The Great Journalists are all Dissidents

The Great Journalists are all Dissidents.

via The Great Journalists are all Dissidents.

JBS Haldane: On being the right size

The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus, or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.

Let us take the most obvious of possible cases, and consider a giant man sixty feet high—about the height of Giant Pope and Giant Pagan in the illustrated Pilgrim’s Progress of my childhood. These monsters were not only ten times as high as Christian, but ten times as wide and ten times as thick, so that their total weight was a thousand times his, or about eighty to ninety tons. Unfortunately the cross sections of their bones were only a hundred times those of Christian, so that every square inch of giant bone had to support ten times the weight borne by a square inch of human bone. As the human thigh-bone breaks under about ten times the human weight, Pope and Pagan would have broken their thighs every time they took a step. This was doubtless why they were sitting down in the picture I remember. But it lessens one’s respect for Christian and Jack the Giant Killer.

To turn to zoology, suppose that a gazelle, a graceful little creature with long thin legs, is to become large, it will break its bones unless it does one of two things. It may make its legs short and thick, like the rhinoceros, so that every pound of weight has still about the same area of bone to support it. Or it can compress its body and stretch out its legs obliquely to gain stability, like the giraffe. I mention these two beasts because they happen to belong to the same order as the gazelle, and both are quite successful mechanically, being remarkably fast runners.

Gravity, a mere nuisance to Christian, was a terror to Pope, Pagan, and Despair. To the mouse and any smaller animal it presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. Divide an animal’s length, breadth, and height each by ten; its weight is reduced to a thousandth, but its surface only to a hundredth. So the resistance to falling in the case of the small animal is relatively ten times greater than the driving force.

An insect, therefore, is not afraid of gravity; it can fall without danger, and can cling to the ceiling with remarkably little trouble. It can go in for elegant and fantastic forms of support like that of the daddy-longlegs. But there is a force which is as formidable to an insect as gravitation to a mammal. This is surface tension. A man coming out of a bath carries with him a film of water of about one-fiftieth of an inch in thickness. This weighs roughly a pound. A wet mouse has to carry about its own weight of water. A wet fly has to lift many times its own weight and, as everyone knows, a fly once wetted by water or any other liquid is in a very serious position indeed. An insect going for a drink is in as great danger as a man leaning out over a precipice in search of food. If it once falls into the grip of the surface tension of the water—that is to say, gets wet—it is likely to remain so until it drowns. A few insects, such as water-beetles, contrive to be unwettable; the majority keep well away from their drink by means of a long proboscis.

Of course tall land animals have other difficulties. They have to pump their blood to greater heights than a man, and, therefore, require a larger blood pressure and tougher blood-vessels. A great many men die from burst arteries, greater for an elephant or a giraffe. But animals of all kinds find difficulties in size for the following reason. A typical small animal, say a microscopic worm or rotifer, has a smooth skin through which all the oxygen it requires can soak in, a straight gut with sufficient surface to absorb its food, and a single kidney. Increase its dimensions tenfold in every direction, and its weight is increased a thousand times, so that if it is to use its muscles as efficiently as its miniature counterpart, it will need a thousand times as much food and oxygen per day and will excrete a thousand times as much of waste products.

Now if its shape is unaltered its surface will be increased only a hundredfold, and ten times as much oxygen must enter per minute through each square millimetre of skin, ten times as much food through each square millimetre of intestine. When a limit is reached to their absorptive powers their surface has to be increased by some special device. For example, a part of the skin may be drawn out into tufts to make gills or pushed in to make lungs, thus increasing the oxygen-absorbing surface in proportion to the animal’s bulk. A man, for example, has a hundred square yards of lung. Similarly, the gut, instead of being smooth and straight, becomes coiled and develops a velvety surface, and other organs increase in complication. The higher animals are not larger than the lower because they are more complicated. They are more complicated because they are larger. Just the same is true of plants. The simplest plants, such as the green algae growing in stagnant water or on the bark of trees, are mere round cells. The higher plants increase their surface by putting out leaves and roots. Comparative anatomy is largely the story of the struggle to increase surface in proportion to volume. Some of the methods of increasing the surface are useful up to a point, but not capable of a very wide adaptation. For example, while vertebrates carry the oxygen from the gills or lungs all over the body in the blood, insects take air directly to every part of their body by tiny blind tubes called tracheae which open to the surface at many different points. Now, although by their breathing movements they can renew the air in the outer part of the tracheal system, the oxygen has to penetrate the finer branches by means of diffusion. Gases can diffuse easily through very small distances, not many times larger than the average length traveled by a gas molecule between collisions with other molecules. But when such vast journeys—from the point of view of a molecule—as a quarter of an inch have to be made, the process becomes slow. So the portions of an insect’s body more than a quarter of an inch from the air would always be short of oxygen. In consequence hardly any insects are much more than half an inch thick. Land crabs are built on the same general plan as insects, but are much clumsier. Yet like ourselves they carry oxygen around in their blood, and are therefore able to grow far larger than any insects. If the insects had hit on a plan for driving air through their tissues instead of letting it soak in, they might well have become as large as lobsters, though other considerations would have prevented them from becoming as large as man.

Exactly the same difficulties attach to flying. It is an elementary principle of aeronautics that the minimum speed needed to keep an aeroplane of a given shape in the air varies as the square root of its length. If its linear dimensions are increased four times, it must fly twice as fast. Now the power needed for the minimum speed increases more rapidly than the weight of the machine. So the larger aeroplane, which weighs sixty-four times as much as the smaller, needs one hundred and twenty-eight times its horsepower to keep up. Applying the same principle to the birds, we find that the limit to their size is soon reached. An angel whose muscles developed no more power weight for weight than those of an eagle or a pigeon would require a breast projecting for about four feet to house the muscles engaged in working its wings, while to economize in weight, its legs would have to be reduced to mere stilts. Actually a large bird such as an eagle or kite does not keep in the air mainly by moving its wings. It is generally to be seen soaring, that is to say balanced on a rising column of air. And even soaring becomes more and more difficult with increasing size. Were this not the case eagles might be as large as tigers and as formidable to man as hostile aeroplanes.

But it is time that we pass to some of the advantages of size. One of the most obvious is that it enables one to keep warm. All warmblooded animals at rest lose the same amount of heat from a unit area of skin, for which purpose they need a food-supply proportional to their surface and not to their weight. Five thousand mice weigh as much as a man. Their combined surface and food or oxygen consumption are about seventeen times a man’s. In fact a mouse eats about one quarter its own weight of food every day, which is mainly used in keeping it warm. For the same reason small animals cannot live in cold countries. In the arctic regions there are no reptiles or amphibians, and no small mammals. The smallest mammal in Spitzbergen is the fox. The small birds fly away in winter, while the insects die, though their eggs can survive six months or more of frost. The most successful mammals are bears, seals, and walruses.

Similarly, the eye is a rather inefficient organ until it reaches a large size. The back of the human eye on which an image of the outside world is thrown, and which corresponds to the film of a camera, is composed of a mosaic of “rods and cones” whose diameter is little more than a length of an average light wave. Each eye has about a half a million, and for two objects to be distinguishable their images must fall on separate rods or cones. It is obvious that with fewer but larger rods and cones we should see less distinctly. If they were twice as broad two points would have to be twice as far apart before we could distinguish them at a given distance. But if their size were diminished and their number increased we should see no better. For it is impossible to form a definite image smaller than a wave-length of light. Hence a mouse’s eye is not a small-scale model of a human eye. Its rods and cones are not much smaller than ours, and therefore there are far fewer of them. A mouse could not distinguish one human face from another six feet away. In order that they should be of any use at all the eyes of small animals have to be much larger in proportion to their bodies than our own. Large animals on the other hand only require relatively small eyes, and those of the whale and elephant are little larger than our own. For rather more recondite reasons the same general principle holds true of the brain. If we compare the brain-weights of a set of very similar animals such as the cat, cheetah, leopard, and tiger, we find that as we quadruple the body-weight the brain-weight is only doubled. The larger animal with proportionately larger bones can economize on brain, eyes, and certain other organs.

Such are a very few of the considerations which show that for every type of animal there is an optimum size. Yet although Galileo demonstrated the contrary more than three hundred years ago, people still believe that if a flea were as large as a man it could jump a thousand feet into the air. As a matter of fact the height to which an animal can jump is more nearly independent of its size than proportional to it. A flea can jump about two feet, a man about five. To jump a given height, if we neglect the resistance of air, requires an expenditure of energy proportional to the jumper’s weight. But if the jumping muscles form a constant fraction of the animal’s body, the energy developed per ounce of muscle is independent of the size, provided it can be developed quickly enough in the small animal. As a matter of fact an insect’s muscles, although they can contract more quickly than our own, appear to be less efficient; as otherwise a flea or grasshopper could rise six feet into the air.

And just as there is a best size for every animal, so the same is true for every human institution. In the Greek type of democracy all the citizens could listen to a series of orators and vote directly on questions of legislation. Hence their philosophers held that a small city was the largest possible democratic state. The English invention of representative government made a democratic nation possible, and the possibility was first realized in the United States, and later elsewhere. With the development of broadcasting it has once more become possible for every citizen to listen to the political views of representative orators, and the future may perhaps see the return of the national state to the Greek form of democracy. Even the referendum has been made possible only by the institution of daily newspapers.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

Lenin the lizard by M. Krishnan

Peeping from under a rafter in the ceiling, I see a pair of eyes — cold, beady eyes that search every nook and corner of the room for something to eat. And I know that Lenin, the fat and rascally lizard who patrols the walls of my room is out on his nightly rounds.

Lenin has been there ever since I can remember. Once, long ago, he was small and lithe, and moved with a swift, easy grace. His tail would twist nervously from side to side, specially when some insect was near, for Lenin was eager and excitable in those days. His body would shine a warm, translucent orange in the glare of the wall lamp, as your fingers would if you closed them over the bulb of a powerful electric torch. At times he was almost beautiful.

All that is gone. Tonight (for he comes out only in night) he is fat and repulsive. His tail is thick and rigid, with a kink at the end of it, and he is no longer translucent. I never liked Lenin, but in the old days, I used to admire his sinuous speed as he raced about the walls on his career of rapine and murder. Now he has no saving grace: he is just six inches of squat, warty ugliness.

Lenin lives to eat. I have followed his career from time when he was three inches long. He has grown older and bigger, and more expert in the art of catching and eating insects, but he does nothing else. He is silent, and unsociable, resenting acquaintance except with moths. Lizards are not noted for their passionate and affectionate nature, but I feel that Lenin would be considered a sour old recluse even by these cold-blooded reptiles. Once, another lizard came into Lenin’s province — a much smaller, much younger lizard: a lizard whose delicately curved tail and elegance of carriage lent a vague feminine touch to the walls.

For a moment I was distress by a vision of Lenin, his wife, and a young family of Lenins crowding the walls of my room, but this passed like all visions. Lenins’s attitude towards the fair visitor was shockingly ungallant and cannibalistic. He chased her round and round, and only her youth and superior speed saved her from a most unhappy end, for lizard are cannibals, and will eat their kith and kin if they are small enough to be eaten. Other lizards might indulge in friendship and family life but not Lenin. I’m afraid he is a confirmed misogynist. He never gave up trying to eat her. That brave little lizard, she stuck it out for a week, defying Lenin. In fact she almost conquered the territory for, being quicker than Lenin, she either got the insects or drove them away before he could move. But it was a short-lived triumph. One night Lenin planned a cunning rear attack, and before she knew where she was, he had her firmly by her tail. There was a terrific struggle, and then down she fell, with a whack on the floor, leaving squirming tail in Lenin’s mouth. I was reminded of Tom O’Shanter’s mare and the devil

The Divil caught her by the rump.
And left puir Maggie scarce a stump.

It is a curious provision of Nature that the tail of lizard, normally pliant, becomes quite bristle when anyone lays hold of it. ‘Aha!’ cries your inexperienced lizard-catcher as he grabs the tail of his victim, "I’ve got you at last!" And the tail, suddenly fragile, comes away in his hand while the rest of the lizard scuttles hastily away to safer regions. And so ‘puir Maggie’ escaped. I never saw her again. Perhaps she went into hiding — into some dark and secluded corner — till she’d grown another tail, before venturing elegantly out again in the full splendour of a new-grown one. For it is an even more curious provision of Nature that lizards which have lost their tails grow new ones.

Which brings us to the question, "Do lizards really need tails?" Of course, the do — in fact, I think that they would be utterly lost without tails. The tail is the only organ of emotional expression that lizard has. It compensates for his voicelessness. There are frogs that pipe shrill tunes and crickets that chirp quite half a dozen different notes, but everyone knows that the Lizard on the Wall never says anything beyond laconic "Tchut, Thcut". But then, he has, in his tail, an organ that expresses the entire gamut of a lizard’s emotions. Whenever he is excited by any feeling, he twitches his tail. It is true that very few things outside the imminence of food excite him, but that is truly beside the point. Watch a lizard as he stalks a moth and you’ll know what I mean. Only the tip of his tail twitches as he advances, carefully, inch by inch, upon his unsuspecting victim. The rest of him is tense and rigid — only the tail betrays his eagerness. Or again, watch him as he passes another lizard and note the gay, friendly wave of his tail as he salutes her. He has another use of his tail — a far more practical use. He clings to the sheer faces of the walls by the suckers in his pads and the tail is his rudder. Without it, his progress against the force of gravity, as he races along the wall, would be more erratic….

I have wandered far from Lenin. Lenin is so unemotional, and unsociable, the perhaps he does not need a tail. Life, for him, is one continuous orgy. Beetles, moths and garden bugs are, to the zoologists, widely different things. But to Lenin they are the same: all things to be gobbled up. Once I saw him actually swallow a small scorpion, with no more fuss than a child would make over sugar candy! It’s during the monsoon that he is truly happy, for with the rain the insects come and cluster round the wall lamp. Just now, as I write, a moth has come in, and settled on a rafter just above the fatal lamp; one of those brown-and-yellow, mottled moths that look, when at rest, exactly like a chunk of wood. Indeed I can scarcely believe that it is not a piece wood, but Lenin will not be deceived. However still that ill-fated moth may stay, however much it may imitate a chunk of wood, Lenin will get it; for Lenin eats everything that comes his way, chunks of wood included. Why, only the other day, he gobbled up a big, nickel four-anna bit I’d left carelessly behind the table! You do not believe it? Only Lenin and my servant could have got it; and my servant swears that he has never, in all his life, seen such a coin — it seems the poor, ignorant man simply did not know that the government of India struck nickel four-anna bits!

M. Krishnan 1938

Andre Beteille: Academic Autonomy

The subject of academic autonomy may be discussed in more than one way. There is firstly the autonomy of the academic institution — the university or college — in relation to the government or other organ of society. Closely related to this is the autonomy of the academic profession, involving a particular kind of work viewed as a service by society as a whole. In the latter case the problems are similar to those of the legal and medical professions, although lawyers, doctors and academics function in institutional settings that differ considerably from each other.

There are self-employed doctors and lawyers, but hardly any self-employed academics. Doctors certainly recognize that when they give up their private practice to work in a public hospital, they give up a part of their autonomy in return for other considerations, including those of security. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt from this about professional life in general: it may not be possible beyond a point maximize both professional autonomy and occupational security at the same time.

It may be argued that doctors and lawyers who value their independence above everything else should work as self-employed professionals. At the same time, even when they seek employment in public institutions, they should not be made to surrender their autonomy as professionals, because that would harm those whom they serve and not just themselves. The demand for professional autonomy is based on something more than trade union rights of the ordinary sort. It is recognized in so far as there is a link between the strength of professional autonomy and the quality of professional service. I am not sure how widely this link is recognized in our society, or how far doctors, lawyers and other professionals employed in public institutions carry conviction when they claim that they want more autonomy for themselves in order to be able to serve others better.

In cannot be too strongly emphasized that the strength of academic autonomy will depend ultimately on the value assigned by society as a whole to independence in academic life. This value is formally acknowledged by making academic institutions self-governing. In India universities are not department of government, they are governed by own Acts, statues and ordinances. It is not always relaized that at least formally Indian universities enjoys greater institutional autonomy than universities in many other countries, including some European countries with strong academic traditions.

Even in the best of times universities have not enjoyed complete autonomy anywhere. Because the institutional autonomy of the university can never be complete, it can never be fully secure. In Europe, the principal threat to university autonomy in the past was the church, now it is the state. The long arm of government has reached into the inner recess or universities in one European country after another, and I have heard academics in Belgium, Holland and England say that their government are determined to destroy their universities. Without yielding to hysteria, one has to take note of the changes taking place in the relations between universities and government throughout the world today.

In India, the government is making its presence increasingly felt in the universities even though it has not shut down university department as in Holland or told university professors to take early retirement as in England. The main instrument of intervention, whether it is applied directly by government of through the University Grant Commission, is the financial sanction; if universities were not perpetually in need of more money, the intervention would probably be less odious. The justification most commonly given for intervention is the affairs of the universities is that they are not able on their own either maintain standards or control corruption.

Indian universities would be able to protect their autonomy better if they were less open to charges of corruption and inefficiency. No public institution can insist on enlarged rights of self-governance against universal suspicion of corruption and inefficiency. The university’s right of self-governance is damaged most when the strongest charges against the authorities of the university came not from outside but from university teachers themselves. A growing number of young and talented teachers have convinced themselves that professors, head of departments and deans, not to speak of vice-chancellors and the pro-vice-chancellors, are corrupt as well as inept. A very common argument in support of time-bound promotions is that academic selection committee can not trusted to either recognize or reward merit. When academic selection committee cannot be trusted by new entrants to the professions, what happens to the academic self-governance and university autonomy?

While it is undeniable that corruption and inefficiency are widespread in self-governing institutions, it would be foolish to tar all universities or all sections of any university with the same brush. In talking about corruption and inefficiency, we must never forget that universities are perhaps the most exposed among institutions and therefore their faults are always exposed to public gaze. And if it be argued that these particular faults in our universities must be corrected by tightening government control over them, who is to say that our governmental bureaucracy is lily-white in its purity? It will be very hard indeed to prove that our better universities — like the University of Delhi or Jawaharlal Nehru University — are more corrupt or more inefficient than the University Grant Commission.

Denigration of their own profession has become a way of life with our academics, and it sits ill with their plea for greater academic autonomy. The attack from within on the university’s organs of governance has acquired a new character with the development of an active, vigorous and militant trade union movement among college and university teachers. Whereas in the past vice-chancellor, the academic council and the executive councils were criticized privately and discreetly, the onslaught against them is now direct and open. The indefinite strike provides an occasion to otherwise sedate men and women to express themselves without let of hindrance against the constituted authorities of the university.

Where a union of college and university teachers is particularly strong and self-confident, it might seek to negotiate directly with the education secretary or even the education minister, over the heads of the vice-chancellor and the executive council. An irresponsible government might even encourage this as a way of setting one part of the university against the other. The union defines the university in the image of capitalist enterprise and other, willy-nilly, come to acknowledge the definition. To the extent that teachers play their part in accordance with such a definition, the case for autonomy and self-governance becomes weakened.

It can of course be argued that by union leadership that the constituted authorities of the universities are so inept that they are forced to bypass them the enter into direct negotiations with the government. This way well turn out to true in future, although I do not believe it to be true today. But when it does turn out to be true, if it does, the university will hardly be in position to ask for greater powers of self-governance. No vice-chancellor should be above criticism, but university teachers must recognize the damage done to the case of autonomy when they allow their unions to undermine the dignity of the vice-chancellor’s office.

Unionization has not only led to increasing confrontation between elected leadership and the constituted authorities of the university, it has also provided a foothold to political parties within the university. Our political parties being what they are, it would be surprise for them to miss an opportunity, while in opposition, to embarrass the constituted authorities. Moreover some parties are committed to the view that in a class-divided society every institution conceals a division of interests as in a capitalist enterprise.

University teachers have the freedom to join political parties of their choice. This is a part of their professional autonomy, and it is a good thing that they enjoy the freedom, provided they respect their non-partisan colleagues and provided that they do not always put loyalty to their party above loyalty to their university. We must surely acknowledge that if interference by civil servants in the affairs of the university is a violation of university autonomy, so too is intervention by leaders of political parties. Throughout the strike of August-September 1987 major decisions concerning the resumption of normal academic work were taken not in the universities but in the offices of political parties. The record of these parties do not inspire much confidence int heir commitment to the principle of academic autonomy. And it is one thing for academics to be unwilling victims of bureaucratic hight-handedness, but quite another for them to court party leaders and seek direction from them in the conduct of their own affairs.

Andre Beteille

Times of India, February 6, 1988

On village Deities

http://www.india-seminar.com/2010/612/612_interview_siddalingaiah.htm

Chandan Gowda: How did you become interested in village deities?

Siddalingaiah: I was always curious about gods. I often went to fairs and festivals with my grandmother and used to participate in the festivals of village deities as an onlooker. I was also interested in the ‘possession’ by gods. A relative of mine would often get possessed by a god, and I would sit next to him on such occasions. Since he was closely related, we felt safe that no problems would befall us. Also, there was tremendous intimacy between the devotees and the gods. The devotees spoke to them as if they were their brother, father, mother, grandmother or friend. I particularly liked how they questioned and challenged the gods. The gods too did not mind and spoke back as if they were indeed their friends and relatives.

I realized when I was young that the god-human relation is intimate and humane among the lower castes, villagers and farmers. Among the upper-castes, purohits and poojaris mediate relations between the god and devotees. In fact, only the priests can enter the temple’s inner sanctum; the devotees offer their respects from a distance. A big distance exists between the god and the devotees. In folk (janapada) religion, the distance is much less, if not non-existent. There is freedom to scold, condemn and even criticize god. An elderly person once asked a deity on behalf of the people: ‘Where were you all these days? Have you forgotten us?’ The god answered calmly: ‘Is yours the only village? I need to look after the seven worlds. Do you know how difficult my task is?’ The elderly person hit back: ‘We work so hard – don’t you see that!’ The god replied: ‘Am I working any less? Even I’m working hard.’ The relation where the god and humans share their hardships with each other is an intimate one. The distance between them is erased. The context that allows for this interested me.

Referring to your book, Avataragalu (Incarnations), you once told me that it was a crude rational approach to understanding folk religion. How would you understand village deities now?

Mockery was central to Avataragalu. Because of my rationalist background, I used to make fun of gods for a few years. That’s when Avataragalu was published, which appealed to rationalist youth. But, I don’t think like that any more. For example, people suddenly start lashing themselves with a whip. I probably would have made fun of this earlier. I would like to look at it differently now. This person is inflicting self-violence (sva-himse). Why is he doing this? What are its origins? I would ask such questions now.

Some devotees took me to a forest to show their deity who was supposed to have great powers. They showed me a round stone with turmeric and kumkuma. I asked, ‘She is such a powerful deity. Why haven’t you built a shrine for her?’ They replied: ‘We tried to do it. But she asked us not to.’ Some of them strongly felt that she had to have a shrine and tried to build one. She asked them to stop building it. They demanded to know why. She asked, ‘Do each of you have a house?’ One of them replied that he didn’t have one. She then said: ‘See, he doesn’t have a house, and you’re asking me to have one. No, I cannot have a house; don’t build one for me.’

Many deities in and around Bangalore don’t have shrines. And, the shrines of many deities have no roof. A deity called Bisilamma said: ‘I want to burn under the sun, shiver in the cold and get drenched in the rain.’ Her demand might mean that she wants to be part of nature or, that she wants to face hardships. Braving nature goes against the history of civilization itself which has tried to conquer and escape nature’s hardships. Unusual conceptions lurk behind village deities. Freedom is very dear to village deities – ‘I want to be free to roam the plains’. If ‘refined’ deities like to be in a well-built shrine, village deities wish to freely roam the plains. A doorless shrine exists near Bangalore. The deity had protested against having a shrine, but the devotees forcibly built one for her. The deity begged them later, ‘You’ve already built a shrine, but please don’t build the door.’ They asked why, to which she replied: ‘I would like to go and come as I please.’

 

The King Crow: M. Krishnan

THERE were some 30 cows in the grazing herd, four bull calves and two buffaloes. And once again I noticed that the king crows rode the coloured beasts, not the white ones. For a moment I thought I had confirmed a trend in the more obscure habits of these bold black birds. Then I realised how easily false conclusions can be reached in the field.
It was in the same tract that, earlier in the year, I had twice observed the liking of king crows for coloured coats on their mobile perches. The cattle of this flat scrubland are stunted and black or brown, the brown varying from fawn to a rich, deep chestnut, very few of them are white and these, presumably “imported” milch-cows, are much larger; the chances of finding king crows on the backs of coloured cows are about five times as good as on white ones, considerably better in view of the fact that the birds like to ride low.
This latter preference is real. King crows perch on small cows, yearling calves, buffaloes and even goats rather than on tall cattle, where, choice offers. It  is mainly for the sake of the insects flushed from cover by the  lumbering hooves that they go riding grazing cattle, and obviously the closer they are to the grass the surer their hunting.
It is remarkable with what certainty and speed they can take prey in the air. I have repeatedly seen a king crow take a vaulting grasshopper in mid-leap, swooping down on the quarry, snatching it up and returning to the hump of its mount in one smooth movement. But if you want to know with what acrobatic speed and ease the bird can twist and turn in the air, you should watch it chasing some fast-flying insect.
The deeply forked tail and broadly triangular wings are spread out into translucent brown fans as the bird brakes in the air, half-shut and black again as it dives headlong almost to the earth or shoots up obliquely on the impetus of the dive. You can actually hear the zip and rustle of the tail and pinions being flicked open and shut if you are near enough, but the bird seldom flutters its wings — the entire dizzy and complicated manoeuvre is sustained by the initial momentum, till the prey is plucked from the air and the king crow flies off, whirring and swinging by turns, to its perch.
Undoubtedly, the fishtail helps in these aerial acrobatics, other birds notable for their deftness of wing also depend heavily on their forked tails, kites and swallows for example. It is its speed and dexterity in twisting around in full flight that enables the king crow to attack much larger birds like hawks, kites and crows that venture too close to its nest.

The  chorus of king crows heralding the dawn can be heard in the jungles as well as in rural areas where they roost close to the human settlement. Even, I, who, like these birds so much, cannot say that they have musical voices (though some of their cousins do), but in the chill, grey clearness preceding daybreak, their calls have an exuberant, confident cheeriness, at least to the human ear. A famous set of stanzas by the Vaishnavite poetess Aandaal, addressed to a girl still asleep after promising to wake the others early (so that they could be in time for the early morning worship), refers to the pre-dawn chorus of king crows.
Do you not hear the high-pitched conversation of Harsh-voiced king crows!

Yes, there is a certain harshness in the king crows’ calls,  in spite of the carrying shrillness, but it is pointless analyzing sounds that belong so very much to the open air in cloistered print, incongruous as it may read, it is still true that it is this very vigour and rasping vivacity in the morning voices of these birds that makes the experience of being awakened by them so pleasant.

Before roosting, the birds fly about actively and call to one another again, and the sharp double whistle can often be heard then. King crows are said to mimic the shikra in this call; it is true that the shrikes and drongoes have imitative talent and that some of them are wonderful mimics; it is also true that this double whistle is exactly like the shikra’s call, except for the lack of a tonal quality that I can indicate only by the word “querulous”. But all the same I beg to differ from the experts who consider this call imitative. I think it is one of the king crow’s authentic calls, and that its similarity to the shikra’s is purely a coincidence. Otherwise, I cannot understand why this is so frequently indulged in by king crows all over the country, just before roosting.

Incidently, the open beaks of the king crows in the pictures do not show them calling. The afternoon sun was parchingly hot overhead when I took the photographs accompanying this article, and the birds were panting. Many birds pant in such heat and no doubt gain considerable relief thereby.

— Published in The Sunday Statesman, 1956

Andre Beteille: Language and civilization

A FEW years ago at a dinner in Tokyo, hosted by the Japanese anthropologist, Prof. Chie Nakane, I said somewhat light- heartedly to a Cambridge academic seated next to me that I did not think the English were a particularly civilised people. My Cambridge friend took up the banter and asked me to give him a defensible definition of a civilised person. I accepted his challenge and said a civilised person was simply one who was at home in at least two different languages: having one language makes us human, being at home in more than one is what makes us civilised. Prof. Nakane, who had been listening to the interchange with amusement, turned to me and said, `Ah, that is a very Indian way of looking at civilisation’. I was a little embarrassed because the Japanese are, if anything, even more inept than the English at handling languages other than their own.

The Japanese do very efficiently many things at which the Indians are rather inept, but the latter have an undeniable advantage over the former in the matter of languages. My Japanese students in Delhi often told me that while in Japan the students were very hard working, in India they were more intelligent, but what they really meant was the Indians were more articulate. It is a fact that an Indian can make a public speech at the drop of a hat whereas, I am told, in Japan even a seasoned politician finds it hard to speak at a stretch for more than 10 or 15 minutes.

Indians owe their aptitude for languages not to any superiority of racial or genetic endowment but to specific social and historical circumstances. They have for long lived in an environment which has tolerated and even encouraged a diversity of social and cultural practices, including linguistic practices. The linguistic diversity of India is truly remarkable. In the past when a family, a kin group or a community moved from one region to another, its members acquired the language of their domicile without giving up the language of their ancestors. Bilingualism was widespread in both rural and urban areas, and even among the unlettered. In a village in Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur district, where I did fieldwork in 1960s, Telugu, Kannada and Marathi were spoken in some homes, in addition to Tamil that was spoken and understood by all.

To be sure, people do not learn new languages only because they are available for learning. Sometimes they are obliged to learn them out of compulsions of one kind or another. But when the compulsion arises, a favourable disposition towards other languages goes a long way in meeting it. Although a favourable disposition towards other languages has been part of the Indian cultural tradition, it faces threats from various quarters. The politics of language tends to create hostility towards other languages in the name of attachment and loyalty to the mother tongue.

It is self-limiting to view other languages as threats to one’s mother tongue and a mistake to believe that human beings were created to express themselves or communicate with others in only one language. English has now come to occupy a pre-eminent place throughout the world. It is read, spoken and understood by more people than any language has ever been in human history. No doubt, the spread of the language in the 19th century was driven by the expansion of the British empire. Had some other nation, instead of the British, extended its power, some other language would have been the predominant language of the 20th century. The fact is that the predominance of the English language has outlived the dissolution of the British empire, and there is little indication of a decline in its influence for the foreseeable future.

Learning English became very important for education and employment from the middle of the 19th century. A new middle class began to emerge in the presidency centres in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras and it gradually spread its influence throughout the country. Its members found places for themselves in a new occupational system, in the services of the government, and in law, medicine, teaching and other professions. The new middle class played a momentous part in shaping the economic, political and other institutions of contemporary India. Facility with the English language contributed much to the formation of all those modern institutions we value today, although it did not come easily or without cost.

In some parts of the world the existing languages declined or died out with the advance of dominant languages such as English, French and Spanish, but that did not happen in India. On the contrary, literary and journalistic writing in Bengali, Marathi and Tamil was enriched by the influence of English. The two great literary figures of 19th century Bengal, Michael Madhusudan Datta and Bankimchandra Chatterjee, not only acquired an effective command of English but also tried their hand at literary compositions in that language. Their mastery of the English language and literature enabled them to experiment successfully with new literary forms in their own language.

Knowledge of the English language was sought because it gave access to gainful employment, but that was not its only attraction. It opened a window to a new world. English books and periodicals brought on the doorstep of the Indian intelligentsia a whole new system of ideas, beliefs and values. Its social and political categories were different from the ones to which educated Indians had been accustomed for centuries. It is not as if reflective Indians never thought about equality, liberty or progress, but they thought about them in a language whose concepts and categories had become set in a particular mould. Their growing intimacy with a new language and idiom stimulated them to rethink their old categories and explore new ones.

 

For all its troubles with alien rulers, an alien language and alien ways of life and thought, the Indian intelligentsia did not turn its back on the modern world. Modernisation is today inescapable, but it is not a painless process and it penalises latecomers severely. Modernity does not presuppose a homogeneous world in which everybody does the same thing, thinks the same thoughts and speaks the same language; on the contrary, it requires and encourages knowledge and appreciation of alternative ways of life. India is fortunate in having an educated middle class whose origins go back 150 years in time. This middle class is now very large and differentiated. Despite regularly losing many of its ablest members to outward migration, it is replenished by increasing numbers of professional persons who are able to draw upon more than one intellectual tradition. The accumulated intellectual capital of this class is an asset whose value to society is not sufficiently appreciated and whose role is often thoughtlessly denigrated by the intelligentsia itself.

Differences of language divide people from one another, but there is nothing inevitable about these divisions. Politics may be used for either deepening the divisions or building bridges across them. The main point to bear in mind is that loyalty to language need not be singular since the same person may be attached to more than one language. This has been a common practice in India for a long time, and there is no reason why it cannot become more extensive in the future.

Their social tradition has given Indians an aptitude for languages that is sometimes better appreciated by others than by themselves. Prof. Max Gluckman, a British social anthropoligist of South African origin, once told me that the best English he had ever heard spoken was by an Indian, Srinivasa Shastri. But, whereas I could pronounce English names clearly and easily, Prof. Gluckman had the greatest difficulty in pronouncing the name of the silver-tongued orator. That of course confirmed the point he was making, that the British were hopeless when it came to languages other than their own.

Andre Beteille on Hazards of multi-cultarism

Multi-culturalism is an attractive social and political programme, although it is not without its hazards. Since most people who speak of multi-culturalism speak in its praise, I will in what follows also say something about its hazards.

Multi-culturalism is based on the recognition and appreciation of the diversity of practices, customs and institutions among the various communities that exist within the larger social order. It advocates the accommodation of such practices instead of seeking their assimilation within one single dominant way of life.

The accommodation of diversity comes naturally to Indians as it has been a part of the Indian social tradition since time immemorial. Anthropologists of an earlier generation, such as N.K. Bose and Irawati Karve, never tired of pointing to India’s rich diversity in material culture, social organization and religious practice. After pointing to the endless variety of practices relating to food, dress and habitation, Karve wrote, “The variety of family organizations is equally great. Polygamy and polyandry are both found. There are groups which are matrilineal, others which are patrilineal.” In peninsular India, the patrilineal extended family or okka of the Coorgs co-existed with the taravad or matrilineal extended family of the Nairs.

Karve noted that Indian society had evolved over the ages through a distinctive process which she called the process of accretion. “The historical process is one of continuous accretion. There does not seem to be a stage where a choice was made between alternatives, a choice involving acceptance of one alternative and a definite, final rejection of the others.”

The diversity that was accommodated in the past was organized hierarchically and not democratically. The principal bases of the traditional hierarchy were caste and gender. The contemporary advocates of multi-culturalism are strict in their scrutiny of any bias against disadvantaged castes and communities, but they tend to remain silent on the question of gender. Some of the very castes and communities whose ways of life they seek to protect are associated with the most odious forms of gender bias. Should they be allowed to continue in the name of multi-culturalism?

When people speak of multi-culturalism, they do not generally have in mind the entire range of cultures present in a complex and changing society. They do not have in mind variations springing from education and employment. After all, the medical profession has a culture of its own which is different from the culture of the legal profession. And the culture of the Communist Party of India is evidently different from that of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry. If one makes a distinction between communities of birth and fellowships of choice, it is with the former and not the latter that the advocates of multi-culturalism are concerned. In that sense, they look to a society’s past rather than to its present or future. In the modern world, both types of association are present, each in many different forms, and it is hard to find a justification for favouring the one type at the expense of the other.

The accommodation of diverse, even divergent, customs, practices and institutions has its advantages, but it also has limitations. It works well in a society that changes little and changes so slowly that the change is hardly noticed by its individual members. It is not able to cope easily with rapid and consciously designed social change. An exaggerated respect for one’s own social customs or for those of others acts as a brake on social reform. The makers of modern India were faced with serious political and moral dilemmas at the time of India’s independence. On the one hand, they wanted to carry forward the spirit of tolerance and forbearance that they had inherited from the past. On the other, they were appalled by the multitude of archaic, obsolete and retrograde customs entrenched among many, if not most, of India’s numberless communities.

Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar were broadly of the same mind on the need for social reform. They both wanted to sweep away the cobwebs of the past. But, whereas Ambedkar wanted to push ahead, Nehru was inclined to vacillate. He fulminated in speech but equivocated in practice, out of real or imagined regard for immemorial tradition. It did not take long for Ambedkar to be eased out of Nehru’s cabinet.

Multi-culturalism becomes a problem when it is used as a shield for the protection of retrograde customs. It is doubtful that anybody in this day and age will seek to defend or justify cannibalism and head-hunting in the name of multi-culturalism. But what about child marriage? And what about polygamy? Until the time of Independence, polygamy was allowed by both Hindu and Muslim law. Shortly after Independence, Hindu law was reformed to make polygamy illegal. But Muslim law was not reformed in the same way, presumably out of respect for the sentiments of the community, but to the detriment of the long-term interests of all Muslims, both women and men.

The zeal for safeguarding the established practices of a community often acts against the interests of the individual members of the same community. This is seen most clearly in regard to practices relating to family and marriage where some decide what others will be required to do in the name of social tradition. Where women are denied choice in these matters, that denial is invariably justified by invoking the traditions of the community: others may do as they wish, but in our community we arrange marriages according to our own customs.

In the countryside around Delhi, local councils, known as khap panchayats act as custodians of the traditions of the community. They are dominated by men and they are strict about the regulation of marriage practices. Even though marriages outside the caste or jati and inside the clan or gotra are now permitted by Hindu law, the khap panchayats condemn them as being contrary to the customs of the community. They are both strict and swift in imposing penalties on transgressors and their families. The families generally fall in line with the elders either from conviction or from fear of ostracism.

In many communities the easiest way of maintaining order and safeguarding tradition is to impose restrictions on the movements of women, particularly young women. As they grow older, the women themselves lend their support to such restrictions. Not long ago, a local council in a village near Delhi issued a directive prohibiting women below the age of 40 from carrying cell phones. They did not have the resources to monitor such conversations. When the ban came up for criticism in the national papers, a member of the Union cabinet sought to justify it on the ground that the elders of each community have a duty to protect the integrity of its traditional way of life.

It will be naïve to believe that the diversity of cultures reproduces itself automatically without any regulation from within or outside. The regulatory mechanisms in use become obstacles to progress when they forbid choices that the law allows to individuals as citizens. Multi-culturalism will contribute to the general good only if it can build the freedom of choice, for women as much as for men, into its appreciation of diversity.

Andre Beteille, The Telegraph, August 23, 2012

Andre Beteille: A Right for Every Season

Fifty year after Independence, India’s record as shown by some of  basic social indicators of development is dismally poor. The spotlight is now on failures on the front for elementary education, and there has been much public recrimination. Educationists have blamed the politicians, and politicians have blamed each other. There is something odd about all this. Every time the advocates of universal elementary education seem to argue as if it is the first time its great significance for the health and well-being of the nation has been discovered.

It has rarely been doubted that the spread of education is a good thing for both individual and collective well-being. At least the makers of the Constitution were free from such doubt. Article 45 in the Directive Principles of State Policy urged the state to provide ‘within a period of ten years from the commencement of  this Constitution for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age for fourteen years’. The Constitution has been in force for nearly fifty years, yet elementary education is even now far from being universal.

Would it have been better if elementary education had been made a fundamental right instead of being made a matter of state policy? There would be no doubt be some difference. There would be a greater sense of urgency, at least in some quarters, though perhaps not in all. There would be also a greater pressure on the courts to enforce the right created by the law. Some judges would welcome this as an opportunity to enhance the social well-being, but other would probably be alarmed by the prospect of the courts having to cope with unresolved and perhaps unresolvable litigation. Judges now appear to be less alarmed by the arrears of pending cases than they might have been a few decades ago.

It is simply not true that the people of India or even the ruling classes are opposed to all changes. There is widespread desire for change and betterment among all sections of society, all communities and all professions. Everybody wants to get to the end of the rainbow, but not many worry about how to get there. Economists seek to create their utopias through planning, politicians by legislations, and social activists through empowerment. They all can give detailed and eloquent accounts of that the utopia will be like once it has been created. But they find it tiresome to dwell too closely on the obstacles the lie on the way. Perhaps in our social environment these obstacles are so pervasive and so oppressive that the mind naturally turns away from them. In the event, people tend to alternate between being utopian and being fatalistic, or fluctuate between a moralizing and a cynical perception of the world.

India has a complex, divided and hierarchal society in which life chances are very unevenly distributed among individuals and groups. Although there are many currents of change, they do not all flow in the same direction or work towards the same end. Societies are governed by their own laws of change; they do not change simply because change seems desirable; and they cannot be changed according to mere will and pleasures of individuals. This is not to argue against conscious or directed change, without which no society can move forward in modern world. It is only to draw attention to the obvious fact that human intervention in social processes and institutions has unintended consequences. By their nature, these consequences — of economic planning, of social legislation or of political mobilization —  can never been fully foreseen. But more thought can be given to them than is usually done by the advocates of radical break with the past.

The first two of three decades following Independence were marked by an enormous enthusiasm for the transformation of society through economic planning. If economics was the imperial science anywhere, it was in India in fifties and sixties. In Delhi, the economists maintained a high-profile, and they were to be seen everywhere: in the universities, in research institutes, and in the government. They were brilliant, articulate and highly skilled technically, but they also overestimated their own capacities as brilliant intellectuals sometimes do when they are gripped by a social mission. Some of the best among them became victim of their own fantasies about the transformative powers of economic models.

Planning models are still important and useful, but the days of their glory are over. Now the spotlight is on ‘rights’ rather than on ‘models’, and judges, advocates and jurists are joined by social scientists and social activists who all demand the creation and expansion of rights: the right to education, the right to health care and the right to work. But the belief in transformative power of rights may turn out to be no less delusive than the belief in the potency of planning models.

When people do not have schools and the school teachers to give them a decent education — or, for that matter, any kind of educationn — it will be a small consolation for them to have right to education. The government can not doubt take satisfaction from giving people at least something: the right, if not the real thing. It is like the French queen Marie-Antoinette’s observation on a clamouring Paris mob. When told that the mob was clamouring for bread, she is reported to have said: ‘The don’t have bread? Well, let them eat cake.’

Responsible judges and jurists should surely tell our legislators and our public that rights must not be created unless they can be enforced. It is not enough to create rights that can be enforced only in some cases or even in many cases. Conditions must exists for their enforceability in most if not all cases. Let it be not said about the Indian legal system that it has the most rights and the fewest sanctions. Nothing can be more corrosive of the laws and Constitutions than to take rights lightly.

Political theorists since the time of de Tocqueville have known that what contributes even more than the laws of nation to the working of democracy are its customs. It is vastly easier to replace old laws by new ones that to replace malign customs by benign ones. Good laws certainly help to change customs, but the creation of laws that can not be enforced, that are disparaged and disregarded, does more harm than good to society.

— Andre Beteille, January 28, 1999, Times of India

The importance of Rights

From “Democracy in America”, by Alexis de Tocqueville. Chapter 16.

After the idea of virtue, I know no higher principle than that of right; or, to speak more accurately, these two ideas are commingled in one. The idea of right is simply that of virtue introduced into the political world. It is the idea of right which enabled men to define anarchy and tyranny; and which taught them to remain independent without arrogance, as well as to obey without servility. The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he obeys the mandate of one who possesses that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow-creature, he rises in some measure above the person who delivers the command. There are no great men without virtue, and there are no great nations – it may almost be added that there would be no society – without the notion of rights; for what is the condition of a mass of rational and intelligent beings who are only united together by the bond of force?

I am persuaded that the only means which we possess at the present time of inculcating the notion of rights, and of rendering it, as it were, palpable to the senses, is to invest all the members of the community with the peaceful exercise of certain rights: this is very clearly seen in children, who are men without the strength and the experience of manhood. When a child begins to move in the midst of the objects which surround him, he is instinctively led to turn everything which he can lay his hands upon to his own purposes; he has no notion of the property of others; but as he gradually learns the value of things, and begins to perceive that he may in his turn be deprived of his possessions, he becomes more circumspect, and he observes those rights in others which he wishes to have respected in himself. The principle which the child derives from the possession of his toys is taught to the man by the objects which he may call his own. In America those complaints against property in general which are so frequent in Europe are never heard, because in America there are no paupers; and as everyone has property of his own to defend, everyone recognizes the principle upon which he holds it.

The same thing occurs in the political world. In America the lowest classes have conceived a very high notion of political rights, because they exercise those rights; and they refrain from attacking those of other people, in order to ensure their own from attack. Whilst in Europe the same classes sometimes recalcitrate even against the supreme power, the American submits without a murmur to the authority of the pettiest magistrate.

This truth is exemplified by the most trivial details of national peculiarities. In France very few pleasures are exclusively reserved for the higher classes; the poor are admitted wherever the rich are received, and they consequently behave with propriety, and respect whatever contributes to the enjoyments in which they themselves participate. In England, where wealth has a monopoly of amusement as well as of power, complaints are made that whenever the poor happen to steal into the enclosures which are reserved for the pleasures of the rich, they commit acts of wanton mischief: can this be wondered at, since care has been taken that they should have nothing to lose? ^[16b]

The government of democracy brings the notion of political rights to the level of the humblest citizens, just as the dissemination of wealth brings the notion of property within the reach of all the members of the community; and I confess that, to my mind, this is one of its greatest advantages. I do not assert that it is easy to teach men to exercise political rights; but I maintain that, when it is possible, the effects which result from it are highly important; and I add that, if there ever was a time at which such an attempt ought to be made, that time is our own. It is clear that the influence of religious belief is shaken, and that the notion of divine rights is declining; it is evident that public morality is vitiated, and the notion of moral rights is also disappearing: these are general symptoms of the substitution of argument for faith, and of calculation for the impulses of sentiment. If, in the midst of this general disruption, you do not succeed in connecting the notion of rights with that of personal interest, which is the only immutable point in the human heart, what means will you have of governing the world except by fear? When I am told that, since the laws are weak and the populace is wild, since passions are excited and the authority of virtue is paralyzed, no measures must be taken to increase the rights of the democracy, I reply, that it is for these very reasons that some measures of the kind must be taken; and I am persuaded that governments are still more interested in taking them than society at large, because governments are liable to be destroyed and society cannot perish.

I am not, however, inclined to exaggerate the example which America furnishes. In those States the people are invested with political rights at a time when they could scarcely be abused, for the citizens were few in number and simple in their manners. As they have increased, the Americans have not augmented the power of the democracy, but they have, if I may use the expression, extended its dominions. It cannot be doubted that the moment at which political rights are granted to a people that had before been without them is a very critical, though it be a necessary one. A child may kill before he is aware of the value of life; and he may deprive another person of his property before he is aware that his own may be taken away from him. The lower orders, when first they are invested with political rights, stand, in relation to those rights, in the same position as the child does to the whole of nature, and the celebrated adage may then be applied to them, Homo puer robustus. This truth may even be perceived in America. The States in which the citizens have enjoyed their rights longest are those in which they make the best use of them.

It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty. Such is not the case with despotic institutions: despotism often promises to make amends for a thousand previous ills; it supports the right, it protects the oppressed, and it maintains public order. The nation is lulled by the temporary prosperity which accrues to it, until it is roused to a sense of its own misery. Liberty, on the contrary, is generally established in the midst of agitation, it is perfected by civil discord, and its benefits cannot be appreciated until it is already old.