Grab-bag

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Well, I haven't really done any extraordinary traveling recently, but I felt the itch to write something, so here's a grab-bag of thoughts:

1. Everyday Life

I haven't been taking pictures of my day-to-day life here, so the pictures on this posting will be my "Ode to the Ordinary". I know that with all the pictures of Arabian Sea Sunsets, you've been wondering where I shower, relieve my bowels, etc. Well today is your lucky day.

2. Work

Work has finally started moving at a slightly quicker pace. Most importantly, Henri finally gave me a decent image of the PRODUCT towards which I'm working...very exciting indeed. Basically, there will be one National Torture Report and 9 State Torture Reports. The National Report will start with a complete overview of the National Legal Standards on torture and custodial violence. That way the reader can get an idea of the tools available for fighting torture IF they were adequately enforced. The real tragedy in India is that the horrible day-to-day practice is masked by a progressive Constitution, legislation, etc., that make it seem at first glance as though India is really tackling issues of torture. Anyways, I'll get to that soon. The report will then cover data culled from various national sources, such as the National Human Rights Commission, National Crime Records Bureau, etc. This will likely show that torture issues are not being adequately addressed, and information is not adequately being collected. The third section, which sort of coincides with the second, is Institutional Responses, in other words, what the institutions are doing to stop torture. The overall picture will show oodles of lip service and little to no enforcement. The state reports will include data from each individual state that has been collected through secondary sources (newspapers and torture monitoring by NGOs) on instances of torture, major trends (i.e. the situation is particularly bad for Dalits, aka untouchables, women, etc.), and institutional responses. The overall picture will be roughly the same, except at the state level. Ultimately, the report will serve as a guide for NGOs and international organizations, as well as an ultimatum to the Indian government.

Now that we've nailed down the outline for the report, Henri has frantically started sending interns to the various states to collect information. His plan was to have the secondary source reports (newspapers) done by the time I arrived so that I could start immediately, but these sources turned up far fewer cases than he expected. So now he's sending interns to scour documentation centers at various NGOs. This means that the only section that I can currently write is the National Standards section, which I finished on Saturday. I learned all kinds of interesting little tidbits doing this section. For example, India has no law criminalizing torture (go figure). However, there are a number of laws in the Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, etc. that criminalize behavior that tends to accompany torture, i.e. assault, murder, rape, etc. So we've documented all of this stuff. The Supreme Court has also been quite helpful in filling in gaps where the Government has patently failed to protect its citizens. For example, it's now accepted precedent that torture victims can be compensated by the Supreme Court or State High Courts for a breach of their fundamental rights under the Constitution (arbitrary deprivation of life and liberty). This is a nice gesture, but very few cases actually make it to these courts. Further, although compensation is often granted through this method, it's based on strict vicarious liability, which means that the court recognizes that the right was breached, and the state is responsible for paying the compensation, because it is strictly liable for the actions of its public officials. This method conveniently avoids punishing or even identifying the perpetrator. So police officials enjoy impunity even when the victim is compensated. Ultimately, the victim really has no power over whether or not the perpetrator is criminally prosecuted. This system of impunity has pervaded India since Independence, and it's so entrenched that the struggle against it seems impossibly difficult at times. It really is embarrassing for a country that takes pride in being the largest democracy in the world. And what's worse is that torture is not even confined to a politically driven agenda. It's just generally accepted as a method of interrogation. The police feel that it's their right to beat the crap out of people, and from the stories I've heard they seem to do it out of pure sadism and power-drunkenness. It's disturbing at times to see how most citizens fear the cops and see them as "the bad guy" (which is not to say that's not the case for certain communities in the US, but here it's more like "if the cops get me, they might take me to a cell, pull out my fingernails and beat me mercilessly, then hang me from the ceiling"). Ultimately, though, it's all based on connections. If you have powerful connections, the cops will treat you like royalty. If not, then tough luck.

Another interesting law is that the liability of the state for torts committed by public officials is still defined by the law that described the liability of the East India Company under the British Raj. Now I've seen everything!!!

3. Gandhi

I just finished reading the book "Freedom at Midnight", which I highly recommend to anyone wishing to learn about Indian independence. It's a bit long and can get dry at times (it is, after all, non-fiction), but on the whole the authors do a great job of telling the story as if it were a fictional story, with colorful characters, scenes, etc. (Their descriptions of Indian maharajas are particularly fun--one spent enough money on the wedding of his two favorite dogs to feed something like 12,000 of his subjects for an entire year). The last hundred pages or so focus mostly on Gandhi and his killers. One great advantage of the book is that it really explores his killers and what motivated them. It also goes into great detail about their harrowing failed attempt to murder Gandhi and the bumbled police investigation that allowed them to get a second shot. The biography of Gandhi didn't cover any of that stuff, so I thought it was quite interesting. It brought up an old issue that I've always thought pretty interesting, which is the relationship of modern India to Gandhi and his ideals. The great tragedy of Gandhi's life is that ultimately his ideals crumbled and today many Indians openly dislike him. It should be noted first that his legend far exceeds anything that we can conceive of in the States. He is literally all-pervasive. His face is on all the currency, he is known as the Father of India, and almost any academic book that you'll come across in India mentions "Gandhiji" or "Bapuji" (both names of endearment) somewhere. But I've met very few Indians who wholly support him, and many wholly oppose him. The book really made clear to me how magically his methods worked early in his life, when he opposed treatment of Indians in South Africa and then started his Swaraj (Home Rule) movement in India. When Indians could unite against the common enemy of the British, he was at the height of his powers. Everyone in India turned on his every word, to the extent that if he called a "hartal" (day of mourning), hundreds of millions of people would stay in the house all day and the entire country would come to a halt. This in a country with a miniscule literacy rate and no modern media network. Most people stayed abreast of his actions via radio broadcasts. But then as Independence came closer and closer, the country was torn apart by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his demand that Hindustan be split into two countries, India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Slowly, ancient rifts among Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims began to re-open. This is where Gandhi's powers fell short, despite his valiant efforts to hold the country together. He was able to gather enough support to force the British out (no small feat) but not to heal internal divisions. The stories of the miracles that he pulled off even in this time are incredible. When the Government feared that Calcutta would become a blood-stained nightmare upon partition, Gandhi saved the day. All of India's forces were committed to preventing a blood-bath in the Punjab, and only half-succeeding. So with no other options, the Viceroy asked Gandhi to try to keep peace in Calcutta. He set up shop in a tiny house in one of the worst slums of Calcutta, held daily prayer meetings and implored for sanity and peace. And he accomplished what the entire Indian army could not, keeping Calcutta peaceful for 22 straight days. After a brief spat of violence on the 23rd day, he restored order. So these final years weren't without successes, but he was profoundly sad for most of the end of his life. He desperately wanted India to be a laboratory for the successful use of his non-violent doctrine, so that it could serve as a beacon to the rest of the world. Ultimately, he was killed by Hindu militants because he demanded that Hindus in India protect the Muslim minority that remained. He also demanded that India pay 550 million rupees to Pakistan, which it had promised to pay but had then withheld, feeling that Pakistan would immediately use the money to kill Hindus in Kashmir. The hatred of the times ultimately won out. The Hindus that killed him felt that he was a traitor to Hinduism.

So anyways, I've wondered a lot about what has led to India's hesitant feelings about Gandhi today. You can sense the hesitation in many people's voices while talking about him. I spoke to someone recently, who I think avoided bad-mouthing him in front of me because he could tell that I really like Gandhi, but he held his comments to "Gandhi was more than just a man". Personally I think there's a lot of residual anger towards his insistence on the unity of all Indians, which many Hindus in particular feel sanctioned the rape and murder of Hindus by Muslims (even though Hindus were raping and murdering Muslims at an equal rate). For example, many people are drawn to Bhagat Singh, a revolutionary who attempted to secure India's independence with bombs (he tried to blow up Parliament). People feel like if Gandhi truly cared about Indians, he would resort to such measures. I'm not talking about everyone, but some people that I've met. I also think he gets blamed for partition. Frankly, this one perplexes me, because he tried harder than anyone else to prevent it. The authors of the book describe brilliantly how Gandhi was the only Indian leader who foresaw the bloodbath of partition. He was the only one who deigned to spend all his time among India's villagers, so he had an intuitive "sense" for the mood of the nation. The others steamrolled towards partition, thinking that most Indians would accept it peacefully. He is the only person who opposed partition until the very end, but ultimately I think he gets the blame because he is seen as the only person who had the power to stop it, yet it wasn't stopped. Perhaps an unfortunate side effect of his immense power. I also think he is often misunderstood because of his obsessive habits, leading some to think that he's just a crackpot. He was less a political leader than a spiritual leader, and he was never satisfied merely with actions: he demanded absolute purity of mind. For example, he remained abstinent for something like the last 40 years of his life, believing that a true Brahmacharya (holy person, I guess) has no sexual drive. This was part of a campaign to have his mind completely dominate his body, which would lead to ultimate enlightenment. But he wasn't content just to avoid sex; he had to completely stamp out any sexual desire. So when he had a dream later in life that left him with an erection, he was devastated. His diet was also driven by his desire to have his mind dominate his body. He allowed himself only the barest minimum of fruit, nuts, milk, etc., just enough to keep his body alive. This reflected a belief that the body is merely a container for the soul, which is eternal. This belief morphed into what became one of his strongest political tools: fasting. He wanted to fast anyways, because he felt that it elevated the mind above the body, but he turned it into a brilliant political mechanism. For example, when he kept Calcutta peaceful for 22 days, he did it largely by fasting. He said that until order was restored and all political leaders gave their solemn pledge not only to keep the peace but to behave with brotherly love towards all, he wouldn't eat anything. On numerous occasions he nearly died. But the brilliance in the method is that everyone loved him so much that they would not allow his death to be on their hands. That method achieved the peace that the Indian army couldn't establish. And he openly admitted that compassion in your audience is a necessary component for this method to work. He always gave the British credit where it was due, and he said that had India been run by a Hitler or Mussolini, the method would be useless. The British always caved at the last second, as did Indians. Anyways, back to the main point...he had a lot of strange quirks that, in my opinion, led to Indians tiring of him. They didn't want to hear about peace and brotherhood towards all when their family members had been killed in post-partition violence. He held on to his "turn-the-other-cheek" philosophy to no end, advising Jews in Nazi concentration camps to accept their outcome and always show compassion to their captors. On the topic of nuclear weapons, he said that if a country was faced with one they should accept their deaths with the word "God" on their lips, rather than pre-emptively strike. (He stayed true to his word--when shot, he said "Oh God", then crumpled up and died). I think his economic philosophy hit the same roadblock. He wanted India to become entirely self-sufficient, and he felt that spinning cloth was the holiest of possible endeavors. He spun khadi (home-made clothing) every day and implored India's political leaders to do the same, because it would help them to stay in touch with India's poor (the vast majority of the country), keep the village as the focal point of economic growth, and promote self-sufficiency. But ultimately India's politicians, such as Nehru, had visions of socialist growth, of vast industrial complexes. Slowly but surely, Gandhi was abandoned until he had not only lost the support of the nation, but many called for his death. So I think it's a combination of factors that lead to people's ambivalent feelings towards him today. He operated on a belief that all people could lead lives like his, so in a lot of ways his own naivety led to his downfall. The strains of partition tested whether people could really remain faithful to his ideas, and he gained a lot of detractors near the end of his life.

It certainly bothers me to see people bemoaning this man whose philosophy speaks to me so strongly, but ultimately it's kind of a fitting scenario. He always remains interesting precisely because he was complicated and often paradoxical. He wasn't afraid to change his mind because he followed his heart, so he never had the same obsession with consistency of message that plagues politicians. His life contained many contradictions and quirks. Because he always remained faithful to Truth and to God (one and the same for him, really), he seems like a likely candidate to stick to his guns to the point that people turned against him.

4. Standing in Lines

This posting is getting quite long, but here goes one more story. I discovered a very interesting thing about Tamil Nadu (and possibly all of South India) when I went to the train station to get tickets a couple weeks ago: people actually wait in lines here! I discovered this in most embarrassing fashion. I should start with my previous experiences with lines in India, especially at train stations. The simple truth is that there's no such thing as a line. The ticket booths are usually confonted with seething masses of people pushing their way to the front, sort of like travel by natural selection. I realized this in Udaipur when, standing in line, I kept getting cut. I would stand there thinking I was next in line, and as soon as the person in front of me finished, someone would come shooting in from behind, cut me off and stick their reservation card through the window. So I would move as close as possible to the person in front of me, thinking that surely nobody could cut in front of me now. But I quickly discovered that standing directly in front of the ticket window is no guarantee of service, because people will crowd in around you and stick their arms right by you and through the ticket window. So on some occasions I found myself literally standing inches from the window, puffing my shoulders out as far as they would go and strategically positioning my arms to block any possible holes. On one occasion even this proved inadequate, as arms waving reservation tickets began to grow from under my armpits. I can't understand travel behavior in this country. People are so laid-back in their general business, but people travel as if they're contestants in the Amazing Race. People will literally shove others aside to be first to the ticket window, and while driving people will swerve in and out from behind buses, nearly killing themselves and others, just to get to their destination a little faster. I really can't find any good reason--it's just the way people operate.

So I went to the train station to get tickets to Varkala, and being early in the morning there weren't many people there. There was a row of ticket windows, and there were a number of rows of seats running perpendicular to the ticket windows. The seats were full of people, but there weren't any lines before the windows. So I filled out my reservation ticket and thought I would take advantage of this rare opportunity. I walked brusquely up to the ticket window and staked my territory, placing myself squarely before the window and puffing my arms out. I was sure nobody would get past me. Then I was lightly tapped on the back, and a sweet little lady in the seat next to me informed me that the people sitting in the seats were actually IN LINE, and I should take my place at the end of the line. I was shocked. Not only that, but I waited in line and got to buy my tickets when my turn came. It was a glorious and cathartic experience. I think South India is growing on me.

So that's it for now. I'm heading back to Varkala on Thursday to visit the friends that I made the first time, so I'll be in touch after I return.

I hope everyone is doing well.

-Aaron

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Comments

[Manju]

The pictures of the bathrooms were illuminating, brought some memories back. Glad that you appreciate Gandhi. My dad made us all read his autobiography "My experiments with Truth" when we were little. But I think his biography by Fisher is a better read. Gandhi was too honest and self-effacing in his autobiography.