypt. He came back and then set the legal world afire as a judge and was later appointed as the Grand Mufti by the Khedive, a position he held till his untimely death in 1905. But that’s just the barebones of this remarkable man and the real power and brilliance of the man comes forth in his thought and arguments.

I was shocked to read that Abduh was a Salafist. Surely not, I thought, how can a liberal reformer of his ilk be the same and think in the same way as the obscurantist Saudi Salafists? And then the penny dropped. While he did think that following the forefathers was good, he believed that it should be taken forward under the ijtihad (innovation) framework. It is not surprising that the later Salafists did not agree with him and in turn accused him of being a modernist. As I have regretfully seen, way too many Muslim intellectuals seem to spend an inordinate amount of time debating with each other and accusing each other of wrongful thinking rather than actually thinking about their faith and the faithful. But I digress.

He was a true Salafist, because he is indeed following his forefathers, who took what was given in the Qur'an, the Sunna and Hadith and then reinterpreted them as well as the application of Islam wonderfully. This required firm faith and a determined desire for rational analysis and application of the religion on the basis of new and varied requirements. Life does not stop and it certainly does not stand still at all. Islam, even though it was said to be the last revelation, has to continuously evolve and adapt to cater for new challenges and issues. That is what the forefathers did when faced with an expanding community with a whole host of new problems and issues from an ever increasing mix of ethnically different and geographically diverse believers and that is what Abduh recommended as well. It is this evolutionary aspect which seems to get the traditionalists' goat and get their knickers in a twist. But all credit to the man, he stood up proud and defended his opinion.

Compare that with the current Salafists who seem to get hold of the wrong end of the stick on both ends. They do want to go back to basics, but not in terms of religion, but rather in terms of time and stay there rotting away in ancient history like a lump. Such things as insistence on beards, length of their pyjamas and other outward manifestations of religion rather than the inner issues show this kind of thought. They do not think that life and the world will evolve and move on. So they not only want to go back to that time, but also remove all new thoughts and ideas since then and go back to the time when they would sit around eating dates and poking camels. Remember Charles Darwin’s quote? “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” That requires thinking, rationality, innovation, modification and much more, all which seem to be in rather short supply for these chaps and were found in abundance inside of Muhammad Abduh.

But to go back to Abduh, it was this stern and unyielding insistence on reason, rationality, combined with firm liberalism and wrapped in almost Sufi like mystical thinking which made this man such a wonderful person. But don’t think he is a traditionalist or a literalist. Here’s what he said about modern science and what he said way back then still applies (which is a shame). “There is no religion without a state and no state without authority and no authority without strength and no strength without wealth. The state does not possess trade or industry. Its wealth is the wealth of the people and the people’s wealth is not possible without the spread of these sciences amongst them so that they may know the ways for acquiring wealth.”

What is tragic is that if you look at Egypt now or even look across the various OIC, Arab League or MENA countries, they have not moved as much as an inch forward since the day that Abduh exhorted them to read and study, following the injunction of the Qur'an "Iqra".

I had a debate with somebody about how one should not take the Qur'an literally, especially if one looks at the sura’s around Jinns. If you are a modern man living in the twenty-first century, you will obviously look askance at such formulations. But Abduh had a wonderful way of explaining these suras. For him, jinn’s were not much different from microbes. Once you put the concept of jinn’s in the framework of microbiology, creatures too small to be seen, then it is almost like an Archimedes bath time event. You do go, Ah! Ha!, I understand sura 7.179 it is not meant literally but figuratively. Can you imagine the sheer imagination of that man? To say something like this? Joining unrelated ideas together, and pushing it forward as the head of Al Azhar and Grand Mufti? Absolutely amazing.

But I have gone on way too long. I will simply close with two quotes, a man who could say this (clear as spring water, scintillating as pure mathematics and as direct as a missile) in his Risalat al-Tawhid (Theology of Unity), “The Qur’an directs us, enjoining rational procedure and intellectual enquiry into the manifestations of the universe, and, as far as may be, into its particulars, so as to come by certainty in respect of the things to which it guides", can also say this about worship (deep, mystical, Sufi like, almost like it has been taken from Rumi, touching the heart and making you go into a trance about God): “It refers to complete surrender springing from a deep consciousness of the Worshipped One, without knowing the origin of its form or essence. The only thing one knows of, is being surrounded by it.” [From Tafsir al-Fatiha]

What a man! It is indeed tragic that he was taken away from us too soon. When you look around the Muslim world today, his words and his ideals are still as valid as they were then. The conditions which catalysed his ideas are still the same and the likes of him and his reform concepts are more than needed. Awake you lot and read what your gurus have said before and what you seem to have forgotten and start kicking in the move towards reform again!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: Egypt,Lebanon,France,Islam,Reform

Kosovo's Independence - The Emperor is Wearing Albanian Clothes

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:09:54 EST

Kosovo has declared independence on the 3rd Sunday of February, 2008 and the expectation is that it will be recognized by USA, UK and many other countries immediately. As soon as these western powers do recognize Kosovo as an independent country, it will immediately cause a huge dislocation in the fabric of all other separatist terrorist campaigns, their supporters and the states/groups who oppose them. We have examples ranging from the Turkish, Iranian, Syrian or Iranian Kurds, Northern Irish Catholics, Palestine, Malaysian Indians, Kashmiri Muslims, Naga’s etc. in India, Thai Muslims, Sri Lankan Tamils, Darfurians against Arab Sudanese to the Turkish Cypriots. This will make the international political scenario very complicated and the hypocrisy galore of almost all countries will be exposed. How so? Well, let us take a look.

First, a brief look at Kosovo. The country, which can be said to be part of the Bulgarian (Christian) Empire, became part of the Byzantine Empire in 1018 AD. The local Slavs fought against the Byzantines and then finally became independent in 1208 but not for long. Then the Ottomans came in 1389 and the epic battle of Kosovo happened, something that has been seared into people’s minds. This battle is at the same level of the Battle of Hastings for the English, the Battle of Panipat for the Indians, the Battle of Karbala and the Battle of Badr for the Muslims, etc. That battle defined what Serbia is, the leaders of the Serb armies were even canonised as saints!. But to no avail, over the next hundred or so years, the Ottoman’s won and Islamisation happened rapidly till the 1871 when Serbian Nationalism again arose. Wars happened, the Turks ethnically cleansed a very large number of Slavs from Kosovo and it was a big fur ball but by the end of the 19th century, effectively, the land of the Serbs was now the land of the Albanians.

Then in 1912, the Balkan wars broke out again, and this time, the Serbs won, did a re-colonisation of Kosovo, and the Albanians moved out. Then the World War 1 broke out which ended in a confused mess. In 1929, the kingdom of Yugoslavia was formed lasting till 1941 when the Italians invaded and then again after some confused too’ing and fro’ing, the republic of Yugoslavia was formed. Now the Albanians lived under the atrocious and horrible regime of Hoxha in Albania proper, and for them, Kosovo was a paradise. So all the Serbian re-colonisation and wars were frankly useless as the population of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo rose rapidly to the low 90% by the late 1970’s.

Then the Slobodan Milošević phenomena happened and all hell broke loose. Whether he was personally to blame or whether he was just a conduit for long festering religious/ethnic tensions will be long debated, but Yugoslavia broke apart into civil war, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Kosovo problem is just one step in the still to be completed Balkan saga. After the Bosnian war, the attention of the Serbs turned to Kosovo and then the Albanians reacted, peacefully first and then violently. Horrible atrocities were carried out by both sides and then the Serbs got pounded by NATO who stepped into the breach on behalf of the Albanians. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Albanians were ethnically cleansed, thousands were killed, and it even degenerated to destruction of churches and mosques.

Now, under UN guardianship, the situation is that the Kosovo Albanians are confident enough to declare independence. The rights or wrongs of the actual decision are beyond this essay, but the point is, that this fight for independence is being waged under the guidance and approval of the West. Mainly Europe and America and they will recognize the independence of Kosovo immediately and they are the people who are providing the military, police and economic cover to the Kosovars. While countries like Serbia (naturally!), Russia, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania are also the doubters and countries who will not recognize an independent Kosovo.

So what does this mean for other insurgencies, terrorist campaigns and separatist movements? Let us take things within Europe first. Well, the Northern Ireland issue is calming down rapidly so I am not very sure how much it will impact them, but if the protestant/Anglican minority in Northern Ireland or in mainland UK do decide to stall the peace process, this is definitely a way out for the Catholic politicians to declare unilateral independence as an interim way to get to full union with Ireland. Will Scotland use the same mechanism? I do not think so. How about Wales? Nope, it will not. But the Basque in Spain will and can definitely claim this precedent to demand their own homeland.

How about the demands of the far right in Northern Italy? No? How about the very dangerous and frankly hypocritical stance in Northern Cyprus? That statelet is recognised by the Turks and only Turks. Why is Europe not recognising Northern Cyprus as an independent country? See? No response and no comment. Hypocrisy galore. No, actually they are liars, for lying to the Turkish Cypriots, but then, hypocritical lies come very easily to certain people. So the much vaulted principled foreign policy, the speeches about democracy and ethical treatment.

So if that is the case of how to deal with separatist cases, how will the EU/USA work with the other members of the Quartet on the Palestinian case? Will they provide another 2000 members of a stabilisation force to help settle and provide security to the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank? A similar situation will come up when we talk about Kashmiri Muslims, the Sri Lankan Tamils, Darfurians, and so on and so forth. Will the USA agree on the Puerto Rican struggle for independence? Or how about the Hawaiian struggle? For that matter, would the American Civil War have happened? Curious when these kinds of decisions are extrapolated wider and back in time.

Another question that arises is what happens when the minority becomes the majority? What happens to the minorities in the now majority country? The tragic situation is that the new minority always suffers. Look at what has happened to Pakistan and Bangladesh, two countries created for being the homeland of Muslims. This invariably meant that the minorities of Christians and Hindu’s have their numbers rapidly reduced. Similarly, we have seen the situation in Palestine where the Christians have been emigrating or being terrorised to a great extent. We saw this behaviour in Bosnia where the various minorities, which became the majority, in turn oppressed the minorities.

So here’s the other question to NATO. If the ethnic Albanian Kosovars now oppress the ethnic Serbs as it will happen, will NATO bomb the ethnic Albanians? Or will the EU police force be in there for the next 200 years? Or what? It is very clear that it will not do so and more hypocrisy is very clear on part of the Western Powers. This is the reason why all these high sounding principles are frankly distasteful when you hear from these politicians. Not surprising, specially when you remember that these politicians are the inheritors of the same tradition which has managed to carry out two world wars, innumerable genocides and centuries of warfare and colonisation. Fifty years of civilisation and soft EU power is too short a time for the hypocrisy and naked ambition to breed out. Watch out for more hypocritical statements emanating from these politicians, especially for places such as Northern Cyprus. In this case, the Western Emperor is currently wearing Albanian clothes.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!